What Was It Like to Spend 6 Years With Kanye West?

In this episode, Gandhi talks with documentary filmmaker, Nico Ballasteros, about spending 6 years of his life making a film about Ye; the good, the bad, and the really bad. We learn how much he was paid, how he got the gig, and what the toughest parts of the job entailed. We also find out about something big Diamond is putting off and discuss the train wreck that is this season of Love is Blind.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, here we go, what's up? And sauce on the side,
and I am with my girl Diamond. Hello, Hi, Hi,
And we have an interesting person on the pod today.
His name is Nico Blisteros and if you haven't heard
of him, which you maybe haven't, he followed Kanye West
around for six years of his life, just documenting what

(00:27):
was going on. And he recently came out with a
basically a documentary about Kanye called in Whose Name? And
it's pretty interesting how all of it went down. But
I have a lot of questions for him, because dedicating
six years of your life to that had to be insane,
and he didn't get paid for it.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I almost said something that I don't think I should
say out loud.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
But why this is a free space.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
It takes a psychotic person to follow around a psychotic person.
And Nico s very nice, sweet guy, truthful, he seemed.
But I mean, I hate to label someone as crazy,
but you got to be crazy to deal with that
level of I'm not calling him crazy crazy Kanye, Yeah,

(01:14):
he is crazy, I know, but and then also I
don't know. I mean, Kanye confuses me, so I wonder
how people could be around him for extended periods of
time and not drive themselves insane as well.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
So it's just not a lot of money. Money causes
people to do wild things and put themselves in wild positions,
which is just in itself crazy. And I'm mad that
people are saying you can't use that word to describe
crazy things. But there are just some things and some
people and that are crazy and it hurts your feelings, okay,
but it is what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Kanye West is a fascinating, creatively genius lunatic. The man
is a lunatic. I used to and we talk about
all this in the interview, so you're gonna hear soon.
But there was a time, I mean, it was really
hard to convince me that Kanye was not amazing and
that fall it was ridiculous because I'll be the first
person to say my favorite moments with him are now

(02:04):
when he is silent.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
I absolutely don't say anything. You know, what just came
to my mind what Kim Kardashian's call her Daddy interview
was probably a response to this movie.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh you know, that was a fascinating interview too. If
you haven't seen it, watched it hurt it, which maybe
we shouldn't be promoting someone else's podcast, but it was good.
I think in all of this, what I told Diamond
and I said Taniko at one point was I have
never been a big Kardashian fan, none of them. I
don't watch the show ever, so I don't really have

(02:37):
a good grasp on who they are as people. Through
all of this, I think she looked like a good
human being with what she was trying to do, because
there were so many moments where if that was my
boyfriend or husband or whomever, I would have snapped, and
you could tell that she loved him and she was
really trying to work with him and say like, calm down,
I'm trying to do what's best for you. And it

(02:58):
was just a wild ride. Minds me a little bit.
What's going on on this season of Love is Blind?

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh? Please don't again, don't. I'm trying so hard.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Season nine Love is Blind. Every single one of those
people needs help, except maybe Calabria. However, the fact that
she is dealing with Edmund period makes me question what's
going on with her. But I will say this every
single time this show comes out, how many seasons of
the show do we need before we realize love is
in fact not blind. Love is not blind. It's blind ing,

(03:35):
but you don't walk into it blind.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah. Oh I like that blind ing.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, like when you fall in love with someone, I
think that blinds you. Then you don't see all of
these red flags and these horrible things about them because
you're in love with that person. But you know what,
she did see them first, and then you made that decision.
These people are falling in love with quote unquote personalities
and being like, yes, I love you. Then they see
them and they're like, I actually don't even like you,
and I don't want to be friends with you. Oh
it's funny, and they call it an experiment. But this

(04:01):
season has been nuts.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
I think that if there's anything that this season has
taught us more than the other ones, I've gone on
record and said this. They're not the casting, they're not
doing their job. They need full evaluations done, and they
need them to be honest, because there is no way
that Edmund should have got through the evaluation.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Not at all. One of the best memes I saw
about this was somewhere this man took a wrong turn
on his way to casting for Love on the Spectrum
and ended up on Love is Blind, yep, because there
is something about him, almost the love on the spectrum.
People don't deserve Edmund. They're like the purest love, most lovely,
amazing human beings. Edmund is a ham.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
He is just.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
He should not be on one of these shows.

Speaker 4 (04:49):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
They should not be unleashing him on innocent, unsuspecting people
because but there have just been multiple instances with multiple
people on that show where I'm like, absolutely not, why
you sticking around?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
I'm not gonna say who did it, but somebody made
a shake out of chicken oh and crystal light and
the man drinks it every day.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Also goodbye. The thought of crystal light makes my stomach term.
My doctor used to try to get me to go
on diets when I was little, and that was his fix.
I told my mother, if you bring another crystal light
bottle in this house, I'm gonna pour it out.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
It's the crystal light making you sick, not the chicken
smoothie disgusting it. There's just a lot of weird stuff happening.
Love is Blind is the show, but we have learned
love is in fact not blind. Ridiculous. How's your cousin
doing post Love is Blind. Her cousin Monica was on
if you didn't already know this, she's great, Monica, her
best life, famous for her.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
House and everything. Don't ever buy me that, don't ever
get me one of those. I love it, I love it.
But yeah, she's great.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
She's moving into a new house. That's exciting.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
It is is she engaged? Not yet? Okay? Oh honey,
it's coming.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
I bet it is.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Oh boy, I'm nervous.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
There's a lot of weddings happening around.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Please don't get me started.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Why why is her sister's wedding stressing you out?

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Oh I'm in trouble right now.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
What did you do?

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Because, oh, my cousin Melanie decided that.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
She edged control, Yes, kJ edge control.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
She decided that she was going to she may miss
the rehearsal dinner because of something at work. And she's
a DJ. No she has a day job too. Oh
I didn't know that, okay. And so she called me
and told me the situation, and my immediate reaction was
call my sister immediately. Well, it looks like she hasn't

(06:39):
called my sister. And that was over a week ago.
I kept the secret because Number one, I feel like
you're an adult. I'm not doing your dirty work for
you. You get yelled at, not me, you know what I mean.
Number Two, it wasn't set in stone, so I'm like,
I'll give you some time to figure it out. You
need to have this conversation. Well, someone else leaked it
to my sister, and now she's mad at me for

(06:59):
not telling her. But I'm like, oh the w And
then the thing that she hits me with is well,
I would have told you, And I'm like, oh great, great, would.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
She have Probably?

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, that's the worst, But I won one or two
okay because it's premature. Okay, but you know, so I'm
in trouble.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
When is your sister getting married less than a month away?

