Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast is a collaboration between costart and Touchstone Productions and the dads from the crypt pod.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: It's fun to come to work.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it's different to come to work. You don't know what's. What's gonna be around every morning.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Every morning, all the time. Every morning you come in, you wonder, well, what's gonna be on these walls.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: That wasn't here before? The uniform I wouldn't do at first. I told him, no, that wasn't possible for me. And you. Just how long did it. Did you hold out? About almost a year. Almost a year before I was. I was the last one to put it on. What made you finally turn the corner? He told me I had to.
She cried a few times. He told me I had to.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the how not to make a movie podcast. I'm Alan Katz. Gil will join us shortly.
Our good friend Roger Nygaard makes his bread and butter, editing and directing tv shows like Grey's Anatomy, the League, who is America, Veep, and especially curb your enthusiasm. But Roger's passion, the thing that drives him creatively, is making documentaries. His first was a raging success called Trekkies about Trekkies. From there, he went on to make Trekkies two, and documentaries about the nature of existence, the truth about marriage, and the comedy store.
Considering the people Rogers interviewed for his movies, the subjects he's tackled, and the diy nature of making documentaries, when Roger sat down and wrote a book about how to make documentaries, inevitably it was going to be not just meticulous and thorough, but entertaining, too. Roger, as you'll hear, has always been a note taker. It's one of his suggestions about how to be a successful documentarian. In fact, Roger is filled with great suggestions about how to make documentaries, or even just movies and tv shows in general. And every single lesson that he learned came with a great story to go with. How are you, man?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Check 1234. Hey, guys. How's it going?
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Good, good.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: How you been?
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Good. It's a double team now.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: There you go.
Twice the fun.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: So I didn't have much time, but I really sort of glanced a little bit at the book, and now I want to read it.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: That's a good, good sign.
[00:02:27] Speaker C: Really interesting. Yeah, it really is. It really is an interesting book.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: We were actually arguing, is it a textbook with great stories or great stories with a textbook thrown in?
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Well, as long as the film students buy it, I'll go with either description.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: So we're both wrong.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's egalitarian. I think is the word. Everyone's wrong.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: The book is called the documentarian.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: I couldn't believe that title was available when I was looking around, like, so obvious. Oh, great. I'll take it.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Really? No one has the documentarian.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: No, I'm making a career out of finding diamonds in the road. Like Trekkies. No one had done Trekkies before or had used that title, you know?
[00:03:10] Speaker A: And part of what makes the book entertaining as well as incredibly informative is the fact that you tell a lot of Trekkie's stories. It really. It's about how Trekkies got made.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah. My first film, my first documentary out of the gate, I got lucky. It was a home run. And so I took notes at the time of all the conversations, the deal points, the ups and downs, the failures, the arguing, the moment where money was on the table, and it was like treasure of the Sierra madre. And everyone went insane and like, well, I should get more for this reason. And there's only 100%, guys.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Yes. It's funny of all that. As I made my notes, as I ran through the manuscript as quickly as I could, looking for. Oh, okay. Yeah. I highlighted the fact that you compared the experience to making it to the treasure of the Sierra madre.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Anytime. Yeah, you get. You strike it rich with some pals. If you haven't papered it, you're in big trouble.
[00:04:09] Speaker C: See, that's your mistake, though. You can sell more than 100%.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: How do you pay it when you've only got a dollar?
[00:04:18] Speaker C: Just ask zero Mostell. You know, he got it right. Mel Brooks got it right.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: I go up to Ontario once a year to go fishing.
[00:04:28] Speaker C: Oh, nice.
Where do you live in summer?
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Where do you like to fish? In Ontario?
[00:04:34] Speaker B: It's usually spring or fall is the best fishing. There's a lake called Lake of the woods. It's right on the border with Minnesota in Ontario. It's where that. That cut out juts into Canada, the most northern part of the United States, the lower 48. That's why it's called the North Star State. But that's right on the lake. And it's this gigantic lake that is, I think, the fifth largest lake in the United States after the Great Lakes. If you include the entire surface area. It's gigantic. Just here's one quick piece of trivia. It's so big, it has 50,000 islands.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: That's a big fucking lake.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Some of the islands are only this.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: Big, but it depends on the size of the island. Alan.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah. 1ft across, but still.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Still.
And what do you like? What do you fish in that lake?
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Oh, well, walleye is everyone's favorite, but I also like northern pike. I'll eat that. Actually, I prefer that even more. And muskie is the sport fish.
They're smallmouth bass and crappie.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: How big do these fish get in that lake?
[00:05:46] Speaker B: Well, the muskies get about 50 inches.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Holy shit.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Maybe 40 pounds. But you don't eat those. They're too big. Right. You want the smaller three pound fish.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Why don't you eat the big ones?
[00:06:02] Speaker B: The meat is better when it's about a three year old fish. That's the ideal meat. And it's a good size. There's a good fillet. And the older ones you put back for breeding.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Right. So from the muskie perspective, if they can get past that good eating stage, they have a relatively long life in that lake.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: They got a free rein. Yeah, until it's over.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: When I'm reincarnated.
