Morgan Neville

Academy Award winner for "20 Feet From Stardom," as well as director of last summer's surprise hit "Won't You Be My Neighbor?," Morgan Neville is the go-to documentarian. His Rick Rubin docuseries premieres on Showtime on July 12th. Morgan's a huge music fan, listen to how he got from there to here, I could have talked to him all day!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Steps Podcast. My
guest today is director Morgan Neville won an Oscar for
twenty Feet from Stardom and should have won an Oscar
for his Mr. Rogers movie. Morgan, Welcome, Hi Bob. Okay,
you were presently working on a Rick Rubin documentary series

(00:30):
for Showtime. How did that come together? It came together
because somehow Rick and Showtime it started talking to each other.
And I think initially the idea was it was going
to be more about the studio. So Rick owns the
studio Shango Law that originally was put together by the
band in the mid seventies, and Bob Dylan ended up
spending a lot of time recording there. But other people

(00:51):
did too, Eric Clapton and you know, Bunny Raid and
on and on. And I was less interested in just
doing a commentary about the recording studio than than Rick,
because Rick is a fascinating character. So I started meeting
with Rick. Let's be clear, Yeah, Rick wanted in Showtime
want to do something? Were you there from the very beginning,

(01:15):
not the very beginning, but close to it? Okay, there
was just this kind of vague idea how long ago.
Was this somewhere between a year and a half and
two years ago, probably closer to two years ago, So
there was a while ago and UM and I think
what Rick and I started talking about that I think

(01:37):
we both connected about. There were a number of things
that we connected about. One was, UM, create a process,
you know, how people and kind of the universality of
creat a process. It's something I've spent a lot of
time making things about. I do a series for Netflix
called Abstract about designers, but so much of that show
is actually about creative process. And Rick had love that
show and we talked about that UM and and Rick

(02:02):
is an interesting character too, So I think there was
an ongoing debate and continues to be an ongoing debate
even though we finished the show as to what UM
what the show is because I feel like UM, in
Rick's mind, his role as a producer is merely to
be a mirror and to reflect what the artist wants.

(02:24):
And as I say in the opening of the show,
there's a real conversation I had with Rick. I said, well,
my job is a documentarian is to reflect you. And
if I'm making a reflection of our reflection, that we're
going to find ourselves in a hall of mirrors. And
Rick said, yeah, isn't that great? And that's kind of

(02:45):
what the show has been. It's been a hall of mirrors.
It's you know, lady from Shanghai with Orson Welles, you know,
both of you know, we had bonded about that too,
and you know this kind of um, the embracing the
surreality of it, and what I came to really embrace
about it is I think one of Rick's maintenance in
life is that when the lines get blurred between what's

(03:07):
real and what's unreal, interesting things happen and go a
little bit deeper what would be real and what would
be unreal. Well, for instance, anything that resembles a rule
or a deadline or a budget or any of those things,
I think Rick just doesn't believe them, you know, willfully, UM.

(03:31):
And I think that stems from his earliest days. I mean,
if it stems from his childhood, I think in some ways,
but certainly in college. You know, Rick being a rule
breaker UM has rewarded him again and again. So there's
been a lot of positive feedback that this idea of
doing exactly what you want and not caring about what's

(03:52):
popular or not caring about what people say you can
do or what you're supposed to do. Um is actually
really for old ground. So I think that's that's part
of it. It's just a wilful disregard for any Whenever
anybody says, well this is supposed to happen like this,
you know, you might as well be speaking foreign language

(04:13):
to Rick. Okay, but let's go back to the point.
They wanted to make a movie about the studio. You
were more interested in Rick, So then you got involved.
How did they find you? Um? Well, I think the
people a showtime and Rick knew my work right. I've
been a working documentary and for twenty five years, I've
made a ton of music films. I made lots of
non music films. Um. And as I said, Rick was

(04:35):
a big fan of this design show I'd done. That
was another thing they talked about, and so I think
they all said, well, if we can get somebody to
do this would be Morgan. So I honestly think it
was me coming on board and having a series of
conversations with Rick that kind of swung the show from
what they thought it was going to be into what
it is. I don't have a good way of describing

(04:57):
what it is, because it's a rather indescribable show. You know,
it's it's a very idiosyndradic show. It's been, um in
many ways, some of the most rewarding stuff I've done
and some of the most challenging stuff I've done. It's
forced me way out of my comfort zone. Give us

(05:18):
an example. Um okay, Well, Rick said at the beginning, UM,
I'm never going to do an interview with you on camera. Um.
So what I ended up doing? Why do you think that? Well,
it's just that's normal. That's what people do. You know.
I don't like talking heads. I'm never going to do it.
You know, typically if you do a documentary with the subject.

(05:40):
He said, Oh, can I'll sit down do interviews with you?
Can I get a shot of you walking, you know,
across your house? Can I do this? I could never
ask to do anything like that. So what I ended
up with was said, well, let me just do audio conversations.
I'd even call them interviews, just conversations. So Rick um
Off is uh at his house in Hawaii, and so

(06:03):
part of my job was taking several trips to Hawaii
where I'd go over and we'd spend the day having conversations,
and that conversation we could talk about the Ramons for
an hour, you know, we could talk about Um, Tom
Petty for an hour. We could talk about anything. And
I went in with no agenda. You know, this is
not me trying to interview Rick. This is just talking
about what what's interesting, and you're recording it and I'm

(06:25):
recording it. So I'm by myself. First of all, I'm
forced to be my own audio engineer, which scares the
Jesus out, I mean, especially in front of Rick being
who he is. UM And plus you know, just dealing
with the nature of hawaiis I'm trying to record good audio.
And we ended up doing more than twenty four hours
of audio interviews and that really became kind of this

(06:49):
text that flows throughout the series. And then I had
to figure out how am I going to actually illustrate
this cinematically, and it forced me into a lot of
very create of solutions. Um And I know you've only
seen half the series. It gets even weirder. Okay, from

(07:09):
the beginning, was it going to be four episodes, It
was gonna be something like that. It was a mini series,
you know, could have been Yeah, but I think four
was always kind of the goal UM, and we didn't
know what it was going to be UM. And part
of it is I mean, originally it was going to
take about a year. It's been about a year and
a half. UM. And there's a kind of an unpredictability

(07:35):
also to to what's happening in the studio. So a
lot of what you see in the in this series
is just me getting call from Rick saying such and
such as coming in the studio tomorrow, you should show up,
and we show up, And sometimes I have no idea
who they are and or how they're going to fit
into it. So I feel like in many ways, I

(07:56):
was given this incredibly diverse but random um set of
ingredients and then I was told to make the best
meal I'd ever cooked. So it was it took just
a lot of um outside the box thinking to kind
of stitch together things that don't normally get stitched together.

(08:18):
What do you think Rick wanted out of it? UM?
I don't know. I mean I have a very hard
time answering anything for Rick UM other than I know
he's definitely been more interested in, you know, speaking publicly
a little bit you know, he has his podcast now,

(08:38):
and and he's been somebody who's been kind of notoriously
um off the grid in anyways. Um. And the fact
of the matter is Rick has done and learned a lot,
and I think part of him understands that there's some
wisdom that could be shared. And I think one takeaway

(09:00):
he and I had when we're having these initial conversations
was if you could come away from the show knowing
what it's like to be produced by Rick, that's a win.
And so in many ways, it's not trying to tell
his story or the story of the studio per se,
though it's all in there, but um, but to try
and give the experience of what it would be like

(09:22):
to come in and work with Rick and what you'll
glean from that as an artist or even more perfectly,
as any kind of creative person or any person you know,
because the rules he's talking about that I'm interested in
are the universal ones that apply to you, you know,
if you're a filmmaker or a writer, or or a
musician or anything else. Um, that's what excites me. So.