Speaker 2 (07:20):
I think we're three weeks away. And the only reason
why I'm saying is because I have no clue what
I'm gonna say, and I'm made of honor speech and
it's keeping me up at night.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Can I help you?

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (07:28):
I love writing?

Speaker 2 (07:29):
These things really pull me out because I am losing it.
I'm just like, I need something written down because I
don't want to just go up there and wing it.
But I feel like winging. It is the only way
to go about it. It is not overthinking.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Diamond is not the only way to go about it.
You need to at least have some talking points, just
a couple of things, because you're gonna get up there
and you're gonna be in front of people looking at them.
You're probably gonna get nervous.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
I'm gonna be drunk.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Just you're gonna be drunk. You want to have at
least some talking points. I think it'll go out when
for me, you've seen my notes app Whenever I think
about anything, if I think it's funny, if I think
it's important, whatever it is, it goes into an oh
and my notes up my stand up comedy routine for
my Netflix special is going to be crazy. Oh god,
so long. Let me tell you this. I was reading
through it the other day, chuckling to myself. I was like,

(08:09):
this is funny.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
What if it's only funny to you and no one else? No,
that's not possible.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
What okay? All right, back to my land of delusion?

Speaker 2 (08:18):
All right, it's given Scotty.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, First of all, what the hell does that mean?

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Because Scotty lives in a world of delusion?

Speaker 1 (08:25):
I resent to you, this is sick.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Now I'm upset. Now we have to get to the interview.
Thanks a lot, Timond. His name is Nicobellasteros. The movie
is called in Whose Name? If it is not out
in theaters now, because we did record this a couple
of weeks ago, I'm sure you can catch it on
a streaming platform. But let's get to it, all right.

(08:53):
I am with Nico Ballasteros, who is fascinating to me
for a lot of reasons, and I watched your film
last night. I have a million questions. So before we
get into it, let's introduce you a little bit. First
of all, Hi, Hi, thank you for joining. Much appreciated. Yeah,
of course. So you recorded six years worth of footage

(09:14):
with Kanye West? Or are we going by yay now now?

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (09:17):
I saw in the film that was actually a topic
of contention with him quite often. Yeah, it's a part
of the arc, a part of the arc. Yes, his transformation.
What's been going on with him? You were with him
when you started when you were what eighteen years old,
that's correct, and you stuck with him for six years
until you were twenty four, recording pretty much everything that
he did everything that he said, and you put together

(09:38):
a film called in Whose Name? Where do we even begin?
How did you become part of this project?

Speaker 5 (09:44):
Well, I was in high school and I was desperately
looking for a.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Way out in high school.

Speaker 5 (09:50):
Yeah, just away into the real world, okay, And I
knew that higher education was no longer something of interest
to me. I was in this high school for performing arts,
and I was actually doing film and TV studies, but
kind of halfway through it, I kind of found myself
searching for a lived experience to be had in order
to really pool from something to tell stories from the future.

(10:10):
And I felt like documentary filmmaking was the best way
that I could be of service to the world to
also grow up in it and figure out what it
is that I want to tell. So about my junior year,
I would say of high school, I kind of shifted
gears a bit and started to focus less on the
craft of filmmaking and more on the culture around me.
And I really found myself integrated in that naturally, because

(10:33):
there was just a group of kids at my school
that was already kind of tapped into culture. We were
in proximity to La living out in Orange County, and
you know, they basically took me. One day, we ditched
class and we went to the AMC and watched a
live stream of YA doing at the time, Kanye West
doing a Madison Square Garden performance, and I kind of

(10:53):
just saw it as an epicenter of culture and kind
of his relationship with it very fascinating, and I decided
at that moment that this is the person that I
want to go make a documentary on or something within
this zeitgeist for sure. And I started to just naturally
become a part of that world.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Well yeah, when.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
You say naturally becoming part of that world.

Speaker 5 (11:12):
Taking the train out to LA and just kind of
meeting with people through social media, okay, and shooting music videos,
hanging out with different artists, creative directors, producers, and you know,
like just kind of looking for a home outside of
the one that I.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
Grew up in.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Okay, did you graduate barely?

Speaker 5 (11:28):
I really desperately. I was a want to be a
high school dropout. I tried as much as I could,
but you know, I didn't just dissatisfy my parents, but
I was definitely pulled in the principal's office multiple times
for not going to class.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
So you decide I want to be part of this.
And as an eighteen year old, how did you actually
get the call or did you reach out to them
to say, let me do this? Because I read a
lot about your process and pretty much the fact that
you did this unpaid. You were taking loans to be
able to go out and support yourself for the six
years that you were doing this. So where naturally all.

Speaker 5 (11:58):
Come from, Well, it came from when he went to
the hospital also as well, it was within the timeframe
of me still graduating in high school. So I started
to also understand the severity of this story and like
the need to tell it and kind of the the
story being a relationship between the mind and celebrity and

(12:19):
artistry as well, those kind of three situations going on
at once. Because he was always someone who and still is,
you know, tapping into younger generations and emerging talents and
finding you know, the next the next talent, like someone
like Virgil Ablow as an as an example, So Virgil
Ablow did this collaboration with this one clothing brand at
the time called the Spaghetti Boys, and this one person

(12:41):
by the name of Lucas Sabat was a part of
this group and this collection, and basically they were looking
for creative collaborators and through that I found myself connected
with some of the videographers and directors that were working
with Yea at the time.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
And when Ya got out of.

Speaker 5 (12:56):
The hospital, the previous videographer went to work with I
Have a Scott. His name was Tyler and he ended
up doing the Loukmak a Fly documentary, which I Have
a Scott and Yay just needed, you.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Know, someone else.

Speaker 5 (13:06):
He's always kind of had someone and I knew that
was a position and I just kind of rose to
the occasion in.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
That way at the time that you got the call
or you somehow figured out I'm going to go now
start shooting Kanye West twenty four to seven. Did you
understand what that was going to entail? Were you ready
for it?

Speaker 3 (13:23):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (13:23):
I mean, humbly, I don't know if I could say
I was ready for it. It was, you know, a
life changing experience. And I don't want to sound, you know,
arrogant in that regard, but I did know what it
entailed on.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Paper, rumblings of like this could could be a wild
ride for you, absolutely, and you were ready for it. Yeah,
part you were prepared for that.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (13:41):
I mean again, I think not to sound like an
armchair psychologist, because I'm definitely not a mental health professional
by any means. But you know, there was this moment
in my life as well where I was about to
go into the real world, so to speak, and I
had maybe my own little existential crisis, and I started
to find myself being comforted by reading texts like Carl
Young and Sibby and Freud, and you know, still as

(14:02):
someone who was very open minded, those were kind of
the textures that I was entering within.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Okay, you got what three thousand plus hours of footage
that you somehow managed to boil down to an hour
and forty four minutes, and in that what it felt
like to me, And I'm interested to see your take
on it, because you were the person who created this film.
It felt like I was watching real life someone slowly
destroyed themselves. How did you feel watching that over the

(14:31):
six years versus me in the hour and forty four minutes.

