EP014 – Low Moments in Documentary with Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine

This one’s a little different… Keith gets off the trail for an old-fashioned sit-down conversation with Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, the acclaimed husband-wife filmmaker duo behind the BOYS STATE and this year’s MIDDLETOWN. Jesse and Amanda share insights and highlights from their films, their career, and the challenges and opportunities that come from working together as a married couple and film team. From THE OVERNIGHTERS through MIDDLETOWN, this sit-down episode offers an intimate look at the creative dynamics and career evolution of two impactful documentarians at the top of the form. Special thanks to the Austin Film Society for the collab on this one!

00:00 Introduction and Overview

01:10 Discussing ‘Middletown’ and Audience Reactions

02:40 The Impact of Streaming and Theatrical Releases

04:45 Early Inspirations and Career Beginnings

08:49 Meeting and Forming a Partnership

13:16 Challenges and Breakthroughs in Filmmaking

17:04 Navigating the Documentary Film Industry

23:59 The Uncertainty of Verité Filmmaking

24:57 Ethical Dilemmas in Documentary Filmmaking

26:11 The Role of Objectivity and Journalism in Documentaries

26:39 The Collaborative Process in Documentary Filmmaking

29:19 The Genesis of Boys State

34:21 The Impact of Boys State on Careers and Industry

38:37 Reflections on Middletown and Documentary Filmmaking

41:11 Final Thoughts and Future Projects

Welcome to Dock Walks, doing things a little different this time.

Uh, Ben is out for this episode, so it's just gonna be me, Keith Maitland,

in a long form conversation with visiting filmmakers husband and wife

duo Amanda McBain and Jesse Moss.

And, um.

And we're not even walking.

This is a sit down long form interview courtesy of Austin Film

Society, who are welcoming Jesse and Amanda to present their new film

Middletown at Doc Days here in Austin.

So I hope you will stick around for a long ranging conversation.

We're gonna be talking about one of their first major films, the Overnighters,

and how that changed their career.

We're gonna be talking about Boys State and a little bit about Girls State.

And of course, we're gonna be talking about Middletown, the new film

from Amanda McBain and Jesse Moss

On your left,

you're listening to Doc Walks with Ben and Keith,

Amanda McBain, and Jesse Moss.

I'm glad we've had a chance to spend 36 hours together to get to know each other.

So I don't feel stupid.

Shared some tacos for being dumb at the beginning of the conversation.

Yes.

We've shared some tacos several times.

You've shared your film with a live audience here in Austin last night.

How did that feel?

I know you premiered Middletown at Sundance.

And it sounds like you've had a few opportunities to show

it, but what does it feel like?

Well, what's, what's exciting is the world's changing so fast too.

And, um, you know, you, you make a film and you, you don't know the moment that

it will meet when it comes into the world.

And Sundance was one moment, in fact, um, I'm not even sure Trump was inaugurated.

Uh, two days later.

Two days later.

But, but you know, a lot's happened in the last a hundred days.

So I, I think that's part of the experience and the joy and the thrill and

the terror of taking the film out is, um, where is the audience, you know, what,

what, what are they feeling and how do we both meet that with the, with the movie,

but also in conversation about the movie?

I think it's also a thrill for us always with any film to share

it, uh, in a theater with people.

Um, but we, especially like with this one, because there's some

laughs, there's this one joke.

About New Jersey, and I just never know if there's gonna be a state

finally that doesn't have a thing for New Jersey, and there has so far not

so Missouri, Texas, California, Utah.

Everybody thinks New Jersey is funny.

As a native new Jerseyan, I, uh, was slightly offended by

how quick the audience was to pounce on that joke last night.

I've

had to apologize, um, actually, uh, for, for that to people from New Jersey and

say that I've made, we've made, we've made good work about New Jersey that.

That painted in a much more, um, benevolent light.

What is the difference for you between being.

At a Premier or, um, on the circuit or even in wide release versus knowing that

your movie is out there on, on Apple TV or on Netflix or wherever it lives.

Well, first of all, to be honest, we're just not sure if the movie's gonna

make its way into the wider world.

So we're, we're appreciating every opportunity we are given to share the

film with people and as filmmakers.

I think I speak for both of us in saying like that.

Is the ultimate experience for me to share it with an au an

audience in a dark theater.

Um, that's what I live for.

I liken the streaming experience and, and going back to linear cable,

it's like dropping a pebble down a well and listening for something

faint, maybe if you're lucky, right?

So abstract and kind of unfulfilling, and yet I will feel unfulfilled if

it's not available to people to find.

In their homes on their devices, but I don't know what to do about that.

I mean, things have changed also.

We've been in this business for a really, really, really, really long time.

And now, you know, you do, when you go wide on Apple or net Geo or whatever

it is, you do get some responses if you're in a room full of people.

And that's kind of great because that's what you, you wanna communicate, you

wanna connect like you, I. Make, partly make films as a bridge making exercise,

empathy generation, whatever it is, and to see people respond for good or for bad.

I also like the bad reviews.

I'm like, that's great.

That's fascinating that I at least provoke some feeling.

I feel the same kind of duality as far as.

There's nothing like being in the room.

Right?

Yeah.

They call it a movie theater and it is a theatrical experience.

Yeah, it is.

You know, it's not Broadway, but yet when you're in a room full of

an audience reacting all at the same time, it sure feels like there's an

energy in the, in the space and the players are, aren't on the screen.