(09:46):
UM that was the goal. But it was no easy goal. Okay,
you watch or the half that I've watched you get
the impression that Rick is trying to make the most
successful record in later in the series or just your discussion.
Not everything he does is successful. Now, you know, we

(10:07):
had this tenure with Columbia Records, which really wasn't that successful.
But does that factor into his thinking I'm talking about
financially successful. Yeah, I know. I don't think finance figures
in in any way I've ever been able to detect um.
I mean, I wish I could be that pure in

(10:27):
my decision making. I try. I think most of us
wish we could be that pure um. But from what
I could tell, Rick really really doesn't care. Okay, So
if you watch the film, it begins with people from
the hip hop world. I must admit some of them
I didn't know. Okay, how about yourself? Did you know them? No?
I mean I knew some. You know, I knew Tyler

(10:48):
Um creator who's in it. But you know, people like drama.
So part of what Rick wanted to show, which is
very real, is that somebody like drama. This um, young
hip hop artist Rick discovered on SoundCloud UM when he
only had three listens. Somehow, Rick became the three first
listen and you know, tweeted that he was listening to

(11:12):
drama and next thing you know, he's producing drama. So
Rick is still actively interested in finding new things he
hasn't heard before. So there are a lot of people
throughout the show who are people I didn't know, people
who nobody knows, or people who are barely known that
Rick is is trying to mentor I guess, Okay, we

(11:32):
live in an era where it's conventionally believed that hip
hop dominates. I noticed through the first episode, Uh, it
was mostly African Americans talking. Was that a conscious choice
to be hip? No? No? And in fact, I think
by the end of the series, the balances is much wider.
I mean, if you look at the artist Rick's work

(11:53):
with two it's well, I mean, I know from my
association with Metallica, you know that he's worked with them,
and then certainly in the first two episodes, I didn't
see Metallica. There was a mention of Slayer at the beginning.
There wasn't a mention of the Black Crows, which was
on his label. He was not the producer. Does that
stuff come up? Um a little bit, But again, it's
not the Rick Reuben story. You know it's and Rick

(12:17):
was very clear about that that, you know, this is
not going to be just the a diazy of Rick Ruben.
And honestly, I'm more interested in doing the other version
than the Wikipedia version. You know, I see so many
music documentaries that feel like I'm watching a version of Wikipedia,

(12:39):
you know, or behind the music or behind me. They
did this, and then they did that, and they worked
with this person, they did this tour, and then this happened,
and they have to check every box. I find that
not good storytelling. Okay, you're making the movie, and are
you ever saying at certain points, because you're filming a lot, okay,
now I have it, Now it's coming together, or converse

(13:00):
with you saying hey, I need something. It's not like
it's just like Rick of the movie. I can't tell
you what it is, but I know what I'll get there. Um,
I don't know if I'm ever gonna feel like I've
gotten there. You know. I rarely feel that way, even
about films of mine that have done very well. You know,
I feel like, um, my whole career has been iterative.

(13:21):
I'm a huge believer in that. And maybe it's because
you know, I started my career in journalism, and I
came out of um deadline journalism, which I love because
it's about doing what you can do and then the
next day you do it again. And something about that
iterative process lets you learn faster. I mean, I know
filmmakers that do one film for seven years at a time.

(13:45):
I can't work that way, and I feel just by
doing things more, I get better at it. Um. Well,
you know there's certainly uh, what's his name? The documentary
the guy do the Eagles nick whatever? The guy who
I mean maybe his name is Alex. He seems to
make a million. He's always work. He actually not that

(14:06):
you know when you're the three. But is he actually
hands on it all these movies? Um, I don't know,
but I know he's somewhat hands on and all those movies.
And I think anything he puts his name on as
director because he also produces things he doesn't direct, and
I think, actually, I'm trying to remember did the Eagles doctor?
Did he just produce it? I'm not sure if he
actually directed it because there was a woman who directed it.
I could be wrong. It was great, yeah, So and

(14:29):
it's interesting. I mean, Alex, I've known Alex for a
long time, and he's somebody who's you know, had the
kind of career that's very enviable. I mean, it's interesting.
And we could talk about documentaries if you want, because
I've been doing it for a long time and it's
changed tremendously. What documentary is today is let's let's get
completely different. Let's go let's let's go back to Rick

(14:51):
and make sure that we don't leave certain stones unturned. Um,
there's a plethora of product out now, and there will
be a marketing campaign, usually with a fewer dollars than
there is in a theatrical world. Even though I believe
this stuff should list beyond the flat screen. What do

(15:12):
you anticipate in what would be satisfying or unsatisfying in
terms of response? UM? I don't want to sound um disingenuous,
but I don't really care. Let's say, hypothetically was the
theatrical film? Do you care? Then? UM? I would, But

(15:33):
to me, I think of them differently. UM. I feel
like this Rick experience has been a process of experimentation
and trying things, and it's you're learning on their dollar well,
but it's also idiosyncratic, and I think there are people

(15:53):
who are going to think it's awesome and people who
are going to think it's terrible. I'm okay with that,
you know. And I feel like we had the support
from Showtime, and I feel like it was kind of
the mission statement going in that this is going to
get weird, and um, I feel like doing something for television,

(16:16):
it gets judged differently than if I put into a
theater and want people to pay money on a date
night to go and sit there and watch it. So
I think about them differently, um, which is part of
why I thought of it as a mini series. And
it kind of has a um, I don't know how
you describe it, kind of a a drifting, you know,

(16:37):
kind of we referred to it as the Gossamer Construction.
You know. It has this kind of, um, lightly connected
kind of tangent of ideas. I mean, normally I'm a
big story and character person. This was a challenge of
trying to kind of tell a story with a narrative
of ideas and um. And I'm really happy with what

(16:59):
we did. But it's I know, it's not the most
mainstrength thing I've done, and that's cool, you know. I'm
happy to do things that certain people will say that's
my favorite thing, and other people say I hate it.
I may have done films like that and that's great.
I've done films that are kind of broad cloud crowd
pleasers too. And then to what degree was Rick steering

(17:20):
to the final destination or making comments on the edit?
I mean, I had final edit. But you know, of
course everybody wants Rick to be happy and we want
to talk about it. But honestly, the discussions were not
you know, we it was much more collaborative in that

(17:43):
it's this kind of debate about what it is. I mean,
I think in a way, I mean it's it's it's
no stretch to say that, um, Rick was trying to
produce me that. Um absolutely, the conversations I had with Rick,
with the kinds of conversations, the habit is our this
And even though I would protest and say making a

(18:03):
film is not making a record, part of me knows
that making a film is making a record, and that
I when Rick says, well, I know, you say that's
the best way, but how do you know, How do
you really know what happens if you don't do that?
And um, you know, and that can be frustrating and
it was. But it can also lead you to places

(18:25):
you would never go to on your own, which it did.
Ok Um, I learned to be much freer making this.
I just feel much fear as a filmmaker, you know,
much less constrained about um rules. And it's Rick happy
with the final product. I think. So, So, how did
how did step Goden end up being in the film?
Seth and Ricker good friends? Really? Yeah? How did how

(18:48):
did that come together? I mean Rick has um a
collection of interesting friends and people. I mean there are
other people. He's not in the first two episodes, but
Michael Lewis uh appears in one of our episodes in
a conversation. Um, he does a podcast in Malcolm clab Well, like,
I think he's interested in Well is he? You know? Well,

(19:09):
that's the conflict in the movie in that on some
level you see this guru who barely speaks, but then
you show what was happening in the dorm room and
you have actual footage of him hyping the Beastie Boys
and he said, this is a pretty aggressive guy who
knew where he wanted to go. Absolutely. Um, So do
you think that still applies today? No? I think Rick's

(19:32):
journey is one of um getting away from the idea
that you know, I mean, in fact, he says it
and later a later episode that I mean. This is
the example he gives, which you will appreciate. Um. In
the movie Hall Hale Rock and Roll, as Rick says,
the film that Keith Richard's made about Chuck Berry I

(19:53):
as a documentary would differ the Chuck that UH was
not made by uh by Keith Richards. But um, I'm
blanking on the director it was, I'm blanking. We can
look it up on he did. He's made to Hella Marin,
he did coal Miner's daughter. Um, it'll come to you

(20:14):
in anyway. Um so anyway, Um so Rix talks about
Hell Hell Rock and Roll and that when he saw
that film when it came out. There's a scene where
Keith is constantly trying to break Chuck into getting his
act together, tuning his guitar, actually rehearsing, and like getting

(20:35):
putting him on a pedestal so he'll sound as good
as he can sound. And Chuck resists this and sabotages
it again and again. And Rick said, in the beginning,
when I watched this film, I thought Keith is doing
the best he can to help this artist, and Chuck
just won't listen to him. And now I'm on chuck side.

