Transcript

You've got to figure out the story that you tell because you must. Not not because it seemed like a good idea or you could get people to watch. You have

to tell the story that you must tell because you think you can tell it. Everybody only has one story to tell, one true through line. And the stories

that we always tell these stories about artists are about art. And it's somebody most of the time that has this achievement kind of loses that place in

the art world, which everybody does. and then has some kind of redemption. That's our story. I'm really excited to say that today's uh episode, it's going to be interactive

with Click. Uh on Click, you're able to answer polls, provide your opinions, ask questions, answer questions, just get a more immersive experience as if you're

actually there and a part of the conversation. Uh if you're interested, please click on the link down below and I will see you there. You guys share

stories of very well-known artists and some who have been lost through time. What are some of the differences between telling the stories of very well-known

artists and those who aren't?

I think that um they have one thing in common and that is that the unknown artists haven't had that moment of of recognition of joy. So, they're still

kind of in the meer and the and the uh the well-known artists uh have had that moment of recognition but have slipped back into a place that doesn't lend

itself to them being very wellknown. So, at the time that we try to tell the stories, we are at all times looking for

uh somebody who who maybe had a moment and lost it or hasn't had a moment yet, but we expect might. And so we're trying

to catch them at that tro, try to and then we try to go with them either to a new place or we try to go with them

after they've been to, you know, a great moment and try to regenerate that place. The films help artists a lot that way. Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, they're

all unknown, even the well-known. Uh I mean, that's the only way we can approach the project, right? Because we are looking for what people don't know.

They may know an aspect of somebody's life, right? Or they may have seen the work, but they don't really know the person behind the work. And so that's

where we come in, right? And we're curious just like um any member of our audience would be. So we want to know these people. That's why we do these

projects, right? And and the artists that we work with are generally not wellknown. Um uh because those stories are are, you know, they kind of are harder to tell,

frankly. the the unknown artists, the well-known artists, you can go to, you know, a clip file. They don't have clip files anymore, but you can go to the

internet and you can learn all about them immediately. It takes very little time. But these artists, there's a lot of exploring to do. You're trying to

think about what was their psychological makeup at the time that they were having either a great moment or aspiring to a great moment. So, um, it's it's it's a

more interesting story to tell, I think, than than, uh, we, you know, we're able to do that. We're able to go in because we just uh do all of our our uh our

films ourselves. We're able to go in and look for the story that is just a little different. Yeah. I mean, I I really like that

approach. Like regardless of the status of the artist, you guys are treating each project going in and is like exploring that unknown aspect. Now when

it comes to you know you guys are dealing with the stories of artists who are both alive and dead too. What are

the initial strategies you guys take in order to explore and to find out the stories of these artists? It's interesting because I think most of

the ones we've done lately is have been you know have been artists that are no longer with us. Um so I have to yeah I

have to go back and think we've done you know we've done music right dogs then is where the people are very much alive very much in the making in the process

of making work right and that's really fascinating so you were asking Michael what are the different approaches yeah like the how you guys initially

approach each project okay I I I think from a uh from an approach. One of the things I always

worry about before I commit to any film is what are the assets? What is available? And uh with a living artist, of course, you always have that

protagonist. In most cases, you have that protagonist available to you to be able to either be the person that will lead you through the process or be able

to give you back filling, backstory, things like that. When when we're making films of an artist that has passed, it is I'm very careful about that to not

select a story in which I don't have some kind of I I I use traditional assets mostly traditional archival

footage, audio archival. Um photographs are generally not enough. I've always got to have something else to go with it. Um, in the film we

recently just released together, George V, uh, we were able to get from George's friends who had been sitting th this box

had been sitting in a closet for 50 years. And in the box were films that George had made about himself and uh, people that he was both friends and

almost family with. That's just a gift from the gods when you get that. You know, one of the joy uh joyful aspects of the film is George dancing around and

George making his art and things like that. You know, if you don't have that, it's very hard to create texture in the film. And so, um um when we made the

film about Clifford Still, a very well-known abstract expressionist artist from the 1950s, I got into the project and um I looked up and I said, "Man, I

might be in a little trouble here. There's a lot of photography. There's the art." And we'll talk about that in a minute. But what else is there? And I

got lucky because they found during the shoot, during the making of the film, which took almost I don't know what five years maybe I think. Um they found both

34 hours of audio and 28 minutes of of Super Eight movies of him home like any family would shoot back then. You know, that was a thing. You had a Super Eight

camera and you kind of cranked it and you shot your family and it humanized him greatly and the film turned out completely. I mean it liberated Dia to

tell both sides of the story in the edit. Assets are key. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes we have them in the start and sometimes as Dennis

mentioned they will pop up in the process of making something. So there's a lot of you know uh happy accidents as we call them where we're like okay we're

committed. we're making this work and we don't know what we're going to find right in in the process and things find us you know which is I think what's the

beauty of taking your time with these projects you know that's that's something that we have been good about kind of like waiting for you know for

the project to be ready for us in a way you know the longer we take the luckier we get you know in terms of the word seeps out

you know we don't push the projects until they're But people ask both of us all the time, what are you working on? We do things like this and they say,

well, what are you working on next? You know, and the word begins to percolate out and suddenly you get that fortuitous wonderful phone call and somebody says,

you know, I got this box of stuff in my closet. You know, you might be interested. And you're like, yes. So, it is D is right. The longer we wait, the

better we get. Yeah. Especially in documentary film making, you guys are talking about what 34 hours or 28 hours of audio and then

the 30 minutes of of video and things kind of coming together over time allowing the story their lives to kind of digest

amongst yourselves over time. It probably creates new possibilities and different arcs to the story. And you know, one thing I'm I'm I'm very curious

about, you guys are dealing with these large files and boxes of every single artist. How do you guys go through all that

information and select what pieces you want to include in the story? I don't have to say a word. That's all you know, I uh I become a collector of

things that um you know, the the production basically ends up living with me. So I have uh Dennis, I have a lot of stuff that I need to return to you by

the way from our last project. Um but you know I I mean we take things as as they arrive to us and we'll take them in any state

and then as we hone into the story right and and we start to structure our story we go back and at least for you know um

our our last project Naked Ambition right we had practically you know I don't know like thousands of photographs

to to our availability but um they were digitized at different stages and they were at different formats. Maybe you know I have access to the negative, I

have access to the print and maybe we have access you know to several prints and several digital formats. So it's a task. It becomes really a task but uh we

take everything we organize everything and then it's really a task at the end of finishing a project where you have to go back and be like okay now let's

select the best copy available to us and I have to say this is where we're really lucky to have a team where we're able to

recruit assistants and you know help us with that process because it's extremely timeconuming. So you've gone through the process of like putting the story

together, right? Editing, organizing, figuring out what you want to say and then comes the technical task of making sure that every asset that you have it's

it's presented in the best format possible, right? So we've learned a lot. But I have to say we were lucky enough to work with some professionals in the

past um like Prudence Art who did archival work for us with Clifford Steel and she's amazing and she was a great teacher for me in terms of like how to

keep everything organized, how to keep everything labeled so that you don't lose track of your assets. We also um we have an we have a community uh

organization in town called the Wolfson archive and that is a place where the Wolfson family who owned the first television station in in Miami have

donated all of the original reels from the 50s on forward till you know 40s even on forward and what they'll do for us is we will bring them the footage in

whatever format it is and they have every single uh uh technology to be able to take the footage and and uh put it on a digitized

version. So, for example, in in in Naked Ambition, you saw a couple of times where the footage had clearly been eaten by like wolves or something, you know,

it was all chewed up and all kind of u bacteria everywhere. It was like a, you know, and we were able to use some of

that footage because it just puts you in that place. it put you in the 1950s and um you know it was a little hard to see

but I can't tell you how many people came up to us and said ah you know that really made me understand kind of that

moment where you were and what what was going on and and uh so we're not afraid to use footage that isn't uh of the

highest broadcast quality. Dia said it perfectly. We use what we get and we use it in ways that make it make sense for what it is. You know, a lot of times

people are looking for perfect footage and if they don't have it, they won't use it. In in the Naked Ambition example, um Dia Dia looked at me and she

goes, "It's just too much." You know, I mean, who would ever as a as a filmmaker say, "I have too much great footage." But it is sometimes because it's just

like when you're shooting, you can do an interview with somebody that's 400 hours. But you got to watch it all, you know, and you got to look at it. You got

to find out what's best. So as judicious as you used to have to be with film and I never used film. I I was you know I

didn't come into film making until about 16 years ago. So um when you use film you were very judicious about it. You had a tight script. You asked your

questions carefully. Um and in digital you can just sit there all day and meander around and not do it. But then you go to the editor and say you know

like here's a 17-hour interview with your subject and they go what do you want me to do with this? You know, so we we actually start out with pretty tight

parameters as to what we're going to chase, you know, and then we leave oursel open as Dia said, the happy surprise. Yeah. And especially in in Naked

