Wild Rivers Film Radio: Eve Annenberg and Scott Brock – Capturing Conversations Through Film

In this episode of Wild Rivers Film Radio, hosts Sue Wright and Kenny Wright sit down with filmmaker Eve Annenberg and editor Scott Brock to talk about their documentary, The Work: A Conversation. Eve shares the inspiration behind the project and the importance of preserving pivotal stories on film. Scott offers insight into the art […]

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
Greetings, cinephiles.
I'm Sue Wright, and I'm here with Kenny
Wright, our VIP coordinator for the twenty twenty
five Wild Rivers Film Festival.
So welcome to the official podcast of the
Wild Rivers Film Festival here on KCIW
one hundred point seven.
And today, we are sitting with Eve Annenberg.

(00:30):
And Scott Brock.
But before we dive in, we'd like to
thank the Wild Rivers Film Festival's twenty twenty
five presenting sponsor, the Tullahwadene
Nation.
Your generous support has made both our festival
and summer film workshop possible this year.
We also thank our other incredible sponsors, the

(00:51):
Roundhouse Foundation,
Travel Curry Coast,
Sutter Coast Hospital,
Edward Jones, Our Flower House,
Southwestern Oregon Community College Curry Campus, and the
City of Brookings.
If you'd like to join these wonderful supporters
in celebrating indie cinema,
expanding film education,

(01:12):
and growing a film economy right here on
the Wild Rivers Coast,
visit wildriversfilmfestival.com
for sponsorship
opportunities.
If you're just discovering us, welcome. The Wild
River Film Festival is a four day celebration
of Indian local cinema each August in Brookings.

(01:33):
There are always a full slate of panels,
VIP parties, and our unforgettable
award ceremony.
So if you're just tuning in, you're listening
to the Wild Rivers Film Radio. I'm Sue
Wright here with Kenny Wright. And today, we're
talking with Eve Annenberg
and Scott Brock. So welcome, Yves. Thank you.
Welcome, Scott. Thank you.

(01:54):
I'm gonna just dive right in and ask
you, Yves, if you just give us a
bit of your history, your background, and
then we'll talk about
the film you have here at the twenty
twenty five Wild Rivers Film Festival,
The Work, A Conversation.
Hi, Sue. Thanks. It's great to be here,
and this town is so cute.

(02:17):
I've never been to the Pacific Northwest. It's
so beautiful. Oh my god. And we are
so delighted to have you here. Thank you.
That's a general response for people.
My background,
well,
I went to Julliard to their actor training
program and,
from there,

(02:39):
I realized that you people could actually make
movies,
not just put up plays, but make films
and control every aspect of production. And I
thought that was really exciting. I went to
a really, a summer class at NYU called
Sight and Sound. It's probably still around. It
was great.
And then I tried to make my first
feature, which crashed and burned.

(03:02):
At the time, there were not too many
women
making independent films.
There were about four of us, honestly.
And
so I I pulled myself together, and I
applied to Columbia Graduate School of Film,
and I just wanted to make a feature.
I didn't wanna go to any more school.
I'd just come out of a conservatory.

(03:23):
I wasn't sure what they had to teach
me about acting, really, you know, or directing
for sure, screenwriting, but I just wanted to
get through it and make a film, and
I
had
written a script. I wrote a script there.
I had a wonderful screenwriting teacher,
and she said to me,
sweetheart, just take notes on your life,
which had been a little colorful to date,

(03:46):
and I
got a production grant based on that script
from the Valencia
Community College Film Technology Program
in a suburb of Orlando,
and
I thought that was exciting, and I went
down there to talk to them. It was
an incredible programme,
and
they offered me to shoot on the back

(04:07):
lot of Universal
as a New York City
location.
So they had a New York City set.
They had a New York City set. It
was beautiful pastel colored brownstones.
No garbage. No homeless people.
No graffiti.
And I looked at it, and I said,
I can't possibly use this set because it's
nineteen
ninety ninety or something, and I'm living on

(04:29):
the Lower East Side Of New York.
All the garbage cans are on fire.
Everybody's armed. Everyone's doing heroin and sleeping in
the street, and that's exactly what I need.
I don't think you're gonna let me recreate
it here.
And,
so I said, I can't do it, and
I went back to Columbia,
and I told my thesis adviser,
who's quite a well known guy, that I