Speaker 5 (14:35):
It was, you know, in some ways in slow motion.
And you know, I think there's just quote by Steve
Jobs that I think about a lot and I've said
it a few times now that you can only connect
the dots looking backward, not forward. So as I was
going through it, I knew that there would be a
cause and effect to some of the things that I
was observing, but I wasn't necessarily trying to immediately make

(14:57):
sense of it nor interject I would you know there
too objectively observe and not necessarily past judgment.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
That mixed with also where.

Speaker 5 (15:07):
He was at and where the story was finding himself,
was accumulation of things that called me to go into
the edit, okay, and start to make sense of the story.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
He talks about. Oh, I don't want to ruin anything
about this film, because I do want people to go
see it. I thought it was fascinating. It left me
with again so many questions and just thoughts. And I
think you did a couple of really fascinating things with it.
One just the fact that you were behind the scenes
with so much of this, and you get to see
the way he thinks. You get to see it gets
darker over time, and you can almost see that in

(15:38):
his art and the things that he's doing, the fashion shows,
the things that he's making, the.

Speaker 5 (15:42):
Contact in the eye that was a big moment, was
it for me? And just yeah, the film, Oh absolutely.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
So what you're talking about is there's a part where
he's in concert with Marilyn Manson and who are the
other two people?

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Play Boy Cardi, Playboy Cardi and this skater.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Eric And you know, one of the things that is
very prevalent for him, just kind of in general, is
he's always talking about Jesus and God, and in this
particular part, he puts these contacts in his eyes and
he goes out on stage with Marilyn Manson, who was
notoriously not necessarily all about Jesus. It's correct, and you
see this just transformation in him in general. Did you
decide when you were done or was there absolutely Okay,

(16:20):
so you said, I've gotten over six years, I've gotten
what I need now I'm going to walk away with
this yea, and I'm going to make this film.

Speaker 5 (16:25):
And it wasn't the first time that I tried to
go and make the film. It was something that I knew.
And you know, you're speaking about Donda two, which was
an album that he made and I don't think it
was officially released, but that's what we were seeing in
that scene. And prior to that, we had Donda one
which was released, and I also worked in a separate
capacity on that project outside of the documentary scope, where

(16:46):
I actually also did the live streams, so as I
was kind of operating within the realm of that and
also telling the story of the documentary adjacent to it,
I you know, kind of saw where we were at
in the story with the divorce and now with this
like concert. So that was the first time that I
felt I had what I needed to go and tell
the story, and I did try. However, I didn't do

(17:08):
it in a way where I truly removed myself. I
was still one with the culture. So my identity as
kind of like a gonzo journalist that I could kind
of say that I became with humility. You know, it
was hard for me to objectively look at some of
the footage because I didn't actually have the time to
and I scraped.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
That first scrapped it. But you said, I need more.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
I needed to make sure that I had what I
needed because I had to leave not just filming, but
I had to leave society in a lot of ways
because I had injected myself so much into culture that
it was you know, subconsciously influencing my perspective on just filmmaking.
So I kept holding in there for a minute, and
then you know, within I think less than a year,

(17:52):
I shot the actual ending of the film, which the
last thing that I shot was in the film where
we go to Portland and for the mediation where the
Adidas deal is taken off the table, and that was.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Until you stop filming, basically correct, And that.

Speaker 5 (18:06):
Was like the last time I stopped filming, except for
the epilogue, which was just like for those haven't seen
the film, there's just this epilogue in you know, we
seem a few years later at the chateaum Armont and
we just happened to run into each other at the
Chateau Armont, and I was, you know, intrigued with what
he was saying, and I just captured it for.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Fifteen minutes or so.

Speaker 5 (18:25):
And that was essentially the true, true, last time that
I had ever filmed him. But prior to that, it
was that meeting where they told me to stop filming,
and that was actually the last time that I stopped filming.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
There was so much going on and so much of
what you just said that I want to kind of
touch on So one, you started this when you were
eighteen and you stopped when you were twenty four, So
essentially you went through the college years filming Kanye West
and being immersed in this celebrity world during some pretty
formative years of your life. How has that impacted you
going forward? Because for me, college is when I discovered

(18:58):
so much about myself and so much of about the world,
and you are in a completely different type of learning environment.
Where are you at now with that? Are you was
it easy to adjust back to the real world? Are
you still having trouble?

Speaker 3 (19:08):
I'm still adjusting, you know.

Speaker 5 (19:10):
I mean, I definitely have the lived experience that I
was looking for to pull something deep out of me,
to tell that.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Crazy lived experience. I don't think a lot of people
would be like, you know what, I'm just gonna be
like like stuck in some ways with Kanye West for
six years. That's a lot heavy.

Speaker 5 (19:23):
I feel very grateful for the journey, you know. Now,
I'm really looking forward to pulling from this deep well
of experience to tell stories, to continue to really service
humanity and also forward in advance what I hope you
know to do with film. But there's another question that

(19:50):
you had that I wanted to address. Do you remember
what it was?

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Many I just asked you about college and.

Speaker 5 (19:55):
You're like, oh, yeah, yes, yeah. I mean I definitely
came of age throughout that whole process. And you know,
that was one of the things that he would ask
me a lot when there may be a break or
two within the filming period of times, you know, I
would come into the room and he would ask, so,
how is the real world?

Speaker 3 (20:10):
And I always found that very fascinating.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah, I mean you can see in it how detached
he is from the real world, and how in a
lot of ways when people tried to step in and say, like, hey,
let me help you out here, let me present an
opposing viewpoint, he did not like that. That was what
seemed to be from the hour and forty four minutes
that I watched, It seemed to be a thing that
triggered him constantly, like, do not tell me what to do,
do not tell me how to make art. That is me.

(20:34):
I will do it the way I want to do it.
And I can't imagine what that would be like for you,
because in essence, you're sort of like a like a
National geographic videographer, where you're out there just quietly observing.
You see the lion about to attack the analogact. You
just have to keep shooting. Were there times that you
wanted to be like, bruh, don't do it? Back away?

Speaker 5 (20:54):
What?

Speaker 1 (20:54):
But you don't say anything?

Speaker 4 (20:55):
You know?