Ambition, not using the perfect footage. It Well, actually, to me, it felt perfect. I mean, I got a sense of what it was like in Miami in the 1950s during

this revolution and Bunny Jagger being at the forefront of it. Like I was walking in Bunny Jagger's shoes and and being one of her being one with her

story of first being a model and then being the prettiest photographer out there as well. Yeah, I'm laughing because uh sorry some of my

students they were asking me it's like oh what kind of effects did you use here? you know, looking at the film and it it's funny to me that there's a

generation of of people who don't know what film looks like after, you know, after a certain amount of time that it it's a physical medium. It it is, you

know, is subject to to the elements and um they thought we went and created an effect on this. No, no, no. That makes me very happy.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's uh some sort of resurgence of people wanting to see vintage film. Like I see a lot of people

shooting with older cameras to capture that aesthetic. It gives like an old time an old time feel like a different generational feel compared to like the

ultra 6K that we have that we have right now. So, I'm

I'd love to know you guys have a very um you guys have a very big responsibility in terms of

capturing the legacy of every single artist, right? There's a lot of trust that's being put into your hands. Obviously the right hands you guys have

had experience time and time again. But how do you two and your overall team ensure that the legacy is being maintained and captured in the light

that best suits the artist? We in particular, the two of us worry about that a lot. Um, the first thing that happens is that I encourage anybody

that I'm going to make a film about or their or their, you know, their progyny, their sons, their daughters who who are going to, you know, help us. I encourage

them to watch the films that we've made already because I always tell the funny the funny idea that we don't do gotcha films. We're not like 60 minutes. You

know, I'm not looking for something salacious that I can put in the film just to put in the film. It's not what we do. We we made a decision long ago

that what we're here for is to is to give artists who who h have done or will do something important the opportunity to be seen in a medium uh that reaches

the most people. And clearly film is the thing that reaches the most people. So we're very careful about that to start. the the the most difficult moment for me

every single time is when I show the film to the family if the artist is gone or if I show the film to the artist if

the artist is still here. And um I don't do it until the very very very end because it's too easy for the artist to

assume that we're making a film uh with them because they're artists. They're creatives just like we are as opposed to about them. And so we don't show them

till the very end. Um, and I I really lose sleep over that. When Clifford Still's daughter uh saw the film, I was really nervous cuz she's tough as nails

and she cared about her father's legacy and she channels her father's legacy. And when she called me up and and said, "Boy, you know, thank you. You really

you really got it." I mean, I wasn't happy. I was relieved because I feel a huge sense of responsibility. And Dia is important to that too because sometimes

I'll go down a path if you will uh about something and and Dia will reel me back in and say you know you know let's be a

little more either fair or even generous and you know we're that's the kind of filmmakers we are. or not. A lot of documentary film filmm feels

like journalism where they're trying to make sure that you know they present it in a way that is uh both sides of the story or they're looking for something

difficult. I mean our our stories are factual but as you know from Rashimon or anywhere else you know it depends on what side you're looking from.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, one one interesting thing that you mentioned, Dennis, right? You're showing these films either to the artist or to

their kids. I I want to know a little bit more about the kids or maybe maybe even grandchildren in terms of uh you know, Bunny Jagger's grandchildren that

you guys interviewed. What's it like dealing with their kids versus actual artists themselves? Well, I think the issue is that

the biggest uh pain point, the biggest, you know, the biggest difficulty is before they decide to go forward because it's so easy just to say I pass. Nah,

don't want to do it. You know, um when I think of Clifford Still's uh daughter, the second daughter, the I guess she was the older daughter, she turned us down

for three years. And and at at the end of the 3 years, the film was well into the 85%, you know, zone of being done. Her her

daughter, the granddaughter, called me up and says, "Mom, we'll talk to you now." And I was like, "Why?" I didn't understand why she would do that. And

the other thing that was in complete lucky break is they were out uh just just east of Oakland somewhere, Alamita I think it was. And Dia and Ed just

happened to be going there in like a week or were there in a week or something like that. So I was like great. We scrambled a crew. We got

there. We we we shot her and she was tremendous. She was honest and open and emotional. But the but the odd thing is she never spoke again after that. She

she had a little mini stroke and we thought I felt in a way like wow maybe we asked her difficult question. We did not ask her difficult questions but I

think her father and her the relationship was very traumatizing to her and so we felt very fortunate that she was willing to take the time to talk

to us and tell us how she felt and why she loved her father but at the same time why she was uncomfortable with her

father. you know, he leaned over the crib one day and said to her, you know, "I love you, babe, but you'll never be the number one thing in my life. The

painting will be." And so, how do you live with that? You know, she just passed recently in the last, oh, I don't know, year or so. And uh, but that was a

moment that I'll never forget when the granddaughter picked up the phone and said to me, "Mom, we'll talk to you." And I had had subjects die before.

Bunny, as I think we we, you know, talked about, but Bunny died the day I was supposed to interview her. And um that was a very difficult difficult time

for me. We put the film on the shelf and just forgot about it for 3 years. I think what's what's interesting here and what you know we notice sometimes is

that the the film plays we actually you know maybe this is this is a little too um much to share but I feel like the

film helps family members come to terms with their relationship with you know whoever it is that we're um making the film about. I've seen this happen time

and time again and I feel like, oh, we are actually we're actually doing good. We're actually giving this person a chance to resolve whatever issue they had with a

parent, with a loved one. Uh that maybe they didn't have a chance to do it. Um and we happened and it could be just

synchronicity. We just happened to be there at the right time. I don't know what it is, but I've seen it happen time and time again. We we show it in

Clifford Still. It happened in Naked Abition. Right. There's two daughters. One is very much in favor of her mom's work and wants to celebrate her mom's

work and one who felt like this was too exp, you know, the exposure was too much and she was a devout Christian and and

she didn't really agree that with the type of work that her mom was doing and ended up being the this daughter, the daughter that was skeptical about her

mom's legacy ended up being, I think, the one who embraced the film at the end of the process as a huge surprise to us.

Um, and I think it al but it all I mean very much goes back to what Dennis said earlier that we're approaching our subjects with a lot of respect. We are

looking for the human story, right? And we think that um, you know, we we we we are motivated by the need to do justice

to whoever it is that we're making the film about. Uh, and making justice means yes, we'll say the good, we'll say the bad, but ultimately we're presenting

this person as as another human story. Yeah, we did we didn't pretend that Bunny's husband uh didn't commit suicide. He did commit suicide and and we did we don't pretend

that those things happen in uh in our film uh The Last Resort. One of the two subjects uh was murdered. And you know, we don't pretend that those things don't

happen, but we do try to give dignity to the subjects. And at sometimes, particularly with journalists, critics, we get accused of making films that are

too heographic, too honoring our subject. And I'm okay with that. That doesn't bother me a bit. I I've been in the art world a long time. I know how

hard it is to make art. I I I know what people aspire to. And if that's the focus of my practice, uh I'm perfectly

fine with that. And I've been offered films a bunch of times uh where it's going to require me to kind of, you know, make it a little more difficult

for my subject uh dead or alive. And I simply just pass. I It's not what I'm doing. I, you know, you read the reviews

of of uh Naked Ambition and people say, "Love the film." You know, I think we had about 85 to 90% favorable reviews. But the 10% that pushed back were like,