(20:57):
As Chuck says, if I want to play guitar, the
sattit tune, that how Chuck Berry plays it, and you
know what, there's wisdom in that too. Um. But I
think something Rick talks a lot about is this idea
of letting go of your beliefs and admitting that you
don't know. He also has luxury based on his past success.

(21:18):
As you said earlier, a lot of us, you know,
are not that rich because that many accolades. While you're
making this, I want to tell you one of this
story because this echoes another story that's not in the film.
But I heard that We talked to Rivers Cuomo from Weezer,
and Rivers tells this story that there was a cover song, uh,
like a Tony Braxton cover song that Rivers wanted to

(21:40):
do and they recorded it and the rest and the guy,
the rest of the guys and Weezer were like, this
is not good. We should not do this, and Rick
had been supportive of it, and so Rivers was like, Okay,
I'm going to strategize about how we're going to get
on the album, and how I'm going to convince the
guys in the band. And he goes into talk to
Rick and says, guy, you know, Rick, nobody else in
the band wants to use this song, must put it

(22:00):
on the album. Um you know what are we gonna
do about it? And Rick pauses and says, well, maybe
the right And it just took Rivers back right onto
his back. Heel didn't be like, oh, I never thought
you would have said that. And I think that is
part of what Rick has learned, is to understand that

(22:23):
maybe other people are right. Okay, while you're making this
Rick mini series, are you also working on other projects simultaneously? Okay?
And I should say because it's very much worth saying that. Um,
I have a partner on the Shangri Law this Rick
Reuben series, Jeff Malmberg, who directed the series with me,
So we each did two episodes, but he was my

(22:45):
editor and won't you be my neighbor the Mr. Rogers
film and he's a great filmmaker in his own right.
So Jeff and I have been how do you split
up the duties? How does he do two episodes and
you Dutch episodes? I mean realistically, we both just directed
whenever we could. We just covered to shoots and then
we kind of divated all up at the end. Okay,
let's go back to your earlier comment how documentary has

(23:07):
changed over the years. Yeah, documentary. Um, it's been twenty
six years since I started my first documentary. And back
then there was nothing cool whatsoever about documentaries. I mean
it was PBS, maybe something on HBO, but I mean
there was Capturing the Freedman's I mean that was two

(23:27):
thousand four we started. So, Um, Michael Moore was about
the only very successful but even then, not in nineteen well, yeah,
so he done. Um rogery was so. I actually Roger
Me came out, Um in the fall of nine. I
was working as a journalist in San Francisco. It opened

(23:48):
up in two theaters, one in New York, one in
l A. And I convinced my roommate to drive with
me to l A for the day to see a
matinee of Roger Me and drive home to San Francisco,
which we did. Um. So even then, and I had
a real fascination with documentary, and there were a number
of documentaries along the way that really showed me what
I could do well besides Roger and what were they?

(24:10):
I mean, Roger me Um, Hearts and Minds, Sherman's March, Um,
when we were Kings, Um Brothers Keeper. You know some
of those films that were just so influential and I
loved so much. It's so good, so good, uh, And
I have to say for Fake That or in Wales
film there was hugely influential on me. Occasionally really interesting

(24:38):
docs getting made, but they were hard, hard to see
and and there have been a number of waves where
ducks made a little bit of progress. So in the
early two thousand's there was a period where Capturing the
Freedman's and spell Bound and a few films like that,
um Man im Wire came out, and UM, more ducks
were getting made and there was more money going into it,
and then everybody lost money and all kind of went

(25:00):
away for a while, and then this last really kind
of six years. UM, there's been an explosion in documentary UM,
and I think part of that is the streaming services.
You know, a lot of people talked about places like
net Netflix being um kind of the end of the
theatrical documentary, and I think it's actually had the opposite

(25:21):
effect in that for years people told me I love documentary,
I just don't know where to find them. And once
you put documentary on even platform with comedy and drama
and everything else, lots of people choose documentary. So I
think it just grew the audience for nonfiction storytelling. And
you know, last year was one of the greatest years

(25:42):
for theatrical documentary ever. Um. So I think it's changing
in that way. And just seeing people, I mean, having
worked in l A for all this time and having
worked with so many people out of film school, there
was always this attitude of documentary is like a stepping
stone to real movies. And needless to say, I've always
resented that attitude. Um, But more and more and more

(26:04):
I'm finding young people who I just want to make
documentaries for their life. Um. It's great. Okay, Let's go
back to the beginning. You grew up where Santa Barbara, California.
Santa Barbara. Your parents did what for a living? Um?
My dad um was an antiquarium book dealer so um

(26:26):
and a huge, huge rock and roll fan. Huge. How
old is your father? Um, seventy four? Really so young
by today's since very young you know, having me getting
married and having me was a good way to not
go to Vietnam. But you know, huge Dylan fan huge

(26:48):
you know Van Morrison and but also British Invasion and
everything else. Um. So by the time I was getting
into punk rock, my dad had all those records. He
had every Patti Smith and um Sex pistols. You know,
just go to my dad's record collection to pull that
stuff out. Did he also play all that stuff in
the house and on the cars to exposed to it.

(27:10):
Some I think my dad's real music taste tended to
be more literary, So people like Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen,
Bob Dylan, Fan Warrison, those were his kind of go
to people. Um who were great? Who are some of
my very favorites too? Um and uh and my dad
my parents went to the Last Waltz and on that well,

(27:35):
my they were huge fans of the band and they
knew I don't know if they knew Dylan was going
to be performing or whatever, but um, I don't even know.
But they had an extra one and they talked about
bringing me was nine at the time. Um, they did

(27:56):
not bring me, um, but they went and they brought
my aunt and I guess they'd served the whole Thanksgiving
dinner beforehand, and then they cleared the tables or whatever may.
They didn't cleared the devils. Anyway, they had the concert
and um, to this day, I give my dad shit
about not taking me. I would have been the coolest
kid ever if I had gone to the last Waltz.

(28:16):
But but it was that type of upbringing where music
and literature and film were hugely important. And uh, you're
how many kids in the family. I have a sister
three years younger, and she's a geneticist in Oxford, England,
so she went the other way. Wow. And the middle class,
upper middle class? What kind of upbringing, upper middle class?

(28:38):
And also how do you end up going to penn Um.
It's interesting as a kid from California, did you got
a public school, private school, went to private school? Actually
went to boarding school? Uh in o Hi school called
Thatchure And just going back he seemed like the thing
to do. And just do you want to get away
from home? And and and I actually fell in love

(29:00):
with the kind of history of the East Coast. I
majored in Colonial American history of all things. So but
I still find it fascinating because they were basically making
up a civilization from scratch at the time, you know,
by their own rules, and it was a unique situation
that way. And I still find Colonial America very fascinating. UM.
And I was kind of running away from from California

(29:22):
and I um and my plan was to be a journalist,
which I ended up doing for a time. So the
experience in college was a good experience. It was great. Yeah,
I love it. But I was a huge devotee of
new journalism. So you know that new journalism menthodology that
Tom Wolfe edited in the early seventies with tweets and uh,

(29:44):
John Didion and or Mailer and everybody else. Um. I
mean that was like my Bible, you know. And plus
people like Hunter Thompson UM, who ended up who was
family friends of ours. So my dad also had a
small addition press. He was publishing authors he knew and liked, UM,
so he published um Hunter Thompson book. Um. They were

(30:08):
good friends with Charles Wakowski who stayed at our house,
you know, who is a very bohemian I guess you
would say, kind of upbringing UM. So between the punk
rock and the Charles Wakowski. It was not your conventional So, okay,
you're at PEN. You go into Pen knowing you want
to be a journalist. I had a pretty good idea.