If for some reason I get dropped into that form, it's good to have that information already at hand.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and, you know, don't bite fake looking fish.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: You might want to come back as a documentarian, Alan.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Indeed.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: I'll tell you, though, the real reason I go there maybe is to get away from people and the Internet and modern living and to just float on a lake with a pole and look at the otters and the birds, the bald eagles, the turtles.
I don't think I'm happier anywhere else than in those moments. And I always think of Lee Marvin. Somebody once asked him, why do you make movies? And he said, I make movies so I can go fishing.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: One of the first things that you talk about, there are a couple of great documentarians who laid the groundwork. Robert Flaherty in 1922 made Nanook of the north, not strictly a documentary as we think of it.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: It's the first feature length documentary. It has that honor. And he, interestingly, he shot it, came back, edited it together. He wasn't real happy with it, and he took a break. I think he left a cigarette burning or something, and he burned down the building it was in and destroyed his footage. So he went back and reshot it in its entirety with the knowledge of what he did wrong the first time. And so the second time he went back and staged everything. He cast the parts with the local Inuit tribe members who are interested in being in a movie. He told them what to do. Basically, he said, do what you normally do. I'm ready to film you now. Catching a seal or building an igloo or sleeping with your multiple wives in the igloo or whatever. And then he took that back, put together what we now watch as this documentary. And that's the first, most influential feature length documentary.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: You also talk about Davis Guggenheim, who made an inconvenient truth and waiting for Superman. He said that he was more interested in whether the movie is authentic and does it feel honest?
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Right. That's the question of what is right. Was it right for Robert Flaherty in Nanook of the north to stage these scenes? Or are documentaries supposed to be pure? What does that even mean, to be pure? My conclusion was that the only true documentary would be candid camera, where someone does not know they're being photographed. Because when you're filming somebody and they know it, they put on a different Persona when the camera's there than they would if they were alone or were unaware that you're making a documentary.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Did Andy Warhol make a movie where he put a camera on the Empire state building for 24 hours? I mean, thats it. And no choices were made whatsoever. Because really, and you point out many times, once you begin making choices, thats a great example.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Such a great example of when you take it to the extreme of you have to be pure, just how boring it can get as a viewing experience.
So were filmmakers, right? Im a filmmaker, even though Im a documentarian. And so I want to create the maximum impact that I can in a viewing audience. Even though I'm using real people and real scenarios, I'm still trying to craft a story out of it.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Indeed, Davis Guggenheim points out that even the great master Frederick Wiseman decides when to turn off the camera, decides whether to shoot down this hallway and not that hallway. There's always an element of subjectivity. There is a storyteller there present.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Right. And to come back to Davis Guggenheim's point, as long as you are presenting a genuine portrait of what it is you're documenting and you're being true to your subject, you can take some creative liberties because you're an artist. To present that information. You're presenting the world through your point of view, like any artist would painting something or writing a book or making a documentary. But when you're not genuine, when you're not authentic, that starts edging into what's called propaganda, where you have a foregone conclusion and you're trying to support that with half truths or even falsehoods, whatever it takes to get your point across. Like Triumph of the Will is one of the original. Early Lena Riefenstahl made documentaries to support the Third Reich before the lead up to World War Two. And now we have, it's a very common place with 2000 mules or cowspiracy where they have conclusions they want to get to. And so they will intentionally leave things out without being accurate or true to the issue or the idea or the truth of a question.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Documentaries do rely on a storyteller.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: You can be like, Michael Moore is probably the most successful documentary filmmaker and he has a very specific point that he's trying to get across. And so you need to have a point of view and an attitude about it. But you have to walk a line where you are being genuine to your subject and not hiding something in order to make a false point.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: I think this is a problem that we have more in America than other places because, for instance, in London, which is still a newspaper culture, but it was a newspaper culture. And it was understood that certain newspapers present, the Guardian, the Independent, those came from a left point of view, whereas the standard and the Times of London, that was a conservative perspective. But you understood that as you sat and you read the publication and everything that was said in it. So there was a context. And yeah, you could contextualize their perspective and why they were saying what they were saying. It actually made the experience better to know that they were being honest, that, all right, here's my perspective. But I think this nonetheless great.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: If you approach it and you say, you need to tell the audience at the beginning, here's my perspective exactly as you say, as opposed to saying, I'm fair and balanced. And what I'm giving you now is fair and balanced when it isn't, when it's your perspective or I'm neutral.
Nobody's neutral. Right? Who's neutral? Maybe Walter Cronkite was neutral and even.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: His neutrality failed him when JFK died and he broke down on the air as much as he would allow himself to break down. But, yeah, that was. Even his neutrality got punctured and suddenly he was emotionally connected to the story he was reporting.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Yeah, he's a human being.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: And really, that's what great documentary documentaries are about.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: That's the money shot. When you find the emotion in humans, when you're interviewing someone or you're pursuing a story and you get to an emotional thing, a moment, a gut punch, and the audience feels it. Now you're in line for, you know, you're in line for a possible award if you make the audience feel something. And that's what you're chasing.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: William Frederick Wiseman, one of the masters?
Did he get Follies? High school welfare?
He terms his style reality fictions.
