Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Steps Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is director Morgan Neville won an Oscar for
Speaker 1: twenty Feet from Stardom and should have won an Oscar
Speaker 1: for his Mr. Rogers movie. Morgan, Welcome, Hi Bob. Okay,
Speaker 1: you were presently working on a Rick Rubin documentary series
Speaker 1: for Showtime. How did that come together? It came together
Speaker 1: because somehow Rick and Showtime it started talking to each other.
Speaker 1: And I think initially the idea was it was going
Speaker 1: to be more about the studio. So Rick owns the
Speaker 1: studio Shango Law that originally was put together by the
Speaker 1: band in the mid seventies, and Bob Dylan ended up
Speaker 1: spending a lot of time recording there. But other people
Speaker 1: did too, Eric Clapton and you know, Bunny Raid and
Speaker 1: on and on. And I was less interested in just
Speaker 1: doing a commentary about the recording studio than than Rick,
Speaker 1: because Rick is a fascinating character. So I started meeting
Speaker 1: with Rick. Let's be clear, Yeah, Rick wanted in Showtime
Speaker 1: want to do something? Were you there from the very beginning,
Speaker 1: not the very beginning, but close to it? Okay, there
Speaker 1: was just this kind of vague idea how long ago.
Speaker 1: Was this somewhere between a year and a half and
Speaker 1: two years ago, probably closer to two years ago, So
Speaker 1: there was a while ago and UM and I think
Speaker 1: what Rick and I started talking about that I think
Speaker 1: we both connected about. There were a number of things
Speaker 1: that we connected about. One was, UM, create a process,
Speaker 1: you know, how people and kind of the universality of
Speaker 1: creat a process. It's something I've spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time making things about. I do a series for Netflix
Speaker 1: called Abstract about designers, but so much of that show
Speaker 1: is actually about creative process. And Rick had love that
Speaker 1: show and we talked about that UM and and Rick
Speaker 1: is an interesting character too, So I think there was
Speaker 1: an ongoing debate and continues to be an ongoing debate
Speaker 1: even though we finished the show as to what UM
Speaker 1: what the show is because I feel like UM, in
Speaker 1: Rick's mind, his role as a producer is merely to
Speaker 1: be a mirror and to reflect what the artist wants.
Speaker 1: And as I say in the opening of the show,
Speaker 1: there's a real conversation I had with Rick. I said, well,
Speaker 1: my job is a documentarian is to reflect you. And
Speaker 1: if I'm making a reflection of our reflection, that we're
Speaker 1: going to find ourselves in a hall of mirrors. And
Speaker 1: Rick said, yeah, isn't that great? And that's kind of
Speaker 1: what the show has been. It's been a hall of mirrors.
Speaker 1: It's you know, lady from Shanghai with Orson Welles, you know,
Speaker 1: both of you know, we had bonded about that too,
Speaker 1: and you know this kind of um, the embracing the
Speaker 1: surreality of it, and what I came to really embrace
Speaker 1: about it is I think one of Rick's maintenance in
Speaker 1: life is that when the lines get blurred between what's
Speaker 1: real and what's unreal, interesting things happen and go a
Speaker 1: little bit deeper what would be real and what would
Speaker 1: be unreal. Well, for instance, anything that resembles a rule
Speaker 1: or a deadline or a budget or any of those things,
Speaker 1: I think Rick just doesn't believe them, you know, willfully, UM.
Speaker 1: And I think that stems from his earliest days. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it stems from his childhood, I think in some ways,
Speaker 1: but certainly in college. You know, Rick being a rule
Speaker 1: breaker UM has rewarded him again and again. So there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of positive feedback that this idea of
Speaker 1: doing exactly what you want and not caring about what's
Speaker 1: popular or not caring about what people say you can
Speaker 1: do or what you're supposed to do. Um is actually
Speaker 1: really for old ground. So I think that's that's part
Speaker 1: of it. It's just a wilful disregard for any Whenever
Speaker 1: anybody says, well this is supposed to happen like this,
Speaker 1: you know, you might as well be speaking foreign language
Speaker 1: to Rick. Okay, but let's go back to the point.
Speaker 1: They wanted to make a movie about the studio. You
Speaker 1: were more interested in Rick, So then you got involved.
Speaker 1: How did they find you? Um? Well, I think the
Speaker 1: people a showtime and Rick knew my work right. I've
Speaker 1: been a working documentary and for twenty five years, I've
Speaker 1: made a ton of music films. I made lots of
Speaker 1: non music films. Um. And as I said, Rick was
Speaker 1: a big fan of this design show I'd done. That
Speaker 1: was another thing they talked about, and so I think
Speaker 1: they all said, well, if we can get somebody to
Speaker 1: do this would be Morgan. So I honestly think it
Speaker 1: was me coming on board and having a series of
Speaker 1: conversations with Rick that kind of swung the show from
Speaker 1: what they thought it was going to be into what
Speaker 1: it is. I don't have a good way of describing
Speaker 1: what it is, because it's a rather indescribable show. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a very idiosyndradic show. It's been, um in
Speaker 1: many ways, some of the most rewarding stuff I've done
Speaker 1: and some of the most challenging stuff I've done. It's
Speaker 1: forced me way out of my comfort zone. Give us
Speaker 1: an example. Um okay, Well, Rick said at the beginning, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm never going to do an interview with you on camera. Um.
Speaker 1: So what I ended up doing? Why do you think that? Well,
Speaker 1: it's just that's normal. That's what people do. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't like talking heads. I'm never going to do it.
Speaker 1: You know, typically if you do a documentary with the subject.
Speaker 1: He said, Oh, can I'll sit down do interviews with you?
Speaker 1: Can I get a shot of you walking, you know,
Speaker 1: across your house? Can I do this? I could never
Speaker 1: ask to do anything like that. So what I ended
Speaker 1: up with was said, well, let me just do audio conversations.
Speaker 1: I'd even call them interviews, just conversations. So Rick um
Speaker 1: Off is uh at his house in Hawaii, and so
Speaker 1: part of my job was taking several trips to Hawaii
Speaker 1: where I'd go over and we'd spend the day having conversations,
Speaker 1: and that conversation we could talk about the Ramons for
Speaker 1: an hour, you know, we could talk about Um, Tom
Speaker 1: Petty for an hour. We could talk about anything. And
Speaker 1: I went in with no agenda. You know, this is
Speaker 1: not me trying to interview Rick. This is just talking
Speaker 1: about what what's interesting, and you're recording it and I'm
Speaker 1: recording it. So I'm by myself. First of all, I'm
Speaker 1: forced to be my own audio engineer, which scares the
Speaker 1: Jesus out, I mean, especially in front of Rick being
Speaker 1: who he is. UM And plus you know, just dealing
Speaker 1: with the nature of hawaiis I'm trying to record good audio.
Speaker 1: And we ended up doing more than twenty four hours
Speaker 1: of audio interviews and that really became kind of this
Speaker 1: text that flows throughout the series. And then I had
Speaker 1: to figure out how am I going to actually illustrate
Speaker 1: this cinematically, and it forced me into a lot of
Speaker 1: very create of solutions. Um And I know you've only
Speaker 1: seen half the series. It gets even weirder. Okay, from
Speaker 1: the beginning, was it going to be four episodes, It
Speaker 1: was gonna be something like that. It was a mini series,
Speaker 1: you know, could have been Yeah, but I think four
Speaker 1: was always kind of the goal UM, and we didn't
Speaker 1: know what it was going to be UM. And part
Speaker 1: of it is I mean, originally it was going to
Speaker 1: take about a year. It's been about a year and
Speaker 1: a half. UM. And there's a kind of an unpredictability
Speaker 1: also to to what's happening in the studio. So a
Speaker 1: lot of what you see in the in this series
Speaker 1: is just me getting call from Rick saying such and
Speaker 1: such as coming in the studio tomorrow, you should show up,
Speaker 1: and we show up, And sometimes I have no idea
Speaker 1: who they are and or how they're going to fit
Speaker 1: into it. So I feel like in many ways, I
Speaker 1: was given this incredibly diverse but random um set of
Speaker 1: ingredients and then I was told to make the best
Speaker 1: meal I'd ever cooked. So it was it took just
Speaker 1: a lot of um outside the box thinking to kind
Speaker 1: of stitch together things that don't normally get stitched together.
Speaker 1: What do you think Rick wanted out of it? UM?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean I have a very hard
Speaker 1: time answering anything for Rick UM other than I know
Speaker 1: he's definitely been more interested in, you know, speaking publicly
Speaker 1: a little bit you know, he has his podcast now,
Speaker 1: and and he's been somebody who's been kind of notoriously
Speaker 1: um off the grid in anyways. Um. And the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is Rick has done and learned a lot,
Speaker 1: and I think part of him understands that there's some
Speaker 1: wisdom that could be shared. And I think one takeaway
Speaker 1: he and I had when we're having these initial conversations
Speaker 1: was if you could come away from the show knowing
Speaker 1: what it's like to be produced by Rick, that's a win.
Speaker 1: And so in many ways, it's not trying to tell
Speaker 1: his story or the story of the studio per se,
Speaker 1: though it's all in there, but um, but to try
Speaker 1: and give the experience of what it would be like
Speaker 1: to come in and work with Rick and what you'll
Speaker 1: glean from that as an artist or even more perfectly,
Speaker 1: as any kind of creative person or any person you know,
Speaker 1: because the rules he's talking about that I'm interested in
Speaker 1: are the universal ones that apply to you, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a filmmaker or a writer, or or a
Speaker 1: musician or anything else. Um, that's what excites me. So.
Speaker 1: UM that was the goal. But it was no easy goal. Okay,
Speaker 1: you watch or the half that I've watched you get
Speaker 1: the impression that Rick is trying to make the most
Speaker 1: successful record in later in the series or just your discussion.
Speaker 1: Not everything he does is successful. Now, you know, we
Speaker 1: had this tenure with Columbia Records, which really wasn't that successful.