(30:32):
I mean, this is also in the late eighties, and
you remember, you know, there was like a new magazine
opening every week. There was a new magazine. You know,
in the news stands are bursting with amazing long form writing.
And that was just the thing and the idea that
it's It's funny because all the things the new journalism preached,
which was really using techniques of fiction writing to nonfiction storytelling,

(30:56):
is exactly what I'm doing now. It's exactly the same thing,
taking techniques of um, you know, scripted storytelling and putting
into into nonfiction stories. So and I still think of
myself as a journalist. It's just documentaries, like three D journalism. Okay,
so you graduate from Pen. What's your first job the
Nation magazine and you're doing what are you actually writing?

(31:17):
Started as an intern, then became a fact checker. Then
I worked as on the history of the Nation magazine.
So I worked on a book was a long term project,
and then I moved to San Francisco and started working
at a wire service called Pacific News Service, and then
went to work for Pacific A Radio. Flo How do
you go from the new service to Pacific Radio? I

(31:40):
mean it was a small The kind of left wing
journalism world of UM San Francisco in the early nineties
was very small, and everybody knew everybody else. The problem
I had was, as a young person, all of the
jobs in media, particularly in the Bay Area, but this
is true throughout most of journalism. We're taken up by

(32:00):
baby boomers who are not going anywhere soon. You know that.
Basically my bosses that was the job I wanted, and
they were twenty years away from retirement. And that was
true everywhere. So part of me leaving that world was
feeling like I had to make my own opportunity and
I had to come back to l A to do it. Okay,
you switch from news to radio? You were doing what

(32:22):
at radio? I ran? I was still writing freelance UM,
but there was a program called Youth Radio UM where
we would train kids, inner city kids to be radio
engineers and reporters, and we had a weekly show in Berkeley,
but we also ran stories on MPR and it was
kind of like a just a cool program to get

(32:44):
young people, you know, trained up into media. Okay, so
you ultimately quit that to come back to l A
to do what to make my first film? Okay, so
you're in San Francisco. How long does it take for
you to say I'm gonna quit? Two weeks? Let me?
I mean you just suddenly said I gotta go when
you went, well, I've been thinking about it for a

(33:04):
long time. I think basically the truth is I've been
in denial that I wanted to be a filmmaker forever.
I thought that journalism was like a real adult career
and filmmaking was like what I did on weekends, you know,
because it was too much fun, you know, to dilettante
is for me to actually want to be a filmmaker. Um.
And then I kind of had this epiphany that all

(33:27):
the years of doing political journalism, you know, from the
nation on that basically I was in denial about what
I actually cared about. What I spent all of my
week nights and weekends on was culture. I was playing
in bands, I was going to art museums, I was
reading books, and I was devouring movies. And I said, well,
why don't I actually spend my days doing the thing

(33:49):
I spend all my extracurricular hours doing. And that is
pretty much when I was twenty five, I made that decision.
I haven't looked back. All I've done since this culture. Okay,
will you make movies? Before you left San Francisco, I
was flirting with it, um and again documentary Like there
was no clear path to have a career as a

(34:10):
documentary and you saw yourself as a documentarian. So what
happened is I started my first film not a little
slower you moved. Yeah, so I go down there. I
think it's going to take the summer for me to
make a film. And my first film ended up being
called Shotgun Freeway Drives through Lost l A. So it's
this kind of Mondo l a history documentary which you

(34:33):
can find out there. Okay, but the first question is
the average person would say, you're moving to l A
and you're making a movie on what money? So this
was in the era of get a bunch of credit
cards and you know, rack up all the debt. This
is what you know Robert Rodriguez. And there was a book, um,
you know what was it called by John Pearson? Uh?

(34:57):
What was it called? Spike, Dikes, Mike and whatever, which
was kind of like the bible for how to go
out and just do your own thing. And you know,
so we were all this is the early nineties, that
kind of heyday of early independent film where everybody felt
you know, Soderberg's and all these people are just kind
of jumping out there and doing it. So I thought, well,
I can do that. Um at the end of the day,

(35:18):
we ended up making the film for thirty five thousand dollars,
all on credit cards. Um well, we ended up getting
one investor who put in, but still so we But
the the story is that we basically made it for
no money. You know, and your first film, everybody will

(35:39):
work for you one time for free, and you know
they won't do it for your second film. But um,
I mean, for instance, it's also being kind of young
in a city like this with all this opportunity and
all these people that want to become cinematographers and editors
who are all stuck at as assistant editors and you
know everything else. That a friend of mine was a
post production supervisor on the TV show Northern Exposure, and

(36:00):
they had some of the first avid's that had ever
been used in production. And he said, if you for those,
people don't know if those are computer editing, nonlinear editing
editing on computers, which is brand brand new at the time, um,
and incredibly expensive and inaccessible. So he said, if you
come in from eleven PM to eight am, you can
use the machines. So that's how I edited the films.

(36:23):
We stayed up all night, um for like a year. Okay,
let's be clear. You hadn't made a movie previously right now,
so you must have made a lot of mistakes along
the way. Yeah. I made a ton of mistakes. And
I always say my first film was my film school. Um.
But two weeks into making it, I wrote a letter
to my parents and I said, this is what I'm

(36:44):
going to do for the rest of my life. Like
it was so clear when I started it that everything,
all my skill sets, they all come together perfectly in
this job. And it's really all I've done since. And
you said, we, who was we? I had a co
director on my first film, here a Palenberg. Um he
still makes films and um as an old old friend

(37:05):
of mine. Okay, so you finished the film you shot
at one on sixteen on video. It was a combination
of everything. I mean, it was mainly videotape, but we
shot sixteen kind of inserts and super eight and it
was kind of a mondo collage of what history means
in l A. And we got people like James Elroy
and John Didion to be in it, and Mike Davis
and all kinds of other people, and it was right.

(37:27):
I mean really, the reason for me doing it was
as a kid from South California going to college back east,
people laughed at me when I talked about their being
history or culture in Los Angeles, and I had more
than a little chip on my shoulder about it. Um
So I ended up making this film to basically say
fuck you to all these people that l A History

(37:48):
is not an oxymoron, and that there's so much culture
here and so much history here. It just doesn't look
like what you're using used to seeing urban history look like.
You know, it's it's just a different shape. Okay, So
are at the time were you happy with the finished product? Yeah?
Very happy? And so then what happened? You did the
film festival, supermarried it south By, We got a theatrical release,

(38:11):
We sold it to the Sundance Channel, and we made money.
How's that? How do you remember? Like we made like okay,
so this is happening. Now you're thinking about the second movie.
So I then was offered was so the other thing
I didn't tell you, And this may be a locals
only thing, but I had a day job to make
money throughout this period producing Huell Houser's TV show how

(38:35):
did you get that? Gig um? Because he was doing
this l A History show. He with those of you
don't know, was this kind of eccentric southern quasi bumpkin
character who would go around California and Los Angeles doing California,
California's gold Fuel House. And so he was doing his
own l A History California history thing, and people I
knew somebody who worked at KCT here, the PBS station,

(38:58):
They said you should meet him, and I met him
and he was like, oh, you're into this stuff, come
work for me. So I ended up working for him
to make money. Why I finished my first film, and
then right when I finished my film, I got offered
a job producing any biography And I did that for
three years and I learned so much more, not just
about filmmaking, but about how to run a production company.

