EP023 – I’m Not A Pirate Anymore (But I Used To Be) with Bradley Beesley

09.25.2025 - Season: 1 Episode 23

A walk down docu-memory lane as we welcome Ben’s early filmmaking collaborator, roommate, and mentor Bradley Beesley…. A prolific and adventure-prone docmaker, Bradley’s created acclaimed docs OKIE NOODLING 1 & 2, FEARLESS FREAKS, and SWEETHEARTS OF THE PRISON RODEO—among others. This walk takes us through Brad & Ben’s old neighborhood, with a stop in front of the house they shared in French Place, here in Austin. In a flowing conversation filled with stories and insights from Bradley’s early days at OU art school where he made the infamous PIZZA MAN, through his collaborations with Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, and his intense love of Oklahoma hand-fishing, it’s no surprise that Ben calls Bradley, “The Pride of Oklahoma.” And Austin takes plenty of pride in this former-pirate too!

Links:

The Making of Biffy Clyro, My Recovery Injection directed by Ben Steinbauer

Okie Noodling (2000)

Fearless Freaks (2005)

Summercamp! (2006)

The Creek Runs Red (2006)

Okie Noodling 2 (2008)

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo (2009)

Calls To Okies: The Park Grubbs Story (2014)

00:00 The Pride of Barbados

00:22 The Pride of Oklahoma

02:10 Walking and Talking with Bradley Beesley

04:29 Journey to Austin

05:35 The Flaming Lips Connection

20:49 The Making of Okie Noodling

27:33 Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo

28:38 The Best Summer of Bradley’s Life

29:39 The Pirate Life of Filmmaking

33:16 The Okie Noodling Phenomenon

36:11 Creating the Noodling Tournament

38:56 Funding and Production Challenges

40:51 The Passion for Noodling

44:54 Advice for Young Filmmakers

47:49 Current Projects and Reflections

51:30 Conclusion and Future Guests

Okay.

All right.

So, hey, uh, before we get started, Ben, can I just point out it is pride

of Barbados season in Austin and these beautiful red and orange flowers are

everywhere in this neighborhood and all over town, and they make me so happy.

I never knew that that's what these were called pride of

Barbados, the pride of Barbados.

Wow.

That's right.

Awesome.

Well, that is a great intro into our episode for today

because in a way we could say.

Our guest, Brad Beasley, is the pride of Oklahoma.

Oklahoma.

Of Oklahoma.

You were going there and of, uh, documentary filmmakers.

Here in Austin, he is, uh, one of my oldest and best friends, and arguably

the reason that I live in Austin, Texas, and I consider him a mentor, and I'm

so excited that we get the chance to talk to Bradley on the podcast today.

Yeah, Bradley Beasley is an OG Austin doc guy.

He's very prolific, especially in the early part of this 21st century.

Ooh, that sounds very, yeah.

Very highfalutin.

The 20, the first part of the 21st century.

The little Ken Burns, I just watched.

Ken Burns.

Ben Franklin.

Well, this is the antithesis.

This is more like a less blank inspired, uh, walk.

There's lots of fanny packs.

There's a talk of joints, the flaming lips stealing from the post office.

This episode has it all.

So we hope you guys will, uh, stick around and enjoy.

We're

gonna put lots of links to Bradley's work in the show notes.

If you wanna watch the trailers to his fellows before we talk to him so that

you get a sense of who this guy is.

I, I recommend that.

Uh, or you can just, you know, raw dog, the episode, like normal.

And, uh, get in there with myself.

Gross since turned on.

This is a gross intro, but, and our guest, Brad Beasley, but it's apropos.

You guys are gonna love it.

Stay tuned.

It's not the grossest part of this episode, for sure.

On your left,

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

All right, that's Ben Stein Bauer.

Hello, I'm Keith Maitland, and this is The Intrepid Bradley Beasley.

Hey there guys.

How you doing, Brad?

I'm doing well.

I think this.

Concept that you guys have constructed where you walk around is so much

more interesting than just plopping down in a studio or how to record a

podcast 'cause it's just more dynamic.

And most of my good ideas come when I'm walking around.

Well granted is when I'm by myself.

I was gonna say, any ideas that you come up with on this walker

have to be split three ways.

Well, thank you for that.

And I also know that you are a consummate walker.

I see you out walking.

I mean, you must do like an hour plus a day, right?

I do.

during the pandemic, I became what I call a steps dork.

I always made fun of those people that had the watches and they

were looking at their step count.

And now I'm just one of those dorks.

So how many steps do you do to dork?

I try to get my standard 10,000 steps in.

Wow.

But I really do come up with a lot of ideas as I'm walking,

listening to rando podcasts.

Like this one,

like this.

Let's take a right here and then we'll take a left and we'll

walk by Thunderbird Coffee.

Where I first met Keith in 2008 when you had the eyes of me you're working on.

Before we get into this story, which I do want to hear, I,

I'm jingles everything on this.

I have to point out the, uh, the matching fanny packs.

Well, that we were rocking here.

Here's Keith's orange color coordinated fanny pack with his

shoes, and then here's Bradley's.

Fanny pack color coordinated with the knee taping.

Yeah.

Knee bandage.

This is really just

a podcast about old men and their choices.

What is the most interesting thing in your fanny pack?

Well, is this a wholesome podcast?

Oh, no.