They're in the space with you.

And at the same time as a movie fan.

The overwhelming majority of religious experiences I've had

watching films, the filmmaker is nowhere near the space that I was.

So we've all had that experience, right, of being in the audience without the

filmmaker, without, so you're that bridge making you're talking about, right.

The bridge is there.

Even if as the bridge builder, you don't necessarily get the.

Well, let's go back through, you know, we talked about maybe walking

down memory lane a little bit.

You know, over the last couple days we've talked about the overnighters,

we talked about boys state and girls state, and of course we're

talking a lot about Middletown.

I guess what I wanna know is where you both got started, and

it's a two-pronged question.

What is the.

Gateway drug film that got you excited about Docs and then

what did you do with that?

What was the first thing you made that felt like that?

This relates to what you were just saying too, which is I'm thinking

back to my early theater going film Going experiences, and my father

took me, my father's big movie fan.

And I remember he, he took us to a double feature at the Castro Theater

in San Francisco, big movie Palace.

And it was Errol Morris's Gates of Heaven and a film called Hardware Wars by Ernie

Ford Fosselius which is a real obscurity.

Um, and if you're into Star Wars, check it out.

Crazy double feature, probably 19 82, 83, I'm thinking.

And that double feature is like seared into me.

And the director wasn't there or directors.

Um, but, but I think it was sort of implanted something that, that sort of

propelled me forward into this art form.

And it's, if you think about that mashup of Errol Morris, of Gates of

Heaven in particular, and hardware wars, which is a parody, ludicrous parody.

I, I'd like to think my work is somewhere in between,

but that there's not a straight line from that, that experience

to, to to, to making work.

Actually for me, seeing, um, a film by, uh, uh, by, uh, Christine Choi called, who

killed Vincent Chin in the early nineties.

Such a powerful film.

I was not in film at the time, I was in politics, but somebody

introduced me to Christine and I, I said, I wanna do what you do.

This is an incredible piece of political art.

And she said, okay, well help me out with something and then we can talk.

And so that sort of led, led me.

Into documentary.

Yeah.

I mean, I also had a winding path.

I was actually working in.

Advertising and corporate identity, which sort of in the advertising way

was very much like, how can we connect with people, but for different reasons.

And at some point we were all sitting around like a banquet table

pondering a Pantone yellow, and people were so passionate about it

and they were so creative and we were drawing all kinds of stuff.

It was a very creative job, but I just, my, I, I was like, something's

missing here with like the people, like I need people stories.

And so I went to like a, like a summer.

Six week class at NYU and learned about Maya Darin.

It was more for fiction, but at some point I ran across the, or

I was shown or someone shared the film Brothers Keeper by, uh, Bruce

Sinofsky and Joe Berliner, if any.

If you haven't seen it, it's bananas and amazing and it just

totally cracked open for me.

What I. I didn't know that documentary could be so many things, right?

I didn't know much about documentary.

I hadn't seen some of the great works.

Um, I only knew Ken Burns, right?

And so, or PBS and I. To me, that was the first movie Brothers Keeper that just was

like, oh, it has all the stuff of fiction.

These incredible characters, this incredible drama, all this setting,

like, you know, and just how it's built.

Really beautiful.

And so I like the next day, went and tried to find an internship at a documentary.

House and of course all the work they did was for PBS, so it was like perfect.

And they were very academic and very intellectual and it was amazing journey

in, in, in terms of investigative, kind of more on the journalistic end.

And then there was sort of an explosion of cable and so we were all making a lot

of work and I got promoted pretty fast.

So.

And what was your.

Promoted through the ranks from, I'm assuming, you know,

kind of a research Oh yeah.

Entry level intern up to what have, yeah, I mean, I interned for, did you have

a short period of time?

Like not getting paid and then I got paid and then AP associate producer,

then co-producer, then I co-producer for a long time, probably too long.

I would love to know the story of how y'all met and how your.

Relationship turned into a professional partnership.

We are a very much a documentary union, um, which is un interesting, maybe

not unusual, but um, I'm sure many people have met through documentary

and partnered in life and work.

But, um, uh, a filmmaker named Brett Morgan, who I was working with, um,

Brett and his partner then Nanette Burstein, made a great boxing film

called On the Ropes, and I was enlisted to work on that film.

Uh, and I, that's really, that was my production education.

I, I was production audio and an associate producer on that film.

It was a verite film about a boxing gym in Bed-Stuy and I was single.

And, um, Brett, through somebody he was dating, met Amanda, who was

also in documentary and also single.

And then Brett being a kind of a matchmaker in a great tradition, um,

was like, I'm gonna set you guys up.

And, uh, we went to see.

There's something about Mary mm-hmm.

At the drive-in, in Westbury, long Island, altogether a, a double date.

Then we went to the racetrack that like maybe two weekends later.

Second, no, it's the same night.

It was like same weekend.

No diff different date.

Oh, sorry.

Your memory's faulty.

We, yeah, we, we, we connected, we were both new to documentary and loved

what we were doing and, and that, and that was, uh, Brett still taking credit

for, for our creative relationship.

And, and and

10% I imagine.

Yeah,

Brett definitely extracted a, a pound of flesh.

You know, he made, um, mo most recently moon HD, daydream and

the kid stays in the picture.

And, um, Kurt k Mont montage of heck and gr Brett's a, a, a great filmmaker

and still inspires us and terrifies us.