"Well, you know, I needed more dirt. You know, I needed more difficulty. I needed more this or that." And we just tell them as we see them, to be honest. You

know, we don't we don't set out for uh uh with with an effort to try to find something wrong with the person. Um you

know, making art is is so hard that um we just want to DS we we're interested in honoring the person with their story. We're not saying honoring them by giving

them a medal or anything like that. We're honoring them, their lives, their practices. Because in all of our films, the one thing you come away with is how

darn hard it is to be creative and to make art. That's really the the that's really the through line to all the films. It's really really hard. And

we're making films about you think about Bunny who was on the front page of the New York Times when she died. And you think about George V, you know, the the

the 12-minute film we just made about this Ukrainian immigrant who started making art when he was in his 60s. And after he passed, 50 years after he

passed, he had his first big museum show. And it was a huge sit. In both cases, it's about how hard it is to make

great art and how hard it is to have people see your art. That's a hard thing, too. I'm a working visual artist now and I've been very fortunate to have

some of my work be seen. But there are people laboring in obscurity, you know, day after day waiting for that to happen. And it doesn't happen to too

many. Yeah. I mean to to push back on uh the negative reviews for Naked Ambition. I thought there was a a good deal of

conflict towards it and kind of how Bunny lost I mean she lost everything as you know naked photography and videography came came into the light like she had to you

know have have a bunch of side hustles like doing photography singing which which is also a testament to her creative you know uh to to her

creativity like the fact that she could sing in these in these jazz clubs uh as well. And one one thing that you said that really stood well actually I think

Dia said this but honoring the honoring the artist. Now to kind of expand on this, you know, on this idea, how do you guys

both honor the artist and yet still tell the truth when the truth is painful? Yeah, I I I think that one thing D and I

agree about is to the extent that we have it, the artist's work is always a

primary protagonist. It's almost alive uh in each of the films. So, we're attracted to the artist generally not because of who they are, but because of

what they did uh within their practice, what they were interested in. So, we almost always make the art a star of the film. And that's an important thing

because you can get caught up in uh an artist's life in a way that it becomes all about personality and fame and money and those things and you can lose sight

of the art. Uh you know, in a way, Picasso has that issue with the five wives and the you know, and the crazy lifestyle and all those things. And yet

when when you're all done, you go stand before a Picasso and about you're thinking about the extraordinary nature of the work. Uh Bunny's practices like

that. George V's practices like that. He was just he was just a guy sitting in a 9 by12t room, you know, on the third

floor of Ocean Drive in South Beach working every day, filling up his room every day and uh with art. And so that's an important component of what we do is

making the art the star of the film. sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's exactly it. Like that, by the way, the two are not

mutually exclusive, right? You can still honor the person and tell the truth about who they are, what they did. But I think by placing the work at the

forefront is, you know, this is this is our sort of like our vehicle to experience this person, right? That's that's um that's what drives us to get

to know them better through the work, right? So even with Banny, you see her life's trajectory, but you see how it impacts her work, right? Um, and I

think, yeah, number one, just like Dennis mentioned, we do films about artists that we do admire, right? We we we love the work. Uh, we have been lucky

to be able to do these type of projects. Um, and and number two, just saying that the truth about somebody's work and process, um, you know, honors them in so

many ways. this is not a difficult thing to do. I think that the the the difficult thing is to to stay true to that, right? Um that's what

we try. That's really what's uh guiding us in the you know in the editing in the post-production process. Um, yeah, I

think it's easy to fall victim to certain ways of doing things that may be good for audience reactions or, you

know, for different reasons, right? But um, but we're not interested in that. But that's also the reason that we we just self-fund our films. In other

words, I don't really want to take notes. To be honest, I've done a a few gigs where somebody was paying me to make a film and I I I didn't like it at

all. I just would I'm much happier making the film with this incredible team that we have uh that we want to make that we negotiate amongst ourselves

without having somebody who because they're putting money into a film think that you know they can tell you how to change the film, remake the film, etc.

There's just no joy in that for me. And every time I've done it, I' i've looked back and said, "Boy, you're not going to

do that again." And then I get seduced by a gig somewhere because I love the film. And you know, I I I I just don't

do it very often. And I try never to do it because I'm happy with what we do and how we do it. And I mean, I think the

proof is in itself. And the last five films we've made have all gotten national distribution and in most of the cases international distribution, which

for documentaries is a hard look. It's a very difficult thing to do. And I think that it's because we're we're true to who we are and and what we want to see

in the films. People read that. They can tell that. And they they want to be surprised, which which we're able to do most of the time just because of the

impossibility of achievement that some of these art artists get to. Uh and they want to have some joy, which is my favorite thing about making films. And

uh at the end, you know, that re reads true to people when you go to see one of our films. You know, you're going to be

surprised about you're going to learn something about an artist. I Everybody comes out of the films, you know, I didn't know that about Bunny. I didn't

know that about that there was a George V. You know that those kinds of things are um that's what's meaningful to us as an audience tool. You know, D is an

educator. She's been a professor for years. So, so she's used to teaching people things, teaching them how to do things, teaching them what to know about

things. And so that comes through in the edits all the time. You know, she's in there and she's she's really trying to tell the story in a way that she enjoys

surprising you and at the same time she wants you to come away with a learned experience. Dear Yeah, dear. You are meticulous in your editing. I mean, I saw that you

edited the Naked Ambition story and I would said it at the very beginning and watching every single photo, the way it was placed, every single video. I got to

take my hat off to you and uh overall I really respect what you guys do, right? You guys are telling the stories of artists who deserve the light. You know,

you're sharing people's stories. I think that's something that is so invaluable and it connects us right now. Michael, what kind of stories are you

going to tell? What kind of stories am I going to tell? Yeah, that's that's a good question because I gotta tell you, okay, I just

want to say this. Everybody only has one story to tell, one true throughine to tell, you know, and and and the stories that we always tell these stories about

artists or about art and it's somebody most of the time that has this achievement, kind of loses that place in the art world, which everybody does, and

then has some kind of redemption. You know, that's our story. We tell it over and over and over again in very different ways. George V, nobody ever

heard of him. Suddenly has a show at the High Museum. Clifford Still has a show at the Met, but then what happens? He's forgotten, you know. Bunny is on, you

know, Bunny's on Johnny Carson. You probably don't know what Johnny Carson is. Bunny's on the Tonight Show. You know what that is. And then she's she

can't make a house payment, you know, and then the world comes back to her. That's our story. We tell it, you know. What What is your through line? And when

you know you're going to be making some films, you're working on a film now. What's your through line, Dennis? I I love that question. I mean,

my entire time hosting the podcast, no one has spun it back on me, but let me tell you, I am very big into mindfulness

and presence. I want to tell stories of how people have learned to be present in this world. Whether that's meditation, yoga, anything. That's that's what gets me

going. Those are the types of documentaries and stories that I want to tell. See, I couldn't tell that story in a million years. I, you know, I'm too OCD

and too crazy and too this and too that. But that's your story to tell. Never forget that. That that's your story. You own that story. You know, you never want

your viewers to forget that either. You've got to figure out the story that you tell because you must. Not not because it seemed like a good idea or

you could get people to watch. You have to tell the story that you must tell because you think you can tell it. And people forget that sometimes. They say,

"Oh, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do that." And then you look back and you have this very desperate body of work and people say but but what

really were you about you know oops I know where I am. How doesn't know where I am? How do you have that conviction? How did

you how did you guys find out that these stories were yours to tell? What do you think? Do you I mean we've been doing this together for a while

now. I think you know I take I think it's a little bit of of of both, right? you find a story that you're really

interested in, but also once you commit to telling a story, there's a sense of responsibility, right? It's uh I'm responsible, right, of somebody entrusted me with with this task. I'm

responsible for saying this story and we spend time, you know, we spend time on we take our time with this story. So there's got to be some, you know, it is

a process and through actually telling these stories, we discover ourselves, you know. So if I'm going to put myself, if I'm going to devote my time, you

know, I have to make sure that what I'm doing is something I fully believe in. I'm fully committed to, right? So every project we approach it with this kind of

sensibility, right? With this kind of commitment. Yeah. And uh if we didn't want to do that, right, I mean, and that's the reason why

we make these films. And you know, if we if we didn't have this sense of commitment and responsibility, we wouldn't be making them. We wouldn't be

filmmakers. we will be doing something else that's more meaningful. Uh but to us it's very meaningful. It's it's that important. Uh we don't you

know we don't uh you know we take this very seriously. It's it's a responsibility. What kind of story are we going to put out about Bonnie Jagger,

right? How are we going to feel about what we're putting out there? And I had a I remember early on when I was a

student, I had an editing professor who's like who who told me back then when I was starting is that you put out on the screen who you are. No matter

what you do when you finish a project and you put it out there, it's it's part of you. It's who you are. That the

screen is transparent. And I think what this did is shocked me in, you know, in in understanding how important it is that what we do we do

very carefully because it's going to be seen by other people because it's going to impact other people. So, you know, we know people are going to see it. We know

people are going to have opinions about it, right? So, we want to make sure that we do it right. So, doing it right is

make I mean, as far as I'm concerned, is doing it right by myself, right? I if I feel good about what I'm doing, then

hopefully that translates through the screen and other people feel good about what they see. Yeah. I would amplify two of those points. One of the things you're going

to begin to see and learn when you start making films is there are two joyful points in making a film. The first point is when you figure out what you're going

to make and you're excited about it and you've got a log line, maybe you have a synopsis and you're really excited about it. And the other point is when it's

done. And in the middle, what we call it is the ugly middle. Y. And the only thing that gets you through the ugly middle, because these films are

damn hard to make. The only thing that gets you through the ugly middle is your passion for the story, your belief in the story, your belief that the story

deserves to be told. And that's the only thing that gets you through. Because sometimes you look up and you go, why did I I I've done this probably 20 times

out of the 80some films that I've made. I look up and I go, why did I ever think I could do this? Particularly in the

features because the features simply kick your ass. They're so hard and there's so many moving parts. And you know there's just you just feel like uh