I want to hear, I want to hear about the roach or the chicken wing.

Yeah.

What you've got going on.

So I always keep a little joint in my fanny pack just to have it just in case.

is a

beautiful September morning.

Here in uh, French place here on the east side of Austin.

And uh, this is a special episode.

I'm just gonna co-opt this 'cause this is a special episode for me

because we get to interview and walk with one of my favorite people.

And of course I'm talking about Keith Maitland.

It's gonna be a fair, I mean, Bradley Beasley.

Well, I'm excited to go buy her old Hot Bradley is the reason

that I live in Austin and.

Arguably is responsible for a lot of my decision to become

a documentary filmmaker.

And I moved here and started working with Bradley and learned so much from

him and consider him one of my mentors and, uh, one of my best friends.

So I'm very excited to have, be right on the podcast.

Likewise, buddy.

Yeah, we met in, well, we started living together.

In 2002, and we only showered together to conserve water.

But go ahead.

It was right on the heels of me working with you on a Flaming Lips music video.

Mm-hmm.

In Oklahoma City.

And you mentioned you might wanna move to Austin.

I'm like, I got a place.

Yep.

I was living in Lawrence, Kansas.

I was supposed to move to New York with a girlfriend.

We broke up, she moved to New York.

I didn't want to go to la.

We had met, you were the most successful filmmaker that I knew, and you had

invited me to come and start working on some Flaming Lips music videos where

I was shooting behind the scenes, the docks for you, and you had just gotten

the Warner Brothers deal to start making the Flaming Lips documentary.

And you invited me down to start working on that with you and said that you were

moving to Austin and needed a roommate.

And I was like.

Done.

I've won the game of life.

I'm going to go make a Flaming Lips documentary.

Yeah, it was a strangely

prolific time for me in that I was making fearless freaks.

Summer camp in the creek runs red concurrently, and I think your

hands at that time touched all those projects because you were.

An assistant editor at the time.

Yeah.

So all these projects landed on your lap were essentially, you were cutting sizzles

and presentation reels, even though we didn't know that's what they were called.

But yeah, you were, you were cutting all this stuff for me at the time.

So yeah, it was perfect.

And concurrently as that was going on, we were watching tons and tons of.

VHS

tapes via Charlie or Dan Brown, Charlie Satello, uh, the host of show

with no name on Austin Public Access.

Yeah.

And we would go, we would work all day is my recollection.

And our day was about noon to maybe eight or 9:00 PM That's fair.

And then go to Club Deville every night from Yeah, 10 to two in the morning.

And then we would bring whoever back from the bar had not seen Winnebago

Man or Larry Williams or the gassy preacher or any number of other VHS gems.

And we would make, we've forced them to watch these while

we recited all of the line.

Yeah.

Little did

we know that it was gonna be among your most successful.

Projects ever.

Winnebago, man.

The feature Doc Bradley, when did you get to Austin?

I got to Austin in 2002.

And why?

Um, I'd been coming down to South by, since, you know, the mid nineties

and then applying to South by making shorts and stuff and not getting in.

And finally after about three or four years of that, I had.

Stomp Holler a doc about Fat possum records and R Burnside that premiered

in 99 at South by, and then after that I was constantly thinking about it and it

was such an easy transition from Norman.

Six hours away I had met Lee Daniel because we were, he

was DPing these flaming lips.

Music videos and

Lee Daniel was, uh, Richard Linklater's, long time, uh, dp who

Slacker basically confused and yeah.

Yeah.

So I met Lee and we started working together, and then yeah, moved to

Austin, got my two bedroom place.

I was there for about six months, and then Stein moved in.

When you were growing up in Oklahoma, was there.

A film scene, was there a community?

Were there mentors or people to look up to?

Or where did you find kind of that early Oklahoma inspiration?

So when I was in eighth

grade, the place that we liked to go to was the movie theater and not necessarily,

I wasn't a junior high cinephile.

It was just, I like girls and popcorn and all the other things.

I like girls and popcorn.

You become a filmmaker.

Well, well, I like girls and popcorn, but.

In ninth grade, the movie theater fucking shut down in more Oklahoma.

There was no movie theater.

And so it really wasn't until my brother got into college and started

taking, uh, journalism classes and became a shooter that I had any

interest in filmmaking whatsoever.

But it was all driven by my.

Older brother who was taking me to these punk rock shows when I was in

junior high and you know, all these high school kids or you know, we're watching

bands like The Flaming Lips and the mid eighties when I'm 14, 15, 16 years old.

And I think just being part of that scene kind of turned me on to

wanting to be a more of a creative

force.

Most people don't have like a specific moment, but is

there like a moment or a time.

You know, between that kind of 14, 15-year-old show goer and your first

short films applying to South by that, you knew where you turned a corner.

Yes.

Watching the uh, Les Blank Lightning Hopkins Sweet documentary.

I was like, wow, that, that's what I want to do.

And I was already listening.

This was about 97.

I was already listening to Arnold Burnside's record.

With John Spencer Blues Explosions.

So good.

What was that?

Whi full of whiskey.

Yeah.

And so it just happened that RL Burnside was coming to Oklahoma

City, uh, just a small club.

And of course, you know, I was kind of a go-getter type and just walked

up to Burnside and was like, I wanna.

Make a documentary about you.

I want to come to your house blunt.

He just agreed to everything immediately.