And Brett was shooting on the ropes and, um, really good shooter.

And I was doing audio since I was learning how to do.

How to hold the boom.

If I held it incorrectly, Brett would kick me.

But, um, that's a good way to learn how to, how to do it, how

not to dip the boom into the shot.

Right.

And, and actually the value of good audio, right?

That's what I learned in, in production immediately.

Brett told me that, he's like, anytime you shoot verite, make sure

they're l and there's, there's an, the opening scene of Speedo is kind of

amazing and it only works 'cause he's loft and otherwise I, I'm lazy, you

know, who wants to bother with that?

But, um, that was a great lesson.

So that's the story of our union.

Now, Amanda, your turn.

What did he get wrong?

I mean, I have terrible memory, so whatever he said works for me.

Um, I do, I do remember I was just talking to a bunch of college kids and

they wanted to know like how to break into the business and they're a lot,

you know, younger, whatever, but they, I was like practically speaking, like

the fact that I could do sound and own that line in a budget in addition

to being your AP was really how I got work to be able to kind of be a double.

Duty kind of person.

I mean, in some cases, like a triple or quadruple duty person, sometimes

we've made films where we're the only two people, but everybody

figures out what they can handle.

And often with documentary, it's like almost everything.

Right?

I love that everyone figures out what they can handle and many people

underestimate what they can handle.

Yeah.

And it's the people who will throw themselves in the deep

end that realize like sometimes you have to overextend yourself.

To realize like, oh, I wore five hats.

Yeah.

And four is the limit.

But if you only, if you stop at one, you don't know what you can accomplish.

Yeah.

My first job for Christine Choi, I was, um, associate producer but

not qualified for the position.

And she had me do, I was doing, um, archive licensing and it was a tricky

film and I. I didn't know how to do, I didn't know what I was doing.

And, um, she, she fired me.

It was like my first job in documentary and I got fired.

She's like, you're fired.

I'd never been fired in my life.

It was a Friday, and I called the, um, editor, I think he

asked me to do something.

I was like, I'm fired.

And he's like, you know what?

Wait till Monday and see what happens.

And, and she was the kind of person who would fire you

Friday and hire you back Monday.

And I, I've actually never had.

A boss like that.

And since, and yeah, that was the hazard of wearing too many hats.

Yeah.

I didn't realize Christine was the, the Scott Rudin of the documentary.

Oh

yeah.

Oh yeah.

I mean, I love her, but she's a terror.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Between her and Brett Morgan, I'm a little scared.

Okay.

That's how y'all met.

And he went out to the racetrack and you realized, you know, this

is, this is a love connection.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm so glad.

Where was the professional connection and where did you, how

did you take that professional partnership to the next level?

When was the first time you said.

We're not gonna work in service to other people.

We're gonna work in service to either each other or together.

Was the overnighters really the first just us?

You made some.

I mean con man, I mean, you did a lot of stuff.

I think it was

like, it felt it was important to me.

Like I, I think we love, we connected 'cause we, we, we love this art

form, but I had these incredible mentors as bosses and I loved it.

And I think to some extent, like the practice of documentary

is still a kind of guilt.

And you, you apprentice to somebody whose work you admire and

respect and you learn from them.

And I worked at the knee of some great filmmakers and learned a lot.

Not really how to direct, you know, I learned how to be a good

producer and I had to break free.

And so therefore it was really important for me early in our

career, I think for quite a while to sort of flex my independence.

And that meant from our creative partnership and it was like perfectly

natural and comfortable that we not co-direct or even closely

collaborate on movies together.

I think that's why I think it took a long time to discover that we were, you know,

capable of things we couldn't do alone.

And I had to kind of get past my ego.

In some way has,

has he succeeded in that?

Yeah.

I mean, I, I, I think it's partly that, but also, I mean, every

film sort of fits into the moment.

I think we talked about sort of the world moment, but also like your life moment.

Like what are you working out either creatively or formally or whatever it is.

And for, for where I was in life too, we have two kids and I'm

gonna be really honest, like.

I did not wanna be in the field.

I'm happiest in the edit room.

And so when we moved to California in 2000, whatever that was, 12, we had

these little kids and the business was in kind of a weird, we were in just

that weird, like who are we and what is documentary and why do we tell stories?

And you know, having a whatever crisis of faith moment.

And I think that's, when we heard of this story up in North

Dakota, that seemed pretty wild.

And whoever sent you up there to sort of do a. Speck shoot on like roughnecks.

And you went up there and you came back with this amazing footage of this

guy, this pastor up there that they rejected 'cause it was too soulful.

But we looked at it and we're like, oh.

No one's gonna fund this, but this feels like we need to go

back to this place of like, let's make an independent documentary.

This is too important.

Just the overnighters.

Yeah.

And so he went and shot that by himself, you know, once a month

he'd go up there for a week, live in this church, film, verite by

himself, that kind of thing, you know?

And this is halfway into our careers, right?

Like so I think, and I did not wanna be in the field and there's value to that.

So that was that film.

Right we, I had that relationship where as a creative producer, I watched

every frame we talked while he was in the field, and boy did he need a lot

of guidance 'cause it was a tricky shoot every time you went up there.

And then the edit became just a slog of like insanity.

And of course that was like the biggest Hail Mary and it ended

up being a game changer for us.

Your career changed in that moment.