He emits his own perspective, comes into play, and he admits that all the material is manipulated so that the final film is totally fictional in form, although it's based on real events.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: It is right. It is a fiction because you are creating it. You're constructing it for maximum dramatic impact. The footage that you've collected, you are reconstructing it. So it is fictional, but it's based in real people. That's all. You didn't write lines, probably for all these people. You went there and experienced their lives in some way. But even then, I will make suggestions to people, hey, why don't you say it this way? Or, that was pretty funny, but I missed it. Could you say that again?
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Sure, sure. Yes, yes, yes.
I would bet that Frederick Wiseman's approach would be more hands off. He would never be there.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: No, he gives no suggestion to anyone.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: But it's funny in the pursuit of the truth, which is really what everyone's looking for. One of the next documentarians you mentioned in the early part of the book is Earl Morris. He is almost the antithesis of a Frederick Weissman, because in order to get at the truth, he's almost parsing in the thin blue line, which is an amazing documentary. I mean, the music by Philip Glass is. It's all part of a designed way to try to get at a moment. How did it actually happen?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: He is asking that very question. But he's also setting out to prove that Randall Dale Adams did not kill anybody, that hes innocent. He believed when he started the research for the project, he came across this guy's project, this guy's conviction, and started to think, hey, the whole story is not here. I don't think this guy was guilty. He went and met him and he began investigating and came to the conclusion that he was innocent. And so he's presenting what he found, which was his belief and his perspective, and he ended up getting the guy off eventually. And he invented a whole new style of documentary film with the reenactment. People had never done reenactments like that. In that sense, I mean, you could say Robert Flaherty's entire film was a reenactment. But the way that Errol Morris integrated it was brand new. And now everybody does it. You see it in every documentary, from the Tinder swindler to whatever's next, they're probably doing reenactments.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: In almost every news, everything is used as reenactment. It suddenly it became legit.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's the antithesis of Weissman's approach, the cinema verite approach.
[00:17:00] Speaker C: I knew him years and years ago. I was director of grants for the New York State Council on the Arts a long, long time ago.
And he came to us looking for money. And those were the days when documentaries were not very popular. They weren't in vogue. It was very difficult to get financing. Could you talk a little bit about what that journey's been like and what filmmakers are going through today? If any young filmmakers who are listening to this podcast, who are documentarians but don't know how to get to first base, or if they get the first base, they can't get the full financing and so they're stuck. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what that journey is like and also how that journey has shifted and changed.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Let me rephrase your question in this way. What's the hardest part about making documentaries? It's getting the money.
Absolutely.
[00:17:55] Speaker C: You could say that about the motion. All motion pictures are television. It's always about that. But you can do certain things with fiction that you can't do with a documentarian work, which makes it more difficult.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Frederick Weissman said to me this advice. He said, if you want to make a documentary, Mary Rich.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: That'S excellent.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: He's still, he says every film. And Ken Burns said the exact same thing to this day, every film. He's still scrambling to get finishing funds, to get enough money to finish every project. So even when you're that successful, you're still seeking out financing sources. And my last two most recent documentaries, the nature of existence and the truth about marriage, both ended up being self financed because I couldn't close a deal to get financing. And I tried. So I was forced to. I wanted to finish the project. And so that's one reason it took me four years to finish the nature of existence, because I went off and edited or directed other projects to make money. And that's what Davis Guggenheim said he does. He goes and he'll go direct to pilot or something to make enough money to finance his ability to develop new projects. And then I would come back to it. The truth about marriage took me seven years to finish and finance. The funny thing is they cost me almost exactly the same amount of money. Actually, all my documentaries, the hard costs were probably about one hundred twenty thousand dollars to one hundred fifty thousand dollars by the time I was done. And you could do it for a lot less if there's no traveling. And if you don't submit to film festivals if you get lucky and if you own the equipment and you don't have to pay people. For me, it's buying the equipment and traveling that adds up.
Film festivals, submission fees. I spent $7,000 alone on submission fees for the truth about marriage just to submit to 150 film festivals. Because if I want to get into ten festivals, I've got to submit to 100 because I've got about a 10% response rate. That's what my films get. Ten to 15%, which I hear is pretty good. It's really hard to get into. Less than 1% of the films submitted to Sundance get in.
It's so 99%. Those are long odds against.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: It's almost worse than being a spur, for fuck's sake.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: A very good analogy. It's like, I'm going to do it. You have to be that persistent, that one sperm or that one filmmaker that is so persistent, you're going to see it over the finish line, no matter what it takes. If you've got to spend your own money or sacrifice your time and your weekends, your relationships, whatever, you get it done.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: You have broken types of documentary down into 123456 plus one, six types of documentaries.
As you. Because this is a textbook, and I imagine, as people.
Yes. I'd like to be a documentarian. I've got this idea. How do I. How do I think of this idea? Part of the genius of this book is it kind of helps you frame the nature of the story you might be thinking about. You mentioned expository, poetic, observational, participatory, performative, and reflexive.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Yeah, and I didn't come up with that list. I'm recounting. This is what's understood of different types. I added mockumentary to the list.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Yes, that was the. And one.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: And then I took all that and said, you know what? That's really academic, and it's kind of confusing. Let's throw that out. Really, all you need to know is there's two kinds. Like, there's two kinds of people in the world, right? There's two kinds of documentaries, narrative and concept documentary. And a narrative documentary is just like it sounds. You're telling a story, usually about one person or a protagonist or a small group of people who have a goal, and there's an antagonist or opposition to their goal. And so you wonder, will they reach it? Is it like, maybe it's in sports? Will they win the big game or somebody who's a murderer or accused of this or that? So you've got the verdict. So you know, that's the ending you're working toward. And the narrative story is going to take you there and you build a three act or multi act structure, just like you would with a screenplay. While you're planning your filming and in the editing room to achieve this narrative rising action to a climax and a denouement of same as you're writing a screenplay, then the concept documentaries, which are the ones I tend to make, which are much harder and for some masochistic reason I like it.