Dia and I have have developed though I have to say we've developed a way of making features that I think um it really really gives you a lot of

positive feedback and that is we will you know I will go out and shoot and shoot and do interviews and I will feed her archival and she'll feed me archival

and I'll license things and then we'll sit down after maybe shooting for however many. you know, you shoot 10, 12, 13 people and we'll say, "Okay, what

do we have today that you can sit down over the next month or so and and and and crank out what is we I call them

vignettes, beats of the story and and and her and I will talk and I'll say, you know, I really think you have everything you need to do beat number

six in the story." And so, she's not starting at the beginning. She's not thinking about the end. She's just saying, "Yeah, you're right. you know,

you guys at Clifford Still, you went to London and you shot at the, you know, the Royal Academy and we've got this and we've got that. And she says, I think

you're right. I think I could bang out two minutes, you know, and she does. And then she sends it and we argue over it

and we fuss about it and we, you know, we tighten it up, but then you got a really good two minutes. And those two minutes, they

don't change much after that. It's the first two minutes of the of an 80minute film, but they don't change much because we make every single vignette as if it's

a little mini film and and that happens over and over again and and then all of a sudden you look up and you have 20

minutes and then you look up and you have 28 minutes and now you're saying, "Okay, you know, how do I get to the finish line?" And then you start working

on what we call the interstitials that you know the transfer points between um um Bunny as a model and Bunny with her first camera. You know the stuff in

between there. How do you you know and the interstitials are very difficult because because it's something that you can't say oh we're going to use this

interstitial here but we're going to take a completely different approach to the next 12 beats in the story. So that's something we struggle with and

think about a lot. That's the first thing. The second thing is we're offered 20 something films, 30 films for everyone we say yes to, you know. I

don't I don't even show her half of them, you know, because be because I because I don't want to do them. I I don't want to take the chance. She might

like it and I don't. So, but she'll show me stuff, too. She'll say, "Somebody said, "What about this or what about that?" And so, you know, it's very

important because of the ugly middle to absolutely be totally committed to the project. And so, you got to look at you got to kiss a

lot of frogs before you find the prince or the princess. H it's it's uh a pretty good problem to have 30 projects come in for every one

that you say yes to. But I can also see where it proves challenging especially staying focused to the one at hand. Especially if you guys are doing these

over 3 to five year periods. Uh so you guys have been working together for quite some time now.

I I remember when we talked last time you guys were talking a little bit about your dynamic, how Dia is a little bit more sequential and Dennis or sees a

bigger picture vice versa. Could you guys talk to me a little bit more about the dynamic that you two have amongst yourselves?

Yeah, I think we're very complimentary. I couldn't do it without Dennis. Um, you know, actually I'm I'm the editor, but Dennis is far more organized in his

approach than I am. And I I tend to to look for the emotion in the story, right? That's really what what gets me engaged in the material. And uh in order

to do that, I'll, you know, dig and dig and dig and go to places that maybe I don't need to go, but that's my process.

You know, I I need to be able to do that in order to find the heart of the story. what is it that we're really talking

about? Um, and these are the, you know, these are the little the small breaks that keep me going. That's what, you know, that's what drives the story for

me. And then what's great is that Dennis will have the whole structure, the whole story out and I'll be trying to break that down into these other emotional

bits. So, I think that's where we're really working well because um, as I said, I can get lost in this um, in these moments and then Dennis will be

like, "Okay, great. I'm glad you got this out of your system. Now, let's go back to what this is really. Right. Now, let's go make the movie.

Yeah. Exactly. And um and yeah, and and it is about that, right? It I mean, I'm so grateful that Dennis allows me to do

that because that informs how I will approach the material. Um and I need to get it's also part of me learning the story, right? It's it's I'm actually

learning the story as I'm putting the story together. And sometimes he will have more exposure because I'm not on the set. I didn't go to the interview,

right? That's so I don't have that um that whole context. So So yeah, and that's where Dennis comes in and and I need him like I I um I think I've I've

had this experience of working with Dennis now for several projects and it's interesting, you know, I don't know how to do it without Dennis almost uh you

know, works for me. One of Dennis like when he's not there, he's he's here on my shoulder talking to me.

I bring him in. One of the uh first times that we started working together, I had made a lot of short films. Um but I tended to

make them very pedantically, you know, abdeg hi J, you know, marching doom. And the first time I worked with Dia and I I gave her something and she

came back to me and showed me it was one of these vignettes and I said to myself, "Oh my god, what have I done?" you know,

because because I I I was so locked into my wrote way of doing things that I I I couldn't see past the fact that it was

super different and that she was moving the ideas within the story around. She wasn't losing the ideas. She wasn't telling the ideas in in a way that I

didn't accept, but she kept she was moving them around. And it didn't dawn on me until I showed it to a few other people. They said, "Oh, that was really

cool the way you did this. that wasn't like your other films, you know, that that the music played a huge part and was almost overly loud at sometimes or

the music was, you know, a little weird and that really brought me into the story. And I didn't relax for the first two or three films. It was really

difficult for me be because I was just locked into my way of doing things. I had a lot of success doing what I was

doing. But the films got so much better. they got so much more textured and um uh there was there was real um a real

different way of telling a story and and and that's like like like she said I come into the story with her and I go

okay here are you know the 14 beats of the film this is you know you know this is going to happen and this and this and

this and this and she goes great and I say and here's the chunks you know four five six and seven in a row work on

those and then she gives it back to me and it's numbered 6745. And I go, "What are you doing?" She goes, "No, take your time and slow your

roll. It reads better this way." And she's usually right. So So the fact that I'm coming in, I I give her um I give her just enough of a box to

work through, just enough of a structure to work through that she feels liberated so that I would go like this. And Dia goes, you know, like that. and Between Us, you

know, the film has enough of that of that um surprising interest, you know, where you're making moves that you don't expect. Um, and it also has the

structure that lets the audience hear our story. Like we almost never I would say I would say never actually we almost never start with you know she was a

child born in Pittsburgh in you know 1863 you know that kind of we almost never do that. we because we all I think most time that that's very uninteresting

but that's the way I used to make films and and with Dia you know we we're going to tell you something about the kid

about the person's childhood but we're only going to tell it to you in minute like 36 you know because it's not going to play a big part in the film unless

for some reason you know there are facts and circumstance that lead you to that you know Bunny was born in Pittsburgh and she moved to Miami at 17 and she was

a little shy okay well that was it That's all we told you about Bunny up until age 17. That's it, you know. And then she decided to go do modeling to

make herself a little more outgoing. She was also kind of tall and she got a little awkward, but as a model, she could do it. But all that stuff before

that, I I think we spent 35 seconds on the film in the film about that. And it didn't come up until minute 30 or so. So

that's intentional. And that's Dia. Yeah. Um, Dennis, I'm a lot like you. I'm very sequential. as well. I think it's like my technical foundation kind

of playing a role like boom boom boom boom. I was an accountant so you know I was a lawyer. I mean you know if you're not if

you're not walking the line then you know you got problems in those professions. Oh yeah. But in creativity you got to give yourself some rope.

Oh it's different. I mean de I think you're the type of person to stop and smell the roses. Um and and I I very much value that

trait. It's a trait myself. I'm I'm trying to expand upon. I have a very good friend. His his name is Rafi. And we're driving back from a camping trip.