Speaker 5 (20:56):
I think, like you said, like I knew what my
role was as a journalist, and if I were to
cross that line, you know, it would open it up
to bias.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
I think ultimately so.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
But he did ask you a couple like there were
You're very but you see my.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Open endedness though in some of my responses I did.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
I thought, I actually like scormed for you for a
second because just because he was like, Nico, what did
you think of that? Like he directly asks you. It
was right after the Saturday Night Live incident, and he
asks you what you thought of it.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
I said, it's the start of a conversation.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yes, you vaguely answer where I feel like I would
have been like, well, I feel like you maybe overreacted
to something. But you can't say that because I could
completely queer your deal with what's going on and what
you're doing.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
I wasn't worried.

Speaker 5 (21:40):
About changing the dynamic of the relationship. As much as
I was creating like maybe a deviation in perspective, I
also felt like it was a golden ticket, like in
the Willy Wonk kind of story, and I wanted to
kind of see how the candy got made, so to speak,
and the can in this instance being not just the music,

(22:02):
not just the shoes, but popular culture. And when I
would first kind of experiment with the footage, I realized
that I had enough material to really tell it with
what I had, almost like a Blair Witch without needing
talking head interviews, without needing voiceover narration, and not much archival.
You know, it was very important to just remove biases

(22:23):
as much as possible because a lot of documentaries right now,
especially once I came onto the scene as a first
time filmmaker, you could easily get caught up in, you know,
the format that is currently being championed by streaming versus
kind of the old style documentaries from like the seventies
and the sixties, which I just found spoke to my

(22:44):
soul more as like an early you know, filmmaker. If
I were to kind of interject or you know, commentate
a little bit, it would just kind of go against
the format. That I felt like I needed a champion
for this particular project.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
So something else that you did that I thought was
really interesting with this Because I have full disclosure, never
watched an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I
only know about them what I gleaned from the prep
services that we get and just popular culture in general.
You hear about them, you see things about them. To me,
Kim Kardashian came off as incredibly patient and much more

(23:22):
human than I would have ever thought she would be
dealing with him and going through these very heavy dark times.
And I'm asking you how you were able to grab
that footage because I know they're very tight with the
way they allow people to film them and be around them.
So how did that play in? Were there times that
you couldn't be around them because they had other people

(23:42):
there filming?

Speaker 5 (23:44):
Yeah, there were times where they had other people filming,
And actually they were really nice to me, and you know,
their carew and production would even kind of give me
tips and tricks on how to you know, perhaps like
organize things, and you know, yeah, so they were always
like a resource positively in that regard. And you know,
I mean there are also people who've always filmed their
lives and as we even see in the film a

(24:04):
specific moment where you know, there's a heated discussion and
Yay says, you know, you know I've had these moments before.
Backstage there's tapes, so you know that's like very nuanced,
but it's to say, like again, like they're both people
who have always notoriously documented their lives, very personally and
perhaps in some retrospect that says a lot about our

(24:26):
time in society, but maybe even what they're looking to
achieve as artists or as personalities, and you know, it
is like a new art form, like this Truman show.
No one ever told me to stop recording. It was
always the contrary. It was always like keep the camera on.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
In some ways, did you feel like that camera's an
invisibility cloak for me?

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Does it still hold that sort of weight when you're
out in the real world now, do you feel like
when you're behind a camera?

Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah, I mean that's.

Speaker 5 (24:51):
How it started for me as a seven and eight
year old, you know, kind of growing up with the
divorce family and like as an only child, the camera
was always an invisibility cloaked me. I just stumbled upon
a camera that my actually my younger cousin had and
it was just a way for me to kind of
understand at a young age, you know, how our life
could play back.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
For us when you spend so much time filming and
then you have to go through three thousand hours, which
I'm sure it wasn't every second of three thousand hours,
but you're then reliving the past six years again. Yeah,
and that has to sometimes put you in a strange
space seeing that stuff in front of you. And I
know that that's what filmmakers do, but were there times
for you that anyone came to you and they were like, Hey,

(25:32):
can I see that footage that you just shot? Because
I want to see what I said, if I did
something wrong, how that actually played out. Did anyone ask
to see the footage before?

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (25:41):
Okay, yeah, I mean like throughout the years, not at
the very end, but throughout the years, and I always
just kept it like a tight volt. You know, no
one ever got to see anything. And it was never
someone that you would expect. It would be just someone
completely like random. It wouldn't be like an A list
celebrity like coming up to me. It'd be just someone
like in the back of a studio set or like, hey,
most of the time, most people wanting the clip just

(26:01):
for their own like personal you know, memory or something
like that. But I actually moved to Costa Rica for
a year and it took me nine months straight to
watch the three thousand hours back. I had someone who
had organized it and trimmed like the true fat and
unusable moments from it. So maybe we could say just
a ballpark, like there was two thousand, seven hundred hours that.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
I hours had logged.

Speaker 5 (26:26):
Yeah, you know, no stone was left unturned, so much
so that we got to a point where everything became
became transcribed, and I had printed everything out and I
had cut them into individual ships of paper, and each
strip of paper was anywhere between like ten seconds and
maybe like five ten minutes worth of footage. I had
nine thousands of these strips of paper, all on bulletin boards,

(26:48):
and I would go through these bulletin boards and sort
through the data also on paper. So the process, you know,
it was very meticulous. People always would say, like, do
you keep a journal like for your reflections? And I
never did because I just didn't have the time to
or desire. Maybe but when I was going to that footage,
I was immediately inserted back into that lived experience, and

(27:09):
I was almost like viewing it from like the nineteen
year old self for the twenty one year old self,
and I remembered what I was thinking at the time.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
It aided so much so in the story that I
was shaping.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
So now you feel like maybe there's a little bit
of this invisibility cloak because you're behind a camera. But
were there times that you still just didn't want to
be there? Because there were some really awkward moments in
that Like the one that really struck me the most
was when he was talking to Elon Musk, because they're
both kind of maybe intrinsically strange people, and then you
have them together, but there you are just trying to
nonchalantly film what's happening, and it made me chuckle a

(27:42):
little bit, like this is so uncomfortable. Were there moments
like that for you where you thought, I'm very uncomfortable.
Thank God I'm behind this camera.

Speaker 5 (27:50):
Yeah, I mean definitely I like being behind the camera
because that had a reason, you know, it gave me
a reason to be there.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Obviously.