That's where you just have an idea that you're going to probe a premise.
You ask a core question at the very beginning, for example, with the nature of existence. My core question was, why do we exist? So I asked that at the beginning, which promises an answer at the end. And that's what gets people to stick around to watch the investigator or the protagonist or the filmmaker or whomever answer the question. Food Inc. Is a great example where they ask the question, why is corporate farming of food so harmful to human beings? Now we're going to show you, and here's our evidence and here's what we found out. And you stick around to see them reveal the answer at the end. It's a lot harder to hold an audience for 90 minutes for a concept than it is for a person. I asked Ken Burns the same question. I said, ken, how do you make a documentary about a thing like the Brooklyn Bridge, which was his first documentary, which was nominated for an Academy Award. And he said, you can't, you cannot make documentaries about things. You make it about people. So the documentary is about the people, the family, the Roebling family that built the Brooklyn Bridge and all the trials and tribulations and the challenges they had, the near death experiences to getting that bridge completed. That's what's gripping to people and that's what will hold attention in a concept documentary.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: You also quote Peter Bogdanovich going back to earlier point you were making about the difference between fiction, fictional stories and a documentary. With a narrative you write it, then shoot it. With a documentary, you shoot it, then write it is.
It's almost. Well, you know, the famous story about Annie hall was that it was an absolute fucking mess until Ralph Rosenblum turned it into an Academy Award winning movie. And this is true of a lot of movies. They don't get made until they hit the editing group.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Well, that's the thesis of my prior book, cut to the monkey, was that you should choose your editor just as carefully as you choose your writer because the editor is doing the final rewrite on the script. And so if your editor is not a good writer, or, like if with Annie hall, if there. If he's a good writer, he's going to improve what you give him, as opposed to make it worse or make.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: It bland, the person cutting it needs to be as good, if not better, a storyteller than the director. Because really, the editor also has a whole layer of technology that they can take this, that they can put into the storytelling if you just let them or give them enough hints as to what you want.
Yeah. No, it is such an essential part. God, it really is. That is where. That's where the magic happens, provided you have the bits and pieces to work with.
When we were doing Bordello of blood, I think the one nice moment that I can think of doing Bordello of Blood was watching Bob z cut in a scene that we never shot.
That suggests that there was a sexual relationship between the monster and the heroine.
We never shot such a thing, but he put it together with bits and pieces of film. He needed one pickup of just a body crossing in front of just to tie the two together.
And not only did he do it, he did. He gleefully the whole time, because he saw how to take these bits and pieces and turn them into a piece of story that we didn't even have.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: The filmmakers or the showrunners I worked with love it when I come up with a joke. They never wrote that. It comes out of the editing process.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Well, in the editing process, it's just doing dialogue, editing you all kinds of ways. You can impact the timing of a joke or even a piece of dramatic material. You can make it more or less more dramatic or less dramatic, depending on where it sits relative to the line before it.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I spend a lot of time improving diction and clarity because especially with the premise, with the setup to a punchline, you would think that, like, on curb your enthusiasm, you'd think that we. The obsession is with, we got to punch this up. We got to make this funnier.
And with Larry David, it's the opposite. It's usually, if the joke isn't landing, we've got to fix the setup because the punchline's fine. But people, the viewer did not process sufficiently what the setup was so that the punchline could land. And so oftentimes we would rewrite a sentence to make it more condensed, more concise and specific. And then Larry would loop it over the back of his head so it's a better setup. And then the scene is that or that joke is so much funnier.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: But you're still fixing it in post, aren't you?
[00:28:02] Speaker B: As so many things. So much is going on, so much rewriting and fixing and changing and new ideas, and, oh, I wish we had shot this. I mean, you can't think of everything, but you think of a lot of new things in post.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Gosh.
And because the editing equipment now can do so many things, toss in a little bit of aih. Well, there's not a whole lot you can't do, really, if you put your mind to it.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a new thing called a fluid morph, which now editors use all the time, where I'll take somebody who's speaking, and then maybe they make a mistake, or there's a big pause, I'll cut the pause out and then jump cut them and then put a fluid morph on it so it hides the seam of the jump cut. And so the viewer doesn't know that I took out a 1 second pause out of this line that's delivered from one angle.
Everything's sped up. Faster, faster. Comedy is funnier. Comedy and even in drama, if you speed everything up, then when you do pause, it has that much more impact because you've chosen, now is the time to pause. Not in that moment where the actor blew their line and took away the energy. I want to save the momentum so I can pause here dramatically.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Jack Benny would disagree with you, but.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Get him on the show. Let's talk.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: Oh, wouldn't that be. Wouldn't that be excellent?
Oh, taunt us, why don't you?
Is he buried here in LA? We can go dig him up.
We're not beyond that.