We're all exhausted. Like it's been 4 days in the woods. We're tired, a little bit hung over. We ate way too much. And on the way home, like Rafy's driving.

He's stopping by to like little sightseeing in New England. And we're all just hurrying him up. But he's stopping and he's smelling the roses.

And that was one of the most valuable lessons that I've learned because now as I take my approach to film, I try and

embrace more of what Dia does, getting lost in the story, giving myself permission to go deeper into it, even if it doesn't serve a greater objective.

And let me tell you guys, like that comes back later on because I'm pulling from information. And I feel like I know a person so well that it all just comes

together later down the road. It's all in my subconscious and the audience wants texture. Yes. And that little side roadside stop is texture.

So so much texture, you know, when texture. Yeah. Yeah. So it is, you know, it is a destination. I mean, you're right. You're obviously

making a film that is going to be seen, but if you don't enjoy the process, you know, it's it's all about the process. That's that's I think you have to enjoy

the journey. You have to allow the journey to change you. You have to grow with it. So I think that's you know that's a part of the I

mean I that's I'm grateful again that I work with a team that allows me to take my time with a process because uh each

film and and each film has its own process like we've done all these different projects and they all came together in very different ways.

Yeah. I've been hugely surprised about that as we've gone forward is how different uh the the great thing about I I I tell this metaphor in my class Dia was kind

enough to bring me into the university to teach a couple years uh u and uh I told my class when you're making a narrative film you got a script you got

a certain number of days and when you're done the film looks like the script and it's like working with an architect architect draws the plans he shows you a

rendering you build the house it looks like the plans. When you have a documentary film, it's like renovating an old house. You go in there and you

start tearing down the walls and looking inside and go, "Ah, I didn't know that was there." Good and bad. And and and and so, you know, for us, that's a

really important part of the process is to stay open enough and flexible enough. Very hard for me, you know, to do that. I'm always saying, "Well, what's next?

we got this, you know, let's, you know, and uh uh but with an but with a documentary film, you've got to stay flexible and and give yourself some uh

some some leeway, basically, you know, it's harder than it's hard for me. It's it's hard for me, too. I mean just what you were speaking to earlier saying

like when you have those two largest strikes of energy and and passion in a project that like when you first start and then at the very end and then Dia is

saying oh like I get lost in it like I let the story unwind as I go and I think there's something beautiful in that

unknown in those middle segments kind of piecing it together that for me like once I'm able to give that attention and that presence and just fully

accept that it just naturally comes and then I enjoy the process. just as much as I enjoy the beginning and the end. You'll fight your natural tendency

though to tighten everything up the entire time of your film career because like I said, I'm blessed and and sometimes Dia goes way off the

reservation and I go, you know, settle down, you know, but most of the time now I understand that, you know, if I'm here

and she's here, the film is here, you know, and that's that's what makes a good film. I I'm I I've been collecting art for almost 50 years. And I've done

it uh I've bought over 2,000 works of art in 50 years. And and my my wife and I made a decision after about year two

or three that we were only going to buy things that we agreed about. And I would be the person buying like I'd come home

and say, "I found a great new artist. Let's buy 20." And Deborah and my wife would say, "How about we buy two or three?" And so we would compromise and

buy two or three. But but together we were making better decisions as a team than we were separately. And that's the way film making is to me. I'm I don't

you know somebody wants to be co-director, I'm I'm okay with that. These films, everybody is hands-on in every step of the way. Everybody has

input every step of the way. And so the easiest thing for me in the world is to say, "God, we did this together. Let's

let's put it out to the world together." And there are some artists that think of themselves filmmakers in particular as a singular vision and nothing else can you

know and they're wrong because you know you know if you're a visual artist like I've become recently you can sit in your studio and paint all day you don't have

to talk to anybody or do anything with anybody but unless you are a vunderkind when you're making a film you want to have somebody who's a better shooter

than you are a better editor than you are a better graphics person you are better sound otherwise you know your film isn't going going to be as good.

And so that requires you to work as a collaborative group. And boy, do I love that. I love having a co-director. I love having an editor I consider my peer

for the making of the film. Not just for the edit, but for everything. I love having an editor come back and say, "You know what I really need is I need you to

go find somebody to interview who either knew this or could talk about that or says this." And I thought, "Wow, I never thought about that. I got to go do

that." So, the collaborative aspect, you know, if you're a if you're a filmmaker out there, a first-time filmmaker, be generous uh to the people you're working

with because, you know, they need credits, too. They need the opportunity to be in film festivals, too. So, the easiest thing in the world as a

filmmaker is to be generous with regard to credits and things things like that. I mean, I'm a member of the Producers Guild of America now and the rules are

like unbelievably strict, you know, and um I guess because there's a lot on the line in terms of money and things like that, but for me, I you know, I want

people to to to do the work to have the credits that they want. So, be generous as as a filmmaker when it comes to

credit. You know, you'll never be sorry you did. There nothing more fun than standing up on the stages with these guys at film festival, you know, and and

all of us answering questions about our perception of the film and what we did in the film. So, it's an easy thing to do, but a lot of people struggle with

it. Agreed. I mean, community is something that I' it's one of the things I value most, especially community when it comes to a creative project. That's like

that's my favorite thing. I don't think anything else beats that. Each person offering their own perspective. Each person in the lane that best suits them, right? People

don't need to jump back and forth. Like everyone is doing what they can best do and that creates art, the best art possible. Yeah. You know, and I always feel a

little guilty because don't know how to do anything. You know, I feel a little guilty because really being a director for me is simply about building a team

and finding a story and letting that team, you know, deliver the goods. Uh, you know, I I can't shoot, I can't edit, I can't do sound, I can't do anything,

you know, but I'm pretty good at finding the right people to do that. And that just comes from experience and uh having a real vision about what the film could

be. Yeah, he Dennis is so humble. He's really really good at at at that at doing that, you know, at putting a team together. And he's also really

good at at trusting you, you know, which basically he gives you the kind of like the confidence to do what you're I still remember when he came to me and he's

like, "Your next project is naked ambition, you know." I mean, we didn't call it naked ambition, but it was the documentary of Bunny Jagger. And I'm

like, "There's no way I am qualified to cut Buddy Jäger. I just didn't see myself doing that." And and Dennis is like, "No, of course you can do it. I I

trust you. You're the right person for this." And um it took me a while. I was like, "Why why is he saying this?" You

know, like I'm not from Miami. I didn't grow up here. You know, I I you know, I'm I I come from Europe. I grew up in

Greece. So, a lot of the references were completely new to me, right? Um everybody's naked in Greece, but in America, right? You know, no, no, not not in that way. I mean it's

like obviously you know not I've seen I've have images of the US uh living abroad but um a lot of the story was new

to me a lot of it was a process of discovery right and at the same time you know I'm also very shy as a person and

here's a woman who was putting herself out there and I'm like I'm not that type of I don't know if I can do justice to

this woman and I you know I obviously he was right I just couldn't um see it at the at the time and you know just ad

love the work love Bunny Jagger's work loved what I saw and uh after a while I was like yes this is you know these are

amazing images and um couldn't you know couldn't believe how art artistic the work was right and it

just took me a while to get to the point where I'm like yeah I'm totally confident totally comfortable with these images self and making a documentary

about Bounty in a way that really celebrated that. So, I mean it was again all credit to Dennis. Dennis saw it and he's like, "Yeah, you're the person who

can do justice to Bunny's work." I was like, well, again, the other thing is that when you're making a story is you have to ask yourself if you have the right

people because in the case of Bunny in particular, we didn't have, if it wasn't for Dia, we didn't have a

woman in a place in the film that was going to reflect being a woman. I can be as empathetic and wonderful as

I can be, but that's not my ro, you know, that's not my place. That's not it. You know, I can't I didn't live that

life, so I can't have that moment. I I can talk about it and explain it and tell people. But when Dia got into the

edit, like she said, being not from around here was a big deal. It helped a lot because she would look at things and go, you know, like why in America was

this such a big deal, you know, or or or why why are men thinking this way as opposed to that way, you know? So, that

was a was a very positive result for the film. Very positive. And it and in today's climate and in today's culture, um those things matter tremendously. you

can, you know, it's very difficult for me to to not make certain films because people say that's not your story to tell. I I I struggle with that mightily.