(39:19):
UM had actually work with employees and how to deal
with all that stuff. And during that time I got
to do I did to Brian Wilson two hour Any biography.
I did a brill building documentary and if you remember that,
UM for Any and Bert Backrack Libran Stoller like I
pushed them into music in a way that they weren't
doing before. And then kind of my my coup was

(39:42):
that UM. I was a huge fan of Peter Gonnis,
you know the music and Peter I basically run him
a fan letter and said, I would love to do
a documentary with you, do you have any interest? And
he had done a book called Sweet Soul Music that
I really loved and I was thinking about trying to
do and he said, there are only two subjects I
want to make a film about, Doc Pomas and Sam Phillips.

(40:06):
And I thought about it and I said, well, I'm
gonna have a much easier chance making the Sam Phillips
documentary than the Doc Pomus documentary right now. And Peter
and I went about pitching it and we ended up
making a two hour Sam Phillips documentary. It was fantastic,
Thank you, and it was an incredible experience for me

(40:26):
because you know, Peter and I went to Memphis for
three months. I had all this time again like I
was being produced by Sam Phillips. I got the experience.
I was feeling like I was one of the last
artists that Sam Phillips ever produced, because I got the
full on, you know, fire breathing, fog horn, leg horn,
Sam Phillips treatment. Um, And it was amazing and basically, UM.

(40:53):
There were a couple of big takeaways from that. One was,
UM that Peter Gorini, who was really lea somebody, had
taught me so much about what I do and is
one of the greatest music writers of all time. UM.
He said something me early on that I've thought about
so many times, which is, the three least interesting things
about rock and roll are sex, drugs, and getting screwed

(41:16):
over by your record label. Because everybody tells the same stories.
And I've thought about that so often. I mean, that
kind of is behind the music basically. So once you
take all that away, what's the differentiator between all these stories?
That's what I'm interested in. UM. But the other thing
was that Sam Phillips himself was such a believer in

(41:36):
his own vision you know, bringing in African American artists
to record in Memphis, you know, early on, I mean
like Turner and BB King and Hallam Wolf and on
and on and on, to the point where he was
completely ostracized by his peers and the rest of white
society and Memphis, and to the point where he had
nervous breakdowns, was given shock therapy, and he never wavered

(41:57):
in his belief in this music. And I came away
from finishing that film and said, I have to work
for myself. I can't ever work for anybody else, and
I haven't since. So I basically started my own production
company then Tremlow Productions, and haven't looked back. So that
was what year two thousand? So what was the first project?

(42:20):
I mean, in the beginning, I was just scrambling to
make money doing things um and I did projects for
museums and UM. I think my first real documentary I
made was Muddy Waters Film, And that was because Robert Gordon,
the Memphis music writer who was also kind of a
disciple of Peter Groundings. Peter had introduced us and we

(42:41):
become friends, and Robert was finishing his book on Muddy
and said, nobody's ever done a proper Muddy Waters documentary.
Let's do it. So we jumped in and we did
it again, not knowing how we were going to pay
for all of it, and we ended up getting you
some money out of Channel four in England and it's
kind of stitching together money from home video back when
you could do that and um and we made it

(43:02):
and had such a good experience we ended up selling
it to American Masters here for PBS and UM and
that really kind of got the ball rolling for me
as a production company. I next it at Hank Williams
American Masters and what I found, I mean, I am
a music fanatic. It's no surprise, but I have many interests.

(43:25):
But part of the reason I did so many music
films was I could get them funded. You know that
the difference with the music film is that there's a
built an audience that cares about this music in most cases,
um and in many cases there's a publisher, label or
an artist or somebody who cares about a film getting made,

(43:45):
as opposed to making a film about his subject where
there's zero awareness and zero built in audience. UM. And
it just felt both like I could feed my music obsession,
but I could also kind of get no as the
music guy, which I did to the point where I
started getting calls from people all the time saying, Oh,

(44:06):
we have this music project. Are you interested? Are you interested? Um?
Which was great as an impended documentary filmmaker at the
time when there weren't a lot of ways to get
films made that you know, I had my niche Okay,
so Buddy Waters, where are you from there? So? Um,
Hank Williams. Then I made a film called The Cool
School about the l a art scene in the fifties

(44:27):
and sixties is not easy to sell, like a music film. Um.
Like a lot of these things, they're just things that
I can't get out of my head. Um. So The
Cool School was because I went to the Getty to
see a guy named Walter Hopps who was a legendary
curator who had started this gallery called the Ferris Gallery,

(44:48):
essentially the first big modern art gallery in Los Angeles,
and he gave a talk at the Getty. This is
maybe two thousand two, and I found it so fascinating
eating and I came home and said, well, I want
to watch the documentary about him. I looked and there
was no documentary about him, and I said, well, then
I'll read the book about him. And there was no

(45:09):
book about him or about that scene, which was incredible
that nobody had documented it. And then it was one
of those moments, well, well I guess, I guess I
have to do it right, um. And it was fascinating
to then get into that world of all the Venice
artists and the Robert Irwin ed Ruche and Keen Holds
and Larry Bell and Billy Albankston, that whole group of artists, um,

(45:32):
who were fascinating kind of a group of alpha males
kind of half and then we're Venice beach bum surfer
slash art modern artists and the other half for kind
of proto hippies living up into Panga or a Laurel Canyon,
and they all kind of came together around the las
Anega scene and would hang out of Barney's Beanery and

(45:52):
all that kind of legendary the early days of the
la arts scene. And again this was also feeding my
l A Has culture obsessions, so it was another middle
finger to the rest of the country. And what was
really interesting in making that film, and this is the
first time it ever really happened to me um and
it's happened a few times since. Where you make a
film and you never expect a film to have an

(46:13):
actual impact. You know, maybe people like it, but it
to actually change things you don't expect. Um. But the
Cool School was something that really planted a flag for
the fact that l A has a real art scene.
And out of that, I don't think it's a stretch
to say, and I think they admit it that. The
Getty then started their specific standard time series, this huge

(46:36):
year's long program um in, this huge oral history program.
And John Baldassari, who's in my film too, who was
teaching forever at cal Arts, said in the wake of
that film that for years he would tell his graduates
out of art school moved to New York, and that
year he said, stay in l A. Like case the

(46:56):
moment it changed. I mean, that must be very satisfying.
To have that level of impact. It was great. You
never expected. If I had, I probably would have bought
more art. Okay. And then who distributed that movie alter
a company called Art House. It was PBS aired it
here in the States, um and and it got out,
you know, it was on the BBC, and you know

(47:19):
it was around the World after the Art film then
and I did all kinds of things in between. I
did a film on um. I should look at my
IMDb to remember all them, you know. I did little
projects like an Iggy pop project about raw power. Um.
I'm a huge Iggy fan. UM. I did a film
about women and country music. Uh. Did a film by

(47:42):
the Highwayman. Um. So all kinds of so. And are
you working around the clock or you scrambling? You know.
Traditionally a movie producer as a number of projects and
it may take years one to actually flourish. Yeah, and
they could take years. I mean. Another one before I
move on was Stax Records. I did a film called

(48:03):
Respect Yourself with the Robert Gordon, which is one of
my favorite films I've done because stacks stacks music is
unbeatable and the story is well, that's the amazing thing.
I went to Memphis to do a gig. Everybody talks
about Nashville Memphis. There's so much just you, I mean,
between Sun and Stax and High and all of that stuff.
I mean, Memphis is just I love Memphis and you

(48:24):
go there and well, across the river's Arkansas. For those
of us live in California or coastal whatever, and you
know Mississippi is right there, right there, I know, by
down the border. In fact, I was there this summer
with my family and um, my wife and kids, and
I walked across the bridge to the Arkansas side just
to go over there, and I was driving him around. Yeah,
as I said, I did that, didn't do that. I said, well, God,