Among the other terrific documentarians that you talk about, there was Da Pennebaker, Michael Moore. You mentioned Ken Burns, of course. And Ken Burns, really, he changed the way that we make documentaries because he brought photos to life. He created the Ken Burns effect.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a word for it, right? It's in your computer editing system, the Ken Burns effect, named after him with what used to be called animatics.
We used to have to shoot these things physically, where there's a plate and then a camera above it, pointing down at it. That's on a rig that can move three dimensionally, left, right, up and down. And you program in a move. So I want to start wide and then move in slowly to a tight close up on the eye and keeping it in focus the entire time. Or the reverse, move from the eye to this other person and then pull out wide. You design these moves, and then I. You can cut it into your show where each segment of the shot is full resolution, whereas now they do a lot of that digitally. They do digital moves, but you might not have full resolution in that tight close up. And so they still do physical animatics. Ken Burns says he often, when they're editing offline, he said they usually try to avoid doing digital moves with temporary photos that are not full resolution. They say, at least get the full resolution photo that's been scanned at the highest resolution possible, and then we'll look at the scans, and then the next step is to go back to the old style and just film it physically so that you have the entirety of the move. He said he loves to have a wide shot and a medium shot and a close up all from one photograph. And you can get more, he said, out of a photo of Babe Ruth than you can with motion picture footage of him running the bases, because then it's just him running the bases. But with the camera, you can program in the move you want and emphasize the part you want, talk about his childhood or his difficulty with women or his drinking problem, or whatever you want. All from this one photo. With movement, well, you can zoom in on detail and whatever you need to tell the story.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Babe Ruth's running around the bases is a wide shot telling one, one very particular story. But when you can zoom in on particular things, well, now you're layers of the onion.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: So that's a tool that. Yeah, that's named after Ken Burns now that everyone uses. Very common. And it's helpful. It's helpful for. It's just a storytelling tool. And as a documentarian, you need to absorb all the tools, so you know what is available to you. When I first started out, and I didn't know, and I had to sort of figure it out as I went along. And in that sense, I invented a few things. Sort of like, you know, Citizen Kane, Orson Welles. Not to compare myself to Orson Welles, but he came from radio and then went into film not knowing what his limitations were, and created this film, this masterpiece, Citizen Kane, with the intensity of someone creating a radio play with no limits to the visuals. And he did things no one ever thought of before, like digging deep trenches and using super wide angle lenses that he worked out with Greg Toland, his cinematographer, they figured out the physics of how they could get these shots with deep focus, and it changed filmmaking going forward because he was sort of naive about it. And as time went on, he never equaled that again.
And so that's I guess a risk, but part of the being a documentarian is having this bag of tricks, this tool belt of how to approach filmmaking without a script in advance. Or maybe you've got an outline, you've got a hope or a plan of some kind, or at least a theme of the idea you're trying to tell. But how are you going to best get that across to an audience and you go to your tool belt.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: I'm going to assume that the, the documentarian who wants to become this has a piece of material that's good. Let's give them that to begin with, you are filled with amazingly good suggestions. And this comes from someone who's been on the producing end. Who knows, man, when things can fuck up in every imaginable way, you say one amazing piece, amazing piece of advice. Triple check everything.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah. Boy, I've made that mistake. I've learned that lesson. I didn't double check the rental of a van and I had a crew standing around waiting for me, looking at me for my screw up because I didn't double check the van rental. So now I'm scrambling to get a new van. But when you're going to interview somebody, especially if it's a very important subject that you booked and you're lucky to have them sitting down for an interview, maybe it's a big star sports legend or something. Before you get there, when you're at home, practice, set up a chair, set up the lights, plug in the audio, test your levels, and practice interview your friend, your wife, yourself. Have someone interview you. So you're sitting on both sides so by the time you get there, it's second nature. Plugging everything in and what you're going to do, you've had a run through so that you can now focus on the questions and the conversation that you're hoping to generate some electricity with your interview subject. It's much easier when you have a six person crew around you, of course, helping you. But many times it's been just me with my camera. I'm doing everything. I'm riding the levels. I have to remember to shut off the autofocus so it doesn't throw it out of focus. I've got to keep an eye on the changing light. If the sun moves, suddenly the light changes. This has happened to me before. I set it up. It's perfect. And then the sun moved by the time I'm five minutes into the interview, and now he's too dark, and I didn't notice at the time. And so I went back and re interviewed. Luckily, this particular psychologist I interviewed for the truth about marriage was kind enough to do it the interview a second time. But that's embarrassing, right? And so practice so that you are ready, and it's second nature by the time you're sitting down with somebody.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: You mentioned that even when you have a director of photography and sometimes multiple camera operators, you like to operate one of the cameras yourself very often, yeah.
[00:36:20] Speaker B: I'll have a camera and or my producer will have a camera. Everybody pitches in. Whoever has a steady hand, you find out who's got the steady hand on the crew, and sometimes it's a surprise who does and who doesn't. Some people are terrible. They just can't hold a camera steady. And others are natural. My composer, Billy Sullivan, he turned out to be my best camera operator, and he never operates cameras. I would set up the camera and put it in his hands and have him hold the B camera, and I'd get back to the editing room, and his footage would be rock solid and well balanced and framed.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Okay. But he understood how to use this device to get the story.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: Innately. It just came to him innately. And then my producer, also on the same project, he could not hold it steady.