And in fact, early in my career, I I I worked with two African-American filmmakers and we made a lot of of films about African-American artists and

moments and things like that. And the there there were stories that I found, but these guys had grown up in the like we made a film about hats, why

African-American women wear hats to church, and my my co-director, he had grown up in those churches. So, it's great to say like that you can tell that

story, but you got to bring in authenticity with it. And to make the story of Bunny Joerger and to not have a feminine perspective, not a feminist

perspective, a feminine perspective would have been a huge mistake. you know, it would just would have been wrong. And so, you've got to give

yourself, that's why the collaborations are so important. You know, you've always got to be asking yourself, is there another way to tell this story

that I'm not telling simply because I don't have the life experience for it, you know? And that's a it's an interesting thing you always have to

think about in in today's climate. You have to think about it twice as much. Yeah. There's a there's a very uh good I don't know if you guys have seen it, but

there's a very good clip of Denel Washington talking about the same thing. You know, like having black directors talk about things with black culture and

white directors like, you know, Martin Scorsesei, he's showing the Italian the Italian-American life versus, you know, another black director might be showing something in in that sphere at the same

time. So, it's literally touching on what you're saying. And yeah, it can be challenging too cuz you know it seems like you guys are both very

interested about a wide range of stories and and having the or being able to step back and having other people who understand it better take them take the

forefront in terms of shaping the story. It is challenging. It is it's hard for me to because I think a creative ought to be able to tell uh uh any story that

they can sort out, you know, and and in in um uh but you also have to honor the fact that people have lived different

experiences and that and and that in order to tell it in a way that's a See, it's about authenticity more than anything. You know, you you've got to come from a

place of authenticity. when we're talking about contemporary art in in in our practice that D and I have have together. Um I have 50 years of I have

lived, you know, I have my Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours probably 20 times. You know, I have lived that experience over and over and over again. Um so

there's no question about authenticity there. But when you're starting to think about other subjects or or that the story is so heavily wrought with

something else, um you know, you got to just think about, well, who else do I need to help me bring authenticity to the story?

You know, one thing I I'm very curious about, Dennis, you said you were an accountant and then a lawyer and then you jumped into the arts, right? And uh

D I know you're a professor before you jumped well you're still a professor of course um but you know you're being a professor while jumping into the film

making space. Would you guys talk a little bit more about how you guys got to where you're at in terms of creating film? I I

I mean Dia why don't you start because you know you were in it from the very beginning. You were in it to win it

right from the start. I'm professor of film making. So I'm I mean you know I'm teaching That's such a cool title by the way.

Professor film making. Yeah, a professor of cinematic arts to be honest because um I'm in a department of cinematic arts at the school of communication at the

University of Miami. So yeah, I'm actually privileged, you know, in a way that um I actually do have uh a whole institution behind me, right? That they

support me not only to teach but to do my creative work, which is how I managed, you know, to to actually get involved with the film projects that we

do with Dennis. And um I actually get supported by the school. actually um I have the opportunity to apply for grants for the work that I do. So it really is

an ideal situation for the type of work that we do. So but in terms of how you want to talk about the starting in film

or when did film become Yeah. like what were you doing before you did film and then what made you jump into it? So I got into film as a student as an

undergraduate student. I was a student um uh studying communication in Greece and I was in a brand new department where my professors were experimenting

and they're like hey this is a new department. I was basically one of the first the first class that got into this brand new department and so they thought

that they should expose us to everything. So they brought in uh filmmakers, film directors who did a cinema and one of my professors decided

that we will make a short film as a class. Uh and though this was not a film making program that's how I got my start in

film and it was a very much a collaborative process. We all all the students got to write together, direct together, shoot the film and then stay

for the post-production process and the editing. And that's where I fell in love with the process. Um I and I really what it drew me in was the collaborative

aspect of film making. Uh it was I always I've always been interested in the arts. I always admire arts but nothing I've never experienced anything

like film making the collaborative part of film making. And I was like wow this is insane you know this is great. Um and it kind of like grew from there.

So I knew after finishing school I had a chance to work with local filmmakers in Greece for a little bit and then I decided okay I really want to learn how

to properly do this. So then you know that's basically what led me to the states where I did graduate studies in film making and then

really not knowing where I'm going to go eventually I think the plan was to go back to Greece but teaching presented itself as an opportunity and I thought

why not you know and cut to many years later here we are um so yeah it's it it really the the passion for film was

developed through the process of making a film uh for the first time as a as a student and really enjoying the process. Um, everything about it was so new, so

different from anything I've done before. Um, that that was it for me. Yeah. I mean, right now, like, I'm I'm

in the phase of being exposed to the novelty of film. And, you know, I kind of broke it down. It's like I spent so much time in

college thinking about what am I going to do when I graduate? like so much time and I kind of made it simple. It's like

if it energizes me, I'm just going to do it. And especially in film, like I feel so energized. I get to be with people. I

get to do something creative. I get to share stories. And I think stories like they bring us together. They shape the world. They last. Like that's been at

our core as humans telling stories. And now it's like what stories am I going to tell? As Dennis asked me. Yeah. Yeah. I think exactly the same the

same thinking you know for me it was if it challenges me I want to do it. Uh and it was really film making was a

challenge you know working collaboratively on one story that we all decided to write together you know this this was unlike anything I had experienced before and for somebody who

grew up experiencing film but not really knowing any any filmmakers that was you know for me that was didn't even think that um you know I I never saw myself as

a filmmaker to be honest but uh going through the process of making a project like that I was like wow this is this is amazing this is such

a you know really empowering and at the same time humbling experience um right those are the two perfect phrases extremely empowering if you you know if

you can convince a group of people to work on this singular vision for a period of time right and produce this idea out of you know thin air and make

it into something that people celebrate much more people celebrate than actually people were you know involved in the taking then there's something really powerful there and I did you know I did

enjoy films as a as a young person you know I was very much challenged by films the films that I enjoyed are the films

that made me think for days about wow what what was that all about you know that's how you know it's a good film it

makes you think the days after that's how I feel like if I'm thinking about the movie the next day I know it was a

good film yeah it's true yeah mine's a little different but yeah go for it in the sense that Um

I I turned 53 years old uh and I didn't have a creative practice of any kind. I I actually had been an entrepreneur, started a lot of

businesses and um and thought felt that entrepreneurship was a pretty creative practice but not an artistic practice obviously. And I I always wanted not I

shouldn't say I always wanted I was afraid to have a creative practice because I mostly fear failure more than I celebrate success. And I woke up one

day and I said gosh you know I really want to have a creative practice of some kind. And being in the art world at the

level that I have been um it wasn't really at that point in time an opportunity for me to make visual art. You would think that's what I know,

that's what I would do. But in fact, the visual art world was not interested in having a collector who put a lot of effort and funding into the world of

visual arts stop doing that and start making their own art. And I felt that I felt that it's uh you know, it's a very

difficult thing to do to make that transition. I've made it, but only a half a dozen years later. So I said, what could I do? And um and I thought,

well, if I could do something that was visual art adjacent, how, you know, how could I be involved in the visual arts with a creative practice, but at the

same time not be making art? And and so I I decided to make a short film, one single five minute short film. And it's

like when you go to the racetrack for the first time and you win your first bet, you think, man, this is easy, you know, I'm going to keep doing this. And

our first film did incredibly well and it played everywhere and we won prizes and and I was like, "Oh yeah, I got this. This is simple, you know, but I,

you know, I had very good partners at the time. They're very talented and we did a bunch of things together." And um uh and then I just got the bug and I

I've made like I think I mentioned 80 se 80 shorts and seven features in 16 years, 17 years now. So that that's a lot of films. And um uh but that's how I

work usually is I go very immersive on something and then I wake up one day and say you know what did that going to go

do something else now. But fortunately for me art collecting which I've been doing for almost 50 years my marriage which I've had for almost 50 years. Um

and now film making is only the third thing that I've done that's lasted more than five or six or seven years. Uh because I just like as Dia was saying

you can feel the passion in her voice you know. I just love it. I love doing it. I love telling these stories. I love

um honoring these artists. And so for me, it's really and I love the way that we do it. Um I think that people don't

want to lose sight of the fact that we're very privileged to be able to do it in the way that we do it. You know,

whether it's a 12minute film or an 80minute film, we take our time. you know, there's no one there telling us you've got to get this done by Tuesday

or I need the, you know, I need the trailer, I need the, you know, we just take our time. When the film is ready,

it tells us it's ready. And when it's not ready, you just keep going. You just keep working. And if you know it, if for

some reason you can't work on it for 6 weeks, then you can't work on it for six weeks. D's got two kids and a day job,

you know? I mean, that's that's life, you know. I I had a day job up until about a year or two ago. for 55 years I

had a day job. Um, so you do it when you can do it. That doesn't stop you from doing it at the highest level. You don't

have to do it every day to work at the highest level. You just have to work at the highest level and and that's what

we've tried to do in terms of production value and things like that. So um so that's a very important uh uh part of it

is that I decided one day I wanted to have a creative practice. I knew I wanted to be something about the arts because that's my passion and um I was

able to use film making as a way of putting myself back into the art world as a creative but not making but not making art. Now I'm making art

full-time. I basically I have sorry I'm shaking there. I I had film you know I have I do films and I make visual art

and um it's a very happy existence I must say. Yeah, Dennis, you're like a like a second version of George Veronowski. I think he started at 50 as well.