How did it change and like, what did, how did you feel that shift,

um, that film, because it got into Sundance, we did actually get funding to

finish from Impact, um, who we did not have a connection with before because

they knew we were gonna Sundance.

We're like, oh, okay, we'll fund, we'll, we'll, you know, give you this money so

that you can finish to go to Sundance.

'cause that's a thing.

But yeah, to know that we together had this powerful.

Connection over this very hard to make film and that we are gonna

make it through anything creatively if we could make it through that.

I love, that's an incredible use of, of partnership, right?

Like as a, as a married couple with a young family confronting, making your own

bones in this, in a, in a career that's.

Undeniably impossible to figure out for, for anybody.

How did having that kind of foundation at home feel to you?

We have a sort of joke of low moments in documentary, and there there are many, and

one was, I took a picture of my checking account, bounces was eight, eight bucks.

And I was like, well, there's nowhere to go but up.

And, uh, we shoot this amazing footage and I, and I'd, I'd be

like, now we're gonna get money.

For 18 fucking months, like I'd shoot amazing verite footage, great scenes.

I was like, this is dynamite.

This is solid gold.

No, and in a way I think we sort of call back to that experience

because of the degree of risk.

Um, you know, as you get older and more sort of important for us to

remind ourselves that like the work we're proudest of the, the most

meaningful work happened on the edge.

Sometimes, you know, you have to not be deterred when people

don't believe in your project.

There's so much rejection and that's 16 years into our career, you know,

and, and like sort of feeling like we got nothing to lose, you know?

And this feels deeply meaningful.

And in some ways, like beginning of my career was pretty.

Charmed in a way, like moved quickly and I found people to, who mentored

me and then I was like, oh, this is coming quick and coming easily.

And it then it kind of imploded.

And then there was periods of time in that decade where we were not doing

meaningful work and uh, and so, you know, we sort of had to do what we

could do to stay working in film.

Just calling back to the early day, those relationships like Brett and the, the.

People I met in the, the first few years of documentary are still

really meaningful for us and creative collaborators, um, in the work we do.

And it's a pretty small community and I, I not that we're, we don't

bring new partners and love to bring new partners like Chris Paek who cut

Middletown into our small family.

But, um, but that was really meaningful to, you know, the

people that we met early.

Yeah, I mean, when people ask us for advice at the, I never come up with

good stuff except for the one thing that I wished someone had told me.

If you do find somebody that you connect with and it's sort of

easy hold onto that person, right?

Like, you know, we continue to go back to some of the same editors over and

over and over again, even though the projects are so fundamentally different

because our language is, it just makes sense because sometimes it doesn't work.

Like on Middletown, I'll be very frank and say we had an editor.

Who we started with, who we'd never worked with before because

he was local in the Bay Area.

We thought, oh, we should finally work with someone who's like in the

same space as us and what, that'd be great for our creative process.

And it just was, it was a bad fit.

You know?

I don't know how many weeks in, we just, we had to part ways.

Right?

And that's very hard for me 'cause I don't, I don't like that feeling.

I don't, and then, and then we found Chris, right?

So.

Being true to, like, what is the discomfort that is productive and

what's the discomfort that's like, you know, it's a bad relationship.

I, I used to have this conception that there would be these perfect unions and,

and I, I, I'd learned actually pretty early on, particularly with editors,

but also with other collaborators that like, of course, like you're going

to see me through to the finish line.

And actually often that's not the case.

And, and what do you do about that?

And at what point?

Call it.

You know, we actually sort of fought about this on, on Middletown and, and

our first collaboration with our editor.

'cause it was like, how long do we go here?

And we're burning money fast, you know, and we're, we have nothing to show for it.

And um, and maybe that's a, the failures on our part, right?

So that's, that's tough.

There is, from my experience and from what I've seen, there really are.

There's lots of worlds in within this world, but from a big picture

view, there's kind of two worlds.

There's people that are visible and people that can feel invisible.

Mm-hmm.

And even sometimes when you've become visible, you feel invisible again.

But that experience that you had with the overnighters and getting

that validation of Sundance and like you said, meeting funders, suddenly

people who wouldn't answer emails or wouldn't recognize your name.

Yeah.

In their inbox.

Yeah.

Are willing to give you the 15 minutes or the 45 minutes to

make your case for the next one.

Mm-hmm.

And that is a narrow entryway.

Like many are, not many are granted access to that entryway.

Do you have, what's the key?

What's the secret to get on the other side of that door?

Well, people started bringing us stuff, right?

That's what happened after the overnighters, like the

bandit was brought to us.

Right.

Like I don't think that that had happened a whole lot before that point.

Yeah.

But But not That's new.

Yeah.

That, yeah.

Not so much.

So then you're starting to

say no, which feels like an irresponsible thing to do.

'cause you're like, ah, we need to work.

I don't know, something I remind myself of too is like, it did, as Amanda

mentioned, it came out of a different.

Project, which was, I was sent up there by Nat Geo to the North Dakota

oil field to to, to scout for a reality TV show about roughnecks.

They immediately abandoned that project.

You're like, your footage is not what we want.

But I was like, I met this, I found this story, and I was, for a while, I was

like, oh shit, who owns this footage?

Like they paid for it.

I shot it.

Ah, fuck it.

I'm just gonna make this thing.

And, um, that, that, that was important.

