EP024.5 – Matt and Bob Morning Show Meets Doc Walks

10.08.2025 - Season: 1 Episode 24

Ben crashes the Matt and Bob show to talk WINNEBAGO MAN, viral videos before viral was a thing, and tracking down an angry RV salesman living as a hermit in Northern California. The conversation rips through documentary evolution—from Ken Burns photo zooms to Tiger King (quick: who directed it? exactly)—and lands on why docs are the offensive linemen of film: you don’t know their names, but you need them. Ben breaks down Doc Walks, his new weekly walk-and-talk series with Austin filmmaker Keith Maitland, where tiny cameras, AI editing, and real conversation collide. They dig into HIGH HOPES (his Hulu dispensary doc with Jimmy Kimmel), the terrifying gamble of documentary filmmaking (what if nothing happens?), and why authenticity matters when everything else is fake. Plus: why Ben’s wife is rooting for Chuy’s love life.

YouTube Tags:

documentary filmmaking, Ben Steinbauer, Winnebago Man, documentary filmmaker interview, Matt and Bob show, Doc Walks podcast, Keith Maitland, High Hopes Hulu, Jimmy Kimmel, documentary series, Austin filmmakers, Tower documentary, filmmaking podcast, indie filmmaking, documentary production, viral videos, Jack Rebney, reality vs documentary, authentic storytelling, film industry, documentary editing, Sherman’s March, Ken Burns, Tiger King, documentary evolution, cinema verite, nonfiction filmmaking, Sundance documentaries, film school, documentary techniques, filmmaker interview, behind the scenes, documentary process, creative process, film production, independent film, documentary storytelling, Texas filmmakers, Austin film scene, entertainment industry, media production, film discussion, movie podcast, documentary history, filmmaking tips, creative collaboration, film theory, documentary craft

Morning Matt, Bob, Chuy intern.

Georgia's been on the mic today as well.

And now we're joined, uh, by, uh, becoming a show friend, filmmaker Ben

Steinbauer And, uh, Ben, let's remind people, 'cause you were in here, I

wanna say, was it almost a year ago that your show was on, you did a

documentary, sort of a documentary series about a dis distillery, a dispensary

in LA That's right.

With, uh, Jimmy Kimmel as executive producer.

Uh, it was called High Hopes, and I think that was.

Would that have been a year and a half ago then?

Was it that long ago now?

Well, the show came out on four 20.

Okay.

Which is the only reason I know that.

So it would be a year and a half ago then.

That's right.

Yeah.

And, uh, it was like a fun, like a, a limited series where you got to look

into and see these, I don't know, the ca the cast of characters that

work at a dispensary in Los Angeles.

That's

right.

The idea was that we were doing a real life Parks and Rec or the office, right.

But with characters who worked in a dispensary right off Hollywood Boulevard.

Uh, Jimmy Kimmel's company came to me and said, uh, we want you to do this show.

And I said, well, I don't like reality shows.

And they go, you're hired 'cause we want you to make a documentary.

Not, not,

not, not a reality show.

Not a reality show.

Exactly.

So we did eight episodes for Hulu that premiered, uh, four 20 of 2023.

And one more time.

It's called High Hopes Hopes.

And you can, uh, and people can still go grab it and, uh, and see it now.

Absolutely.

And we having you in here for other reasons, but you're also,

uh, you've become a personal friend and, um, Bob went to film school.

So I think you guys have so much you could dig into and, and you

have some big, uh, wins yourself.

A lot of people, even if they don't necessarily write off the bat.

Recognize your name, because I think that's one of the weird things that

happens at documentaries is that unless you're Errol Morris or something,

sometimes names aren't always attached, but one of your projects made it big time

and it's a Winnebago man and you found, well just tell people what Winnebago man.

Well, thank you for saying that.

I'm big time.

I keep telling my mom that and she, she's not listening.

Yeah.

She doesn't agree.

That's, I understand.

Yeah.

I appreciate that.