Speaker 1: But does that factor into his thinking I'm talking about
Speaker 1: financially successful. Yeah, I know. I don't think finance figures
Speaker 1: in in any way I've ever been able to detect um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wish I could be that pure in
Speaker 1: my decision making. I try. I think most of us
Speaker 1: wish we could be that pure um. But from what
Speaker 1: I could tell, Rick really really doesn't care. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if you watch the film, it begins with people from
Speaker 1: the hip hop world. I must admit some of them
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Okay, how about yourself? Did you know them? No?
Speaker 1: I mean I knew some. You know, I knew Tyler
Speaker 1: Um creator who's in it. But you know, people like drama.
Speaker 1: So part of what Rick wanted to show, which is
Speaker 1: very real, is that somebody like drama. This um, young
Speaker 1: hip hop artist Rick discovered on SoundCloud UM when he
Speaker 1: only had three listens. Somehow, Rick became the three first
Speaker 1: listen and you know, tweeted that he was listening to
Speaker 1: drama and next thing you know, he's producing drama. So
Speaker 1: Rick is still actively interested in finding new things he
Speaker 1: hasn't heard before. So there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: throughout the show who are people I didn't know, people
Speaker 1: who nobody knows, or people who are barely known that
Speaker 1: Rick is is trying to mentor I guess, Okay, we
Speaker 1: live in an era where it's conventionally believed that hip
Speaker 1: hop dominates. I noticed through the first episode, Uh, it
Speaker 1: was mostly African Americans talking. Was that a conscious choice
Speaker 1: to be hip? No? No? And in fact, I think
Speaker 1: by the end of the series, the balances is much wider.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at the artist Rick's work
Speaker 1: with two it's well, I mean, I know from my
Speaker 1: association with Metallica, you know that he's worked with them,
Speaker 1: and then certainly in the first two episodes, I didn't
Speaker 1: see Metallica. There was a mention of Slayer at the beginning.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a mention of the Black Crows, which was
Speaker 1: on his label. He was not the producer. Does that
Speaker 1: stuff come up? Um a little bit, But again, it's
Speaker 1: not the Rick Reuben story. You know it's and Rick
Speaker 1: was very clear about that that, you know, this is
Speaker 1: not going to be just the a diazy of Rick Ruben.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I'm more interested in doing the other version
Speaker 1: than the Wikipedia version. You know, I see so many
Speaker 1: music documentaries that feel like I'm watching a version of Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: you know, or behind the music or behind me. They
Speaker 1: did this, and then they did that, and they worked
Speaker 1: with this person, they did this tour, and then this happened,
Speaker 1: and they have to check every box. I find that
Speaker 1: not good storytelling. Okay, you're making the movie, and are
Speaker 1: you ever saying at certain points, because you're filming a lot, okay,
Speaker 1: now I have it, Now it's coming together, or converse
Speaker 1: with you saying hey, I need something. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's just like Rick of the movie. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you what it is, but I know what I'll get there. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm ever gonna feel like I've
Speaker 1: gotten there. You know. I rarely feel that way, even
Speaker 1: about films of mine that have done very well. You know,
Speaker 1: I feel like, um, my whole career has been iterative.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge believer in that. And maybe it's because
Speaker 1: you know, I started my career in journalism, and I
Speaker 1: came out of um deadline journalism, which I love because
Speaker 1: it's about doing what you can do and then the
Speaker 1: next day you do it again. And something about that
Speaker 1: iterative process lets you learn faster. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: filmmakers that do one film for seven years at a time.
Speaker 1: I can't work that way, and I feel just by
Speaker 1: doing things more, I get better at it. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: you know there's certainly uh, what's his name? The documentary
Speaker 1: the guy do the Eagles nick whatever? The guy who
Speaker 1: I mean maybe his name is Alex. He seems to
Speaker 1: make a million. He's always work. He actually not that
Speaker 1: you know when you're the three. But is he actually
Speaker 1: hands on it all these movies? Um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I know he's somewhat hands on and all those movies.
Speaker 1: And I think anything he puts his name on as
Speaker 1: director because he also produces things he doesn't direct, and
Speaker 1: I think, actually, I'm trying to remember did the Eagles doctor?
Speaker 1: Did he just produce it? I'm not sure if he
Speaker 1: actually directed it because there was a woman who directed it.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong. It was great, yeah, So and
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I mean, Alex, I've known Alex for a
Speaker 1: long time, and he's somebody who's you know, had the
Speaker 1: kind of career that's very enviable. I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: And we could talk about documentaries if you want, because
Speaker 1: I've been doing it for a long time and it's
Speaker 1: changed tremendously. What documentary is today is let's let's get
Speaker 1: completely different. Let's go let's let's go back to Rick
Speaker 1: and make sure that we don't leave certain stones unturned. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a plethora of product out now, and there will
Speaker 1: be a marketing campaign, usually with a fewer dollars than
Speaker 1: there is in a theatrical world. Even though I believe
Speaker 1: this stuff should list beyond the flat screen. What do
Speaker 1: you anticipate in what would be satisfying or unsatisfying in
Speaker 1: terms of response? UM? I don't want to sound um disingenuous,
Speaker 1: but I don't really care. Let's say, hypothetically was the
Speaker 1: theatrical film? Do you care? Then? UM? I would, But
Speaker 1: to me, I think of them differently. UM. I feel
Speaker 1: like this Rick experience has been a process of experimentation
Speaker 1: and trying things, and it's you're learning on their dollar well,
Speaker 1: but it's also idiosyncratic, and I think there are people
Speaker 1: who are going to think it's awesome and people who
Speaker 1: are going to think it's terrible. I'm okay with that,
Speaker 1: you know. And I feel like we had the support
Speaker 1: from Showtime, and I feel like it was kind of
Speaker 1: the mission statement going in that this is going to
Speaker 1: get weird, and um, I feel like doing something for television,
Speaker 1: it gets judged differently than if I put into a
Speaker 1: theater and want people to pay money on a date
Speaker 1: night to go and sit there and watch it. So
Speaker 1: I think about them differently, um, which is part of
Speaker 1: why I thought of it as a mini series. And
Speaker 1: it kind of has a um, I don't know how
Speaker 1: you describe it, kind of a a drifting, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of we referred to it as the Gossamer Construction.
Speaker 1: You know. It has this kind of, um, lightly connected
Speaker 1: kind of tangent of ideas. I mean, normally I'm a
Speaker 1: big story and character person. This was a challenge of
Speaker 1: trying to kind of tell a story with a narrative
Speaker 1: of ideas and um. And I'm really happy with what
Speaker 1: we did. But it's I know, it's not the most
Speaker 1: mainstrength thing I've done, and that's cool, you know. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to do things that certain people will say that's
Speaker 1: my favorite thing, and other people say I hate it.
Speaker 1: I may have done films like that and that's great.
Speaker 1: I've done films that are kind of broad cloud crowd
Speaker 1: pleasers too. And then to what degree was Rick steering
Speaker 1: to the final destination or making comments on the edit?
Speaker 1: I mean, I had final edit. But you know, of
Speaker 1: course everybody wants Rick to be happy and we want
Speaker 1: to talk about it. But honestly, the discussions were not
Speaker 1: you know, we it was much more collaborative in that
Speaker 1: it's this kind of debate about what it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think in a way, I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 1: no stretch to say that, um, Rick was trying to
Speaker 1: produce me that. Um absolutely, the conversations I had with Rick,
Speaker 1: with the kinds of conversations, the habit is our this
Speaker 1: And even though I would protest and say making a
Speaker 1: film is not making a record, part of me knows
Speaker 1: that making a film is making a record, and that
Speaker 1: I when Rick says, well, I know, you say that's
Speaker 1: the best way, but how do you know, How do
Speaker 1: you really know what happens if you don't do that?
Speaker 1: And um, you know, and that can be frustrating and
Speaker 1: it was. But it can also lead you to places
Speaker 1: you would never go to on your own, which it did.
Speaker 1: Ok Um, I learned to be much freer making this.
Speaker 1: I just feel much fear as a filmmaker, you know,
Speaker 1: much less constrained about um rules. And it's Rick happy
Speaker 1: with the final product. I think. So, So, how did
Speaker 1: how did step Goden end up being in the film?
Speaker 1: Seth and Ricker good friends? Really? Yeah? How did how
Speaker 1: did that come together? I mean Rick has um a
Speaker 1: collection of interesting friends and people. I mean there are
Speaker 1: other people. He's not in the first two episodes, but
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis uh appears in one of our episodes in
Speaker 1: a conversation. Um, he does a podcast in Malcolm clab Well, like,
Speaker 1: I think he's interested in Well is he? You know? Well,
Speaker 1: that's the conflict in the movie in that on some
Speaker 1: level you see this guru who barely speaks, but then
Speaker 1: you show what was happening in the dorm room and
Speaker 1: you have actual footage of him hyping the Beastie Boys
Speaker 1: and he said, this is a pretty aggressive guy who
Speaker 1: knew where he wanted to go. Absolutely. Um, So do
Speaker 1: you think that still applies today? No? I think Rick's
Speaker 1: journey is one of um getting away from the idea
Speaker 1: that you know, I mean, in fact, he says it
Speaker 1: and later a later episode that I mean. This is
Speaker 1: the example he gives, which you will appreciate. Um. In
Speaker 1: the movie Hall Hale Rock and Roll, as Rick says,
Speaker 1: the film that Keith Richard's made about Chuck Berry I
Speaker 1: as a documentary would differ the Chuck that UH was
Speaker 1: not made by uh by Keith Richards. But um, I'm
Speaker 1: blanking on the director it was, I'm blanking. We can
Speaker 1: look it up on he did. He's made to Hella Marin,
Speaker 1: he did coal Miner's daughter. Um, it'll come to you
Speaker 1: in anyway. Um so anyway, Um so Rix talks about
Speaker 1: Hell Hell Rock and Roll and that when he saw
Speaker 1: that film when it came out. There's a scene where
Speaker 1: Keith is constantly trying to break Chuck into getting his
Speaker 1: act together, tuning his guitar, actually rehearsing, and like getting
Speaker 1: putting him on a pedestal so he'll sound as good
Speaker 1: as he can sound. And Chuck resists this and sabotages
Speaker 1: it again and again. And Rick said, in the beginning,
Speaker 1: when I watched this film, I thought Keith is doing
Speaker 1: the best he can to help this artist, and Chuck
Speaker 1: just won't listen to him. And now I'm on chuck side.