So within weeks of meeting RL Burnside and having this sort of epiphany after

watching the Mining Hopkins doc from Les Blank, I was in R L's kitchen with

he and his family, and he was playing.

Music and I, I got him to sign a release and that was how it really

started.

I love that you were, uh, pro enough to go for the release right away.

Uh, it's a lesson I still have to be reminded of.

Unfortunately, what I, what

I didn't realize though, Keith, is that I had a personal release from rl, but the

record company, of course, I didn't get any kind of publishing rights whatsoever.

So when I finished the film.

And we were like two weeks from playing South by Matthew, the

head of Fat Possum throws a fit because he doesn't like the film.

He wants it to be more commercial and feature more artists and whatnot.

And I was like, well, that's a different movie and that's not the movie I'm making.

And so he's like, well, we're not gonna give you the publishing rights.

I was like, well, I've caught his release.

What else do I need?

That's how naive and stupid I was in the late nineties about.

Yeah.

Publishing.

I mean, that's, that's not easy information to learn.

Yeah.

So you still really can't show that film, right.

Like you have to be there.

Right, right.

Oh, is that right person?

And like we, we

premiered the film at South By, it did.

Well, people loved it.

But even after that, we weren't gonna be releasing it because we

didn't have the publishing rights.

And I didn't wanna recut the film.

I was already thinking about.

Making Okie noodling.

And Matthew Johnson said, I'll give you 10 grand for the raw footage.

And I was like, done.

Oh, my guy didn't even, did he ever do anything with it?

Yeah, yeah.

They recut it and made a film called, you See Me Laughing, and Mandy Stein,

Seymour Stein's daughter was the director and it had like bono in it and

stuff, but they used all my footage.

They just put celeb interviews in there and it's not horrible.

Do you remember what it was about that list, blank light in Hawkins film?

Was it, was it access?

Was it being so close to the music, to the subject?

Was it the filmmaking or like, it was a

sense of intimacy that I'd not experienced in any kind of film I'd ever seen.

And it was like, how does this white guy go into this African American?

Community and a friend, all these people, seemingly like

he's known him for 30 years.

Right.

And yeah, that really

turned me on.

I like that.

So a little bit of, uh, trivia here.

Bradley and I, when we first lived together, lived in this

neighborhood, uh, just down the block here, which we are going.

To walk by and the street coming up here was the site of

the Biffy Clyro music video.

This, uh, Scottish band that Bradley had made some music videos for came

over in the summer, as I remember it.

Mm-hmm.

Just dripping in sweat as we were shooting the music video.

That who, which the concept was really cool.

It was that they were stock car racers.

And you built these stock cars and we had them race up and

down this street right here.

Yeah.

You guys did a couple of videos for Biffy.

Clyro, as I remember.

And this hill, so you can see how steep it is, was perfect for this racing scene.

And I remember we went up and down this thing, I don't know how many,

it felt, probably like a hundred times in the heat of the summer.

With some very pale Scottish rockstar.

Is this a link that we're gonna put in the show notes?

Yes.

We will, uh, link to that music video and to the making of which I shot.

It was really because of the behind the scenes footage of the Flaming

Lips Music video videos over the years that I, I, I started doing those music

videos in art school in 92 and by about.

2002, after 10 years of shooting behind the scenes music videos, I

was like, I've got a couple hundred hours of footage of this band.

Maybe I could make something for the band.

So I made a short doc that screened it south by in 2000, and then from that

is how I built the Fearless Freaks.

But it was just one of those projects, kind of like the.

Sandlot documentary that I'm doing now that you just collect all this

footage, and I like that part of being a documentary filmmaker where you have this

archive that you can go back and tap.

Mm-hmm.

Whether it's to, you know, repurpose something to make a podcast.

During a pandemic when there's no projects to be had that like

I like would with your d Dr.

Dante.

Yeah.

I really like that.

Part of it is collecting part of history and keeping that.

I'm in talks right now with this museum and Tulsa called, okay Pop, and they

may be acquiring my archive, this whole collection of 16 millimeter.

Films at, you know, the first three or four projects I shot were on 16.

Tell us how you met Wayne Coyne and got involved with the Flaming.

It was, it was

just, you know, being in art school at the University of Oklahoma was just

a very small group, and Michelle, his girlfriend at the time was in some

photography classes of mine and I heard they were looking for somebody that could

shoot, and for Wayne, it was just like.

Okay, this guy has access to cameras, albeit their through the university.

Let's get 'em.

And it wasn't, it was, you were a guy with a camera.

Yeah.

No, it was never, Wayne never came to me and said, man, I've

seen a lot of your work like Pizza Man and other titles and, uh.

I really wanna work.

It's so

well get, see that guy who did pizza, man.

Well, this is a, a, a curve ball or a, a detour from the conversation, but you have

to explain to Keith what Pizza Man is for.

So reason in the School of Art at

ou it was just insanely experimental.

And it didn't seem goofy at the time, but it seems real goofy now.

But you know, people would just do gross stuff for shock value.

It was like performance art, basically.

Yeah, totally.

Totally.

And in a, I had a painting class and I couldn't paint, but I would just adhere

stuff to the canvas and it didn't matter.

No one cared.

It was all about the ideas and the concepts.

Wildly experimental.

So among.

One of the pieces that unfortunately I watched was some guy in the class

hanging himself upside down and defecating, and the professor's just

like, yeah, let, let's go with that.