You do.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Um, so let's see.

That would've been 2009 Winnebago Man came out.

Oh, wow.

And basically I got obsessed with what was one of the first viral videos.

Right.

And it was a, uh, outtakes reel of a guy named Jack Reney trying to sell

the Winnebago and doing a terrible job.

And my friends and I basically watched this outtakes compilation

of him swearing at himself, just

screaming at himself for losing, for not being able to sell.

Not, no, not being able to get the, the copyright when he is trying to record ads.

Right.

You, I know you saw it because we, we I know, I know.

It went around everywhere.

Where him going?

Alright.

Your GDMF.

Good, good.

Why don't you just go ahead and

screw it up again and say the words you didn't mean to say exactly.

Would you, would you do me a favor?

Would you do me a kindness?

I can't make my.

Evan mind work.

I mean, it's just full of quotable lines basically.

And it's July, they're in Iowa.

There's flies everywhere.

He's having a terrible time.

And basically I got obsessed with this clip.

Uh, nobody knew anything about the guy.

What I could find online seemed to suggest that he was ashamed of this clip and was

trying to basically live as a hermit.

I had actually heard for a long time that he

had passed away.

Yeah.

There was no information, basically.

So I hire a private investigator, go find this guy with the express purpose

of basically just saying, renaming him, you should, well, it wasn't even that.

It was, I was a true fan and I wanted to let him know that this thing had brought

a lot of joy to me and to my friends, and this wasn't anything to be ashamed of.

Oh.

And I know that sounds very Pollyannish, but I am from Kansas and I do look like

a youth pastor, and it was sincere.

So like I, I approached him about making this film.

I found him, he was a hermit living on top of a mountain in Northern California.

And, uh, he was very suspicious of me at first, but then he, uh, I win him over and

he shows his true colors and he becomes the guy in the video to me, to you.

Uh, and then the movie is really about our friendship, right?

That that blossoms and develops.

And he realizes that, oh, the audience is laughing with him.

With him, not at him.

Exactly.

At him.

And there's a, a redemption story there for people.

Yes.

Yeah.

And you are impassioned.

It's, it's difficult to make documentaries though.

I do think there's a new fan base for documentaries, for a long

time, documentaries because the only place that you really look,

you used to make a documentary.

It was a labor of love.

There was never, there was never gonna be a billion dollar payout for a documentary.

You had to really love it.

But one, the little places that you could make some money

was in the education space.

And so what happened is a lot of people maybe who didn't know how to make great

narratives could sometimes go there.

Uh, but a lot of times what we were seeing were more of

these educational experiences.

There were a few people that broke through.

And then, you know, I think everyone.

Kind of opened up their brain a little bit to Ken Burns when the,

the Ken Burns documentaries took off.

I think that changed things.

But still, when we talk about pacing a Ken Burns documentary is not exactly

keeping you on the edge of your seats.

Right.

But since then, when does this war end so many?

Here's another zoom in on a photo, but we've now seen so

many of these limited series.

I, I, well, let's call it, you know, true crime thing, tiger King

and all that Tiger King, right?

And all of those things are blurring the lines between reality television

and, and, and documentary film.

Do have you seen the changes at how do they affect what you do for work?

Um, I have seen the changes.

That's a big part of why I'm here is to talk to you about

the new project that I'm doing.

But I'm curious to prove your point.

Who directed Tiger King?

Don't know.

No idea.

Exactly.

See, so I like to think of documentary filmmakers.

I played football in high school.

I was an offensive linemen.

Okay.

Documentary filmmakers are the offensive linemen of the film business, right?

I like that.

You don't know who they are.

You, but you like their work and you need them.

And you need them.

Yeah, that's right.

They're very important.

They play a very important specialized role.

And, um, so the new project that I'm here to talk to you about is a

series that I'm doing with a fellow documentary filmmaker named Keith

Maitland, who lives here in Austin.

He directed Tower.

Dear Mr.