It just wasnt in him to keep his hand. His hands needed some kind of Adderall cream or something to focus on what hes doing, but he couldnt do it. And so youll learn over time, whos good at what. And even though, as a composer, that wasn't his job, he traveled with me. Billy Sullivan, my composer, went with me to China and was my b camera for that whole trip. And that footage is great. And he's such a great team member because he has multiple roles that he's good at. And you find out, but also, don't be a big shot. Use a tripod.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Does seeing a the story through the lens of the camera make you feel.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: More connected to it while interviewing or after?
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Well, while interviewing, yeah, while interviewing.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: For me, it's always, I sort of have no idea what I'm getting. I'm almost oblivious. And it isn't until I get back to the editing room, I look at the footage and go, oh, my gosh. Look at this moment. Like there's a moment in trekkies where this, that everybody references, where this kid Gabriel is being interviewed, and suddenly the phone rings right next to him.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: Oh, for God's sakes. I'll get that. You're the one that told me, hello, Peter. This is the worst time you could have called. Go away. Okay, bye.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: And at the time, it was just an interruption. I thought, oh, he just ruined the take. That idiot who called when I got back and looked at the footage, it's hysterical. And I kept it in, and everyone notices it. It became this kid's catchphrase. To this day at Star Trek conventions, he still says to people, and people prompt him to say, this is the worst time you could have called.
[00:38:59] Speaker A: Another great piece of advice you give, and I second this and I third this. Ask why?
[00:39:08] Speaker B: Yeah. That's your best question. Why do you believe that? Why do you think that the worst question is a yes or no question.
Do you like being a doctor? Yes. And then everything stops because it's a one word answer. Better to say, talk about why you like being a doctor. Now, you set them off and running, and they're looking inward for reasons and giving you things that they didn't even maybe even think about, know about themselves.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: That's the nature of why. Because you can push why. And there's usually, there are layers to why. Well, I did this because of that, because of this, because of that. And when you suddenly dig down underneath a bunch of those levels to the core, why?
Well, that's where human beings really live.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Do you remember my core question on the nature of existence?
Why do we exist?
Now, thats an unanswerable question. Because it implies there is a reason. And I was corrected by the particle physicists and the cosmologists who told me that thats not a correct question.
The correct question is, how did we come to exist? Okay. That we have a shot at answering why presupposes theres a reason or a guiding force behind it. And now youre talking about mythology or fairy tales, you know, the man in the moon, and it was, you know, some fate or something that's unprovable and unanswerable.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: What's the mechanism?
[00:40:44] Speaker B: Exactly. And they can, then they'll talk about that. What happened 14.7, or what was it? No, 13.7 billion years ago when the Big Bang happened? And what exactly happened in that moment? And that's what they're, they're looking for.
And how did that lead to human beings lined up at McDonald's? Something happened in those intervening billions of years.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Something made the Big Mac happen.
You say, read distribution contracts carefully. Have a lawyer and your film agent review contracts. License a film, don't sell it.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: Right. Be an owner. Yes. License the product that you own. I know a filmmaker that to this day kicks himself because he sold his film to a distributor, which means its gone forever.
And you dont want that. You want to be the owner. Like with Trekkies, we own it. We sold it to Paramount for a 20 year license. It wouldve been 25 if it was unrecooped, but it was in profit. So it was a 20 year license. Normally you want a two, four, five year license, maybe seven. I wouldnt go beyond seven ever, unless they're paying a lot of money, and then they've earned the right to go to 20 years. That's the reason. But in either case, we still own trekkies, me and my partners, forever. And so it reverted to us, and we relicensed it to another company at that point and continue to make royalties because of that reason. And so, yes, read your contracts.
It's tempting when they put that distribution contract in front of you to just skim over it or, I don't understand this.
Read it carefully and you can make changes. You can suggest changes, nothing. They'll try to give you the typical Stonewall of, well, we never do that.
Our company's never given that point. We've never given that thing. Everything is negotiable. There's no such thing as precedent.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: They'll say, there is indeed. I would say read it carefully because they wrote it carefully, right.
[00:42:55] Speaker B: And they're writing it to benefit themselves, not you.
Filmmakers are creative, and so they want to get onto creative endeavors, not reading contracts. And so then that's why you have an attorney or a film rep who will help you, guide you through that product, that project, that part of the project.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: And the horrifying news is lawyers can be creative in their own way.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yes, they're smart.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: And that's why you have to read every word that's there, or you'll learn the hard way that, oh, because of the words you didn't read. Now something is happening that is not to your advantage.
[00:43:32] Speaker B: I've learned some lessons, and so I made a list in the book of everything to watch out for. Here's what to ask for this. Ask for this other thing. Watch out for this.
And so at least whoever reads the book, they'll be forewarned, forearmed to some degree about knowing what to ask for, because half of negotiation is just don't be afraid to ask.
Ask for everything. Ask for the biggest number. And then you'll, you know, you'll meet in the middle somewhere. But if you start in the middle, you're going to meet below the middle.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Finally, you've got all the hard work done, you've made all your deals, you've got your project, its done, its finished. Now youve got to sell it. And your advice is be as prepared as NASA when launching your selling process.