(04:51):
needed the camera equipment for two weeks because
I wasn't gonna work on this on this
grant,
and he wouldn't give it to me. Oh,
no. He said, how how do I know
you're gonna get it done on your own?
And
I had
taken out a student loan for $10,000.
So I went to the bank, cashed the
check, and dropped out of graduate school and

(05:12):
spent three years making that movie.
And at the end of that three years,
it went around the world to film festivals,
all a list, competitions, stuff like that. And
it was that was pretty cool.
That's an accomplishment.
It was great.
And then I just kept making indie films,
and I wound up producing doing a lot
of producing

(05:33):
because my agent realized I was good with
a dollar.
And,
So if you had $10,000
to start a feature film and you finished
it, you have to Well, I finished it.
You have to have some kind of magic.
I fit that took three years and some
other producers.
But yes, we did finish it and it
went it premiered in the competition at Rotterdam
back in the day. Won a cinematography

(05:55):
award. Shot by Wolfgang Held and Joe Foley,
two of the guys who,
started this project with me. Okay. Thirty years
later
or more, maybe.
Yeah. It's an interesting thing about film. You
create a network and you tend to stay
connected
over time and in through projects. Right? You
fall in love with your DP because that's

(06:15):
the person who's midwifing your baby,
and you stay with them forever.
And your editor too. And your editor. Editors
are a little trickier.
It's a different breed of people. I'm very
lucky on this film to have been hooked
up with Scott Brock,
through Tim Monnick, dialect coach to the stars,
who wanted to help me. And I said

(06:37):
I told him things I needed, and he
works with Scorsese all the time. So he
works with Scott all the time, and he
made a shirekh,
as we say in Yiddish.
And, it was it was great. Okay. I'm
gonna turn to Scott now and ask him
just to tell us a little bit about
yourself and your connection to this project.
Yeah.

(06:57):
My background is that
I went to film school, UCLA.
And then,
long story short, where just sort of a
lot
of knocking around and hit or missing,
I did
manage
to get into,
the first computer based editing,

(07:18):
manufacturer called Lightworks.
They,
I went with a friend of mine and
I showed them my resume and they said,
Yeah, we'd love to have you. So I
worked there for about nine months and then
they said, We're going to send our best
and our brightest
to New York because we're gonna start a
new branch office there. And I said,
Oh, you mean should I help Mike? You

(07:40):
know, we'd like school them. And he said,
no, we're gonna send you.
So,
so I went there and I originally
went there to teach, Sandy Morse, Woody Allen's
editor, and then,
Thelma Schoonmaker who was working on a documentary
at the time.
So I went there and then that's

(08:01):
the rest is history. I've been working with
them in their features, theatrical features since Casino.
Now
I was,
introduced
to Eve,
through Tim Monnick.
And
I I feel really very, very blessed
really to have been introduced to her because,

(08:24):
as I've told her,
when I listen to her, it's like listening
to Lenny Bruce. She has
she has the Much of that. Very
she it just just what she says,
extemporaneously.
She just it's as if write that down.
Write that down. Okay. She gets

(08:45):
no. But it's true. It's true. It's she
is a a natural,
director writer. And she's very, very good at
it. The film she was talking about that
she didn't name is called Dogs
in case, anyone wants to know. We wanna
go find it. Right? I wanna go find
it now. It's it's very well written and
very well directed.
And it was partly, you know, those two

(09:07):
films that she had done,
Dogs and then Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish.
Oh, okay. That I said, this woman's really
astounding. She's very, very good.
And then, of course, getting to work with
her.
We
we
we creatively, I think we just hit our

(09:28):
connection points immediately.
She's very, very good
at times when I say, Eve, Eve, I
don't understand this. What are you doing here?
And
she explains it very thoroughly, and she's very
patient about it. Uh-huh. She's given me a
lot of room to
suggest things, try things.

(09:49):
Editors can really reshape a piece. And and
I wanna come back after we talk about
the work
to talking about the difference between editing on
a narrative film and editing
with the Okay. Documentary
film.
So
tell us a little bit about the work.