Yeah, about the same. Yeah, we're about the same age when we started. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I told you earlier, I think it's

so cool that it's weird to be an emerging visual artist. You know, most visual artists uh that are emerging are young

because they started young. But it is weird to be an emerging visual artist at you know a after seven decades basically

that's an odd thing for me and one of the funnest things about it though is that my mentors are all younger than me all of them you know I don't work with

people that it's also one of the joys of doing this in a collaborative way that no one I work with is my age and I learn

from everybody and I'm happy about that you know I I don't sit there and say, "Well, I'm old, so therefore you should listen to what I have to say." I say,

"What can you tell me that will help me make this film?" And that's really fantastic. It's It's I love having mentors that are younger than me. And I

have them in the art world now, the visual art world where I'm making, and I have them in I've always had them in the

film world from day one. I I always work with people that were much younger than me because they knew what I needed to know. you know, it's not about, you

know, youth or the great thing about the internet, for example, is that no one cares how old you are. If you want to learn how to play Stairway to Heaven on

a on a guitar, you know, there's a 12-year-old kid who will shoot a video and put it up there and you go, "That's how you do the frets, and that's the

fingering that I was looking for." No one cares how old you are. I love that. And and culturally, it's pretty much the same thing. No one cares,

you know, whether I started 15 years ago or 55 years ago. As long as you're doing your best and taking your shot and getting your, you know, we aspire for

our films to to be special, to be important, you know, I mean, two films on Netflix and that, you know, in the last seven years, that that's the gold

standard now. It's it's a theatrical release, which we've had uh, you know, a few times now, and um, and streaming. That's what everybody aspires to,

particularly in the documentary world. So, uh, you know, we aspire to make great films. It's not a hobby. You know, we're we're we're, you know, we're

serious as a heart attack about doing it, but we do take it, um, very joyfully and, you know, just try to do our best.

Now, one thing you said, fighting the practice versus fighting the story. I kind of wanna I I'd love for you guys to expand on that. It's

something you said earlier on, Dennis, that's just been at the back of my mind. I wrote it down on a sticky note and it's just been circulating these la this

last week or so. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Fighting the practice versus fighting the story. Well,

I I had a t-shirt made for my staff at a uh arts organization that I ran and it it was a it was a statement by the

founder of the organization 50 or 45 or 50 years ago. She said, "Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is what counts."

And so finding stories is pretty is pretty easy, but having a good filter to

select a great story is really really important. Um uh and and and so that's great and a lot of people can even do that. But then

when it comes down to actually making the film, you know, it's like digging a ditch sometimes. You just got to keep going. You've just got to, you know,

when D is in there and she's trying to power through this 7 minute piece. I I mean, you know, she gets pretty crazy sometimes. You know, it gets really

hard. And um so fighting the execution of of the film is something we do all the time. We don't fight the story too much. We let the story tell us what it

wants to be. It's very important in film making to um to let that happen. and uh particularly in documentary film making because you don't know what's around the

corner and if you pretend you do then your film gets really small really fast. So do what do you think? I mean I mean

the execution part you know it it's just hard sometimes. Yeah. I mean it's I I think the best way to dis to explain

it it's a process of discovery. Yes, we sort of know where we want to go but we don't know how we're going to get there.

Mhm. Perfectly said. Yeah. And it's and it's and we have to be able to discover it. If we did know, it wouldn't be fun. You know, it

wouldn't there wouldn't be a process. If we knew all the stops and exactly where we're going and we get there, then we just get there,

right? But um but again, it's it's that idea of like there's going to be obstacles and we just have to find a way around them, right? There's going to be

it's not going to be a straight line. there's going to be um stops along the way, right, that we have to take and we

have to entertain those moments and spend time there because there's something to be learned in that moment. Um and so I think that's what ultimately

it boils down to it, you know, being able to allow the process to happen. That's the process. That is the actual way of making the film that we value. I

think in in the way that we do it is that we allow for these stops to happen. The detours, the momentarily pauses where we reassess, we will think about,

okay, do we have this? Do we need to go farther into that? Do we need to go in a new direction? You know, all of that is

part of the process. Bless you. Um and and the agony, right? We don't know where it's going to lead us but uh without it the you know there wouldn't

be we wouldn't have a a result to celebrate something that that we are happy about you know something that we are pleased to celebrate. So it's it's a

you know it's those little small victories along the way. Yeah. One of the things I love, one of my favorite moments in each film is when

De and I will talk about one of those vignettes, those beat story beats I was telling you about and she'll go away and we won't talk for

sometimes, you know, weeks and she'll say, "Take a look at this." And she'll send me five minutes or 7 minutes and or 3 minutes. And that is so fun to to say,

"Well, I never really thought of that story point as evolving that way." And so you you learn a lot about yourself and about who your collaborators are

when you get those uh those cases of first impression when she sends you her minutes for the first time and you watch and you go, "Oh god, that's such a great

idea." Like what, you know, that was never in my consciousness about the film, you know? And other times you say, you know, this is good, but I think

we've got to go back and, you know, like I said, I'm always saying we got to tell the story a little more linearly, you

know, and that's probably our biggest discussion all the time is is that idea of melding uh, you know, the car on the superighway with the stops along the

side of the road to, you know, to smell the roses. And uh, that that's really everybody has their has their pinch points about, you know, what what's

difficult for them. And that's our our pinch point. I've learned to back off tremendously because I'm the better for it and so is the film. Um but it's still

there. You know, my baser instincts are always to go one two three four five, you know, and that's you don't have to do that in film making, which is great.

I'm writing a book right now. Um, uh, it's called, uh, uh, Confessions of an Obsessive Art Collector because I've been doing that for a long time

and I I'm I'm uh, it's hard. It's hard in a different way. And, um, I'm telling I

tried to tell the story chronologically and I couldn't. I I I I worked at it for months and months and months. So now I'm

telling the story on a collection. I've had five different kinds of art that I collected. So I'm using those as kind of the the lynch pin for each of the

stories and uh uh it's very different than film making. This will probably be my first and last book. I can I can tell you that cuz it's way more fun hanging

out with Dia and talking about stories and you know and going and shooting and uh you know sitting down with somebody to do an interview. You get the good

stuff you know you go have a sandwich you you go out to dinner the book you're just alone there at the desk you know

just grinding away. So uh it's a very different type of practice the artistic practice. Dia did you write um like we when you

were you know beginning as a professor and things were you mostly a maker or did you ever like write film theory and stuff like that?

Yeah I mean I came from a heavy writing program as an undergrad that was my thing. It was writing but I I I never

really I was really good at you know at writing essays not fiction you know none of that and uh fiction was a film theory would have been a

yeah yeah and and that was you know uh that was the challenge for me I was like I really don't get this fiction thing

what is it about it you know and really I mean of course in film it's it's a whole different medium right it's an audiovisisual medium and and it really

challenged me in in many ways is um and I completely devoted my my my my studies in understanding narrative film making right I was very much trained as a

narrative filmmaker not realizing how important storytelling is in documentary work but I was not interested in documentary I was like I really have to

conquer narratives you know I really have to understand what makes fiction work is there sorry I'm wondering though I was gonna say that yeah it came from a conviction that

there is truth in fiction right? That there is a lot of truth in fiction. Yeah. And I felt like fiction was the the the

more honest way to talk, you know, to express yourself. And I discovered you were going the whole time. I really was as a student, I was very

arrogant and very against documentary work as a film student because I thought documentary work um in in some way can be exploitative, right? where you take

somebody's story and you make it your own and you put it out there and they don't have control over it. So it was a

very very simplistic now you know in retrospect I realize that's a very very simplistic way of seeing you know the she was 22 then too so it's okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And and I think life has been a big lesson. I mean everything that happens in my life is like to prove me

wrong. So now I only do documentary work. When you think about when you're editing and you think about the films that we've made, is there a documentary film out I

have one I'll I'll talk about in a second, but is there a documentary film out there that you think about when you're making our films?