So I was like, well, I gotta top that.

So I got a bunch of art school freaky friends and punk rock bands to take

off their clothes, and we ordered pizza and invited the pizza man over to.

Deliver pies to nude guy

and I've, they're lucky enough to see this video and from what

I recall is that, I don't think we're gonna put this link in the

show mate,

is that the, this poor pizza guy shows up and you know, he is just another

like college kid and he comes into.

You know, the foyer is right through the front door.

The camera pans over and there's a sheet hanging, you know, between uh,

the rooms and the sheet comes down and there's just this sort of collection

of, of dudes standing a donger roses.

Yeah.

Completely naked.

And then it whips back over.

And then you just see this poor guy's reaction, which is not to like run

screaming or anything like super dramatic.

He more is just kind of like.

I think he takes a drag of a cigarette or something.

No, he is like, I gotta get outta here.

Yeah,

he is like, I mean, the worst part of it, 50 or whatever.

There was no real concept.

It was just for shock value.

Oh.

It was

like jackass before jackass.

But I love that it was done for a college, for college career creator.

I've got an A plus.

Okay.

So we've been veering wi wildly.

Yeah.

All over here.

Yeah.

Let's get to, I just how you get to Okie noodling because that.

In my mind was your first like, big hit that put you on the map as a Well,

and I wanna say, uh, you know, in the warmup, Ben said you were the

most famous filmmaker he knew.

I would say you were the most successful filmmaker anybody knew in this town.

When I got to Austin post-college, post New York, got back here in 2005,

2006, and at that moment in time.

You couldn't go anywhere without hearing the name Bradley Beasley and seeing

title after title kind of roll down the pipe for the next four or five years.

Yeah.

At least that's what it felt like.

I mean, you know, concurrently Margaret Brown and Heather Courtney, there

was a lot of filmmakers in town that were doing exactly the same thing.

Yep, sure.

So that's one of the reasons why I moved to Austin.

'cause there certainly weren't filmmakers doing that in.

Norman, Oklahoma.

Right.

But before we get into Okey noodling, just to finish up the pizza, man, how

did I meet Wayne Coin thread, right?

Yes.

Right.

It, it is just to say it was a relationship built out of geographical

convenience and not someone thinking, let's go over, man, I

gotta work with this Brad Beasley.

Ha.

He's a, he's an art student.

And no, it was just, I had a camera.

So that part of it was just dumb luck and he was really driven and had

a vision and really was for years, a, a mentor to me until he wasn't.

remember just to jump in really quick, our membership works that way.

Yeah, yeah.

I remember being around Wayne and also being struck by that, like he is uniquely

this force of nature where I don't remember ever really seeing him eat or or

whatever, really sit down like he Exactly.

He is always in motion.

He's always creating something.

He's the type of guy that would.

Gets to the show early, set up the stage.

Totally.

You like, like be in charge of the gear even.

I mean it was really wild to

Yeah.

He has a very broad bandwidth for all kinds of things within the course of

a day, and I feel like he and I are both sort of driven and passionate.

The thing he lacks is the ability to have just social relationships.

And that always bummed me out.

'cause I'm like, after the music video or whatever, I'd be like,

let's go get some food and drinks and talk about how cool that was.

Right.

Which we all do to this night.

Yeah.

But he, he never, he, he never made time for anything like that.

But, um.

Yeah, just, just watching him work was inspiring and definitely taught

me how to become a better artist.

Mm-hmm.

So work hard and, yeah.

Yeah.

Are there any specifics in like tied to that for you with him?

How to become a better artist?

I'm always,

yeah.

I, I think specifically Wayne taught me that you have to finish

the project that you start.

And finish it fast and don't worry about what people are gonna think.

Get it out there.

So between, you know, 99 and 2009, I pumped out seven feature link docs that

all premiered at festivals and did fairly,

fairly well.

You know, that's what I was talking about when I dropped into this, like

kind of felt like I parachuted into an existing scene and kind of couldn't find.

A way in or find my footing.

The one thing that I just kept kind of hearing over and over

again is Bradley's got a new movie.

Bradley's got a new movie and it was the thing, I could always go to a screening.

I could always go to a premiere at South by, or I remember

gonna see camp, it was it camp,

summer

Camp.

Summer camp.

It was Sarah PR at the old Ritz, um, on Sixth Street.

We presented that there and just, you know, every time I turned

around you had a new one coming out and that sort of prolific nature.

Isn't common in that period of time.

Can you just rail, uh, like run through the titles and then we'll

kind of hone in on a couple of them?

Sure.

So here's the

house, 34, 15 probably where Ben and I lived.

And this is where you lived while you were making all these films.

Yeah.

This is where Ben was in the back room cutting.

Um.

Fearless freaks.

Uh, summer camp, the creek runs red, all that stuff.

But yeah, between 99 and 2009, there was stomp baller, Okey

noodling, fearless freaks.

The creek runs red summer camp.

Okey noodling.

Part two, the sequel.

I don't know if we needed it, but we made it.

We got money to make it, so we did it.

And then, and then sweethearts of the prison Rodeo in 2000.

Nine the same year that Ben finished Winnebago Man.

Yeah,

yeah, that's right.

And I think I worked on almost all of those films in some Oh you did?

Yeah.

You definitely all, all of those somehow.