(48:44):
what am I ever going to get back to Arkansas?
Because I had in Arkansas? How do you end up
doing twenty feet from stardom? So? Um, I got a
call from somebody who knew Gil Freeson. And Gil many
people maybe listening will know, had been the president of

(49:06):
A and M Records and for forever, forever, from virtually
from the beginning. I think he was the first employee
actually at A and M, and people called him the
ampersand in A and M. So uh. And Gil was
retired and had invested his money wisely and was kind
of looking for a project. Um, and he somebody said,

(49:27):
do you want to be with him? He has a
music project he's talking about, and I said sure. So
we met. We actually first bonded over modern art because
he was a big modern art guy, and so was I.
So we talked about that. UM. I said, so what's
your what's your idea for a music film? And he said, well,
my wife and I went to a Leonard Cohen concert
in Las Vegas and I smoked a joint and I

(49:50):
spent the whole concert looking at these amazing backup singers
he had, and Leonard Cohen didn't have amazing backup singers.
And uh, he said. The next day, A, I just
kept thinking about these backup singers and wondering what's their story.
And I said, oh, that's really interesting. So so what's
the film? He said, I don't know. You have to
figure that out. Says like, okay, backup singers, um. And

(50:16):
it's interesting for somebody who is such a music geek. UM.
I didn't know much about backup singers. UM. And even
on my drive home, I was thinking about it and thinking,
you know, what are songs with great backup vocals? I
could come up with like six, you know, because your
brain is not programmed to notice what's in the background. UM.

(50:38):
And I over time completely reprogrammed my brain to to
this day when I hear a great song with backup vocals.
I added to a Spotify list I have just because
now it's like precious to collect, you know, great songs.
And I ended up with kind of hundreds of songs
and I put together a kind of a theoretical soundtrack. UM.
But it was another one of those things when I

(50:59):
went home said, well, who's written a book about him?
Who has made a film about them? Nothing? Nothing? I
found one article in gold Mine magazine and that was it.
On backup singing UM, And I said, well, then the
only way to learn about this world is to talk
to them. So I said, well, let's and this was
Gil's idea too, well, let's just do some interviews. Let's

(51:20):
talk to people. And he had found Lisa Fisher because
he knew sting and she was singing a sting at
the time. UM. And Lisa was great, and she opened
the door to a bunch of people, and there were
a few other people who really helped. UM. But we
ended up doing probably thirty forty oral histories in the beginning,

(51:42):
just to figure out how this world worked, like how
big is it? How what? What are the themes? You know? Um?
And what I very very quickly came into focus, like okay,
here I understand what the big themes are, you know,
and there are some of them seem obvious of you know,
the church finding its way into secular music and choir
of voices and um and kind of the themes of

(52:03):
the industry versus um versus um, you know, kind of
personal um integrity, I guess um. But the thing we
really discovered when we decided to kind of jump and
really make the film. I ended up interviewing over eighty
backup singers for the film, and I think only twenty
or in the film, but I learned so much by

(52:26):
talking to all of them that what the film ultimately
became about was that your happiness is directly proportional to
the piece you make with the life you're actually living,
not the life people have told you should live, or
that you thought you were supposed to live. That you know,
we live in a culture that tells us that being

(52:47):
a rock stars the most important thing, or being famous
and rich is the most important thing. And of course
very few people live that way. And for those of
us that can't get over that delusion, um, we can
be tortured by it. And the people who are best off.
For the people that I love, the singing, love, the

(53:09):
work for the sake of the work, and I think
that was the universal theme. And I didn't know this
when we started the film. I found it on the way,
but this is the theme I identified with, and this
is the theme so many people identified with, because most
people are backup singers for their life. And in fact,
we had a screening early on at the Minneapolis Film
Festival and a guy stood up in the Q and

(53:30):
A afterwards and said, you know, I just wanted to
say I'm the middle manager to software company, and you know,
I like what I do, but I don't get all
the money or attention in the world. And um, but
I'm I just here to say that I feel like
I'm a backup singer and I'm happy to be about singer.
And the whole crowd applauded, and it was just one

(53:53):
of those moments. You're like another one of those moments
where you make a film and you're like, this connected
in a way, per found way that I couldn't have
predicted when that happens. And this happened a few times.
You again, you don't go into films thinking, oh, you know,
it's going to make people feel this or do this
or change this. You can't play that game when you're

(54:14):
making a film. Well, you know, I remember seeing it
before the film came out, and it was utterly riveting,
and you knew it was something special. At what point,
because you've made a lot of producer and directed a
lot of stuff, at what point do you say, wait,
this is different, Um, Sundance opening night film. Um, it

(54:34):
was kind of the night to change my life because
UM to be the opening night film and Sundance one
to the women in the film all came. None of
them had seen the film, so they're all in the audience.
And Gil passed away in December, so Sundances in January.
So we were finishing the film. Gil died, which, um,

(54:57):
you know, it was a rather fast illness, and so
all of Gil's friends, UM and family came to Sundance
to to support So Tom Freston and jan Winner and
all these people came to Sundance to support Gil, and
you know this was gils. I mean I think a
lot of them honestly thought it was Gil's folly for
a long time, like, how good luck Gil have documentary

(55:18):
about backup singers? You know, Um, but I know, I
mean Gil had said to me and I don't think
it's inappropriate to share it that when he was sick
in the hospital, he said everybody with cancer should have
a documentary they're working on, because I think it really
gave him something creative and positive to be thinking about
during that time. So I know he was very proud

(55:40):
of it. And then so that night, so we screened
the film and it's just electric. I mean, it's the
biggest theater there, people there, it's packed, and it's just unbelievable.
And the film ends, the women get up on the
stage with me and we're all kind of shaking and

(56:01):
they're all in tears because they hadn't seen the film,
and and uh and they started singing, and it was
just unbelievable. I mean, the crowd was, you know, just
you know, completely enthralled. And then we had that classic
old school sundance experience where the film ends and it's

(56:23):
eleven PM and they say, Okay, now we're gonna stay
up all night and sell your film. So we spent
the next nine hours traveling from distributor to distributor while
they made us offers on our movie, and we sold
it at sunrise. So that classic sundance experience, you know,
and by morning I was like, Okay, you know, I

(56:43):
guess this is how it goes. And what was it
like winning the Oscar? Um? Surreal? Um? It was? I
mean it was you know, of course rewarding. And you know,
I'm as a lifelong film fanatic. Um. You know, there's
no greater validation in that way, you know, whatever you

(57:05):
think of the words, and you know, I too can
be like, oh words, no matter but um, but it
just feels like you can exhale in a way. Um.
But the other thing I will say, by far, the
most important outcome of that was that part. You know,
Basically before then I was spending sixt of my time

(57:28):
raising money to make my movies. Now I spend four
percent of my time raising money to make movies. So
I can just be so much more productive and so
much more creative because of that. You know, whether or
not that's valid, I'm the same filmmaker essentially I am
now than I was before I won the Oscar. And
if they need that validation to one of fund my movies,

(57:49):
I get it. I'm not going to complain about it.
You know. So people keep saying, oh, you've been so
prolific since the Oscar part of it is I don't
have to spend time trying to raise my I could
just make things, which is amazing. Where is the Oscar home?
Some people keep it in the bathroom, some people put
it in a Providence demands home my end I have,

(58:11):
UM not to brag. My wife says, you haven't. You
have a real ego because I have an Emmy, a
Grammy and an Oscar, So I know you got I
keep looking. If anybody out there has a um, you know,
Broadway project, I would love to get involved. Okay, then
you make the political movie? How does that come to
get the Best of Enemies? Um? Again, I mean it's

(58:33):
the Best of Enemies is a film about the debates
between Corbette and Wayne M. Buckley. They had ABC television
during the political conventions. And that again was Robert Gordon,
my friend in Memphis, who had a bootleg tape years
ago VHS tape that he had gotten of most of
these debates, UM from somebody who was like the doll fanatic. Um.