Speaker 1: As Chuck says, if I want to play guitar, the
Speaker 1: sattit tune, that how Chuck Berry plays it, and you
Speaker 1: know what, there's wisdom in that too. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think something Rick talks a lot about is this idea
Speaker 1: of letting go of your beliefs and admitting that you
Speaker 1: don't know. He also has luxury based on his past success.
Speaker 1: As you said earlier, a lot of us, you know,
Speaker 1: are not that rich because that many accolades. While you're
Speaker 1: making this, I want to tell you one of this
Speaker 1: story because this echoes another story that's not in the film.
Speaker 1: But I heard that We talked to Rivers Cuomo from Weezer,
Speaker 1: and Rivers tells this story that there was a cover song, uh,
Speaker 1: like a Tony Braxton cover song that Rivers wanted to
Speaker 1: do and they recorded it and the rest and the guy,
Speaker 1: the rest of the guys and Weezer were like, this
Speaker 1: is not good. We should not do this, and Rick
Speaker 1: had been supportive of it, and so Rivers was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to strategize about how we're going to get
Speaker 1: on the album, and how I'm going to convince the
Speaker 1: guys in the band. And he goes into talk to
Speaker 1: Rick and says, guy, you know, Rick, nobody else in
Speaker 1: the band wants to use this song, must put it
Speaker 1: on the album. Um you know what are we gonna
Speaker 1: do about it? And Rick pauses and says, well, maybe
Speaker 1: the right And it just took Rivers back right onto
Speaker 1: his back. Heel didn't be like, oh, I never thought
Speaker 1: you would have said that. And I think that is
Speaker 1: part of what Rick has learned, is to understand that
Speaker 1: maybe other people are right. Okay, while you're making this
Speaker 1: Rick mini series, are you also working on other projects simultaneously? Okay?
Speaker 1: And I should say because it's very much worth saying that. Um,
Speaker 1: I have a partner on the Shangri Law this Rick
Speaker 1: Reuben series, Jeff Malmberg, who directed the series with me,
Speaker 1: So we each did two episodes, but he was my
Speaker 1: editor and won't you be my neighbor the Mr. Rogers
Speaker 1: film and he's a great filmmaker in his own right.
Speaker 1: So Jeff and I have been how do you split
Speaker 1: up the duties? How does he do two episodes and
Speaker 1: you Dutch episodes? I mean realistically, we both just directed
Speaker 1: whenever we could. We just covered to shoots and then
Speaker 1: we kind of divated all up at the end. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to your earlier comment how documentary has
Speaker 1: changed over the years. Yeah, documentary. Um, it's been twenty
Speaker 1: six years since I started my first documentary. And back
Speaker 1: then there was nothing cool whatsoever about documentaries. I mean
Speaker 1: it was PBS, maybe something on HBO, but I mean
Speaker 1: there was Capturing the Freedman's I mean that was two
Speaker 1: thousand four we started. So, Um, Michael Moore was about
Speaker 1: the only very successful but even then, not in nineteen well, yeah,
Speaker 1: so he done. Um rogery was so. I actually Roger
Speaker 1: Me came out, Um in the fall of nine. I
Speaker 1: was working as a journalist in San Francisco. It opened
Speaker 1: up in two theaters, one in New York, one in
Speaker 1: l A. And I convinced my roommate to drive with
Speaker 1: me to l A for the day to see a
Speaker 1: matinee of Roger Me and drive home to San Francisco,
Speaker 1: which we did. Um. So even then, and I had
Speaker 1: a real fascination with documentary, and there were a number
Speaker 1: of documentaries along the way that really showed me what
Speaker 1: I could do well besides Roger and what were they?
Speaker 1: I mean, Roger me Um, Hearts and Minds, Sherman's March, Um,
Speaker 1: when we were Kings, Um Brothers Keeper. You know some
Speaker 1: of those films that were just so influential and I
Speaker 1: loved so much. It's so good, so good, uh, And
Speaker 1: I have to say for Fake That or in Wales
Speaker 1: film there was hugely influential on me. Occasionally really interesting
Speaker 1: docs getting made, but they were hard, hard to see
Speaker 1: and and there have been a number of waves where
Speaker 1: ducks made a little bit of progress. So in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's there was a period where Capturing the
Speaker 1: Freedman's and spell Bound and a few films like that,
Speaker 1: um Man im Wire came out, and UM, more ducks
Speaker 1: were getting made and there was more money going into it,
Speaker 1: and then everybody lost money and all kind of went
Speaker 1: away for a while, and then this last really kind
Speaker 1: of six years. UM, there's been an explosion in documentary UM,
Speaker 1: and I think part of that is the streaming services.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people talked about places like
Speaker 1: net Netflix being um kind of the end of the
Speaker 1: theatrical documentary, and I think it's actually had the opposite
Speaker 1: effect in that for years people told me I love documentary,
Speaker 1: I just don't know where to find them. And once
Speaker 1: you put documentary on even platform with comedy and drama
Speaker 1: and everything else, lots of people choose documentary. So I
Speaker 1: think it just grew the audience for nonfiction storytelling. And
Speaker 1: you know, last year was one of the greatest years
Speaker 1: for theatrical documentary ever. Um. So I think it's changing
Speaker 1: in that way. And just seeing people, I mean, having
Speaker 1: worked in l A for all this time and having
Speaker 1: worked with so many people out of film school, there
Speaker 1: was always this attitude of documentary is like a stepping
Speaker 1: stone to real movies. And needless to say, I've always
Speaker 1: resented that attitude. Um, But more and more and more
Speaker 1: I'm finding young people who I just want to make
Speaker 1: documentaries for their life. Um. It's great. Okay, Let's go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. You grew up where Santa Barbara, California.
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara. Your parents did what for a living? Um?
Speaker 1: My dad um was an antiquarium book dealer so um
Speaker 1: and a huge, huge rock and roll fan. Huge. How
Speaker 1: old is your father? Um, seventy four? Really so young
Speaker 1: by today's since very young you know, having me getting
Speaker 1: married and having me was a good way to not
Speaker 1: go to Vietnam. But you know, huge Dylan fan huge
Speaker 1: you know Van Morrison and but also British Invasion and
Speaker 1: everything else. Um. So by the time I was getting
Speaker 1: into punk rock, my dad had all those records. He
Speaker 1: had every Patti Smith and um Sex pistols. You know,
Speaker 1: just go to my dad's record collection to pull that
Speaker 1: stuff out. Did he also play all that stuff in
Speaker 1: the house and on the cars to exposed to it.
Speaker 1: Some I think my dad's real music taste tended to
Speaker 1: be more literary, So people like Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen,
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, Fan Warrison, those were his kind of go
Speaker 1: to people. Um who were great? Who are some of
Speaker 1: my very favorites too? Um and uh and my dad
Speaker 1: my parents went to the Last Waltz and on that well,
Speaker 1: my they were huge fans of the band and they
Speaker 1: knew I don't know if they knew Dylan was going
Speaker 1: to be performing or whatever, but um, I don't even know.
Speaker 1: But they had an extra one and they talked about
Speaker 1: bringing me was nine at the time. Um, they did
Speaker 1: not bring me, um, but they went and they brought
Speaker 1: my aunt and I guess they'd served the whole Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: dinner beforehand, and then they cleared the tables or whatever may.
Speaker 1: They didn't cleared the devils. Anyway, they had the concert
Speaker 1: and um, to this day, I give my dad shit
Speaker 1: about not taking me. I would have been the coolest
Speaker 1: kid ever if I had gone to the last Waltz.
Speaker 1: But but it was that type of upbringing where music
Speaker 1: and literature and film were hugely important. And uh, you're
Speaker 1: how many kids in the family. I have a sister
Speaker 1: three years younger, and she's a geneticist in Oxford, England,
Speaker 1: so she went the other way. Wow. And the middle class,
Speaker 1: upper middle class? What kind of upbringing, upper middle class?
Speaker 1: And also how do you end up going to penn Um.
Speaker 1: It's interesting as a kid from California, did you got
Speaker 1: a public school, private school, went to private school? Actually
Speaker 1: went to boarding school? Uh in o Hi school called
Speaker 1: Thatchure And just going back he seemed like the thing
Speaker 1: to do. And just do you want to get away
Speaker 1: from home? And and and I actually fell in love
Speaker 1: with the kind of history of the East Coast. I
Speaker 1: majored in Colonial American history of all things. So but
Speaker 1: I still find it fascinating because they were basically making
Speaker 1: up a civilization from scratch at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: by their own rules, and it was a unique situation
Speaker 1: that way. And I still find Colonial America very fascinating. UM.