Um, so, but the lesson there for me was like, sometimes say yes to things

that aren't perfect, like just to keep working, you know, going back to getting

kicked by Brett doing production audio.

It's like, okay, it's not perfect, but I'm out here making work.

Right?

Yeah.

Oh fuck.

It is, you know, an ethos that you can build an entire career around.

I asked you what the key was to get to the other side of that door.

'cause I wanna share.

You know, it can feel so daunting.

And I will tell you, 20 years into my career, I've never

played a film at Sundance.

Uh, my friend Ben, who's over there, we talk about all the time, he's

never played a film at Sundance.

We know that validation is, especially people right around the

same age as you who grew up inspired by the nineties indie film boom.

But like the key, what's the key to getting the other side of the door?

And I think you said it, I just wanna reflect it.

To me, the key is to make something undeniable or something that makes a

difference, something that people can't.

Look away from,

we, we, I think we've done it in two films and both, it took

enormous risk in different ways.

Um, and boy taping the other film, which really, really opened the door to much

more of a kind of Hollywood ecosystem and, and, and more substantial, but

often not good projects coming to us.

And with Boy State, the, the risk was, um, not, you know, 18 months of

like unsupported production about.

What felt like a, an obscure story, but boy, state, like.

A lot of money, a very contained production, but totally unpredictable.

Most likely it won't work, you know?

And we will just to burn through somebody's pile of cash

quickly.

It's very high risk, uh, high reward because it is a one week thing.

And if you don't get, it's not a longitudinal documentary

like the Overnighters, we could keep shooting until we.

You know the question with documentary, like when are you done shooting?

Well, like people's lives keep continuing and they keep changing.

And why not film forever?

Like we did not have that problem on this film.

It was you got it or you don't.

And either it's stays the simulation and kind of bs.

And doesn't sort of resonate in any kind of meaningful way

or it does something else.

And I think for fortunately, Concordia was kind of new and excited

about taking that risk with us.

But, you know, to put a, a like lot of money into a verite film where you

really don't know what's gonna happen.

And also we've never actually seen the boys state experience.

Right.

And, and the first like hour.

Of when we actually got to the event.

Or maybe like the first half a day is a lot of info download about what

is government and it's just, anyways, kids in a classroom listening to a

teacher and I was like, we are so effed.

This is so boring.

This is the worst film I've ever made.

Right.

We're screwed.

And like, of course, like the.

The, the producers are like, check in and let us know everything's going.

And we're like, I'm not talking to them today because this is bad.

Whatever.

It all worked out.

But

I mean, there was a moment on, on the overnighters where blatant production,

where I showed up following this guy and, and his life just blows up in front of me.

But I showed up and he was like, this, my life's blowing up.

And, and I knew that like it would require a lot of fortitude

to push through that door and to.

Film what was happening around him and um, 'cause it was really painful and it

just took me into like unstable territory, like ethically, um, to be honest.

And, and I do think the form is problematic, you know, and, and I

think like acknowledging that I, I think it's, we sort of sometimes don't

talk more openly about that fact.

For example, and I'm not the first person to point this out, but to ask people to

sign a release form at the beginning of a project in which they have no idea what.

You know, will happen or what they're actually giving you

is unethical to some degree.

The discomfort is built in.

And, and that, and, and sometimes our instinct for most of us is to

sometimes lean, lean away from, from, from, from what is un uncomfortable.

But

that ends up being the mic drops often.

Yeah.

Right.

Like those real, like we all know that from real life too.

Like the spicy stuff is really, um, the stuff that does make us kind of like.

Either cry or lean in or freak out, whatever.

I think that, um, we talk about this a lot in terms of objectivity

or journalism for, and it comes up a little bit in Middletown.

You know, you sort of see in the beginning you wanna do journalism.

By the end he's calling himself a crusader.

And you know, what is, how does documentary relate to journalism?

And that there are all these rules with journalism, right?

And they're in, they're like.

Codified somewhere.

I don't know.

I didn't go to journalism school.

But with documentary, you're kind of making up the rules,

like are you a good person?

Are you creating good boundaries?

And I think for us with this sort of like release form, you know,

the back end of that is we're gonna share this rough cut with you.

The idea at the end end is that you all are gonna stand on stage with us.

We're gonna have made a film that is collaborative in the sense

that you see yourself reflected in a real way or authentic way.

And we're all gonna be doing this together in the rollout of the movie.

Right.

But that rough cut moment is really interesting with Boys State, you know,

it being teenagers, um, there was sort of an added layer of like, we need to.

You know, I used my parenting tools.

I used my, there's so many skills that I had from not filmmaking that

I was putting into play in that film.

Why am I saying that?

I don't know.

I'll tell you, I was planning on this whole talk being about

Boys state and Middletown.

Oh, okay.

And really the focus on like.

Teen working with teenagers.

Mm-hmm.

You know, today in Boys State and we're going, the idea of teenagers

from the past, the limitations of the one week shoot with boys state

the limitations of an archival shoot, which is, you know, watching your film

feels fairly unlimited for the amount of archival you had to play with, but

still, archival comes to an end at some point, and it doesn't, isn't designed

to fit together into a great movie.

Right.

So they, that's what I expected to talk about.

I'm glad we've, what we've been talking about is I think much

more, much more interesting.

Although I'm very interested in those subjects too, because

it is about who you are.