Brody, very successful Maker Tower

was a big deal as well, and Tower was a fun documentary

that had a lot of mixed media.

There was a lot of, uh, animation that was involved in Tower and it

retold the story of the 1969, uh, tower shooting at University of Texas.

And I

think that's true.

I don't know if fun is the correct adjective to use about a school

shooting documentary, but Well, what

I will say is that they brought a new take to it that we hadn't seen in a

lot of other documentaries that helped them kind of recapture a lot of the

storytelling that people were doing.

So you weren't just looking at a talking head.

Oh,

that was like the half animated one.

Yeah.

I love that one.

That was good one.

Yeah, it's great.

It won all the awards.

He was, yeah.

Very successful.

Keith's a really talented filmmaker and basically he and I, our

friends have been for many years.

We were going on walks about every two weeks talking about the state

of the industry, talking about our projects, and at some 0.1 of

us said, should we do a podcast?

And the other one said, no, that's a terrible idea.

Right.

And then about six months went by and then the other one said,

maybe we should do a podcast.

And we finally just agreed, yes, let's do this.

And what we do is we film these walks, we go on walks here around the city or

when we travel, we went to Sundance.

Uh, we've done some in New York, some in Los Angeles.

Um, and basically we bring on a guest, usually another documentary filmmaker, and

we talk about the state of documentary.

We talk about their projects, our projects, uh, the importance

of non-fiction filmmaking.

And by filming it we put it up on, uh, YouTube, on Spotify.

And then we also make it, um, audio only as a podcast.

And so my theory is that podcasts and TV shows are sort of merging.

They

are.

They everything's sort of coming together into one, right?

Because we do like authenticity.

Absolutely.

And so this is, the walk is kind of part of the experience, right?

So like, you guys do a show, we're sitting here in a studio.

If we were out walking, we would talk about what we see, what we're, you know,

what who we bump into, that sort of thing.

Oh, that's cool.

Becomes part of the conversation.

Um, and the history of the film business, it always starts in a studio.

The cameras are like the size of cars.

Technology progresses all of a sudden.

You can take cameras out in the world, you can make documentaries, you can make

single camera, um, sitcoms or TV shows.

And so the technology is such right now that we have these

tiny little cameras that shoot 4K track our faces, record audio.

Great.

And then, uh, basically we can edit them using these AI software programs

and then have a, uh, do a weekly show with basically two to three people.

Well, and that's one of the things I wanna bring up too, because.

I, I will say to a lay person, when you say we're talking about

documentaries, for some people that does sound like Snooze Fest 5,000.

Uh, but I've watched it and you guys are really good personalities.

You're interesting in what you're talking about.

And for a lot of people, I've loved documentary films since I was a kid.

What was a problem when I was younger, like especially before

the internet really took off, is you didn't know where to find them.

They certainly were never on HBO, whatever.

And, and you learned that, oh, they were these certain, uh, rental places

that were kind of underground and you had to go to the right ones.

'cause if somebody said they, I'm looking for a place to rent

underground VHS, uh, they up under the counter with the covers the counter.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I remember

those places.

But

of course we know places in town like, uh, uh, I Luv Video and Vulcan video and there

were these places before we had streaming, before we had the internet and you would

have these, you know, employees choices.

And that's how I learned a lot.

Uh, Sherman's March.

Oh, great.

One Ross McElwee, which was in incredible, right?

Yep.

And so, which is fun 'cause I can name these document and, you

know, the actual filmmakers, but they were, you know, Bush's Brain.

There were all these things that, and Feed was another documentary

that I was really into, which was people running for president.

And when they link you to another location, so you go into an office,

a studio in Florida for an interview that's gonna happen in la but when

they're running the feed in the 10 minutes before you go live.

That stuff is still stuff that people captured and it

shows the real personalities.

So they made this documentary out of these, uh, Clinton Bush, all these other,

or the, or the famous Bill O'Reilly, where

we'll do it live bill, do it live, right?

Yeah.

So all those things.