Speaker 1: And I was kind of running away from from California
Speaker 1: and I um and my plan was to be a journalist,
Speaker 1: which I ended up doing for a time. So the
Speaker 1: experience in college was a good experience. It was great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. But I was a huge devotee of
Speaker 1: new journalism. So you know that new journalism menthodology that
Speaker 1: Tom Wolfe edited in the early seventies with tweets and uh,
Speaker 1: John Didion and or Mailer and everybody else. Um. I
Speaker 1: mean that was like my Bible, you know. And plus
Speaker 1: people like Hunter Thompson UM, who ended up who was
Speaker 1: family friends of ours. So my dad also had a
Speaker 1: small addition press. He was publishing authors he knew and liked, UM,
Speaker 1: so he published um Hunter Thompson book. Um. They were
Speaker 1: good friends with Charles Wakowski who stayed at our house,
Speaker 1: you know, who is a very bohemian I guess you
Speaker 1: would say, kind of upbringing UM. So between the punk
Speaker 1: rock and the Charles Wakowski. It was not your conventional So, okay,
Speaker 1: you're at PEN. You go into Pen knowing you want
Speaker 1: to be a journalist. I had a pretty good idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is also in the late eighties, and
Speaker 1: you remember, you know, there was like a new magazine
Speaker 1: opening every week. There was a new magazine. You know,
Speaker 1: in the news stands are bursting with amazing long form writing.
Speaker 1: And that was just the thing and the idea that
Speaker 1: it's It's funny because all the things the new journalism preached,
Speaker 1: which was really using techniques of fiction writing to nonfiction storytelling,
Speaker 1: is exactly what I'm doing now. It's exactly the same thing,
Speaker 1: taking techniques of um, you know, scripted storytelling and putting
Speaker 1: into into nonfiction stories. So and I still think of
Speaker 1: myself as a journalist. It's just documentaries, like three D journalism. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you graduate from Pen. What's your first job the
Speaker 1: Nation magazine and you're doing what are you actually writing?
Speaker 1: Started as an intern, then became a fact checker. Then
Speaker 1: I worked as on the history of the Nation magazine.
Speaker 1: So I worked on a book was a long term project,
Speaker 1: and then I moved to San Francisco and started working
Speaker 1: at a wire service called Pacific News Service, and then
Speaker 1: went to work for Pacific A Radio. Flo How do
Speaker 1: you go from the new service to Pacific Radio? I
Speaker 1: mean it was a small The kind of left wing
Speaker 1: journalism world of UM San Francisco in the early nineties
Speaker 1: was very small, and everybody knew everybody else. The problem
Speaker 1: I had was, as a young person, all of the
Speaker 1: jobs in media, particularly in the Bay Area, but this
Speaker 1: is true throughout most of journalism. We're taken up by
Speaker 1: baby boomers who are not going anywhere soon. You know that.
Speaker 1: Basically my bosses that was the job I wanted, and
Speaker 1: they were twenty years away from retirement. And that was
Speaker 1: true everywhere. So part of me leaving that world was
Speaker 1: feeling like I had to make my own opportunity and
Speaker 1: I had to come back to l A to do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you switch from news to radio? You were doing what
Speaker 1: at radio? I ran? I was still writing freelance UM,
Speaker 1: but there was a program called Youth Radio UM where
Speaker 1: we would train kids, inner city kids to be radio
Speaker 1: engineers and reporters, and we had a weekly show in Berkeley,
Speaker 1: but we also ran stories on MPR and it was
Speaker 1: kind of like a just a cool program to get
Speaker 1: young people, you know, trained up into media. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you ultimately quit that to come back to l A
Speaker 1: to do what to make my first film? Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're in San Francisco. How long does it take for
Speaker 1: you to say I'm gonna quit? Two weeks? Let me?
Speaker 1: I mean you just suddenly said I gotta go when
Speaker 1: you went, well, I've been thinking about it for a
Speaker 1: long time. I think basically the truth is I've been
Speaker 1: in denial that I wanted to be a filmmaker forever.
Speaker 1: I thought that journalism was like a real adult career
Speaker 1: and filmmaking was like what I did on weekends, you know,
Speaker 1: because it was too much fun, you know, to dilettante
Speaker 1: is for me to actually want to be a filmmaker. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I kind of had this epiphany that all
Speaker 1: the years of doing political journalism, you know, from the
Speaker 1: nation on that basically I was in denial about what
Speaker 1: I actually cared about. What I spent all of my
Speaker 1: week nights and weekends on was culture. I was playing
Speaker 1: in bands, I was going to art museums, I was
Speaker 1: reading books, and I was devouring movies. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: why don't I actually spend my days doing the thing
Speaker 1: I spend all my extracurricular hours doing. And that is
Speaker 1: pretty much when I was twenty five, I made that decision.
Speaker 1: I haven't looked back. All I've done since this culture. Okay,
Speaker 1: will you make movies? Before you left San Francisco, I
Speaker 1: was flirting with it, um and again documentary Like there
Speaker 1: was no clear path to have a career as a
Speaker 1: documentary and you saw yourself as a documentarian. So what
Speaker 1: happened is I started my first film not a little
Speaker 1: slower you moved. Yeah, so I go down there. I
Speaker 1: think it's going to take the summer for me to
Speaker 1: make a film. And my first film ended up being
Speaker 1: called Shotgun Freeway Drives through Lost l A. So it's
Speaker 1: this kind of Mondo l a history documentary which you
Speaker 1: can find out there. Okay, but the first question is
Speaker 1: the average person would say, you're moving to l A
Speaker 1: and you're making a movie on what money? So this
Speaker 1: was in the era of get a bunch of credit
Speaker 1: cards and you know, rack up all the debt. This
Speaker 1: is what you know Robert Rodriguez. And there was a book, um,
Speaker 1: you know what was it called by John Pearson? Uh?
Speaker 1: What was it called? Spike, Dikes, Mike and whatever, which
Speaker 1: was kind of like the bible for how to go
Speaker 1: out and just do your own thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: so we were all this is the early nineties, that
Speaker 1: kind of heyday of early independent film where everybody felt
Speaker 1: you know, Soderberg's and all these people are just kind
Speaker 1: of jumping out there and doing it. So I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I can do that. Um at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we ended up making the film for thirty five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: all on credit cards. Um well, we ended up getting
Speaker 1: one investor who put in, but still so we But
Speaker 1: the the story is that we basically made it for
Speaker 1: no money. You know, and your first film, everybody will
Speaker 1: work for you one time for free, and you know
Speaker 1: they won't do it for your second film. But um,
Speaker 1: I mean, for instance, it's also being kind of young
Speaker 1: in a city like this with all this opportunity and
Speaker 1: all these people that want to become cinematographers and editors
Speaker 1: who are all stuck at as assistant editors and you
Speaker 1: know everything else. That a friend of mine was a
Speaker 1: post production supervisor on the TV show Northern Exposure, and
Speaker 1: they had some of the first avid's that had ever
Speaker 1: been used in production. And he said, if you for those,
Speaker 1: people don't know if those are computer editing, nonlinear editing
Speaker 1: editing on computers, which is brand brand new at the time, um,
Speaker 1: and incredibly expensive and inaccessible. So he said, if you
Speaker 1: come in from eleven PM to eight am, you can
Speaker 1: use the machines. So that's how I edited the films.
Speaker 1: We stayed up all night, um for like a year. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's be clear. You hadn't made a movie previously right now,
Speaker 1: so you must have made a lot of mistakes along
Speaker 1: the way. Yeah. I made a ton of mistakes. And
Speaker 1: I always say my first film was my film school. Um.
Speaker 1: But two weeks into making it, I wrote a letter
Speaker 1: to my parents and I said, this is what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do for the rest of my life. Like
Speaker 1: it was so clear when I started it that everything,
Speaker 1: all my skill sets, they all come together perfectly in
Speaker 1: this job. And it's really all I've done since. And
Speaker 1: you said, we, who was we? I had a co
Speaker 1: director on my first film, here a Palenberg. Um he
Speaker 1: still makes films and um as an old old friend
Speaker 1: of mine. Okay, so you finished the film you shot
Speaker 1: at one on sixteen on video. It was a combination
Speaker 1: of everything. I mean, it was mainly videotape, but we
Speaker 1: shot sixteen kind of inserts and super eight and it
Speaker 1: was kind of a mondo collage of what history means
Speaker 1: in l A. And we got people like James Elroy
Speaker 1: and John Didion to be in it, and Mike Davis
Speaker 1: and all kinds of other people, and it was right.
Speaker 1: I mean really, the reason for me doing it was
Speaker 1: as a kid from South California going to college back east,
Speaker 1: people laughed at me when I talked about their being
Speaker 1: history or culture in Los Angeles, and I had more
Speaker 1: than a little chip on my shoulder about it. Um
Speaker 1: So I ended up making this film to basically say
Speaker 1: fuck you to all these people that l A History
Speaker 1: is not an oxymoron, and that there's so much culture
Speaker 1: here and so much history here. It just doesn't look
Speaker 1: like what you're using used to seeing urban history look like.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's just a different shape. Okay, So
Speaker 1: are at the time were you happy with the finished product? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Very happy? And so then what happened? You did the
Speaker 1: film festival, supermarried it south By, We got a theatrical release,
Speaker 1: We sold it to the Sundance Channel, and we made money.
Speaker 1: How's that? How do you remember? Like we made like okay,
Speaker 1: so this is happening. Now you're thinking about the second movie.
Speaker 1: So I then was offered was so the other thing
Speaker 1: I didn't tell you, And this may be a locals
Speaker 1: only thing, but I had a day job to make
Speaker 1: money throughout this period producing Huell Houser's TV show how
Speaker 1: did you get that? Gig um? Because he was doing
Speaker 1: this l A History show. He with those of you
Speaker 1: don't know, was this kind of eccentric southern quasi bumpkin
Speaker 1: character who would go around California and Los Angeles doing California,
Speaker 1: California's gold Fuel House. And so he was doing his
Speaker 1: own l A History California history thing, and people I
Speaker 1: knew somebody who worked at KCT here, the PBS station,
Speaker 1: They said you should meet him, and I met him
Speaker 1: and he was like, oh, you're into this stuff, come
Speaker 1: work for me. So I ended up working for him
Speaker 1: to make money. Why I finished my first film, and
Speaker 1: then right when I finished my film, I got offered
Speaker 1: a job producing any biography And I did that for
Speaker 1: three years and I learned so much more, not just
Speaker 1: about filmmaking, but about how to run a production company.