You just said something I, Amanda, I feel like, like you, I actually enjoy

spending time in the edit more than I like getting up on the sunny day and

getting out there with the camera.

Yeah.

Um, and like you, I didn't go to journalism school and I've used

that exact, those exact lines.

Those are my lines.

I don't know what the ethics of journalism are and I don't wanna know.

'cause I don't wanna have to follow somebody else's rules.

I follow my own rule.

Right.

I set my own course.

Yeah.

But it boils into exactly what you just said.

Like what is your personal ethic and how do you feel about yourself

as a person when the film is done.

Mm-hmm.

You've asked these people to let you you into their lives.

Right?

You've asked them to share and to be vulnerable, and at the end you're also

asking 'em to trust you that you're gonna take care with that at the end.

You have to stand there at the q and a. And I, I've never made a movie where

the people were mad at me at the end.

Uh, as far as I know, um, it doesn't seem like you guys have either.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Well, not the subjects, but the people around them.

We are takers on some level that is what we're doing.

It's someone else's story, but I think that it is also a shared.

Event.

Right?

They there, there is a need for a witness and that collaboration is a, I don't

think I'm super imposing that with the people that we very carefully select,

by the way to follow it is not everybody that should be in a documentary film.

It is not every film that should be made.

You came up with the idea to do boy state.

Where did that colonel come from?

An

article in the Washington Post.

Okay.

Um.

And was

it about

the

Texas boys state?

It was about Texas Boys State seceding from the United States.

Right.

And it was a big story for a minute, a hot minute, and, uh.

I was like, that's funny, but it's telling.

And we thought, what, what an interesting world.

You know, Trump had just been elected the first time and this story sort of albertus

sideways into politics, um, because it was young people and because it was this

one place where like in real life people were gathering who had very different, you

know, they were having, uh, it was sort of right where the right left met and had

to have conversations with each other.

That was interesting.

But mostly it was like the teenager piece of it.

Um, I think what we did not know is like, how.

It was gonna end up being a portrait of masculinity on some level at

that time, um, right around me too, so that was really interesting.

I, I, I wrote quick, quickly, we wrote a treatment and I, I

was working with another company at the time and I shared that.

With them.

And they were, they kind of jumped on it and, and then they offered

us a really shitty deal and it was really hard to walk away from that.

I said no.

Immediately though.

Yeah.

I was like,

absolutely not.

You know?

Absolutely not.

But you know, when you're

desperate, you're like, you want somebody to believe in you.

But, you know, and, and, and I've made bad deals, but, um, that then, um, we, we

got, you know, Concordia bit and, um, this is kind of, um, the first time I think.

I mean, there's like two ca it's a little controlled, the, the, the, the

camera work and like, like less run and gun than other work that we had done.

And this was like an intention already to sort of explore what the visual, both

the iconography of the American Legion sort of old fashioned, but also these.

Kids who are very much of the moment in their own ways.

And so that tension, there's a lot of tensions in the film, the tension

of playfulness and sort of in comedy, ludicrous comedy of like teenage boys

in Texas, Jack jerking off and doing stupid stuff and then like actually it

being a very powerful, um, prism into.

Political division and masculinity.

So the sort of those tensions were in the article.

I think that the value of doing the casting process was Concordia

could then see, oh, I would watch these guys sort of do anything.

So we knew there was gonna work on some level as a character study.

Yeah.

And our access was so complete with them as people.

I think that Concordia was taken with that too.

The interviews shot in casting were foundational for the film though.

And um, and it's been my experience too, that sometimes those first conversations.

Are, are, um, reveal things that, that you, you don't get subsequently

with, with the, we had to shoot a girl state, uh, casting reel,

even though like Apple wanted it.

We had, we had done development work, we had had access, but they're

like, no, we want a casting reel.

And we're like, oh, shit.

You know, and, and we, um, had to do the same thing and you'd

think it would be just, yeah.

Green light.

But, um, it, there were compelling subjects in that reel, but it's still

to, to get the green light required.

A lot of cajoling, even like, like Davis at, at Concordia having to like

nudge them and, and like it's, I I told Amanda, we have to make the film too,

because no one pays for verite films.

They, they, why would, you know,

before they're made

and certainly no streamers do.

And um, I thought this is like our one chance with girls state to ever make

a a a, a verite film that that is, um, financed by a streamer whenever.

Never again we'll have that chance.

I'm pretty sure of it.

Well, things change, you know, they change rapidly.

The world that Boy State launched into and Boy State made such a

massive, it was like one of those.

It's like a meteor.

It felt like to me from here in Austin, you know, you boys state came out 20 18,

20 20 at premiered January 20.

Oh, shot 2018.

Shot in 2018

and that's probably okay.

That makes more sense then.

That's probably why it felt like such a meteor.

It was such a huge story in January of 2020 and then the world changed

immediately six weeks later.

But it was a huge impact tonally in that you are dealing with the Trump.

Election in this really interesting kind of sideways way

that said, how did we get here?

Well, let's take a look at the microcosm of these teenage boys that

represent all of us in this strange way.

Uh, and it shows how we got here.

Me too.

Mm-hmm.

Being, uh, such a stark contrast.

And then the price tag of the big sale that you guys

made, like that sort of thing.

The, the, the twofer and the fact that it's.

Formally and totally a, a very classic documentary.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you didn't go out and, and, you know, throw all the

different razzle dazzles at it the way I would, would've felt I needed

to, to kind of make a, a splash.