(10:11):
Like, where did that concept come from? You
know, how did you develop it?
And
what makes it special to you, I suppose?
The work
kind of happened on the fly. It was
during the pandemic, and,
as I said, I went to Juilliard acting
program, and my mentor there was Eve Shapiro,

(10:33):
and she was also, you know, petite,
Jew of Russian
extraction.
And
she had studied at Radha, she was really
brilliant, and
during the pandemic, I thought, oh, I wonder
if she's okay, because she was
elderly living in this big apartment in Manhattan

(10:54):
by herself,
and I went down to see her and
things were a little bit
of a mess, and I would
go and I became a fixture there,
and
two of her best friends kept calling and
they were from Julliard
also, and I had known of one of
them and I'd known the other one very
well, And they were the scariest women I

(11:15):
had ever met in my life. And
I I like, they
but it turned out they were such wonderful
friends.
And then they were calling her, and then
they started calling me. And, like, so when
the woman that you
took voice from for four years
and terrified you is on your cell phone
at eight in the morning, you know, I'm

(11:36):
like, should I do a vocal warm up
before I answer the phone? I better brush
my teeth. I was like, it was scary.
But
then I thought, oh my god. They're they're
82, 86, and 90.
I better do a little tiny quick documentary
about their friendship.
And so I I put it together really
fast.

(11:56):
And
when I did, Eve
began to cognitively decline.
She suddenly became aphasic and could not speak
in full sentences.
And
that was terrible and so heartbreaking,
and I
thought, well, what can I do about that?
And I thought, well, I can call the
people she trained

(12:17):
and have them talk about her. And also,
probably, they have imitations of her because everybody
dies and we all hear her voice in
our head. And so I just started calling
people from my class,
and, you know, that's Bradley Woodford and Thomas
Gibson, Wendell Pierce.
I didn't get Michael Gill, unfortunately, Juliet Pritner,

(12:39):
and then people from classes around me, Valina
Logan,
and Belina
put me in touch with Laura Linney, who
was one class behind her, and
then I expanded a little bit. Tim Monnick
came on board, and he's so articulate, and
he has
the world in his Rolodex.
And so I was able to reach out
to Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone and other

(13:00):
people, and everybody had something to say. So
instead of being about these women coming to
New York in the 60s and kicking up
their heels and
you know, finding their place in the world
and, oh, by the way, they're all gay.
It became
about what they wanted to talk about, which
was
the work, acting, acting schools, training.

(13:24):
Is that Their passion. It's their their ruling
passion. There is nothing else,
and Juilliard was really central to all that
even though they taught at the Royal Academy.
So it it's not specifically
about Juilliard,
but it does describe
a lot of what happened at Juilliard.
Documentaries

(13:45):
don't
they're never what you think they're going to
be.
You know, they take a turn,
and you have to follow it. They develop
a life of their own, and you have
to follow the story, don't you? It's true.
That's it's just it's very unexpected. It's extremely
time consuming
and frustrating.
So
It's so good to hear you talk about
this because something that's out there that I

(14:06):
really want to do is an Elmo Williams
documentary. So Elmo Williams was central to our
community here. He's the Academy Award winning
editor behind High Noon, for instance. And he's
got a filmography that's
a mile long.
And he was just beloved in this community,
and he passed away at 103

(14:29):
about
a dozen years ago. And so
we need to capture those stories before the
people who were close to him here are
gone.
You do? Yes. It's now or never really.
That's how it is with documentaries sometimes. It's
a now or never. It's a now or
never thing. And we're we're blessed because all
of the interviews he did here on his
films are archived at the University of Hawaii

(14:52):
through some connections. So that will help, but
we have to do it soon. So, anyway,
not to take away from No. No. That's
great. I mean, be prepared for that to
take you
four years, you know, like
Every time I talk to somebody with a
documentary, it's like you just kinda
you you have a subject, you hit start
on it and it just takes you. You

(15:12):
don't know where the finish line's at. It
it's gonna
swing and curve in different directions and Yeah.
It's gonna tell its own story by the
time you get there because you have to
fact find and pull all these little pieces
out of the woodworks and You know, it's
there's no script.
And so when you see in credits on
a documentary

(15:32):
written by,
I feel funny about claiming that credit because
obviously these words are coming out of people's
mouths, but you do pick them carefully and
juxtapose them carefully,
and then sometimes you find these little miracles.
Like in our film, I kept
harping on
we're dealing with the teachers, and also I
wanted to mention the cleaning lady at Julliard.

(15:54):
And it was really important to me, and
everyone was like, what are you doing?
And then
we were talking about Robin Williams,
and then we were talking about the cleaning
lady, and she was Irish. She had an
accent,
and
suddenly, I woke up in the middle of
the night one night, and I went, she
was the inspiration for missus Doubtfire.
Oh my goodness. And for some reason that

(16:16):
was really important to me, and we it's
hard to even show in the documentary. We
do
a dissolve to a photo from her to
missus Doubtfire,
But missus Doubtfire
is so built into our culture. Uh-huh. You
know? Where did she come from? Well, that
I I think is where she came from.
Missus Doubtfire is iconic. She is. My kids
love her more than they love me.