Speaker 1: UM had actually work with employees and how to deal
Speaker 1: with all that stuff. And during that time I got
Speaker 1: to do I did to Brian Wilson two hour Any biography.
Speaker 1: I did a brill building documentary and if you remember that,
Speaker 1: UM for Any and Bert Backrack Libran Stoller like I
Speaker 1: pushed them into music in a way that they weren't
Speaker 1: doing before. And then kind of my my coup was
Speaker 1: that UM. I was a huge fan of Peter Gonnis,
Speaker 1: you know the music and Peter I basically run him
Speaker 1: a fan letter and said, I would love to do
Speaker 1: a documentary with you, do you have any interest? And
Speaker 1: he had done a book called Sweet Soul Music that
Speaker 1: I really loved and I was thinking about trying to
Speaker 1: do and he said, there are only two subjects I
Speaker 1: want to make a film about, Doc Pomas and Sam Phillips.
Speaker 1: And I thought about it and I said, well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have a much easier chance making the Sam Phillips
Speaker 1: documentary than the Doc Pomus documentary right now. And Peter
Speaker 1: and I went about pitching it and we ended up
Speaker 1: making a two hour Sam Phillips documentary. It was fantastic,
Speaker 1: Thank you, and it was an incredible experience for me
Speaker 1: because you know, Peter and I went to Memphis for
Speaker 1: three months. I had all this time again like I
Speaker 1: was being produced by Sam Phillips. I got the experience.
Speaker 1: I was feeling like I was one of the last
Speaker 1: artists that Sam Phillips ever produced, because I got the
Speaker 1: full on, you know, fire breathing, fog horn, leg horn,
Speaker 1: Sam Phillips treatment. Um, And it was amazing and basically, UM.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of big takeaways from that. One was,
Speaker 1: UM that Peter Gorini, who was really lea somebody, had
Speaker 1: taught me so much about what I do and is
Speaker 1: one of the greatest music writers of all time. UM.
Speaker 1: He said something me early on that I've thought about
Speaker 1: so many times, which is, the three least interesting things
Speaker 1: about rock and roll are sex, drugs, and getting screwed
Speaker 1: over by your record label. Because everybody tells the same stories.
Speaker 1: And I've thought about that so often. I mean, that
Speaker 1: kind of is behind the music basically. So once you
Speaker 1: take all that away, what's the differentiator between all these stories?
Speaker 1: That's what I'm interested in. UM. But the other thing
Speaker 1: was that Sam Phillips himself was such a believer in
Speaker 1: his own vision you know, bringing in African American artists
Speaker 1: to record in Memphis, you know, early on, I mean
Speaker 1: like Turner and BB King and Hallam Wolf and on
Speaker 1: and on and on, to the point where he was
Speaker 1: completely ostracized by his peers and the rest of white
Speaker 1: society and Memphis, and to the point where he had
Speaker 1: nervous breakdowns, was given shock therapy, and he never wavered
Speaker 1: in his belief in this music. And I came away
Speaker 1: from finishing that film and said, I have to work
Speaker 1: for myself. I can't ever work for anybody else, and
Speaker 1: I haven't since. So I basically started my own production
Speaker 1: company then Tremlow Productions, and haven't looked back. So that
Speaker 1: was what year two thousand? So what was the first project?
Speaker 1: I mean, in the beginning, I was just scrambling to
Speaker 1: make money doing things um and I did projects for
Speaker 1: museums and UM. I think my first real documentary I
Speaker 1: made was Muddy Waters Film, And that was because Robert Gordon,
Speaker 1: the Memphis music writer who was also kind of a
Speaker 1: disciple of Peter Groundings. Peter had introduced us and we
Speaker 1: become friends, and Robert was finishing his book on Muddy
Speaker 1: and said, nobody's ever done a proper Muddy Waters documentary.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. So we jumped in and we did
Speaker 1: it again, not knowing how we were going to pay
Speaker 1: for all of it, and we ended up getting you
Speaker 1: some money out of Channel four in England and it's
Speaker 1: kind of stitching together money from home video back when
Speaker 1: you could do that and um and we made it
Speaker 1: and had such a good experience we ended up selling
Speaker 1: it to American Masters here for PBS and UM and
Speaker 1: that really kind of got the ball rolling for me
Speaker 1: as a production company. I next it at Hank Williams
Speaker 1: American Masters and what I found, I mean, I am
Speaker 1: a music fanatic. It's no surprise, but I have many interests.
Speaker 1: But part of the reason I did so many music
Speaker 1: films was I could get them funded. You know that
Speaker 1: the difference with the music film is that there's a
Speaker 1: built an audience that cares about this music in most cases,
Speaker 1: um and in many cases there's a publisher, label or
Speaker 1: an artist or somebody who cares about a film getting made,
Speaker 1: as opposed to making a film about his subject where
Speaker 1: there's zero awareness and zero built in audience. UM. And
Speaker 1: it just felt both like I could feed my music obsession,
Speaker 1: but I could also kind of get no as the
Speaker 1: music guy, which I did to the point where I
Speaker 1: started getting calls from people all the time saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: we have this music project. Are you interested? Are you interested? Um?
Speaker 1: Which was great as an impended documentary filmmaker at the
Speaker 1: time when there weren't a lot of ways to get
Speaker 1: films made that you know, I had my niche Okay,
Speaker 1: so Buddy Waters, where are you from there? So? Um,
Speaker 1: Hank Williams. Then I made a film called The Cool
Speaker 1: School about the l a art scene in the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties is not easy to sell, like a music film. Um.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of these things, they're just things that
Speaker 1: I can't get out of my head. Um. So The
Speaker 1: Cool School was because I went to the Getty to
Speaker 1: see a guy named Walter Hopps who was a legendary
Speaker 1: curator who had started this gallery called the Ferris Gallery,
Speaker 1: essentially the first big modern art gallery in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and he gave a talk at the Getty. This is
Speaker 1: maybe two thousand two, and I found it so fascinating
Speaker 1: eating and I came home and said, well, I want
Speaker 1: to watch the documentary about him. I looked and there
Speaker 1: was no documentary about him, and I said, well, then
Speaker 1: I'll read the book about him. And there was no
Speaker 1: book about him or about that scene, which was incredible
Speaker 1: that nobody had documented it. And then it was one
Speaker 1: of those moments, well, well I guess, I guess I
Speaker 1: have to do it right, um. And it was fascinating
Speaker 1: to then get into that world of all the Venice
Speaker 1: artists and the Robert Irwin ed Ruche and Keen Holds
Speaker 1: and Larry Bell and Billy Albankston, that whole group of artists, um,
Speaker 1: who were fascinating kind of a group of alpha males
Speaker 1: kind of half and then we're Venice beach bum surfer
Speaker 1: slash art modern artists and the other half for kind
Speaker 1: of proto hippies living up into Panga or a Laurel Canyon,
Speaker 1: and they all kind of came together around the las
Speaker 1: Anega scene and would hang out of Barney's Beanery and
Speaker 1: all that kind of legendary the early days of the
Speaker 1: la arts scene. And again this was also feeding my
Speaker 1: l A Has culture obsessions, so it was another middle
Speaker 1: finger to the rest of the country. And what was
Speaker 1: really interesting in making that film, and this is the
Speaker 1: first time it ever really happened to me um and
Speaker 1: it's happened a few times since. Where you make a
Speaker 1: film and you never expect a film to have an
Speaker 1: actual impact. You know, maybe people like it, but it
Speaker 1: to actually change things you don't expect. Um. But the
Speaker 1: Cool School was something that really planted a flag for
Speaker 1: the fact that l A has a real art scene.
Speaker 1: And out of that, I don't think it's a stretch
Speaker 1: to say, and I think they admit it that. The
Speaker 1: Getty then started their specific standard time series, this huge
Speaker 1: year's long program um in, this huge oral history program.
Speaker 1: And John Baldassari, who's in my film too, who was
Speaker 1: teaching forever at cal Arts, said in the wake of
Speaker 1: that film that for years he would tell his graduates
Speaker 1: out of art school moved to New York, and that
Speaker 1: year he said, stay in l A. Like case the
Speaker 1: moment it changed. I mean, that must be very satisfying.
Speaker 1: To have that level of impact. It was great. You
Speaker 1: never expected. If I had, I probably would have bought
Speaker 1: more art. Okay. And then who distributed that movie alter
Speaker 1: a company called Art House. It was PBS aired it
Speaker 1: here in the States, um and and it got out,
Speaker 1: you know, it was on the BBC, and you know
Speaker 1: it was around the World after the Art film then
Speaker 1: and I did all kinds of things in between. I
Speaker 1: did a film on um. I should look at my
Speaker 1: IMDb to remember all them, you know. I did little
Speaker 1: projects like an Iggy pop project about raw power. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge Iggy fan. UM. I did a film
Speaker 1: about women and country music. Uh. Did a film by
Speaker 1: the Highwayman. Um. So all kinds of so. And are
Speaker 1: you working around the clock or you scrambling? You know.
Speaker 1: Traditionally a movie producer as a number of projects and
Speaker 1: it may take years one to actually flourish. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they could take years. I mean. Another one before I
Speaker 1: move on was Stax Records. I did a film called
Speaker 1: Respect Yourself with the Robert Gordon, which is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite films I've done because stacks stacks music is
Speaker 1: unbeatable and the story is well, that's the amazing thing.
Speaker 1: I went to Memphis to do a gig. Everybody talks
Speaker 1: about Nashville Memphis. There's so much just you, I mean,
Speaker 1: between Sun and Stax and High and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, Memphis is just I love Memphis and you
Speaker 1: go there and well, across the river's Arkansas. For those
Speaker 1: of us live in California or coastal whatever, and you
Speaker 1: know Mississippi is right there, right there, I know, by
Speaker 1: down the border. In fact, I was there this summer
Speaker 1: with my family and um, my wife and kids, and
Speaker 1: I walked across the bridge to the Arkansas side just
Speaker 1: to go over there, and I was driving him around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as I said, I did that, didn't do that. I said, well, God,
Speaker 1: what am I ever going to get back to Arkansas?