You, you play it pretty straight and the subject matter rises to

meet you and you're there 'cause you're great filmmakers who knew

how to cast and knew how to point, and knew how to position yourself.

And edited something that really got the most out of it.

I know Overnighters changed your career.

How did Boys state change your career?

Again,

I mean, you mentioned the price tag and I think it, you know, we wish the price

tag had never been publicly disclosed.

Sure.

'cause it, and it's not fun to talk about money, but it kind

of puts a target on your back.

I mean, it's also, I mean, obviously great and, and then the,

the sort of Hollywood ecosystem, that's the ultimate metric, right.

What's your value, you know, or how much do you make?

But I mean, I think that we, we met a moment in, in ways that we

never anticipated and, um, we're the beneficiaries of a new streaming service.

And a 24 is marketing muscle.

And that, um, again, is like, um, um, just feels like a, a,

a kind of planetary alignment.

Um, and, um, um.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Let, let me say that we don't see it.

I mean, I understand totally what you mean about have feeling like

you have a target on your back.

We, I speak for myself only, but I can, uh, I, I can guess I'm not the only one.

We did not see it as, uh, um, as something to target or as something that'd be

jealous or, or angry or frustrated by.

If anything, it was aspirational and it showed that documentary.

Can make the kind of crossover impact.

I know, I mean, I guess I view it with nostalgia now that, that a streamer

would buy a film about people who aren't famous about, uh, a story we don't know.

You know, no one dies.

I mean, it's just, it's, it's an anomaly.

It, and I recognize it for that and I feel very fortunate that we're

the beneficiaries and because that's always the films that we have made

and want to continue making, you know, unscripted films about people who aren't.

Famous already or infamous and I'm, I'm kind of a little mournful because

I, I don't know if our ecosystem has, um, much room for those kinds

of like the sys the world, the culture, the systems have evolved

in a way, and I feel lucky that we.

Been able to build our sort of haphazard career and journey off those kinds

of films like The Overnighters, which again, similar in in a way, I, I just,

I still long to get back to that kind of filmmaking and I actually long to

go back to these are huge crews that, that film in particular, I loved it.

Um, working with a giant crew.

But I also long to go back to the days of working by myself with

Amanda, no one else, and just.

Seeing where the story takes

at and we're at now.

So we're, so, I mean, you know, the Boys State thing was meaningful us to us too.

I'll just have to say this personally.

Um, it's the first film our kids like, gave us the thumbs up on.

And so that was like, that was great, you know, to, to make films that.

Um, could ha, could, could provoke intergenerational conversation because,

so there were some young people at the film last night and I really liked

that about the last couple films we've made is that we're having my parents,

my generation, and my kids all having these conversations about politics or

about the climate, or about teachers, or about journalism or whatever the

film is asking you to talk about.

I love that because young people don't necessarily

gravitate towards documentaries.

And so that's exciting.

I'm still turning

on the question we got last night, um, from the teacher about this, the

mid story Middletown of this sort of collaborative investigative endeavor and

the way these kids make a film together.

Like that's not how people create media together.

Young people create media for themselves or for their friends,

but it's sort of done individually.

And so what is the model of collaborative work?

What, what will documentary become?

I just, I, I think that's a great question.

I don't have an answer for it, but I'm, I, I am wondering what.

You know how young people will work together in the way that

we see them work together in Middletown to make an investigative

documentary like what is that media?

What is that model of tomorrow?

It's amazing to be this far into like a career and still be asking

yourself, what is it that you do?

You know, what is a documentary?

And the buyers having one definition that's also always evolving.

Is it entertainment?

Is it journalism?

Is it hagiography?

And I don't think there's one answer, obviously, but I do think

it's interesting that we're still like questioning that, you know?

Yeah.

We've talked a, we've talked a long time already.

We have not talked almost at all about Middletown.

Middletown is your new film.

Premier Me to Sundance.

It's playing here at doc days.

It is an incredible look at teenage activists.

Uh, an inspiring teacher.

It's an archive heavy film.

It is about a subject matter that dominated the lives of these high school

kids, high school experience in 1991 through 1997, but it's a microcosm of a

major issue that dominates our lives today with the environment and, and corporate

control and corruption and greed.

The people who are in this room saw the film last night and, and we got to

experience a great q and a last night, and you've shared a little bit about it.

The people who will watch this podcast.

We'll have to wait to see the film 'cause you're still seeking distribution.

Can you share with us to wrap up what Middletown has meant?

The pr, the process of making Middletown on the heels of girls

state and boys state, the overnighters getting kicked by Brett Morgan.

Uh, all the different, you know, this is where you're at in your career right now.

And this is, you know, we be.

We become traveling salesman during distribution, right?

We go from town to town selling our wares, answering the same

questions, looking for connection.

Where do we find you now in distribution with, with Middletown?

Just to wrap the whole thing up,

Amanda describes a simple question.

Amanda describes Middletown as our unplugged album, right?

It's a little throwback, I mean.

It's not, doesn't have kind of the show value of boy state

or the kind of 11 register.

Crazy as crazy.

But maybe not overnighters crazy.

So where does it fit?

You know, I, I, um, I mean we're, we're trying things that we're excited about.

Um, we, we did one thing in particular that, um, we built a kind of hot tub

time machine, I'll call it that, but, but it was a sort of, um, a strategy

to kind of invite the subjects who are now our age to look back on a teenage

experience and how we did that formally and was, was an interesting challenge

and something that we're looking for.