(16:40):
So, anyway,
it's things magical. You you get some
rewards.
I have this favorite. So our first year,
2023 here at the Wild Rivers Film Festival,
we screened Mark Sutherland's,
Abby's
List, which is the story. It's documentary,
and it opened for us. It's the documentary,

(17:02):
and we had dogs on the red carpet
from our humane society,
and they all got adopted
that day.
He's such a wonderful man with heart. But
so he had this 13 year old whippet,
and he'd lost whippets before around 13. So
he decided he was gonna take Abby
on
a dog bucket list road trip across the

(17:24):
country
starting with so the the bucket list were,
like,
pee on the tallest tree in the Continental
US. And so we took her to the
Sequoia Forest, and and then she couldn't pee.
So he expected that maybe it would be
a matter of weeks they would travel from
the Pacific Ocean where he put his feet

(17:44):
put her feet in the ocean to the
Atlantic where he put her feet in the
ocean.
And,
so the story takes you. Right?
Interestingly enough, Abby began to age backwards because
the she was engaged and they were having
fun and she was active. And so Abby
lives three more years.

(18:04):
Oh.
So he's got now not six weeks of
filming, but three years of filming with Abby
and all these characters. And so he talks
about
the process of editing
a documentary,
giving it a story arc and such. So,
Scott, can you tell us a bit about
editing with the work? Oh, absolutely.

(18:25):
I when
Eve
first approached me, she we were literally just
gathering everything that she shot. Uh-huh.
And it was sent to me on a
drive. And she said, I don't know. I
I'm not
sure whether we have enough for a film.
Maybe a twenty minute video birthday card, something
like that. And I watched everything

(18:48):
and I said,
you have a film here. You really do
have a film here. And that was before
she got the interviews with Kevin Kline and
Randall Mill
and,
you know, and others. And so it was
a thing where I just said, well, you
know, as we got everything together,

(19:11):
I said, you have a problem.
You've got I've got good news and bad
news. You've you've got a lot of gold.
That's, that's the good news. The bad news
is you've got a lot of gold
and you've got to figure out, you know,
yeah, it's, it's, it's a very, I said,
it's a very good problem. And I said,
you definitely have a film, man. There's, there's
just,

(19:32):
just a lot of real strong substance and
historical,
and emotional connectivity
going on.
And that's what I saw really was
the arc
of everyone
involved.
Uh-huh. And the very first,
scene I sent to her and it was

(19:52):
unsolicited
was the ending which,
she has
virtually left
with
with some refinements. But from literally a section
where I call it the ending
to the ending,
that has remained untouched.
Because there was just something that was just
very clear

(20:13):
in my mind. And I think that's that
And that helps create your story arc. Right?
You have to know where you're gonna land.
Right. Exactly.
And and particularly with that ending. Uh-huh. The
way it's ended,
it is a summation
literally of of the work, of the result
of the work. And that's just what I

(20:33):
saw immediately,
you know,
looking at all those pieces.
And spoiler alert, there is,
the ending section with Eve
that to this day
I don't I've seen it a million times,
but I just literally get emotionally choked up
every single time I see it. And that's

(20:54):
how you know it is really working.
And that's the thing about editing is that
it is an instinct.
I mean,
one of the great helps It's a gift.
Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is. And one
of the great helps,
even though Eve says,
you know, I, I, I feel a little
strange about taking writing.
What we would do in the editing process

(21:16):
is, you know, she would, I would literally
transcribe,
you know, electronic
transcription,
but she was able to see them in
words and picture in her mind how those
images juxtaposed.
Going together. And she could see,
you know, how it was going. We So
she is a definitely a filmmaker
as as well as a a good director.

(21:38):
I had been working on it, you know,
putting it together for quite a while before
Scott came on, and so I did have
people helping me. And I worked for a
year with Henry Steady, who is a,
he's sort of a triple threat young man.
He's an actor, really talented actor, really talented
singer,
and had been working in,

(21:58):
doing special effects and science fiction low budgets
for a friend who recommended him strongly, and
he really helped me piece together
things, you know, pull what I felt were
selects. Uh-huh. And then I,
you know, got the opportunity to
work with Scott and his tremendous, you know,

(22:19):
experience, and
Henry was really gracious
and said, I fully understand,
you know, that
that that might be where you're gonna,
go, and
I was just lucky to have that that
wonderful energy in the beginning also that's collaborative.
Mhmm. Yeah. That's really, really lovely.