Speaker 1: Because I had in Arkansas? How do you end up
Speaker 1: doing twenty feet from stardom? So? Um, I got a
Speaker 1: call from somebody who knew Gil Freeson. And Gil many
Speaker 1: people maybe listening will know, had been the president of
Speaker 1: A and M Records and for forever, forever, from virtually
Speaker 1: from the beginning. I think he was the first employee
Speaker 1: actually at A and M, and people called him the
Speaker 1: ampersand in A and M. So uh. And Gil was
Speaker 1: retired and had invested his money wisely and was kind
Speaker 1: of looking for a project. Um, and he somebody said,
Speaker 1: do you want to be with him? He has a
Speaker 1: music project he's talking about, and I said sure. So
Speaker 1: we met. We actually first bonded over modern art because
Speaker 1: he was a big modern art guy, and so was I.
Speaker 1: So we talked about that. UM. I said, so what's
Speaker 1: your what's your idea for a music film? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: my wife and I went to a Leonard Cohen concert
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas and I smoked a joint and I
Speaker 1: spent the whole concert looking at these amazing backup singers
Speaker 1: he had, and Leonard Cohen didn't have amazing backup singers.
Speaker 1: And uh, he said. The next day, A, I just
Speaker 1: kept thinking about these backup singers and wondering what's their story.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, that's really interesting. So so what's
Speaker 1: the film? He said, I don't know. You have to
Speaker 1: figure that out. Says like, okay, backup singers, um. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting for somebody who is such a music geek. UM.
Speaker 1: I didn't know much about backup singers. UM. And even
Speaker 1: on my drive home, I was thinking about it and thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, what are songs with great backup vocals? I
Speaker 1: could come up with like six, you know, because your
Speaker 1: brain is not programmed to notice what's in the background. UM.
Speaker 1: And I over time completely reprogrammed my brain to to
Speaker 1: this day when I hear a great song with backup vocals.
Speaker 1: I added to a Spotify list I have just because
Speaker 1: now it's like precious to collect, you know, great songs.
Speaker 1: And I ended up with kind of hundreds of songs
Speaker 1: and I put together a kind of a theoretical soundtrack. UM.
Speaker 1: But it was another one of those things when I
Speaker 1: went home said, well, who's written a book about him?
Speaker 1: Who has made a film about them? Nothing? Nothing? I
Speaker 1: found one article in gold Mine magazine and that was it.
Speaker 1: On backup singing UM, And I said, well, then the
Speaker 1: only way to learn about this world is to talk
Speaker 1: to them. So I said, well, let's and this was
Speaker 1: Gil's idea too, well, let's just do some interviews. Let's
Speaker 1: talk to people. And he had found Lisa Fisher because
Speaker 1: he knew sting and she was singing a sting at
Speaker 1: the time. UM. And Lisa was great, and she opened
Speaker 1: the door to a bunch of people, and there were
Speaker 1: a few other people who really helped. UM. But we
Speaker 1: ended up doing probably thirty forty oral histories in the beginning,
Speaker 1: just to figure out how this world worked, like how
Speaker 1: big is it? How what? What are the themes? You know? Um?
Speaker 1: And what I very very quickly came into focus, like okay,
Speaker 1: here I understand what the big themes are, you know,
Speaker 1: and there are some of them seem obvious of you know,
Speaker 1: the church finding its way into secular music and choir
Speaker 1: of voices and um and kind of the themes of
Speaker 1: the industry versus um versus um, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: personal um integrity, I guess um. But the thing we
Speaker 1: really discovered when we decided to kind of jump and
Speaker 1: really make the film. I ended up interviewing over eighty
Speaker 1: backup singers for the film, and I think only twenty
Speaker 1: or in the film, but I learned so much by
Speaker 1: talking to all of them that what the film ultimately
Speaker 1: became about was that your happiness is directly proportional to
Speaker 1: the piece you make with the life you're actually living,
Speaker 1: not the life people have told you should live, or
Speaker 1: that you thought you were supposed to live. That you know,
Speaker 1: we live in a culture that tells us that being
Speaker 1: a rock stars the most important thing, or being famous
Speaker 1: and rich is the most important thing. And of course
Speaker 1: very few people live that way. And for those of
Speaker 1: us that can't get over that delusion, um, we can
Speaker 1: be tortured by it. And the people who are best off.
Speaker 1: For the people that I love, the singing, love, the
Speaker 1: work for the sake of the work, and I think
Speaker 1: that was the universal theme. And I didn't know this
Speaker 1: when we started the film. I found it on the way,
Speaker 1: but this is the theme I identified with, and this
Speaker 1: is the theme so many people identified with, because most
Speaker 1: people are backup singers for their life. And in fact,
Speaker 1: we had a screening early on at the Minneapolis Film
Speaker 1: Festival and a guy stood up in the Q and
Speaker 1: A afterwards and said, you know, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: say I'm the middle manager to software company, and you know,
Speaker 1: I like what I do, but I don't get all
Speaker 1: the money or attention in the world. And um, but
Speaker 1: I'm I just here to say that I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm a backup singer and I'm happy to be about singer.
Speaker 1: And the whole crowd applauded, and it was just one
Speaker 1: of those moments. You're like another one of those moments
Speaker 1: where you make a film and you're like, this connected
Speaker 1: in a way, per found way that I couldn't have
Speaker 1: predicted when that happens. And this happened a few times.
Speaker 1: You again, you don't go into films thinking, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's going to make people feel this or do this
Speaker 1: or change this. You can't play that game when you're
Speaker 1: making a film. Well, you know, I remember seeing it
Speaker 1: before the film came out, and it was utterly riveting,
Speaker 1: and you knew it was something special. At what point,
Speaker 1: because you've made a lot of producer and directed a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff, at what point do you say, wait,
Speaker 1: this is different, Um, Sundance opening night film. Um, it
Speaker 1: was kind of the night to change my life because
Speaker 1: UM to be the opening night film and Sundance one
Speaker 1: to the women in the film all came. None of
Speaker 1: them had seen the film, so they're all in the audience.
Speaker 1: And Gil passed away in December, so Sundances in January.
Speaker 1: So we were finishing the film. Gil died, which, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a rather fast illness, and so
Speaker 1: all of Gil's friends, UM and family came to Sundance
Speaker 1: to to support So Tom Freston and jan Winner and
Speaker 1: all these people came to Sundance to support Gil, and
Speaker 1: you know this was gils. I mean I think a
Speaker 1: lot of them honestly thought it was Gil's folly for
Speaker 1: a long time, like, how good luck Gil have documentary
Speaker 1: about backup singers? You know, Um, but I know, I
Speaker 1: mean Gil had said to me and I don't think
Speaker 1: it's inappropriate to share it that when he was sick
Speaker 1: in the hospital, he said everybody with cancer should have
Speaker 1: a documentary they're working on, because I think it really
Speaker 1: gave him something creative and positive to be thinking about
Speaker 1: during that time. So I know he was very proud
Speaker 1: of it. And then so that night, so we screened
Speaker 1: the film and it's just electric. I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: biggest theater there, people there, it's packed, and it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And the film ends, the women get up on the
Speaker 1: stage with me and we're all kind of shaking and
Speaker 1: they're all in tears because they hadn't seen the film,
Speaker 1: and and uh and they started singing, and it was
Speaker 1: just unbelievable. I mean, the crowd was, you know, just
Speaker 1: you know, completely enthralled. And then we had that classic
Speaker 1: old school sundance experience where the film ends and it's
Speaker 1: eleven PM and they say, Okay, now we're gonna stay
Speaker 1: up all night and sell your film. So we spent
Speaker 1: the next nine hours traveling from distributor to distributor while
Speaker 1: they made us offers on our movie, and we sold
Speaker 1: it at sunrise. So that classic sundance experience, you know,
Speaker 1: and by morning I was like, Okay, you know, I
Speaker 1: guess this is how it goes. And what was it
Speaker 1: like winning the Oscar? Um? Surreal? Um? It was? I
Speaker 1: mean it was you know, of course rewarding. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm as a lifelong film fanatic. Um. You know, there's
Speaker 1: no greater validation in that way, you know, whatever you
Speaker 1: think of the words, and you know, I too can
Speaker 1: be like, oh words, no matter but um, but it
Speaker 1: just feels like you can exhale in a way. Um.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I will say, by far, the
Speaker 1: most important outcome of that was that part. You know,
Speaker 1: Basically before then I was spending sixt of my time
Speaker 1: raising money to make my movies. Now I spend four
Speaker 1: percent of my time raising money to make movies. So
Speaker 1: I can just be so much more productive and so
Speaker 1: much more creative because of that. You know, whether or
Speaker 1: not that's valid, I'm the same filmmaker essentially I am
Speaker 1: now than I was before I won the Oscar. And
Speaker 1: if they need that validation to one of fund my movies,
Speaker 1: I get it. I'm not going to complain about it.
Speaker 1: You know. So people keep saying, oh, you've been so
Speaker 1: prolific since the Oscar part of it is I don't
Speaker 1: have to spend time trying to raise my I could
Speaker 1: just make things, which is amazing. Where is the Oscar home?
Speaker 1: Some people keep it in the bathroom, some people put
Speaker 1: it in a Providence demands home my end I have,
Speaker 1: UM not to brag. My wife says, you haven't. You
Speaker 1: have a real ego because I have an Emmy, a
Speaker 1: Grammy and an Oscar, So I know you got I
Speaker 1: keep looking. If anybody out there has a um, you know,
Speaker 1: Broadway project, I would love to get involved. Okay, then
Speaker 1: you make the political movie? How does that come to
Speaker 1: get the Best of Enemies? Um? Again, I mean it's
Speaker 1: the Best of Enemies is a film about the debates
Speaker 1: between Corbette and Wayne M. Buckley. They had ABC television
Speaker 1: during the political conventions. And that again was Robert Gordon,
Speaker 1: my friend in Memphis, who had a bootleg tape years
Speaker 1: ago VHS tape that he had gotten of most of
Speaker 1: these debates, UM from somebody who was like the doll fanatic. Um.