Most of them in this house.

And I remember, so like the, I don't know how close we can get here 'cause

somebody probably lives here, but we, this was the living room right here.

This was your bedroom, Uhhuh.

Right.

And then in the back of the living room, like if we went through the

front door, kind of the back wall would've been your desk setup.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you know, this is like 2000, so there's a, we're talking a big ass

monitor, you know, maybe one great big computer with a big screen.

Like there were, it, it was sizable.

It was a big setup, is what I'm saying, because the hard drives were

large, computers were large, it was.

It took up like half the living room.

It was sort of the command center there.

Totally, totally.

And then there's a kitchen, and then through the kitchen was my room, and

my room had a bed, and then a desk that was about as large that just

completely dominated, gigantic red chair.

Oh, I had a huge red office chair.

Yeah, you're right.

Yes.

I had a cray pick.

The room was too small for a big chair, but I spent almost

all my time in that thing.

So I, I guess it needed to be comfortable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we had a lot of fun, uh, in, in this house and made

a lot of cool work for sure.

Yeah.

So the, the last, you know, sort of, uh, feature doc that I made in that era

was sweethearts of the prison rodeo.

And I was actually living, had moved from this place to.

San Francisco in 2006 and was working on some TV shows up there.

And then I heard in 2006 or oh seven that they were starting the prison rodeo and

they were gonna allow women to participate and I immediately, like within days, had

moved from San Francisco back to Austin to be adjacent to the prison rodeo.

So I was only six hours away so I could drive, you know, back and forth.

So I got.

Funding to make.

Okey noodling, part two.

But what they didn't know the funders is that I was using that half of that money

to make sweethearts of the prison rodeo,

but I guess they know now.

Oh, were you double dipping on like production trips, like driving from

Austin up to Oklahoma, shooting one, shooting the other, all in one trip?

yeah.

So it was the summer of 2007.

I was with Mike.

Close friend and longtime collaborator and producer, James Payne, the tallest

man in Oklahoma City, big Al Nove was the dp, and then Royce, uh, was our

sound guy and there was four of us.

And we would go film the Okey noodles part two, right, for about three or four days.

And then when we go to the lady prison in Oklahoma, and we did that

all summer and it was by far the.

Best summer of my life.

'cause it was just so freeing, you know, before kids, before marriage where

you're with three of your closest friends making, you know, going to prison.

Yeah.

To Lady Pringle

making a film that I, you making a film that I really believed

in and was passionate about.

Yeah.

I really wanted to make that film and enjoyed every bit of the process.

You know, looking back on that, you know, to borrow a phrase from Wayne, he would

liken being in a band to being a pirate, you know, a couple hundred years ago,

where you just get to travel around and have all these adventures and be so free.

And that's how I look at that time.

Like, you know, I'm not a pirate anymore, but I used to be.

It's like, have to travel around and make all these Yeah.

Projects with your friends and then you come back home, you know, obviously.

Yeah.

Or four kids.

But yeah, lots of fun and memories and

I, I love that about, about you and the way that you worked was that it was

always about being with friends, bringing friends in to help you make the project.

There was often this sense of like freedom, where, like

you're saying you were double dipping, you were sort of like.

Throwing, throwing it all out there all the time.

There wasn't like a safety net about like, well, you know, if I

save money here, we can do this.

There.

It was very, like everything was, we were doing it ourselves.

It was very like speculative and it was really exciting.

And I remember the story of like making the things was always as

good as the things we were making.

And I remember Greg Edar, who's been one of our guests on the podcast.

Said that really eloquently, where he's like, you can sort of trust that

if the setup of what you're doing is a good story to people, then the thing

that you're making will end up being.

A good film, like a good product.

I'm a little

worried.

I edited that out of the Greg Guiar episode.

Bran has referenced that every episode since then.

Oh no.

And then I keep editing it out because there's no, there's no roots to it.

Yeah.

So now it could be, you could say, just like Bradley said,

I mean that, that's one thing that I remember from that time very distinctly

that I feel like I learned from you, which was this sense of like, you

have to be this force of nature and you have to sort of like put all

your chips in and go all in on these.

Projects, but also have a great time while you're doing 'em and Right.

And make, make art with your friends and have this like really fun experience

that everybody benefits from, and that that ultimately makes its way on

screen and that's what the audience enjoys about watching the move.

Yeah.

I've always loved the process and there's been no distinction between my

social life and my life as a filmmaker.

They've just.

Always merged and it's still kind of that way.

Not as much of course, with kids and whatnot, but um,

it gets harder to do that for sure.

Yeah.

As we get older and you start thinking about mortgages and 4 0 1 Ks Well, yeah.

After,

after I finished Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo, at the time it was knocking it out

of the park because we premiered it south.

By that same week it got snatched up by HBO.

Thanks to Julie Goldman.

Um, and we made like $250,000 and I was just like,

fuck.

Yeah.

And then I did the math for all the years that I worked on it and paid everybody

on the crew and everybody got their cuts.

And I made $19,000 over the course of three years of making that film.

And that's.

When I made the transition from being a feature doc maker to like, maybe

I'll give this branded content a shot, and started working with brands

like Cosa and Yeti and the outdoor brands, because they'd seen, you know,

the ad guys had seen Okie noodling.

Right.

So they were attracted to that part of it.

Well, let's, let's take it back to Okey noodling then.