Speaker 5 (27:56):
When I mean that, because like when you have someone
like Yay or just celebrities, and there are a lot
of people around who have a role and responsibility that
could quickly become undefined, especially if it's like more in
the kind of realm of someone being there to give ideas,
and you know, they can kind of get lost in
those environments very quickly. And I you know, think it

(28:17):
would even be something that ye would say, like we
know what Nico does, Like he's here with this camera,
Like what do some of you guys do? Because you know,
weeks could go by, months could go by, and suddenly
it's like what do these people do?

Speaker 3 (28:29):
So less about me feeling like I was.

Speaker 5 (28:33):
You know, awkward in those moments and more like I
just had a reason why I was there.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Okay, looking back at the film when you finish it,
was there anything left on the cutting room floor, as
they say, or are there things that were left behind
that you specifically didn't include because you thought it might
be too much?

Speaker 3 (28:47):
You know, I don't have any regrets.

Speaker 5 (28:48):
I mean I made this cut with so much intention
and I had final cut on it, and I made
it for the theatrical experience specifically because of again, like if
it were to go to streaming, there would have been
different constraints put on too, just because I'm my first
time filmmaker. I don't have the pool to demand a
first cut with a streamer. You know, anything beyond two
hours was not watchable in one sitting. And I knew

(29:10):
that because I did screens every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and
sometimes even Sundays, just repeatedly watching the film over and
over again with different groups of people as I was
editing as well. You know, nothing was left on the
cutting floor, no stone was left you know on turn.
It's because it was like sculpting David out of marble,
and that three thousand hours was whittled into the hour

(29:30):
and forty again, not for me pulling from memory thinking
we need this and this is the story. It was
really being humbled and you know, in service to that
footage and watching, you know, the first cut was ten
hours and then then it was six hours, and you know,
watching it repeatedly was a way.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
For us to whittle it down to what we see today.

Speaker 5 (29:51):
And you know, if it were a series and things
like that, it would have been a different format and
I would have approached things a little bit differently. There
would have been more to the story. But you know,
a lot of the things that you know, maybe the
fans or people would have thought would have been necessary
to the story, like music studio sessions and maybe even
design sessions, you know, kind of fell flat when it

(30:11):
came to the grander story.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Okay, and the six years that you're there, do you
feel like you were friends?

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (30:20):
Yeah, in some capacity, as much as one could be
with their documentary subject. I think you know, more than anything,
it is someone who is at times a creative has
been a creative mentor to me. It's like you talked
about earlier school and all, just be honest, it's the
first time filmmaker. If it weren't for me observing even

(30:41):
though they're not other filmmakers, but observing these artists make
their art for six years, I wouldn't have been able
to cut this film because I made it entirely with
a team of people who never made a film before.
Except for one person, justin Staple. Everyone else, you know, collectively,
were people that I had curated over the years and
a community of creatives that I wanted to foster with me.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
So do you think it was worth taking all these
loans out to do I have a feeling. I know
what your answer is going to be. But how is
it that you were doing this and there was a
lot expected of you to always be there and shoot
and you didn't get paid for it?

Speaker 5 (31:15):
Yeah, I mean it was it was all worth it
in the end, of course, you know. I mean, because
it's just the beginning of my career as well. So
it's bigger than just the film. Yeah, it's bigger than
just this film. It's it's me starting a relationship with
the medium of filmmaking and also developing a relationship with
an audience too.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Were they all aware that you weren't getting.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Paid to do this, Yeah, because I know that.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Sometimes when it's all the way up to the artists,
maybe the artist just assumes other people are taking care
of things.

Speaker 5 (31:42):
Well, like you know, I made it very apparent like
when I'm going to go edit this, like you know,
I have to like do it completely independently, and like
you know, that was always the goal was to remain
independent and not you know, get influenced by anyone or anything.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
So I also would assume that makes it a lot
easier to edit. Back to what you were saying earlier,
ed the way you want to edit because there's not
somebody that paid you that then, Oh yeah, because I.

Speaker 5 (32:04):
Wasn't on a payroll, or because there was no contract,
because you know, it wasn't a work for hire. Yeah,
that that was what enabled me, as a first time
filmmaker to maintain ownership.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
And creative control.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Has he seen it?

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Yeah? I showed it to him three times.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Oh wow. They keep saying it's unauthorized, like he didn't
sign off on it. But if he's seen it three times,
clearly he has.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
And I think he again located it in some capacity
one hundred percent.

Speaker 5 (32:27):
And I think in this day and age, you know,
the word authorized or unauthorized is so much of a
challenging kind of perspective to me because of where we're
at with streaming documentaries, which are really commercials for celebrities
a lot of the times versus you know, true journalism.
You know, I showed it to him in three durations.
In the last version I showed him was about a

(32:48):
month ago now, and it was the final final version.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
And yeah, I mean every.

Speaker 5 (32:52):
Time it's it's it's very deep, of course, and like
very reflective. It's like looking through a scrap book or
a yearbook with you know, a colleague that you spent
you know, a lived experience with. Most importantly though, that
there was a sense of gratitude from him, and he
was actually very you know, very kind, not just to me,
but also the team that I made it with, my friends.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Okay, how do you get I don't know anything about this,
and I don't think a lot of my listeners know either.
How do you get a film into theaters? What is
the process behind that?

Speaker 5 (33:22):
You got to find the right partners, you know, for me,
I was trying to do it all by myself in
the beginning, you know, walking into Netflix or walking into
these places.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
I'm very surprised a lot of those places wouldn't have
picks it up.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Well, I think they would have if I was willing.

Speaker 5 (33:36):
To change the narrative. And I wasn't willing to change
the narrative.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
What do you think they wanted you to change that
narrative too, Well, I.

Speaker 5 (33:42):
Mean they would have just first of all, it would
have been a different format, and I didn't want it
to change. I wanted it to be observational. I didn't
want this you know, cookie cutter approach of talking at interviews,
and you know, whatever. I wanted something that meant challenging
myself to tell a story with the source material that
I had as it was. And then also I just

(34:04):
think I saw how they did other documentaries with people
who struggled with mental illness or controversies, and I never
wanted to make a hit piece and I never would
have done that. And I didn't get the inkling that
they were immediately going to do that, but I could
see how I could lose control and it could become
something like that, and I was definitely not interested in that.
I wanted to tell a deeper story about America and

(34:28):
its relationship to celebrity and also genius, but also the
dangers of genius, what happens when you fly too close
to the sun. You know, we always knew, I always knew,
the team always knew that this film was something intrinsically
deeply psychological in those ways, and I didn't want to
cheapen it by, you know, making a tell all.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
It was still very not necessarily tell all, but it
was incredibly illuminating fars behind the scenes, how things worked
and how they went something that I know is about
him because I was a huge Kanye West fan for
a very long time. I had a really hard time
when it started to spiral, kind of reconciling like, yeah,
he's doing some really bad stuff. This is not cool,

(35:13):
the things that he's saying, the things that he's doing.
It took me a while to finally be like, yeah,
you know what that might be my line. Can't do
it anymore. He's really gone too far from me. But
one of the things that I always wonder with him,
especially because he had a line in one of his songs,
famous the worst drug known to man? What do you
think is most important to him? Do you think it's
fame is the worst drug known to man?