Not a, you know, I mean, not a specific project, but I'm very much admired uh observational documentary, right? Uh direct cinema. Uh I thought that was,

you know, the Frederick Weissman. anything you think about like that kind of stuff. Wiseman and um uh yeah and um god the

brothers um it'll come to me uh gray gardens right like um you know this type of film making basically that was for me like the purest documentary form and I

very much approached documentary that way in the beginning you know it was like okay we we don't want to meddle with this universe we just want to

observe it um as if observing is purer than actually going in there and I'm smiling because that interests me not at all. You know, and for me the reason is

because it's a total lack of control and it also doesn't feel like a good time investment result ratio. Like those guys are willing to sit there for weeks at a

time, okay, and let the film run through the gate, you know, and I just want to like sit down, I will interview you, you

know, boom, let me let me move on, you know. As I said, film making is a humbling. It's an empowering and at the same time

very humbling uh experience for me. Yeah. So I've learned you know I've obviously the more I work in documentary I'm still learning uh you know with

documentary I don't I don't have a specific uh one film that dictates everything the way I film with fiction but um and maybe you know and maybe that's a

good thing. I feel like I'm very much a a student of documentary still. I'm still kind of like learning what, you know, pushing the limits, what what what

we can do. But at the same time, I try to be very very respectful. I worked early on with uh photojournalists and um doing work on on people who photograph

or shoot their own things. And one of the things that they instilled in me early on is like you can't you don't want to interfere with somebody's work.

You have to respect it, right? You have to really you can't reframe a picture. I was so, you know, so so nervous about reframing Bunny's work, right? Because

her frame is the way she chose to to do it, right? The way she chose to photograph everything, the composition in the image is is dictated by that and

that's part of her art. Um, yeah, yeah, that's why I think we we, you know, we always have to we try to find a balance,

right? How much can you interfere without interfering, right? How much can you go in without altering or how do you do it with respect? Right? So, like for

example, with with Naked Ambition, we we went from a film, a finished feature film where you could see the entire photo with a lot of black around, right,

to a different version. At some point where we actually had this conversation, we went back and forth and we decided, you know what, her work is better

appreciated when it fills the screen and you know, kind of like trying to still do justice to the work without Yeah. You know, we're still finding a way to

present your work as beautifully as we can. Uh but, you know, and trying to preserve that element of your work, the beauty of your work. Um and basically

compromising on on on that idea of like no it has to be with the actual frame. Yeah. Which is what we started photography presents better as a full

screen than than uh painting sculpture things like that. It just it just feels more animate frankly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean these are the kinds of

debates that we have believe it or not. We we we you know will debate uh on this for for a while. Big decisions for the film. These are

the decisions that you know stylistically, aesthetically you may think, "Oh, that was an easy one to make." No, that was not a very easy one

to make. That was a really hard one to make. Michael, you have a Touchstone film that, you know, a touchstone film for you that you look back on and it kind of

drives you sometimes, consciously or unconsciously. Yeah. Uh, you know, the movie Boyhood by Richard Linkladder. Yeah. I I've recently explored his movies. I

think he's definitely my favorite director right now. He's pretty amazing. It's kind And that film is particularly amazing because it's so out of character for

him. Yeah. And it's kind of what you guys were talking about with patience over time, right? He let he let the main character

different facets of their life, you know, revolving around the main character, of course, kind of showing how people's lives fall in and out of

place. kind of what you guys are doing with documentary film making. Um, yeah, it just left a very strong impression on me. Yeah. Dia, do you guys teach Seven Up,

14 Up, 21 Up? That that British film where he followed Oh, yeah. For many, many years. Have you ever seen those? Henry, you know, sorry,

I'm The filmmaker picked off a group of people, kids at seven, went back seven years later at 14, went back seven years later at 21. I think he just got to 56

years old, I think. And so it's Michael's something. I'm sorry. I should know all these, but uh um uh the the name of the filmmaker, but if you just

put seven up, 14 up, it's it's all, you know, you won't have a hard time finding it. And uh it's again, it's observational and it shows you in such

basic detail how people's lives change over time without any other outside stimuli in the film. you know, just I was doing this and now I'm doing that.

You know, I think it's the outside stimuli because most movies they need conflict to keep the plot going. That's why like Richard Linkladder's movies like he still keeps

you engaged without adding extrrenuous conflict. Like it feels natural. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean his movies like Before Sunrise, After Sunset, Before Midnight,

like those up my tier of what like a romantic movie should be. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, for me, a film that's really I think about a lot, I

think about it often when I'm making a film is Searching for Sugarman. Um, uh, it's a film that, um, where I'm really careful sometimes to not find

myself in that situation. But they found the ending first in their archival work and built an entire film around a what I would

describe as a glorious ending. And um uh it it's it's almost like it feels almost like a narrative fiction film. I I I taught it in when Dia invited me to

teach for a couple of years. I taught it in my class and um um it just feels so real. That's a that's a not I mean the

guy won the Academy Award. He also committed suicide soon thereafter. Uh the the uh the uh director uh and uh but it's uh for me I always

think about that because of what Dia was said there's observational uh you know kind of documentary film making where you really try not to

intrude but you're still making huge decisions in the edit room. Um uh I loved uh uh Leair's the uh the movie

that won something about Tro the the restaurant Tra in France. I have actually uh been there. It's a you know it's a three star Michelin uh restaurant

and um they were there for days and weeks and months but they probably shot you know 500 hours of footage. So, anytime you go back into the edit room,

you can pretend like, "Oh, but this is what I shot." You're still making decisions the whole time. You're making decisions. It's a million decisions in a

fiveminute film. Million decisions. And um you don't want to forget that because, you know, uh documentary doesn't necessarily mean quote truth.

Documentary means documentary. And it's very easy to get caught up into the idea of in a documentary that somehow you have an obligation as a filmmaker to to

to have a predetermined outcome that somehow is in in some way veritas, you know, and it's just not true. You go in there, you make your film the way you

want to make it. We talked earlier about how we like to make films that frankly are a little heographic. they're a little honoring, you know, and other

people come in and they're just looking to, you know, they're just looking to to kind of grit it up, you know. So, you know, it you can talk all you want about

how you think it's supposed to be truth, but in fact, it's it's simply supposed to be capturing something that exists in a way that you choose to present it. Big

difference. Yeah. And kind of Well, I I wanted to add to that. I mean D was mentioning earlier like there's truth a lot of truth in

fiction too. That's something I find as well which goes against some documentary films which might not be as truthful. Life is messy. Real life is messy and

you can take a fictional film in order to drive home a very specific uh issue point of view moral moral fiber thing that you're trying to tell. So yeah,

fiction can be way cleaner. Yeah. You know, when you try to make Yeah. It just fiction doesn't have this existential issue about truth, you know,

in the way that it exists in the documentary universe, right? It's like, is it true or is it I mean, of course, as I say, life is messy. That's

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and as Danny said, there's no such thing as, you know, objective, you know, work in a documentary. Everything is subjective.

It's just that we when we do fiction, there's no question about that, right? where we documentary people you know have certain ideas or expectations

but yeah I think for me every film is a personal a very personal film right or the way we approach it it becomes a very

personal film yeah and also like fiction it's it's masked in a different reality which sometimes allows you to explore the

truth further and to go deeper in a different world. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Michael, we want you to go make something so we can interview you

next time. Guys, I I would love that. I I can't thank you to enough for talking with me today, sharing your insights, and and

being yourselves most importantly. Um I I'm super excited to go and explore more of your works these next couple of

weeks. And thank you. Yeah, it's my pleasure. idea, that was a fun time. Thank you, Dennis. And thank you, Michael. We're looking forward to

supporting you in your projects. Thank you guys, and I'll continue supporting you on yours. Thank you for watching today's episode. Uh again, there's an interactive version of it on

Click where you can answer questions, provide feedback more often, giving you a more immersive experience, kind of as if you were a part of today's

conversation. Uh if you'd be interested, please click on the link down below.