[00:44:25] Speaker B: Trey?
Yeah, its probably going to take longer and be more expensive than you have any concept of. I mean, it took us nine months to sell Trekkies to Paramount. You would have thought they would have picked it up immediately. Right. Thats everyone think. Well, of course it would. They were the last one to look at it. We couldn't even get them to look at it until we had an offer from universal. So you need to get multiple offers. Or if you don't have multiple offers, if you have a single offer, it's going to be a low offer because why should they pay you any more than minimum if no one else is vying for your film?
So if you have a film rep, for instance, they'll know this and they know they want to get your film out to all the buyers, the viable companies, all at pretty much the same time and ideally get multiple interest. Or you hold everything back and just screen it first. If you get into Sundance, you win the lottery or south by southwest or Toronto or Tribeca.
Then you wait because the reps will be there, the scouts will be at those particular festivals. They're at some festivals. They're not at most festivals, but they're certain festivals where they will be and they'll be in competition and they'll see your film with an audience where it'll be much hotter. The response will be stronger. You'll have a better hand if you do sit down at the negotiating table because of that. But you don't need a film festival to sell your film. You just need the fortitude to stick it out and to make sure it gets sold, you'll find a buyer. If your film is good, you'll find a home for it, but it may take a while.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: Patience is always, that's an important part of being successful most of the time. Being at the right place at the right time usually involves being at the right place at the wrong time up until that moment. Trey.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: Plus being thorough, getting it out to every possible avenue that could be interested in it.
[00:46:25] Speaker A: Trey, another piece of advice you give. You don't actually use these words, but this, but you use the treasure of the sierra madre. So you're saying don't be greedy.
[00:46:36] Speaker B: Yeah. What's that phrase they use on Wall street? Bears win and bulls win, but pigs lose.
You have to know when to close and if you wait too long or you ask too much, you could lose the heat that you've built up to get to that point, we were constantly wondering, did we wait too long? Are we asking too much? Should we just settle at this point, or I, should we hold out for this negotiating point that's so important to us? A theatrical release? Should we just give up on the theatrical release? Should we give up on the 60% of home video or just accept 30%? Should we, should the distributor be able to take 35% or 20% commission?
You want to chop your numbers down or up, depending on whether it benefits you. Like you want a lower commission and a higher minimum guarantee. The mG, the MG, the minimum guarantee. You want the highest advance possible and the lowest commission, distributor commission possible.
But eventually you might tire them out and they'll say, oh, it's just not worth it. These guys are crazy. So, yeah, it's gut instinct. You got to trust your gut.
[00:47:49] Speaker A: I once had a creative partner on a project who named Matt Hastings, who did that, who literally a six week negotiation took six months. And by the time it was done, they didnt even want any.
[00:48:00] Speaker B: Yeah, theyre going to think, do we need to, do we even want to be in business with this crazy person?
Somebody once said to me, yeah, but Im getting screwed if I do this deal. I said, thats what you want. If youre getting screwed in Hollywood, that means youre making deals. Get screwed, then move on to the next one.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: It's the hardest piece of advice to give, in essence, because you're always looking at, hey, the other guy, the guy on the other side of the negotiation, the person on the other side of the negotiation.
It would not be out of reason to think that they're a little bit greedy, especially if it's, and they are.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: They are greedy.
[00:48:42] Speaker A: They're more than greedy. They're taking greed to places you can't even imagine. And so it's a, it's a qualified, don't be greedy.
[00:48:55] Speaker B: That's why you get help from a good lawyer, a good film rep, good advice from other filmmakers, or read my book and you'll be better prepared.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: The last piece of advice you give, I think, is it's the best in a way. It's never stop creating.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Yeah. What is the, I mean, retirement? What does that even mean? If I'm going to retire someday, does that mean I'm going to sit in a chair and watch game shows until I have a stroke?
No. To me, the definition of retirement would be okay. Now I'm no longer going to work on anyone else's projects. I'm going to work on my own all day long until I'm dead.
But it's pretty hard to do that. You have to work. I do. You know, you've got to have a cash flow. And so I try to choose work where I can be creative every day, even if I'm helping someone else's vision, which is great. Editing a great show like veep, or I'm editing a show for Netflix, for a Netflix series right now called the Residents. And it's so much fun. I love it. I love editing these episodes, and it allows me to be creative every day. And so. But I'll back up a little bit and give you my philosophical reason for why it's so important. And I learned this while making the nature of existence.
I learned while pursuing the question of what's the point of life, what's our purpose? While we are here looking at the universe, it's filled with destruction and creation. There are stars being born, there are stars dying all the time. It's the natural cycle, right?
We, as humans are part of the universe, and we can align ourselves, our energy, with either creation or destruction. It's easy to destroy things, to critique, to tear things down, to stamp on things, to bring others down, to steal their joy, to smash things, to blow things up, to ruin. That's easy. And it feels fun at the moment you're doing it, but afterward, it doesn't leave you fulfilled, I don't think. Whereas if you choose creation, building things, designing things, writing new things, making pottery or painting a picture, designing a house, an architect or a business plan, or a new dance, whatever it is, you're being creative in some way, you're aligning yourself with creation and not destruction. It ends in some kind of a tangible product that you show to your social group, whether it's now, it's on Facebook or wherever, and you get positive feedback, you get enjoyment because you've shared your perspective on life in some creative way, and people have seen it, and maybe it's impressed them or changed them in some way, and it propels you forward to do it again and again until you're no longer mobile and you can't lift your hands anymore if you're in a box. But until that day, you should be creative every single day, because that's the point of existence. The purpose of existence is to be creative. And that it's in it. The process of being creative makes you happy. And when people say, what's the secret to being happy? What's the secret to happiness?