Speaker 3 (35:31):
That that is the there line?

Speaker 4 (35:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (35:33):
Absolutely, Yeah, fame is the most dangerous drug known to man.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
But do you think the art or the fame is
more important to him? Because it seemed like he would
waffle on that a little bit. He wants to make
art that is art for art's sake, but then it
seemed like he would also do things specifically to get
attention and then not enjoy the attention that came his way.
What in your opinion, because I know you're not a
therapist or anything like that, do you think that was about.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
I can't speak on another man.

Speaker 5 (35:58):
I think, you know, for me, if I were in
a similar situation, I can definitely see the reflexivity between
you know, this postmodern with this postmodern world that we
live in, the reflexivity between you know, output and input,
and just how you can kind of get lost in
that echo chamber for sure, and how it can at
times be a little bit energizing perhaps like the controversy,

(36:20):
you can kind of provide new wraps or you know,
new ideas for films or whatever it may be. But
I could see how could also be an abyss that
can completely consume you.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
And you did a really good job documenting that roller
coaster ride, because it's like he would get this seemingly
super high high from some of the things that he
was doing that were to a lot of people outrageous,
whether it's running for president or putting on a White
Lives Matter T shirt, and he would be all about it.
I am, this is my passion, this is what I'm doing.
I'm one hundred percent behind it, and then you would
see this sort of crash where it's like this is

(36:54):
too much for me. I don't want to do it anymore.
It was supposed to be a joke has gone too far.
I'm out. I don't want to do it, and then
he'd follow up and do something again. You see the
manic sides of what he's dealing with and what he's
going through.

Speaker 5 (37:06):
Yeah, I, as an artist, do feel things very deeply.
I just knew that my greatest contribution to the whole
situation was to remain still. You know, everyone around someone
like Yay or celebrities are always thinking of what to
say next, and I perhaps was the only person not

(37:27):
thinking of what to say next.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
I was truly listening.

Speaker 4 (37:30):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
And in all of this, you said something earlier, before
we even started rolling on the microphones. You mentioned that
you're here in New York City right now because you're
going to screenings. You're showing people this film.

Speaker 5 (37:52):
Oh yeah, I'm just going to AM season is putting
my location up and you're seeing it with.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yeah, okay, And then people are coming and they're watching
this movie.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
With you and they're connecting after Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
And I asked how that's been going, and you said
it's been very insightful.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (38:05):
Explain that well, because you know the first time I
watched it with an audience, it was in Orange County
actually in the same theater that I saw that live
stream in twenty sixteen.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Full Circle.

Speaker 5 (38:17):
It was a full circle moment, and everyone was very,
very young. They were my age when I started this journey.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
You know.

Speaker 5 (38:26):
Some of them afterwards came up to me with a
graduation album to sign, and I was like, I was
seven years old, and when that came out, I didn't
work on that album. I cannot sign that. That's always weird,
But that, you know, is me confronting with them idolatry
in the in the real you know, flesh. And that
is why I made this film, is to have a
conversation about idolatry in America. I think for the first

(38:50):
time when I watched it with these audiences. Now, I'm
honestly starting to understand the level of access that I
did have and the anomaly of this story and how
something like this may never exist again. And I say
that with humility someone at that level providing such access
and giving someone final cut. You know, as we go

(39:10):
deeper into this content age, you know, I don't know
if that will ever really exist again. As we continue
to kind of bottleneck these narratives. The other thing is
too honestly, seeing it in theaters and seeing some of
these subject matters and the controversies on that screen was
also very insightful to understand, like the gravitass and the
magnitude of some of these things. Because no longer am

(39:32):
I just you know, in an Airbnb or you know,
my apartment kind of looking at this material, or even
Edit Bay in Hollywood. I'm watching it with real everyday people,
and we're all confronting this story. You know, as one body.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Do you find it easy to lose yourself in service
to somebody else and immersing yourself in following and documenting
another person for so long? Like how much of your
life were you able to live while you were doing this?

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (40:00):
I didn't have a life outside of this. This was
all consuming for me. But I knew, you know, someone
who had grown up reading Hunter S. Thompson and like
what he did with The Hell's Angels. I knew, you know,
someone like that was a hero of mine, like a
gonzo journalist. So I knew that this is this is
the only way to do it.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Do you have somebody in mind who if they gave
you this opportunity to do it again, you would want
to do it with that person, Donald Trump, Really, do
you think you could do that? I mean, obviously, do
you think you could do that? Or you wouldn't say it?
Why Donald Trump?

Speaker 5 (40:32):
Just because I would be interested to tell that story
after the White House to see what life would be
like after the White House.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
So you want to follow him when he's out of
the White House. Not necessarily now, m okay, And in
all of this, how's your family? How were they with
all of it? Like, Hey, you're going away, You're gonna
take out loans for six years? Did they have a
lot to say?

Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (40:52):
They were always very supportive. You know, I love my family. Yeah,
they were always very supportive. And you know, but it
goes deep. It goes to the fact that they allowed
me to go to this charter art school that was,
you know, forty five minutes away from either of their homes.
My mom lived on the northern side of Orange County,
my father on the southern side, and the school was
in Santa Ana, so in the heart But they did it,

(41:14):
and you know, that was a part of my process.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Do you ever get nervous that, let's say you do
get this opportunity with Donald Trump and you have years
that you're then gonna spend dedicated to following someone else around.
Do you ever get nervous that you're gonna lose yourself,
that you don't spend enough time with you you're just
kind of watching and observing everybody else.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
No.

Speaker 5 (41:33):
I believe my relationship with God, you know, is what
defines me. And I know that I'm here to observe
for him in some way in capacity, and that's just
a spiritual you know. Note, what else would I do?

Speaker 1 (41:47):
I don't know. I don't know that you would know that,
but I wouldn't know that.

Speaker 5 (41:49):
Well, make narrative films, you know. I'm not gonna wait
around for another documentary subject to fall from the sky,
you know, I'm gonna start writing. I've already started that actually,
and I've been receiving scripts scripted film.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
Oh wow, yeah, Okay, how long before we see something
from you that's scripted? I know that's a tough question.

Speaker 5 (42:08):
Probably probably, you know, it's probably going to take a
year and a half to two years, I would say,
till it's you know, released.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
So what is your life like right now that you
are Liane Free? You're going around, You're talking about this film?