Yeah.

Okey noodling is one of the most fun, entertaining.

Interesting cultural peaks into a thing you would never know existed.

Mm-hmm.

Can you share with our audience who maybe isn't as familiar with Okey noodling, what

it is and, and, and where it came from?

Yeah.

So as a kid growing up at Oklahoma, went fishing a lot with my dad.

It was the thing that we did on the weekends to pass the time, but

it was always with rods and reels.

I'd never even.

I'd heard of noodling, but I didn't really know what it was.

Cut to being 14 years old in the early to mid eighties, and I'm at a family

reunion and it's my mom's family reunion, so the last name is Buford.

But I come across these teenagers with the mud and a little

blood and stuff all over their.

Arms, but they also had name tags on that said Beasley.

Come to find out, I was at a family reunion and I met double cousins.

Which that's very Oklahoma

are related to these people out at, but don't even, I don't even know

what that means, but it sounds bad.

Yeah, it's, it does sound bad and it sounds very oaky, but it's

just, you know, distant relatives getting married and whatnot.

But that's the first time, and God that captured my imagination.

These guys down there in the lake catching catfish with

their hands and it just never.

Left me and I had,

wait, let's, let's not bury the, the, the, that that theme, that concept right there.

What is noodling?

Yeah.

Just, uh, catching giant catfish with your bare hands.

So you literally reach into a hole.

The catfish bites your hand and you pull this enormous catfish.

Right?

So the question is, are you catching the catfish or as the catfish caught you?

It's a little bit of both, but yeah,

going into it, I just, um, hadn't.

No aspirations to go out there and catch catfish myself, but the very first shoot,

I found myself in the water noodling catfish for myself by myself, and really

enjoyed the process so much so that.

I made a feature doc and then I made a sequel, and then I did two seasons

of a reality show for history and Nat Geo and I started a tournament.

So within the documentary, Okie Noodling, I wanted a way for my cast members.

To meet and compete against one another.

So I constructed this tournament that didn't exist, so it was like

manufacturing content, overproducing a documentary, which I still think was

a good idea, and it was a great way for all these guys to come together.

What I didn't know is that like 25 years later.

There would still be an Okie noodling tournament happening today with, you

know, tens of thousands of people coming from all the world to watch, and you

participate

in this

event.

So you seized on this subculture through your cousins, cousins who were also your

cousins, and you saw something in this.

Look, these people are sticking their hands in the mud and coming up.

With, uh, with Phish.

And you hadn't seen that before?

We hadn't seen that before.

You put a camera on it, but there was no resolution to the story.

There was no way to kind of pull it all together.

Is that what I'm hearing that Oh, absolutely.

Like I didn't, I didn't want

to force these guys like, Hey, let's have a gathering.

Let's have a fish fry or something.

I wanted like real stakes and real drama, and I knew that these

guys were hyper competitive.

They were, yeah.

So they wanted to compete and they kept saying there's no noodling tournaments.

You know, we're the bottom feeders.

No one cares about us.

Uh, which is kind of the truth about noodlers.

No one does care.

No one cares.

Uh,

well, until you gave us a reason to.

And so let me ask you this, as a documentarian, I know

you're not a journalist, right?

You come out of a pizza man art school background.

Was there any pushback?

Internally or externally in the documentary community around kind of

constructing this third act tournament?

I can't remember honestly.

It's been a minute since I've seen the film.

Sure.

Whether you reference that you have put this together or not.

Yeah,

yeah.

No, I had some vo, I was like, these noodlers are asking

why there isn't a tournament.

They have all these bass fishing tournaments.

Why isn't there a tournament for noodlers?

And I was like, well by God.

We're gonna make one fall.

Okay.

So you not up to it, right?

I didn't know anything.

Oh, yeah.

It was part of this story.

I knew a guy at a restaurant that was a fisheries biologist.

Okay.

And I happened to camp on his land a lot, and it all just came together so easily.

And so, making that film, tell me the, the funding, um, scheme.

Right, like the production, like how you were able to pull that off.

Is this kind of in the front part of this run?

Oh,

multiple films.

Oh yeah, de definitely.

So on the hills of Hilltop Holler, I had racked up 10 grand on my

girlfriend at the time, Jodi's credit card to make Stomp holler.

And then, uh, Matthew Johnson gave me 10 K. So I paid off Jodi's credit card.

And then I re-upped on Okie noodling, and I spent a year of shooting, and then I

cut a trailer for ITVS and they funded it.

Wow.

And I went into the meeting in San Francisco with ITVS in 2001,

and they looked at my budget.

Yeah.

And we'll do sooner.

It has looked at the budget and they're like.

Dude, this isn't enough money.

You're asking for $40,000, you need more.

And so I walked out of the meeting with like $65,000 in, in 2000.

That was, that was a lot of bread to me.

So yeah, I was able to pay off Jodi's credit card and making okey noodling.

I was working at the US Postal.

Service at the time doing training videos.

And I used all of their editing equipment to finish the film

and the mix and everything there at the postal training center

from Pizza Man to Mailman.

And was that independent lens that it went out on or through what, uh, thread?

No.

I, I did make a, the creek runs red was independent lens, but

Okie noodling was something else.

But what I didn't know with all of Okie noodling.

The sequel, the TV shows, the tournament.

I had no idea that I was gonna become this hyper passionate, noodling.