That's the wrong question. The real question is, what is my purpose in life? And once you have your purpose, once you're doing it, happiness is a side effect of being creative, following your purpose. For most people in life, what happens is you grow up, you're very creative in school and art class and on the playing field. Then you get married and you have a baby. And now this baby, this child is your new creation, which you're going to raise up to, hopefully a better version of yourself and then launch it. That's the goal. And until age 18, it's your responsibility. Unless they stay in your basement for another 50 years and they never, you.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: Know, failure to launch, that is the new reality. That is not some, that is how a lot of people, hello? I don't have a basement. So.
[00:52:59] Speaker B: But yeah, that's what can happen. But eventually that fledgling version of yourself launches and now you're back to where you started. Well, what's the point for me now? And a lot of times people, they take up hobbies and pottery classes and painting classes because they've rediscovered the need. I need to be creative because what I created is, I've launched that product. Now I've got to create something else to feel happy and content with who you are in life. And for me, it's writing, editing, making films, making work, podcasts. Any creative endeavor at all, if you do it daily, will bring you happiness.
[00:53:40] Speaker A: Preach.
Preach, brother. Preach, brother. When does the documentary, and it's got a subtitle, doesn't it?
[00:53:49] Speaker B: It does.
The way to a successful and creative professional life.
It comes out September of this year.
[00:53:58] Speaker A: 2024, and I assume it will be available everywhere.
[00:54:03] Speaker B: It's available right now for pre order at your favorite bookseller. And I'll be at book soup on September 23 signing autographs. The little book release party.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome, awesome.
It really is a terrific, it's a terrific book because like I said, of all the information that's in it, it really, you are thorough is an understatement. This is authoritative, really, from. It doesn't matter whether you're making a documentary or whether you're making a regular old feature film. A lot of that, virtually every last bit that information goes either way. It, this is how to, how to make a movie, frankly.
And thrown in are some fantastic stories about how you've gone through making your documentaries, trekkies especially, and having, having to scat through it. I really didn't get a chance to, to savor it, but I plan to because, you know, I was in a hurry to read your damn book. You know, I had to just grab things, and I'm stopping to read the stories. You motherfucker.
[00:55:17] Speaker B: It's grabbing you. That's good.
[00:55:19] Speaker C: That's good.
[00:55:19] Speaker B: That's what it's hoping to do.
[00:55:21] Speaker A: It really is. It really is good. It is, it is. It's a terrific story inside a textbook.
[00:55:30] Speaker B: I just. Thank you. And I really just sort of applied what I learned as a documentarian to the book. And as you noticed, I interviewed other documentarians and gathered their wisdom in the same way I would have done with a camera and then edited down to their bits and bytes of great wisdom.
[00:55:46] Speaker A: Are you thinking of turning it into a documentary?
[00:55:50] Speaker B: Hey, I'm open to anything. I don't say no to any good idea.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: Well, it would make. Actually, it would make a fantastic documentary.
Yeah. Just talking to the other documentarians, but also the nuts and bolts.
For us, that was essentially the most important part. It's your attention to the detail, as per the nuts and bolts, because, really, that's where you're going to live and die.
[00:56:14] Speaker B: Well, here's a piece of advice to young filmmakers who might be listening to this. Keep a journal of all your industry related and lifestyle related experiences. You don't know what you'll need in the future, and you may want to refer back to exactly what was said in a particular pitch meeting or on the set while you're making your short film.
All of this richness that I was able to go back and get was only because I wrote it down when it happened. At the time, I would have never remembered these details if I didn't keep a journal. So keep a journal.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: But then you've always been a documentarian. One way or the other.
[00:56:55] Speaker B: It's a form of madness.
[00:56:57] Speaker A: Oh, isn't it all?
Thank you so much for coming back to visit us, and your book really is terrific.
[00:57:07] Speaker B: Wow, I'm thrilled. Thank you for the invitation. What a nice surprise to be back again.
[00:57:13] Speaker A: When I looked at the book, I suddenly thought, this is one plus one equals 30.
So thank you again, Roger. And we still got to do that. I still want to do that. We wanted to do a podcast about Scott Nimblefield, but that's a conversation for another day.
Someday we should have lunch again.
We'll get to that.
[00:57:39] Speaker B: Yes. To everything. Always, yes.
[00:57:40] Speaker A: In the meantime, thank you again, Roger, and we'll see you next time, everybody.
[00:57:45] Speaker B: All right, thanks.
[00:57:47] Speaker A: The how not to make a movie podcast is executive produced by me, Alan Katz, by Gil Adler, and by Jason Steiner. Our artwork was done by the amazing Jody Webster and Jason Jody, along with Mando, are all the hosts of the fun and informative dads from the Crypt podcast. Follow them for what my old pal the Crypt keeper would have called terrific crypt content.