So tho those things are great and I, I like that you're pushing those.

And I do think it's interesting because we were talking the other,

the earlier today too, about a lot of stuff that's happening with ai.

Mm-hmm.

And then we do feel cheated some, sometimes it's good, but that

authenticity, and maybe we're talking about how it's all gonna meld together.

We want people appreciate real, because so many times, especially now when we

see influencers, we know that they're doing what reality television did,

which is I have to be guaranteed a win.

I don't wanna just roll tape.

So they're faking their stuff.

Right.

It feels, yeah.

But I means, feels like they're cheated when it's faked, but, okay.

So I hear what you're saying and, and maybe Ben can play,

uh, talk to this point.

I'm always amazed at the risks that doc real documentary filmmakers

take, and that you don't know at the end of the day or at the end of the

shoot or the end of the project if you're gonna get anything at all.

Yeah.

Well, the best one do that.

So some, some directors will make things happen because they know they

have to have, especially if there's corporate money on the line or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

They want you to deliver a product.

Yeah.

And you can't go to them six months later and say, Hey, we rolled

camera, but nothing happened.

Right.

So how do you guard again, how do you.

How do you protect yourself against that?

Without being, without stepping away from the camera and

going, Hey, could we try this?

Yeah, yeah.

Could we try to make this more cinematic or make this more interesting?

Because nothing's happening right now.

We've been here all day and it's kind of hot.

I think it's about the relationship with the funding, right?

So like, if you're making something for a huge network that has a

lot of money on the line, yeah.

They're gonna give you a lot of notes and push in a lot of cheesy directions.

But if you are, uh, doing something that's more self-financed mm-hmm.

Financed with, uh, private money, um, or just for like smaller stations,

that's when the, like Sherman's March, for example, the one that we

were just talking about, he made it as a grant and then basically let

you in that like, Hey, I just got gr uh, grant money to make this film.

My girlfriend broke up with me.

I'm heartbroken and depressed.

So I'm just gonna start rolling the camera on myself.

It's this crazy bet.

Mm-hmm.

And you're like in the crouch position the whole time.

'cause you're watching this plane go down, essentially.

Um, and those are the best movies.

Mm-hmm.

The ones that aren't doing the thing that you're talking about, where

you're trying to force an ending.

And, but I've, I've seen so many

movies that have an amazing swerve at the end and I go, what were

the, you didn't know that was gonna happen when you took the pro?

Like, like, like that It's Ear Zachary the Amazing Dear Zachary or, or

Icarus.

Did you see that one?

I haven't seen one yet.

It starts off about, uh, a, a certain like cyclist and then it becomes about

the cyclist taking Russian, um, steroids.

Oh really?

And then the Russian chemist becomes the main character, like totally corrupt.

Wow.

The story.

Wow.

And so those are really the best movies.

Yeah.

Where like you as the filmmaker, you don't know the ending.

You don't Yeah.

And you're taking the audience on a ride.

Yeah.

And that's the stuff that I love to make.

Yeah.

And I think that speaks to that authenticity piece you're talking about

right now, which is like, you know, people are kind of looking for like surrogate

relationships right now through podcasts.

Mm-hmm.

Or radio or TV shows.

And so if you can be real and be like a funny character, like I was

coming, uh, to do the show today.

My wife wanted me to be sure to tell you Chuy That she really loves you.

Oh, and that she feels like she, that you are gonna find love.

She

sounds, she sounds like idiot.

I don't trust, I don't trust her at all.

I dunno.

What.

And

see my, so my wife has a connection with you from listening to the show.

And I think that's what most people are looking for is like

some sort of, some kind of, yeah.

Yes.

Like you gotta see something

themselves.

I wanna tease you about one thing, uh, also, but, but a reminder, uh, because

anybody can watch this, this is something, it, this is not on a streamer is for

free.

We put out a, we put it out weekly.

It's called Doc Walks.

You can follow us at Doc Walks pod at YouTube, Instagram, X