Yeah, like outside of my kid.

I think I care more about noodling than anything.

Like I'm not even kidding.

Like I turned down good paying jobs in the summer to go noodling.

Because it just means that much to me and I can't put my finger on exactly

why, but I care about it a lot.

Like Sonny doesn't have to play baseball, he doesn't have to be that great in

school, but he's gotta be a noogler, like that's a deal breaker if he's

not into catching fish with his hands.

And I'm not even kidding.

And we'll put some pictures in the, uh, show notes of Bradley Catching.

What, like 30, 40, 50 pound catfish, all that Yeah.

Yeah.

That are on your Instagram feed, uh, from even just this summer.

I mean, you were, you were an avid noodler and it's, again,

that's a very interesting outcome.

Didn't see it coming.

No.

For having made this documentary.

'cause it, you made the dock in, what year did that come out?

Uh, 2001.

2001. So here you are 25 years later.

Arguably more interested in noodling now.

Totally.

Ever.

Yeah, that's fair.

I'm almost scared to ask, but you mentioned this spot earlier on our walk.

We're standing outside of what is now called Teddy's.

Um, but this used to be Thunderbird Coffee and you reminded me

that we met here in 2008.

I don't have any recall of this particular meeting, but I do know that that's the

time period when I was reaching out.

It was either me film, right to Heather Courtney, to Margaret

Brown, people you mentioned before.

People in our community that had walked this walk, you know, before me and had

had plenty to share, and I'm sure that I, I, I remember tapping you for information

and, and relying on you for inspiration.

What do you remember?

I'm a little scared to ask, but what do you remember from this

meeting or from that time period?

Oh, I just remem you were asking about funding sources and so I kind of.

Turned you on to ITVS.

Yeah.

And did you end up getting funding?

I did.

Thank you very, very much.

See, here we go.

You already hear I'm about that worked out.

It worked and, and you sent me like an early cut of the tease or something.

I gave you some feedback on it and uh, I think that film still holds up.

Well, I appreciate you saying that.

I haven't seen that film in quite a while, and I will tell you it's because.

I am very upset about the sheer number of cross fades that I utilized.

I honestly, I felt like it was thematic.

I remember having the conversation with ITBS and they were like,

there's a lot of cross fades, and I was like, you know, it's thematic.

The other day I found myself excoriating.

One of my edit turns for a dissolve for, yeah, so many fades.

Uh, and she only used two.

And I was just like, there's no cross fades in this office if we learned

anything in the year, 2008, 2009.

Well, that's another interesting

thing, not just about you guys, but a lot of successful doc makers

come from the world of editing.

They started out as editors, and I think editors make the best filmmakers.

'cause you know what you're after when you're out there,

right?

Yeah.

You know, you're cutting it together as you go.

I definitely shoot like an editor.

Yeah.

Um, and I, yeah, I totally agree.

I, you know, I started out blindly and naively assuming that all

documentary filmmakers produced, directed, shot, and edited.

And so that's what I, that's how I started producing, directing, shooting,

and editing with no experience in any of those things really.

And of all of those things, editing is the one that I'm.

Strongest of overall and the one that, that impacts all the other decisions.

Mm-hmm.

Well, and one of the things that, um, we hope this podcast accomplishes is

the young filmmakers can listen to this and, uh, get some inspiration and some,

uh, learn a little bit from people who have, are further along in their career.

So what would your advice be for a young documentary filmmaker

just starting out right now?

Oh, I would think just don't worry about the budget, don't

worry about the distribution.

Just go out there and be passionate about the topic and, and find out by doing.

If you like the process.

And then if you like the process, then you have to finish.

And you know, I said this earlier about Wayne Coyne, that's what he taught me.

Just finish the project is my biggest piece of advice.

'cause I think, how many filmmakers do we all know that have three or four films

in the work that never get finished?

Right.

I have three or four in my office right now that are never gonna get, I mean, I

love that piece of advice and it's the one I find hardest to take because when you're

getting started, you know, I was the same as you when I, when I made Eyes of Me.

I spent four years on that film and I got paid a total of

$40,000 over a four year period.

And this 10 KA year, bud, it sound bad.

I I have no regrets.

So like, I'm glad I did it.

And the film, I'm glad to hear you think it stands up.

I ha I need to see it again.

But I, it got me started and it got me where I'm going.

And then the next two films I made started with, with no money and just, you know,

burned out credit cards and, and called in favors and did, you know, wore a lot of

hats, but now pushing 50 mortgages kids.

Uh, second half of life kind of looming large, like I have burned

a lot of time over the last six, seven years developing ideas Sure.

That are never gonna get finished.

And I know to a degree you've done some of that.

Oh,

totally.

But I mean, I don't look at it as burning the time I actually

development is like my favorite.

Yeah.

Well, and I'm, I'm not pushing back on that either.

Uh, I just get like the idea of like getting the thing made and like

finishing right, no matter what isn't is advice I like hearing, but it's

not, it's not advice I've taken all that much in the last couple years.

I've started a lot of things.

Many of them won't be finished for various reasons, but I'm looking

at the things that I've got started now and hearing you say that.

I don't know.

It makes me want to make an adjustment.

Yeah.

I mean, even if the project is just, I'm gonna create this tease for this

project, you know, finish the tease and see it through and pitch it.

Okay.