(22:41):
Yeah. But I I I will say this
as cliche as it might be, it comes
from the top.
Anyway. Really does.
Really, really does. Do you have any other
more questions?
Well, I think we're gonna switch gears a
little bit and just find out
more.
Okay. So,

(23:04):
I'd like to I I just wanna get
your impressions of Brookings and Wild Rivers Film
Festival.
It's your first year here. And,
what are you looking forward to seeing or
experiences you'd like while you're here? I saw
Deso last night. It was incredible.
It was certainly watching a documentary that's funded
by an entire country is a very different
experience,

(23:25):
but wow, so glad to have seen that,
and I don't know where else I would
have seen that.
It is incredible, and I'm
not The Beatles don't make my world go
round,
but the man's story was unbelievable.
That was great.
And then I also saw a short about
a guy

(23:46):
overcoming his addiction,
and it was really moving.
And I
met Dan Springen
years ago at Valencia,
And so when I heard that Dan is
a, you know, director here,
I really wanted to come. And Brookings is
beautiful, well worth the trip. Definitely hope this

(24:07):
isn't my last time here. Oh, we hope
it isn't too.
We'd love to have you back as often
as you can. We have managed in the
pipeline. And we'll come visit you in New
York. You've got to. I would love to.
Come on. For knowing about it. But now,
see, Brookings for me is actually
I've already experienced the Pacific Northwest

(24:28):
and the more artistic oriented nature, you know,
of this town,
in Cambria. So I said, Oh my God,
it's a second home. This is home for
you? Yeah. Yeah. This is my second home.
Yeah. Yeah. Very much so.
The the the word that I think people
might use to describe it but I think
it's a little derogatory.
It might be quaint but
quaint but quaint in the fullest sense of

(24:51):
the heart
of people in terms of what they have.
So, yeah, it's really wonderful. I said to
Scott this morning, we were getting,
coffee at the Bumblebee Bakery. Uh-huh. Plug here.
Bumblebee Bakery. Wow. And and and They are
the best donuts on the coast. Oh my
god. And and I am staying in the
sun Pacific Sunset Motel.

(25:11):
And they're both owned by
youngish people. And I thought, where in America
can young people decide to open and run
a business and have it work out? Well,
apparently, it's Brookings, Oregon. We do. We have
a
a community
of younger dynamic
business owners. Yeah. And they are phenomenal, and
they work so hard. And I I have

(25:33):
to just say with,
with the film festival,
the fact that
there is such an
active,
management decision to include young people. Oh, yeah.
Yes. And, you know, actively cultivate them. Yes.
That's conscious too.
My my first passion is as a youth
advocate. Yeah. It's it's it's very clear, you

(25:56):
know, in in the workshop showing that it
was
almost an overflow crowd. It was gigantic.
So that was actually so gratifying to see
because,
you don't
maybe I'm just used to New York where
it's sort of, oh, you're on your own
kid.
Well So it's good to see that. And
because

(26:16):
we are very rural. Thank you.
We are very rural. And so our the
youth here don't necessarily get the kind of
opportunities that they would have in New York
or LA or Austin.
So the film workshop is,
cobbled together with ideas from New York
University, their film workshop in the summer, and
UCLA's

(26:37):
summer film workshop. And the one in the
Bay Area, we looked at I looked at
all of those and it's like, what can
we do? But it's really a gift that
Dan Springen brings here because he brings the
connections that allow us to bring the filmmakers
from around the country
to give these kids a chance to try
things out. I love what you said about

(26:58):
the if you wanna be a sponsor,
of the new film economy.
Yes. So is the film festival
bringing, like, a new kind of economy to
because when I look at the city, I'm
thinking It's like the tip of the iceberg.
Right? You can't see what's happening below it,
but we have to train up Yeah. The
skill sets that

(27:18):
and,
so I think we're at the end of
our conversation even though it's not done.
And,
so this for those of you who are
joining us, this is the Wild Rivers Film
Festival.
To learn more about the festival, bypasses, volunteer,
or explore sponsorship opportunities,
visit wildriversfilmfestival.com.

(27:40):
You can also follow us on Facebook and
Instagram.
Our recordings are done by Michael Gorse, our
sound mixing and editing by the wonderful Tom
Bozak.
I'm your producer, Sue Wright. And until next
time,
enjoy the films.