Speaker 1: And I watched these debates raw and just thought there's
Speaker 1: something amazing here, Like I don't know what it is,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what the story is or where
Speaker 1: it's going to go, but just in terms of huge
Speaker 1: characters way M. Buckley and Gore Vidal and huge themes,
Speaker 1: and I just felt like whatever it was saying was
Speaker 1: saying something about what's happened to television. And it was
Speaker 1: one of those great stories that once you start telling it,
Speaker 1: it gets better and better. You know, every detail it
Speaker 1: gets added just gets juicier and juicier. But that was
Speaker 1: the film we had started making before from Stardom. In
Speaker 1: the wake of from Stardom, suddenly people said, oh, what else,
Speaker 1: And we said, well, I have this film Best of Enemies.
Speaker 1: It's great, we'll finish it. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: hadn't made start them, if I ever would have gotten
Speaker 1: the money to finish Best of Enemies, you know, as
Speaker 1: sad as that is to say. And then how does
Speaker 1: Mr Rogers movie come together? That happened because I was,
Speaker 1: I mean, the real story. I home, um in bed
Speaker 1: at night on YouTube and somebody had maybe sent me
Speaker 1: a link of a Mr. Rogers commencement address he had given,
Speaker 1: and I somehow went down the YouTube rabbit hole of
Speaker 1: watching more Mr Rogers, particularly speeches and interviews, and as
Speaker 1: I was hearing it. I just kept feeling like, where's
Speaker 1: this voice today? Like what he's saying is exactly what
Speaker 1: I feel the culture should be hearing right now, this
Speaker 1: kind of voice of radical kindness and empathy and understanding.
Speaker 1: And um, and I woke up in the morning and
Speaker 1: I turned to my wife and I said, I think
Speaker 1: I need to make a film about Mr. Rogers. And
Speaker 1: she's a children's librarian, I will say, and she said,
Speaker 1: I love that idea. Um. I literally went to the office. UM.
Speaker 1: I made a couple of calls, and I'd made a
Speaker 1: film with Yo Yo Maa and his and Yo Yo
Speaker 1: knew Fred Rogers pretty well and had told me stories
Speaker 1: about to which was also in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: And Yo Yo son is a filmmaker, and I called
Speaker 1: him and I said, is this crazy to make a
Speaker 1: film about Fred Rogers? He said, not only is that
Speaker 1: not crazy, I want to produce it with you. So
Speaker 1: he's one of my producers. And so we flew to Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: We sat down and I said to them, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm again not sued to do a Wikipedia version of
Speaker 1: Fred rodgers life. I want to make a film about ideas.
Speaker 1: And to me, his ideas are incredibly relevant today. This
Speaker 1: is not a film about nostalgia. There's a film about
Speaker 1: the big things he thought fought for. And I think
Speaker 1: what they responded to was that he was never taken
Speaker 1: very seriously in his own lifetime. So what we were
Speaker 1: trying to say, I think was something they felt needed
Speaker 1: to be said for a long time. But it was
Speaker 1: again purely instinctual, like, this is something I want to
Speaker 1: put out in the world, and I again having no
Speaker 1: idea how much the world wanted to hear it. I
Speaker 1: had no idea how big an audience for Mr. Rogers
Speaker 1: would be. Um well became a phenomenon. What was the
Speaker 1: what was the ultimate theatrical gross? About three? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: I have to ask you did some of that fall
Speaker 1: to your bottom line? Not yet? Yea? How long it
Speaker 1: takes for studios to pay well usually I I worked
Speaker 1: as an attorney on a film that was the second
Speaker 1: biggest of a year, and it was three years later
Speaker 1: and the film was still in the negative part position
Speaker 1: for the profit participants. It's that crazy. It's crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: we got a bonus, but but I think the real
Speaker 1: if if I do see back end, it hasn't happened yet,
Speaker 1: so we'll see. And we had two great group investors
Speaker 1: and other people that kind of came in to help
Speaker 1: us make that film. Well, what's the budget for a
Speaker 1: film like that? UM? Just under two? Okay? Yeah, So theoretically,
Speaker 1: what percent of the film do you the What percentage
Speaker 1: did you still have? UM? What percentage of the back
Speaker 1: of the profits? Profit participants? UM? I mean typically equity
Speaker 1: would control about back end and creative about back end,
Speaker 1: and then with my producers and team, I shared that
Speaker 1: back end, so you know, maybe a quarter you know,
Speaker 1: thank you about Okay. So what are you working on now? Um?
Speaker 1: Other than the Shangri Law project? I don't. I hate
Speaker 1: to say this, but I can't say what I'm working on? Okay,
Speaker 1: then we will we will go specifics. How many films
Speaker 1: are you working on right now? I'm not actually making
Speaker 1: a film at this very moment, but I'm about to
Speaker 1: work on two projects. And if they go according to plan,
Speaker 1: they would be ready for the market when one would
Speaker 1: come out in the one would come out. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: now that you've had the success, especially in non music areas, UM,
Speaker 1: are you personally thinking of broadening from music? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: my last three films haven't been about music, and um,
Speaker 1: and I've kind of willfully turned down any music documentaries. Uh,
Speaker 1: and these next two are not music documentaries. UM. I
Speaker 1: am interested in music series, and I'm working on some
Speaker 1: music series, and I've produced some music documentaries and even
Speaker 1: back in the day, I produced music documentaries. I produced
Speaker 1: Pearl Jam twenty for Cameron Crow, and I produced Crossfire
Speaker 1: Hurricane for The Stones, and UM, you know, I still
Speaker 1: love music. I think part of it is I just
Speaker 1: don't want to be Pigeonholed is like the music one
Speaker 1: of the two best music documentaries ever ever leaving anything
Speaker 1: you worked on out. I mean, it's funny. Some of
Speaker 1: my favorite music documentaries are about bands I don't love.
Speaker 1: You know, which is great? You know, whether it's UM
Speaker 1: some kind of Monster or the Metallica film, UM or
Speaker 1: Um The Devil and Daniel Johnson, UM, all kinds of
Speaker 1: other interesting ones. UM not Dead yet. Have you ever
Speaker 1: saw that one? No? I didn't see that one. And
Speaker 1: not to mention neither the kind of great concert docs
Speaker 1: Stop making Sense and Last Waltz and things like that. UM.
Speaker 1: And I watch every single music documentary. I don't think
Speaker 1: you could find a music documentary I haven't watched. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask whether you thought certain ones were overrated?
Speaker 1: But in your viewing time, how much viewing do you
Speaker 1: take of anything? I still watch at least a hundred
Speaker 1: documentaries a year. And but how about like Netflix series
Speaker 1: that are not documentaries? Not that many some? Um, I
Speaker 1: watch a ton of movies. I mean I watch a
Speaker 1: ton of documentaries. I watch a lot of movies, old
Speaker 1: and new. Um. And then I watched only the very
Speaker 1: best series like if five people tell me I need
Speaker 1: to watch it? So have you watched? I just watched Chernobyl? Okay,
Speaker 1: what do you think? I it was really good? How
Speaker 1: much you know? How much did you know about Chernobyl
Speaker 1: going in? Not that much? You know, I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: was young and not paying that much attention to it
Speaker 1: at the time. And um, yeah, I really I found it.
Speaker 1: It got to me. Okay, that was, you know, somewhat documentary.
Speaker 1: What other series? Um? You know Fleabag and I loved
Speaker 1: the new season of Fleabag. Um. You know I love
Speaker 1: kind of biting Black comedy is one one of my
Speaker 1: very favorite gears. Um, And I guess by extension and
Speaker 1: killing Eve I really liked UM, but not that many series.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think, you know, it's just the time investment,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean, but the thing that bothers me.
Speaker 1: I'm obviously a little older than you was. I remember
Speaker 1: moving to l a in the seventies and I go
Speaker 1: to the movie six nights a week. You could literally
Speaker 1: see everything and you could know what was going on.
Speaker 1: The fact that in all culture you can't be comprehensive
Speaker 1: drives me nuts. Me too. It's like, you know, where's
Speaker 1: the frame of I have the same disease. You know
Speaker 1: that there was a long time where I just felt
Speaker 1: like I had to be culturally conversant in pretty much
Speaker 1: everything television, movie, music, literature, Like I just had to
Speaker 1: be up on everything. And um, I think it was
Speaker 1: both getting older and having kids that cured me of
Speaker 1: feeling like I had to do everything because you can't.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just become this avalanche, never ending avalanche
Speaker 1: of more culture coming at you. So so now I try.
Speaker 1: And you know, like I said, when it comes to documentary,
Speaker 1: I'll watch everything because the good thing about documentary is
Speaker 1: even a bad documentary, you're going to learn something. I
Speaker 1: can't say that about it. One thing. One thing. I five.
Speaker 1: This is one of the reasons I don't go to
Speaker 1: theatrical films anymore I have been, is I find I
Speaker 1: can't slow my mind down enough for that experience. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: to watch even last night, to watch, you know, episode
Speaker 1: of something at eleven o'clock at night, no problem, but
Speaker 1: like even seven pm, two pm. You know, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a break, but I just it's really
Speaker 1: hard to slow down, and particularly I think it's harder.