In taking on new projects is like they scare us.

We don't know how to do it.

They demand formal innovation or things that we haven't tried before that feel

risky and the work feels necessary to us.

Like it, it will have meaning in the world.

Not that we're not always tempted to kind of find.

Easier ways to sell out, but I think we want, you know, it's two years

or more of your life and you want to feel like it puts, you put something

good into the world and this felt like that kind of story that hopefully

if we got it right, it would put, put something good in the world.

That's why we wanted to do it.

Is there a final thought or a final message that you hope people

take away from what you put out into the world through Middletown.

Or is there a thread through all your work that kind of speaks to the message

that you're, you're putting out there?

That's

a big question.

Yeah.

I just, I like to bring the big questions at the very end.

Uh, um, I mean, the sort of like, what's the thread through all of your work thing?

It just throws me.

Yeah.

Like, I guess it's us, right?

With this film in particular, I am deeply.

Refreshed by Fred and his state of being in the world as an adult and

found that being around him through the process of making this has.

Helped me kind of make sense of the world that we're in right now and how to be

useful as a storyteller, but also as a good person or trying to be a good person.

The reflection back, I think I talked about this last night,

of like looking, thinking about who you are as a 50 something to

who you were as a 18 something.

Um, obviously that's stuff we're thinking about because we have a

19-year-old and a 16-year-old kid, but you know, it's different parenting that.

Teenager, then actually reflecting on your own younger self, and would

you be making yourself that, that person then proud now as a, I hate

the word, but middle aged person,

would you be.

I think I would, which is, which is also took me a while to be cool with saying

that because I was definitely a more radical and much rager person at the time.

Um, so why have I calmed down?

Because frankly, there's more to be enraged by.

And I think it's that I've found meaning and I found people.

So that is the good thing about getting older, right?

Is you, aren't you?

You do know more of who you are, um, and what's important to you.

So that's a good thing about being older, I think, and being this

far into the business, is that we're not gonna make every film,

God, I have to think about that.

I'm gonna come up with like eight more answers when we stop filming.

Uh, I think that was a great answer.

Middletown is very much about the past and the present and seeing.

You said this last night in the q and a, you didn't know what the third

act was when you started the film.

I don't think any great documentary knows what the third act is when they start.

I

hope they don't actually s then Yeah, that's right.

Because you're

just filling in, you're just filling in an outline if that's all you're doing.

Right.

So what is the third act?

And the third act is almost always, almost always a, a moment of reflection.

And for a film like this where it, where it's definitely a

moment of reflection because.

You have created a time machine and it's time for people to step outta the hot

tub towel off and decide, you know, like how, how wrinkly their fingers got and

how far I wanna stretch this metaphor.

Um, and uh, and that's what your subjects do, right?

They, they all changed and they saw that change in a way that most of us

don't get the opportunity to do, right?

It's why high school reunions.

Are both so terrible and so weirdly wonderful.

Right.

I'm still trying to figure that out.

Yeah.

Whatever that space is.

It was interesting to me.

I mean, we can nerd out on a lot of like documentary stuff about like, you know,

past tense stories and why we tell them versus the present tense stuff of verite,

which is a very different project and we struggle more with like past tense

story to like, why tell this story?

Why does Middletown need to be a story in the world?

Like it happened Great.

What is the value of telling it now in 2025?

And so that's, that's a different challenge, right?

And so every film has a different challenge.

Who's gonna care?

Why are you making it?

But really, the who cares is like the number one thing you

gotta figure out for yourself.

And hopefully that love, passion, whatever it is, will make it out,

uh, of your body into the film and into the room in the theater.

We are wrapping up there, Jesse.

Any final, final, final word?

No, um,

final finals.

Alright, well

you guys are gonna hang up.

We, we, we didn't, I, sorry.

I was gonna say we didn't, we get, didn't get to my religion.

Um, but when you were describing sort of the meaning of the work,

I mean, I, I, I do think, um.

Yeah, I don't have a closing.

I just, it will take us in another digression, which

I don't want to go on now.

That'll be a, a a, a chapter

two of this discussion.

Keith, um, uh, I'm gonna hold you to that because I have loved every discussion

we've had over the last couple days.

I, I look forward to more chapters.

Great.

Um, thank you for your time.

Thanks Keith.

I'm sorry I didn't open up to questions, but I was having such

a good time talking to them.

I appreciate you guys putting up with that.

Thank you guys.

Alright.

That was.

Amanda McBain and Jesse Moss, and that was a great conversation.

I just really enjoy the opportunity to chat with other filmmakers and to get a

sense of what's going on in the industry.

Just get into people's process.

There are so many places that are similar to how I approach documentary

filmmaking and then so many things that I'm learning every time we do this.

So, sorry, Ben isn't here this episode, but um, next time on Duck Walks,

we're gonna reverse roles and Ben is gonna take you on a walk without me.

He's up in Kansas City and he is walking with a writer and filmmaker.

Kevin Wilmont.

Dock Walks is created, produced, and edited by my friend Ben

Stein, Bower of the Bear.

Hello, and my friend Keith Maitland of Go Valley, and we couldn't do it

without editorial help from Juliana Rios.

Thanks for tuning in.

Follow us at Doc Walks pod on Instagram X and YouTube.