(58:57):
And I watched these debates raw and just thought there's
something amazing here, Like I don't know what it is,
and I don't know what the story is or where
it's going to go, but just in terms of huge
characters way M. Buckley and Gore Vidal and huge themes,
and I just felt like whatever it was saying was
saying something about what's happened to television. And it was

(59:21):
one of those great stories that once you start telling it,
it gets better and better. You know, every detail it
gets added just gets juicier and juicier. But that was
the film we had started making before from Stardom. In
the wake of from Stardom, suddenly people said, oh, what else,

(59:41):
And we said, well, I have this film Best of Enemies.
It's great, we'll finish it. I don't know if I
hadn't made start them, if I ever would have gotten
the money to finish Best of Enemies, you know, as
sad as that is to say. And then how does
Mr Rogers movie come together? That happened because I was,
I mean, the real story. I home, um in bed

(01:00:02):
at night on YouTube and somebody had maybe sent me
a link of a Mr. Rogers commencement address he had given,
and I somehow went down the YouTube rabbit hole of
watching more Mr Rogers, particularly speeches and interviews, and as
I was hearing it. I just kept feeling like, where's

(01:00:23):
this voice today? Like what he's saying is exactly what
I feel the culture should be hearing right now, this
kind of voice of radical kindness and empathy and understanding.
And um, and I woke up in the morning and
I turned to my wife and I said, I think
I need to make a film about Mr. Rogers. And

(01:00:44):
she's a children's librarian, I will say, and she said,
I love that idea. Um. I literally went to the office. UM.
I made a couple of calls, and I'd made a
film with Yo Yo Maa and his and Yo Yo
knew Fred Rogers pretty well and had told me stories
about to which was also in the back of my mind.
And Yo Yo son is a filmmaker, and I called

(01:01:06):
him and I said, is this crazy to make a
film about Fred Rogers? He said, not only is that
not crazy, I want to produce it with you. So
he's one of my producers. And so we flew to Pittsburgh.
We sat down and I said to them, you know,
I'm again not sued to do a Wikipedia version of
Fred rodgers life. I want to make a film about ideas.

(01:01:27):
And to me, his ideas are incredibly relevant today. This
is not a film about nostalgia. There's a film about
the big things he thought fought for. And I think
what they responded to was that he was never taken
very seriously in his own lifetime. So what we were
trying to say, I think was something they felt needed

(01:01:49):
to be said for a long time. But it was
again purely instinctual, like, this is something I want to
put out in the world, and I again having no
idea how much the world wanted to hear it. I
had no idea how big an audience for Mr. Rogers
would be. Um well became a phenomenon. What was the
what was the ultimate theatrical gross? About three? Yeah? And

(01:02:13):
I have to ask you did some of that fall
to your bottom line? Not yet? Yea? How long it
takes for studios to pay well usually I I worked
as an attorney on a film that was the second
biggest of a year, and it was three years later
and the film was still in the negative part position
for the profit participants. It's that crazy. It's crazy. I mean,

(01:02:35):
we got a bonus, but but I think the real
if if I do see back end, it hasn't happened yet,
so we'll see. And we had two great group investors
and other people that kind of came in to help
us make that film. Well, what's the budget for a
film like that? UM? Just under two? Okay? Yeah, So theoretically,
what percent of the film do you the What percentage

(01:02:55):
did you still have? UM? What percentage of the back
of the profits? Profit participants? UM? I mean typically equity
would control about back end and creative about back end,
and then with my producers and team, I shared that

(01:03:16):
back end, so you know, maybe a quarter you know,
thank you about Okay. So what are you working on now? Um?
Other than the Shangri Law project? I don't. I hate
to say this, but I can't say what I'm working on? Okay,
then we will we will go specifics. How many films
are you working on right now? I'm not actually making

(01:03:38):
a film at this very moment, but I'm about to
work on two projects. And if they go according to plan,
they would be ready for the market when one would
come out in the one would come out. Okay. So,
now that you've had the success, especially in non music areas, UM,
are you personally thinking of broadening from music? Yeah? And

(01:04:01):
my last three films haven't been about music, and um,
and I've kind of willfully turned down any music documentaries. Uh,
and these next two are not music documentaries. UM. I
am interested in music series, and I'm working on some
music series, and I've produced some music documentaries and even
back in the day, I produced music documentaries. I produced
Pearl Jam twenty for Cameron Crow, and I produced Crossfire

(01:04:24):
Hurricane for The Stones, and UM, you know, I still
love music. I think part of it is I just
don't want to be Pigeonholed is like the music one
of the two best music documentaries ever ever leaving anything
you worked on out. I mean, it's funny. Some of
my favorite music documentaries are about bands I don't love.

(01:04:45):
You know, which is great? You know, whether it's UM
some kind of Monster or the Metallica film, UM or
Um The Devil and Daniel Johnson, UM, all kinds of
other interesting ones. UM not Dead yet. Have you ever

(01:05:05):
saw that one? No? I didn't see that one. And
not to mention neither the kind of great concert docs
Stop making Sense and Last Waltz and things like that. UM.
And I watch every single music documentary. I don't think
you could find a music documentary I haven't watched. Okay, Um,
I was gonna ask whether you thought certain ones were overrated?

(01:05:27):
But in your viewing time, how much viewing do you
take of anything? I still watch at least a hundred
documentaries a year. And but how about like Netflix series
that are not documentaries? Not that many some? Um, I
watch a ton of movies. I mean I watch a
ton of documentaries. I watch a lot of movies, old

(01:05:48):
and new. Um. And then I watched only the very
best series like if five people tell me I need
to watch it? So have you watched? I just watched Chernobyl? Okay,
what do you think? I it was really good? How
much you know? How much did you know about Chernobyl
going in? Not that much? You know, I wasn't. I
was young and not paying that much attention to it
at the time. And um, yeah, I really I found it.

(01:06:13):
It got to me. Okay, that was, you know, somewhat documentary.
What other series? Um? You know Fleabag and I loved
the new season of Fleabag. Um. You know I love
kind of biting Black comedy is one one of my
very favorite gears. Um, And I guess by extension and
killing Eve I really liked UM, but not that many series.

(01:06:37):
I'm trying to think, you know, it's just the time investment,
of course, I mean, but the thing that bothers me.
I'm obviously a little older than you was. I remember
moving to l a in the seventies and I go
to the movie six nights a week. You could literally
see everything and you could know what was going on.
The fact that in all culture you can't be comprehensive
drives me nuts. Me too. It's like, you know, where's

(01:06:59):
the frame of I have the same disease. You know
that there was a long time where I just felt
like I had to be culturally conversant in pretty much
everything television, movie, music, literature, Like I just had to
be up on everything. And um, I think it was
both getting older and having kids that cured me of
feeling like I had to do everything because you can't.