What are, what are other, uh, any other, uh, bun mus you wanna share

with, with our young audience?

Uh, don't make Pizza Man part two

because that's in development

right now.

And if a Yeah.

Anybody wants to make Okie noodling part three?

I'm available.

What about, what are you working on now?

B Rad.

What's, what's up next for you?

I've been shooting Sandlot baseball out at the long time with our baseball team,

the Texas Playboys for the past decade, but it's been mostly stuff for brands,

but through that I've collected hours and hours of footage, and so I'm trying to

kind of expand that archive into an actual film that goes beyond just our community

here in Austin, and touches on Sandlot Baseball and New Orleans, San Francisco.

Brooklyn, wherever.

Awesome.

How are you going about setting that up?

Like are you doing the traditional, you're making a proof of concept sizzle reel

and then taking it out to distributors to see if they'll give you money for it?

Or are you sort of getting back to your roots and, and

making it any way you, you can,

uh, somewhere in between.

There's been a couple of trips like, um, Jack and I and Howard went to.

Alabama, uh, a couple of weeks ago to film with some guys that, uh, Jack Sanders

was on a team with there in Newburn, Alabama in the early two thousands

because like, stomp holler, you know, these guys are now in their seventies,

late seventies and starting to die.

And I was just like, all right, let's, let's get there now.

Right.

Um, so.

We're bootstrapping some of it, but then approaching investors concurrently

as we're building the materials.

Which film of yours, if someone were to start with a Bradley Beasley

film, which one would you recommend?

I mean, I would say that my favorite film that I've made is Sweethearts of

the Prison Rodeo, just because of the.

Impact it had on that community and the outreach we were able to do with

HBO and getting to go into prison.

It's kind of Johnny Cash style and show the film among inmates.

That was probably the most gratifying, but I don't know if it's the Brad

Beasley archive film You wanna start with because it gets kind of heavy.

Maybe just, just start with Okey noodling the og.

Okay.

With my.

Very oaky accent doing the vo, which is why I find it really

difficult to watch that film.

Well, it's still in there, rad.

Just the, the oaky accent swing.

But sincerely, thank you for doing this and um, you know, you're very important

for me in terms of, uh, my career and also just in terms of my life.

And I'm glad that, that we got to share so that, that Bradley Beasley.

Ethos

here with our, with our audience.

Likewise.

Thank you guys.

Yeah, we're gonna put some links in the show notes.

Um, what do we have?

We've got, not pizza man, but maybe some trailers.

So noodling.

Yeah.

We'll

Okie

noodling sweethearts of the prison rodeo.

I'll do, we'll do all the trailers.

Well,

you know what we didn't talk about?

What's that?

In part Grubs film that Ben and I made together.

It's doesn't come more oaky than that.

That's the uh, that's okay.

The prank.

Prank calls.

Prank.

Yeah.

You were just talking about that in my office the other day.

I love that.

I still have the cassette tape that you guys passed around.

Um, and I don't have a cassette player, so I'm gonna have to give that.

Show

off.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well that's all the more reason to have you back on.

So.

Yeah.

All right, let's cut.

Let's cut.

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Great.

That was fun.

That was Bradley Beasley.

I feel like that was that perfectly captured.

Uh, what I admire and love about Bradley, which is his sense of humor,

his sort of adventurous spirit and just his love of, uh, making documentaries.

So I'm really, uh, thrilled that we got to do that today.

It was super fun.

And the timing of that episode, we started on MLK, we walked French place.

We found ourselves right in front of your and Bradley's shared home on Hollywood.

Yep.

The first house that, uh, I lived in, in Austin that I guess we both did in Austin.

Uh, a lot of memories.

Uh, a lot of f fuzzy memories.

A lot of documentaries were made there.

A lot of talk memories.

Ooh, talk memories with Bradley Beasley.

Wow.

That can be his spinoff podcast.

Um,

we're not giving that to him.

Oh, we're keeping that one.

We're keeping that one.

Okay.

Bradley, you heard it here?

Yeah.

Um, well anyway, we, we hope you guys appreciate it and enjoyed that walk.

Uh, Bradley is, um, deeply impactful in both of our professional lives and, uh,

and we got to hear a lot about that.

Um, there's, there's more that.

It wasn't shared.

And we'll probably bring Bradley back on a future episode.

I think he's gonna be a returning guest for sure.

Um, so hope you guys enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed recording it.

And, uh, stick around, uh, for next week.

Yeah.

Who's, who's coming on Doc walks next week, Ben.

Well, we have, uh.

Maureen Gosling, which is Les Blank's long-term collaborator.

Uh, she was his, um, uh, assistant camera person, producer.

She was an editor.

She basically helped make a lot of the, uh, Les Blank films

that Bradley referenced and that he and I were inspired by.

And I am thrilled to get the chance to pick her brain and, uh, learn from her.

Is Maureen, uh, on the road with some, some, some films or, yes,

she's coming here with her new film that they're playing

at the Austin Film Society.

So thank you to Lars for asking me to moderate the, the q and A

screening and to get to know Maureen.

So I am, uh, I'm thrilled to, to, uh, bring that to you guys here very soon.

Okay.

So we'll catch up with Maureen.

And what's going on in the legacy of Les Blank and what she's up to now.

That's right.

And we'll catch you guys next time on Dock Walks.

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.

Thanks

for tuning in.