Speaker 1: I have a much easier time doing it in the theater,
Speaker 1: but when you try and watch a movie at home,
Speaker 1: it's really hard not to double screen, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's not good for the film or good for you,
Speaker 1: and I try not to do it. I was just
Speaker 1: talking to a friend of mine who says she's watching
Speaker 1: all films with subtitles because it forces her not to
Speaker 1: double screen. She has to only watch that movie at
Speaker 1: that time. And you say, you watch docs, you watch
Speaker 1: new movies. What genre of movies do you watch? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean I love independent film and foreign I also
Speaker 1: have to uh young kids twelve and fourteen, so it
Speaker 1: means I see every Marvel movie, And um, I'm just
Speaker 1: not the audience for it, you know, or can you
Speaker 1: enjoy that? You know? This is a big debate, and
Speaker 1: I feel like, I mean, seeing a film like Endgame,
Speaker 1: I actually thought for the Thousand Balls, they had the
Speaker 1: air on that film. They did an incredibly good job
Speaker 1: of balancing it in a way that satisfied most people.
Speaker 1: You know, incredibly difficult task. I know that as a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: how difficult that is to do. And a film like
Speaker 1: thor Ragnarok, you know, has all of that humor in
Speaker 1: it too, And certain films like that or Spider of
Speaker 1: the Spider Verse I thought was great just for its
Speaker 1: kind of experimental attitude. Let's hold that. Because you're talking
Speaker 1: about your kids, do your kids turn you onto new music?
Speaker 1: My kids are not that into music. It's very strange. Um,
Speaker 1: of course, Like my daughter is obsessed with you know,
Speaker 1: Queen right now because of them Rhapsody, and we're going
Speaker 1: to go see them when they come to town next month.
Speaker 1: And I know it's not the same thing, but whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm just happy to take her to a concert that
Speaker 1: she's excited about. Um, But my kids are not. Their
Speaker 1: relationship to music is not what my relationship was. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean I grew up in record stores, devouring as
Speaker 1: much music as I could get, and to me, it
Speaker 1: was like my you know, I'm not the first person
Speaker 1: to say it, it it was kind of my religion. It
Speaker 1: was like how I found a sense of identity in
Speaker 1: connection with the world. Um, and music for young people
Speaker 1: just doesn't penetrate. It can, but seeing the choices they have,
Speaker 1: whether it's social media or video games or just YouTube
Speaker 1: or all of the other things coming at them, it's
Speaker 1: hard for them to have the the quietude to be
Speaker 1: able to let music in in the same way. We
Speaker 1: could go on about that, I'd be a separate podcast.
Speaker 1: But going back to theatrical films, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the big stories the last couple of weeks has been
Speaker 1: Book Smart and its failure in the marketplace. Some people
Speaker 1: said it should have been platformed. I starting in a
Speaker 1: few number of theaters, good gross is press whatever the
Speaker 1: distributor said, No, no, the word of mouth will happen,
Speaker 1: which doesn't seem to be happening. Is the theatrical really
Speaker 1: just for these big budget cartoon movies. Well, again, it
Speaker 1: depends on expectations. So I went to go see book
Speaker 1: Smart this week. Yeah, I loved it. I thought it
Speaker 1: was great, you know, um, and it's gonna break twenty
Speaker 1: million and then some which so it's not a failure
Speaker 1: unless you compare it to Super Bad, and I think
Speaker 1: it's an unfair comparison. I think all the people that
Speaker 1: were saying, um, it was it should have done that
Speaker 1: kind of box office were just misreading the tea leaves
Speaker 1: because not only was Super Bad ten years ago in
Speaker 1: a very different theatrical space, but you know, there are
Speaker 1: no big names playing prominently in the film. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a first time director. Yes, she's well known, but it's
Speaker 1: some harder slog to get that film sold. I personally
Speaker 1: probably would have platformed it more if I was the distributor,
Speaker 1: because I think it's an excellent word of mouth film
Speaker 1: and opening it not many theaters, I think a couple
Speaker 1: of I think that was shooting very high. Um, because
Speaker 1: it is a great, great film. Um, and it's my
Speaker 1: wife and I went it was a great date night film.
Speaker 1: You know, it was the future of that type of film,
Speaker 1: anything other than the uh special effects, you know, Marvel
Speaker 1: type film. Is that really the flat screen? It's hard
Speaker 1: to know again, you know, if you asked me two
Speaker 1: years ago I probably said yes. Then I put out
Speaker 1: a documentary that nobody thought would doing, ring that grows
Speaker 1: more than twenty million dollars about a guy who was
Speaker 1: on TV, you know, decades ago. Um. So what I
Speaker 1: do think in a certain way, I mean, what the
Speaker 1: reason I think people went to the movie theater to
Speaker 1: go see Won't You Be My Neighbor was that they
Speaker 1: wanted a communal experience, And what Mr Rogers was about
Speaker 1: was the neighborhood and kind of community. And in many
Speaker 1: ways the film is like a secular sermon, so it
Speaker 1: plays better if you're watching with other people. I heard
Speaker 1: many people say that there was spontaneous hugging between strangers
Speaker 1: at the end of screenings in the theaters. That's either
Speaker 1: creepy or great however you look at it. So um,
Speaker 1: but stuff like that makes me happy. So I feel
Speaker 1: like whenever I whenever you want to close the coffin
Speaker 1: on theatrical small theatrical films, Um, something happens and something
Speaker 1: unexpected happens, and something new comes out of it. So
Speaker 1: not dead yet, I would say, is is what I
Speaker 1: would classify it as. Um, But it's certainly not what
Speaker 1: it was, you know, in terms of I mean the
Speaker 1: real thing I think is the mid level films that
Speaker 1: cost million dollars to make. Um, the kind of adult
Speaker 1: dramas and comedies that just don't get made in the
Speaker 1: same way anymore. They've all those stories have migrated to
Speaker 1: television essentially. Okay, So you have twenty or thirty years
Speaker 1: left to make movies, maybe a little bit more if
Speaker 1: your career kept on this thing and you kept on
Speaker 1: making documentaries. Are you happy or is there some big
Speaker 1: yet unful old dream. Um, I'm happy. You know. It's
Speaker 1: funny because people still will come up and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: when you're gonna make a real movie. So I've been
Speaker 1: making movies for twenty years, um, and you know I
Speaker 1: love scripted movies, and I've flirted with different projects that
Speaker 1: haven't happened, and um, and one may happen and it
Speaker 1: would be fun, you know, it'd be a fun challenge.
Speaker 1: But my day job is documentary and it's always gonna
Speaker 1: be documentary. I mean, that same sensation I had two
Speaker 1: weeks into making my first documentary, where I knew it
Speaker 1: was my life's calling has not changed, and that, in
Speaker 1: a way gives me great comfort because it means whatever
Speaker 1: I'm into at whatever age I can make a film
Speaker 1: about it and learn about it and it will fulfill me.
Speaker 1: Let's just go back because a lot of this the
Speaker 1: audience for this podcast is people who are into music.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about today's music? I'm I have
Speaker 1: a much harder time being into music in the way
Speaker 1: I was into it before because that you were the music.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to judge. Um, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: push you on it. No, I don't. I mean, I
Speaker 1: listened to plenty of music, but I feel like my relationship,
Speaker 1: I gave so much of my life to music that
Speaker 1: I'm kind of Um, it just took up so much
Speaker 1: my life that I feel like I'm on sabbatical. You know.
Speaker 1: When I come back and find a new artists I love,
Speaker 1: It's great. Um, but it kind of ebbs and flows.
Speaker 1: So you're a cultural vulture. And even though you do
Speaker 1: not comprehensive like you used to be, you still you
Speaker 1: know there's a smugger's board of stuff that you partake of.
Speaker 1: For my audience, can you recommend two things that they're
Speaker 1: unaware of? Music, movies, books, documentaries that they really should
Speaker 1: check out? Um? Sure, Can I think about this for
Speaker 1: a minute. Uh, well, you know, I didn't mean to
Speaker 1: put you on the snow. I know, because I want
Speaker 1: to give the best answer problems. Like in the New
Speaker 1: York Times book review, they say, you know what's on
Speaker 1: your nightstand when there's no way in hell those books
Speaker 1: around the nightstand. It's like they just want to look
Speaker 1: good for the audience who is looking at that. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the last film I made I loved Um,
Speaker 1: I mean or film I saw that I loved, I
Speaker 1: mean Book Smart. I would certainly recommend UM, and I've
Speaker 1: been I signed up for the Criterion Channel. They have
Speaker 1: their news streaming service. Highly recommend the Criterion streaming service.
Speaker 1: As a real ciny asked, you know, I love the
Speaker 1: chance to be able to just go back into that
Speaker 1: and supporting those types of films and making sure we
Speaker 1: can still see those types of films too. What are
Speaker 1: a couple that you would recommend? And this is just
Speaker 1: you know, on the channel in general. Um, I've been
Speaker 1: going through a Cassavettis phase, which has been interesting. So
Speaker 1: what's your favorite Cassavettis um Chinese bookie? Really? Yeah, mine's
Speaker 1: Woman under the Influence. I think he really nails how
Speaker 1: the you know, Peter Flack has no idea what's went
Speaker 1: on with his wife, and his wife is really I
Speaker 1: just found the juxtaposition really good. Yeah, and they know
Speaker 1: there's something about that time period too, and you know
Speaker 1: a lot of Los Angeles and some of that stuff too,
Speaker 1: But I just really respond to um. So yeah, in
Speaker 1: a way, I end up going backwards more than anything. Well,
Speaker 1: the movies were different with a great thing about a
Speaker 1: movie and whether it's certainly better to theatrical experience, is
Speaker 1: that it shuts out the rest of the world, and
Speaker 1: when done well, you're immersed. I want that experience, you know,
Speaker 1: you want an experience where you don't want to check
Speaker 1: your phone, you don't want to look at your watch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is like the best review you can get. Check
Speaker 1: my phone once, you know which I aspired to. Okay Morgan,
Speaker 1: this has been wonderful. The audience will look forward to
Speaker 1: your Rick Ruben project. Thanks so much for being on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Talking to you until next time. This is
Speaker 1: Bob left Sets