(01:07:22):
You know, it's just become this avalanche, never ending avalanche
of more culture coming at you. So so now I try.
And you know, like I said, when it comes to documentary,
I'll watch everything because the good thing about documentary is
even a bad documentary, you're going to learn something. I
can't say that about it. One thing. One thing. I five.
This is one of the reasons I don't go to
theatrical films anymore I have been, is I find I

(01:07:45):
can't slow my mind down enough for that experience. It's like, oh,
to watch even last night, to watch, you know, episode
of something at eleven o'clock at night, no problem, but
like even seven pm, two pm. You know, I said,
I'm gonna take a break, but I just it's really
hard to slow down, and particularly I think it's harder.
I have a much easier time doing it in the theater,

(01:08:07):
but when you try and watch a movie at home,
it's really hard not to double screen, you know, and
that's not good for the film or good for you,
and I try not to do it. I was just
talking to a friend of mine who says she's watching
all films with subtitles because it forces her not to
double screen. She has to only watch that movie at
that time. And you say, you watch docs, you watch

(01:08:29):
new movies. What genre of movies do you watch? Um?
I mean I love independent film and foreign I also
have to uh young kids twelve and fourteen, so it
means I see every Marvel movie, And um, I'm just
not the audience for it, you know, or can you

(01:08:50):
enjoy that? You know? This is a big debate, and
I feel like, I mean, seeing a film like Endgame,
I actually thought for the Thousand Balls, they had the
air on that film. They did an incredibly good job
of balancing it in a way that satisfied most people.
You know, incredibly difficult task. I know that as a filmmaker,
how difficult that is to do. And a film like

(01:09:12):
thor Ragnarok, you know, has all of that humor in
it too, And certain films like that or Spider of
the Spider Verse I thought was great just for its
kind of experimental attitude. Let's hold that. Because you're talking
about your kids, do your kids turn you onto new music?
My kids are not that into music. It's very strange. Um,

(01:09:32):
of course, Like my daughter is obsessed with you know,
Queen right now because of them Rhapsody, and we're going
to go see them when they come to town next month.
And I know it's not the same thing, but whatever.
I'm just happy to take her to a concert that
she's excited about. Um, But my kids are not. Their
relationship to music is not what my relationship was. Um.
I mean I grew up in record stores, devouring as

(01:09:55):
much music as I could get, and to me, it
was like my you know, I'm not the first person
to say it, it it was kind of my religion. It
was like how I found a sense of identity in
connection with the world. Um, and music for young people
just doesn't penetrate. It can, but seeing the choices they have,

(01:10:15):
whether it's social media or video games or just YouTube
or all of the other things coming at them, it's
hard for them to have the the quietude to be
able to let music in in the same way. We
could go on about that, I'd be a separate podcast.
But going back to theatrical films, you know, one of
the big stories the last couple of weeks has been

(01:10:36):
Book Smart and its failure in the marketplace. Some people
said it should have been platformed. I starting in a
few number of theaters, good gross is press whatever the
distributor said, No, no, the word of mouth will happen,
which doesn't seem to be happening. Is the theatrical really
just for these big budget cartoon movies. Well, again, it

(01:10:57):
depends on expectations. So I went to go see book
Smart this week. Yeah, I loved it. I thought it
was great, you know, um, and it's gonna break twenty
million and then some which so it's not a failure
unless you compare it to Super Bad, and I think
it's an unfair comparison. I think all the people that
were saying, um, it was it should have done that

(01:11:20):
kind of box office were just misreading the tea leaves
because not only was Super Bad ten years ago in
a very different theatrical space, but you know, there are
no big names playing prominently in the film. Um, it's
a first time director. Yes, she's well known, but it's
some harder slog to get that film sold. I personally

(01:11:41):
probably would have platformed it more if I was the distributor,
because I think it's an excellent word of mouth film
and opening it not many theaters, I think a couple
of I think that was shooting very high. Um, because
it is a great, great film. Um, and it's my
wife and I went it was a great date night film.
You know, it was the future of that type of film,

(01:12:02):
anything other than the uh special effects, you know, Marvel
type film. Is that really the flat screen? It's hard
to know again, you know, if you asked me two
years ago I probably said yes. Then I put out
a documentary that nobody thought would doing, ring that grows
more than twenty million dollars about a guy who was

(01:12:24):
on TV, you know, decades ago. Um. So what I
do think in a certain way, I mean, what the
reason I think people went to the movie theater to
go see Won't You Be My Neighbor was that they
wanted a communal experience, And what Mr Rogers was about
was the neighborhood and kind of community. And in many

(01:12:47):
ways the film is like a secular sermon, so it
plays better if you're watching with other people. I heard
many people say that there was spontaneous hugging between strangers
at the end of screenings in the theaters. That's either
creepy or great however you look at it. So um,
but stuff like that makes me happy. So I feel

(01:13:08):
like whenever I whenever you want to close the coffin
on theatrical small theatrical films, Um, something happens and something
unexpected happens, and something new comes out of it. So
not dead yet, I would say, is is what I
would classify it as. Um, But it's certainly not what
it was, you know, in terms of I mean the

(01:13:30):
real thing I think is the mid level films that
cost million dollars to make. Um, the kind of adult
dramas and comedies that just don't get made in the
same way anymore. They've all those stories have migrated to
television essentially. Okay, So you have twenty or thirty years

(01:13:50):
left to make movies, maybe a little bit more if
your career kept on this thing and you kept on
making documentaries. Are you happy or is there some big
yet unful old dream. Um, I'm happy. You know. It's
funny because people still will come up and say, oh, well,
when you're gonna make a real movie. So I've been

(01:14:12):
making movies for twenty years, um, and you know I
love scripted movies, and I've flirted with different projects that
haven't happened, and um, and one may happen and it
would be fun, you know, it'd be a fun challenge.
But my day job is documentary and it's always gonna
be documentary. I mean, that same sensation I had two
weeks into making my first documentary, where I knew it

(01:14:33):
was my life's calling has not changed, and that, in
a way gives me great comfort because it means whatever
I'm into at whatever age I can make a film
about it and learn about it and it will fulfill me.
Let's just go back because a lot of this the
audience for this podcast is people who are into music.
How do you feel about today's music? I'm I have

(01:14:55):
a much harder time being into music in the way
I was into it before because that you were the music.
It's hard for me to judge. Um, I'm not gonna
push you on it. No, I don't. I mean, I
listened to plenty of music, but I feel like my relationship,
I gave so much of my life to music that
I'm kind of Um, it just took up so much

(01:15:16):
my life that I feel like I'm on sabbatical. You know.
When I come back and find a new artists I love,
It's great. Um, but it kind of ebbs and flows.
So you're a cultural vulture. And even though you do
not comprehensive like you used to be, you still you
know there's a smugger's board of stuff that you partake of.

(01:15:36):
For my audience, can you recommend two things that they're
unaware of? Music, movies, books, documentaries that they really should
check out? Um? Sure, Can I think about this for
a minute. Uh, well, you know, I didn't mean to
put you on the snow. I know, because I want

(01:15:57):
to give the best answer problems. Like in the New
York Times book review, they say, you know what's on
your nightstand when there's no way in hell those books
around the nightstand. It's like they just want to look
good for the audience who is looking at that. So,
I mean, like the last film I made I loved Um,
I mean or film I saw that I loved, I
mean Book Smart. I would certainly recommend UM, and I've

(01:16:22):
been I signed up for the Criterion Channel. They have
their news streaming service. Highly recommend the Criterion streaming service.
As a real ciny asked, you know, I love the
chance to be able to just go back into that
and supporting those types of films and making sure we
can still see those types of films too. What are
a couple that you would recommend? And this is just

(01:16:43):
you know, on the channel in general. Um, I've been
going through a Cassavettis phase, which has been interesting. So
what's your favorite Cassavettis um Chinese bookie? Really? Yeah, mine's
Woman under the Influence. I think he really nails how
the you know, Peter Flack has no idea what's went
on with his wife, and his wife is really I

(01:17:03):
just found the juxtaposition really good. Yeah, and they know
there's something about that time period too, and you know
a lot of Los Angeles and some of that stuff too,
But I just really respond to um. So yeah, in
a way, I end up going backwards more than anything. Well,
the movies were different with a great thing about a

(01:17:23):
movie and whether it's certainly better to theatrical experience, is
that it shuts out the rest of the world, and
when done well, you're immersed. I want that experience, you know,
you want an experience where you don't want to check
your phone, you don't want to look at your watch. Yeah,
that is like the best review you can get. Check
my phone once, you know which I aspired to. Okay Morgan,

(01:17:43):
this has been wonderful. The audience will look forward to
your Rick Ruben project. Thanks so much for being on
the podcast. Talking to you until next time. This is
Bob left Sets