Speaker 5 (42:20):
Yeah, okay, yeah, and connecting with the audiences and.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
People, okay, and how long do you plan to do that?

Speaker 3 (42:25):
I think this might be the last one.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Really, I think, so you're just sick of it, or.

Speaker 5 (42:30):
Of course, well, you know, I think there's more to
do for the film, but I think right now this
is the last one for the foreseeable future, and I'm
going to start, you know, picking up my rioting again.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Does it get exhausting? Because again, in all of this,
you're the observer and you're talking about someone and filming
someone else, and then you come and you field all
these questions where people are asking you about another person.
Is that part exhausting to you at all?

Speaker 5 (42:56):
To the best of my abilities, for now, at least,
I think I understand the relationship between you know, that fringe.
Then how not to go over the ledge because.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
I think in just in general, the entertainment business, media,
all of it, it can be all consuming and you
get all of these people around you, and it's very
easy to just lose your perspective on the quote unquote
real world and what's happening outside of this bizarro world.
And I say that even involving what we do here,
it's very easy to just think this is what it's like.
It's not. This is not what it's like. No, and

(43:25):
this is not what it's going to be like forever.
This is like a very finite thing. So I'm always
trying to think what am I going to do next?
How do you assimilate back into real life? And you
have obviously a long road ahead of you with all
of this, but it's a wild first go at it
that you had. It's like you stepped out of high school,

(43:47):
got tossed into a whirlpool, swirled in it for six years,
and came out and now it's like, Okay, welcome. How
do you manage from there?

Speaker 3 (43:55):
Like?

Speaker 1 (43:56):
What is your daily life like? Obviously you're doing this
are you? Where are you now?

Speaker 3 (44:00):
Living in Los Angeles? Still?

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Okay? So you're close to family, Yeah, got your friends
and stuff around you?

Speaker 3 (44:05):
Yeah? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Is there a dating life involved? See, now we're talking
about you, and now you get nervous talking about you.

Speaker 5 (44:12):
M Yeah, I mean I would like to have a family,
you know. I think that's very important to me. I
think that'll be an element of grounding.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
I would imagine it would be very grounding to have that.
Do you think that that will ultimately slow you down
a little bit with what they're trying to do.

Speaker 5 (44:26):
Yeah, of course, But I think that's part of life, though,
is to create that balance.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
If somebody wanted to come follow you for six years,
do you think you can do it? Let them? You
have no creative control. You're just letting somebody else observe you.

Speaker 5 (44:38):
I'd be very fascinated, because I don't think my life
is that interesting yet. But I think if I got
to that point, I would take it as a sign
that I'm doing something right.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
Perhaps that's I.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
Mean again I wrote out, So you've probably seen me
looking at my phone a lot because I made a
list of all of these questions.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
I love these questions.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
By the way, well, oh good, thank you. I appreciate that.
While I was watching, I was just like, ooh, pause,
I got to ask about this, and there's still so
many here. But I guess in all of this, because
I don't want to take up too much of your time,
would you do anything differently and going forward? Will you
do anything differently with what you're going to do?

Speaker 3 (45:09):
I would keep a better log of the process.

Speaker 5 (45:13):
I think throughout this is a very technical answer, but
I would keep a better log of the process to
understand how to increase efficiencies.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
I think that's a really creative answer though. That's a
good answer. I hate when people say I wouldn't do
anything differently, because then I'm like, did you learn anything
in the process, because that's why you go through experiences.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
I'll give you an example.

Speaker 5 (45:32):
Yes, the reason why it took so long for me
to go to that footage was because it wasn't organized
and I still had like phones that didn't have the
footage dumped off of them yet. And you know, so
that's a very technical answer, and you know that's an antidote.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
But I would just keep a better log.

Speaker 5 (45:48):
In a journal of my observations of my process to create,
you know, a more efficient production timeline.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Okay. And then in the time that you were with him,
observing him and his mental health and and him choosing
not to take his meds and go the route that
he went with everything, did you find yourself learning anything about.

Speaker 5 (46:07):
You in relation to not taking meds? I'm skidding, well, I.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Mean, hey, if it applies, sure, it's just the way
that he operated in general. Did it teach you anything
about yourself or just to get there?

Speaker 3 (46:17):
Of course.

Speaker 5 (46:17):
I mean, you know, I think again, my relationship to
God is something that I definitely grew in because of
not only the Sunday Service, but what also happened when
you know that went away in his life?

Speaker 1 (46:32):
What exactly do you mean by that, because I'm not
sure if I got that part from the film when
what went away? Sunday Service?

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Mm?

Speaker 5 (46:38):
Hm, Well, like the Marilyn Manson moment you spoke of.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
Oh okay, so you did speak about it.

Speaker 5 (46:42):
Yeah, I said it went from the godly moments to
someone who was around that wasn't very godly?

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Was that part tough for you? Seeing that change when
God is in fact in your life and now you're like,
oh shit, we've taken a turn here.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Tough?

Speaker 5 (46:56):
I mean, you know I'm there as a journalist, but
but yeah, I mean it was a it was an
observation that I made. I think more in the editing
process after I was kind of making sense of it,
and I was like, oh wow, I mean, this is
a big part of the arc is one's relationship with God.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Where do you think he's at right now? He's been
quite quiet lately.

Speaker 5 (47:14):
I pray he's getting the healing he needs and is
you know, getting strengthened, that things turn around for the better.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Of course, and in all of this, the one piece
that I was like, wait, but where was that? There's
no mention of his current wife, Bianca, there was no
footage of her.

Speaker 5 (47:30):
There was no I didn't film, you know, I stopped filming.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Oh you had stopped by then?

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Are there questions in all of this that make you uncomfortable?

Speaker 3 (47:39):
No?

Speaker 1 (47:40):
Nothing? All right?

Speaker 3 (47:42):
No, Okay, he's been good.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
So if people want to watch this, they can go
to an AMC theater. I know it's in limited release,
which sorry, back to that other question really quickly. You
found the right team, But how did this movie actually
get into theaters? Do you have to pay to be
on screens or how does that work? Does the theater
say yes, I want this?

Speaker 5 (47:58):
Well, we had really good partners, someone by the name
of Patrick Hughes and then Cimarron as well and my manager,
Nick jar Jordan. They had the relationships with the theatrical
uh chains.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
So hopefully people. Do you know how long it's gonna
be in theaters? Is that determined ahead of time or
does it kind of depend on how.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
It's I think it depends.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah, Okay, it may not. If it's not, where's it
going to go? Is that then gonna go to a
streaming platform?

Speaker 5 (48:22):
Oh yeah, we're working on a strategy for the film
to live beyond theaters for sure.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
Okay, Well, it's kind of great that you actually got
it out there in it's raw form. So if it
does go to streaming and people see something different, hopefully
there will be some sort of like outrage and outcry like, hey,
what happened?

Speaker 3 (48:36):
Why does this happen?

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Smart move? Yeah, we got receipts in the storytelling exactly,
all right, So you can go to an AMC theater.
Hopefully you can see it right now. It's called in
whose Name.

Speaker 5 (48:45):
And then if not, you can go on in whose
Name Instagram and you could just follow us there and
that way you can stay up to date on information.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Okay, are you interested in pushing your own Instagram at all?

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (48:57):
Nico dot Ballistero's Ico dot B A L L E
S T E R O S.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
All right, And we'll see more from you in the future,
I'm sure. And when you do more, come back, we'll
talk about it.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Yeah, I'd love to come back. It was a pleasure
talking to you.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
Thank you, Thank you so much. I appreciate it all right,
found out a lot of interesting information. I just wonder how,

(49:30):
and I know that we already talked about it, but
those are your very formative years of life. That's when
people go to college. And his college was following Kanye
West round and being a documentarian, And I just wonder
he's got I think he said three thousand hours of
footage and he cut it down to ninety minutes. What

(49:50):
did we not see?

Speaker 2 (49:51):
Oh so much? The person who went through the footage.
I just want to talk to them.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
I just want to because you know that they probably
did a lot to protect him. Oh for sure, a
ton to protect him, because over the last six years
is when he's really had his crazy spirals and incredibly racist,
incredibly prejudiced, horrible things that he's been doing and saying
and hanging out with Nick Fontes and all of that,
and none of that made it into the documentary. So

(50:19):
why are we protecting him? Because this wasn't an authorized thing.
He didn't have to sign off on it because he
didn't pay anybody.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Right, interesting, Sorry it's not funny, but you would think
that he would be smarter.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
Like if I was him, I would have paid the
kid and not release it. Yes, and give me that.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
What are you gonna do? I there are so many
things that I mean, we all know there are things
that are wrong with him, I get it right, But
there are so many things that he's done over the
past few years where like you would think that someone
so like self centered would think about these things, whether

(50:58):
you're going through an episode or not. Like, I feel
like he's so self centered that you mean to tell
me you didn't think about.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
This, or maybe he knew. These people like me so
much and they're gonna look out for me. They're not
going to release anything crazy.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
That God complex is crazy. It is. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
I'll tell you. It's not really a hot take. But
I think too many people get away with being a
dick because they use the I have a mental health issue.
Two things can be true. Oh yeah, you can have
a mental health issue and you can be a dick
on top of it. One does not absolve the other one, Like,
you're not not a dickhead because you have a mental

(51:36):
health issue, and you're not only a dickhead because you
have this mental health issue. You could be both. There
are plenty of people who have mental health issues and
struggle with it, who are very kind people and actually
give a shit about other people around them, And then
there are people who are just assholes, and this maybe
exacerbates it. And I kind of think he's one of
those people. I'm talking a lot about a person i've
never met, based solely on the things that we've seen.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
We've seen way too much to think that he's a
good person. A lot of people want to be kind
and want to be good people at their core, and
they just don't have it. I don't think he has it.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
No, I don't think so either. I think if it
were possible to suck your own dick, which some people
say is because they're very flexible, I believe he would
do it.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
He's done it, He's tried at the least he's try. Yeah. Yeah. Also,
I just need I think he needs a good slap
at the back of the head, you know how like
kids when they're younger and you have like a you see,
like a little brother just say or do something stupid
and the big brother or cousin just slaps him at
the back of the head.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Yeah, shut the shut up.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Just I would love for someone to do that and
for me to be able to see it.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
He is an only child. You got that only child
thing going a lot of things working against him, but
he also works against him. Yeah, he won't listen to anybody.
He doesn't think anybody is right. He thinks he's just
at the forefront of all of it. He could be
on the next season of Love his milnd.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Well, according to casting he's right up there Alley.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
The behind the scenes, by the way, the like reddit
threads that I go down about Love is Blind and
the cast members and like things that they did behind
the scenes is wild. I'm not going to go into
too much because I don't want to ruin it for
people who haven't watched it that there is a couple
that does break up and it doesn't say on the
show why the breakup happened, Like she sort of alludes

(53:21):
to it. She asked him a question, and then I
went and looked it up and I was like, Oh,
that's exactly what happened. Yeah, like, for sure, that's what happened.
Reddit for the wind most of the time.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
Oh, her sliding down in the kitchen was ten out
of ten from me. I'm sorry, I love a person
sliding down the wall crying. And she didn't even use
a wall, she just slid down. There's something that she
slid down on. I loved it.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
Have you ever slid down a wall crying?

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Probably as a kid.

Speaker 4 (53:50):
I don't think I've.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Ever done it.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
I'm for sure like I've thrown myself onto a bed
like face down, ass up and cried and then you
get up and there's this like crazy mask looking thing
on your bed of like where the tears were. I've
definitely done that. I've never punched anything that I can
think of. I don't want to hurt myself.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
I don't think i've done that either, just the thought.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
I'm like, I don't pull out my hair. I don't
hurt myself. I don't do any of that. I just
like I usually just curl into a ball and get
pissed about something and then move on.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
The headache from crying too hard usually like knocks me
on my ass anyway, So I try to stop it
before it even gets there. I'm like, control yourself.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
I will tell you this. My face when I cry
is what I would like it to look like when
I'm not crying, all right, My lips swallow up. They're
like puffier than normal. It's like I got a little
botox injection. My eyes aren't puffy because my whole face
is equally puffy. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
You are unwhelmed, like people say ugly cry.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
This is where I want to be. This is great mind,
this is not it's not sucker.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Oh the snout is not fun. It's not fun.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
All right.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
On that note, Diamond, if people want to see you
before you slide down a wall because you're so sad,
where would they find you at?

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Diamond sincere on Instagram and threats. She's love threats, I
love threads. I have it threaded. Is that what you say?

Speaker 1 (55:03):
I have no idea, I haven't done, we haven't posted posted.
I am at Baby Hot Sauce on Instagram and uh
X and threads and we started a page for this
podcast sauce on the side. I don't know how Celia

(55:24):
got that, but she got it. So maybe a clip
will be posted by now, maybe it won't. Choose to say,
and that's that art. We'll see you next time. Until then,
like follow, subscribe, leave us a review, leave us a
talk back. We love it, and we'll see you next week.

Speaker 4 (55:37):
Say bye,