EP035 – Dyin’ Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard w/Louis Alvarez & Andy Kolker

01.08.2026 - Season: 1 Episode 35

Come along as Ben flies solo—no Keith, just the UT campus and two documentary titans who’ve been making films together longer than most marriages last: the indomitable Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker have a working partnership runnin’ north of fifty years. They made AMERICAN TONGUES (1988) back when folks across the US said they just spoke like everyone else. They made PEOPLE LIKE US (1999) while Americans were spurring their nose at class conversations. And they’re still at it—currently chasing down an obscure architect and sharing a film about a storied Texas State Senator. We get into the unglamorous truth of comedic docs (funders hate them), the secret to not killing your creative partner (separate wives, separate boroughs), and why the best stories are in places nobody’s looking. They started as VISTA volunteers in New Orleans with no one to tell them where to point the camera. Now they’re late-career and busy doing whatever the hell they want. Plus: we decipher a bunch of boats strung together, we bask in neo-classical architecture, all while Louis just wants a dirty chai.

DISCUSSION LINKS:

AMERICAN TONGUES (1988) | YEAH YOU RITE! (1985) | PEOPLE LIKE US (1999) | CONFLUENCE (2024) | WINNEBAGO MAN (2010)

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Keith sits this one out 00:49 Meeting Louis and Andy on the UT campus 02:42 The Rodney Ellis short and pulling political levers 04:13 Fifty years of partnership—step one: separate wives 07:41 Cass Gilbert: The everywhere architect you’ve never heard of 11:17 VISTA volunteers in 1970s New Orleans 15:28 Filming the intangible—accents, class, motherhood 17:48 Why funders hate funny 19:56 The three Cs killing documentary: celebrity, crime, cults 22:08 Steel canoes and the sculpture guessing game 25:32 Making CONFLUENCE during COVID 29:13 AI horror movies and the death of 90-minute docs 34:24 Advice: Go where nobody else is 37:00 Co-directing—the case for and against 43:00 Turtle pond, dirty chai, wrap it up

All.

So today, today I am walking with Louie Alvarez and Andy Coker.

Well, right now he's walking with me, but he won't be in just a minute because

I'm gonna have to sit this one out.

But you guys are in for a treat.

Ben Stein Bower, Louis Alvarez, Andy Coker,

the University of Texas, the Henry Ransom Center.

The Henry, Harry.

Harry, what am I saying?

Harry Ransom Center.

We have some great guests today and I'm really looking forward to it.

So Keith, you'll be missed.

I am missed already.

missed

myself in this one.

These are big shoes to fill, you know, doing these solo.

I don't think they're as good without you, so, well, I appreciate that.

Enjoy this walk with Louie and Andy.

These guys have been around.

Quite a few blocks.

Yes.

Long time.

Um, you may know them.

They were mentioned in Paul Eckler's episode.

Dr. Paul Steckler is a long time collaborator with them, but they

also have a whole career outside of their political work with Paul.

That's right.

And they make funny documentaries, which I'm very excited to talk to them about.

Bread and butter there.

That's, that's my jam.

So, uh, butter and jam.

It sounds like a delightful breakfast with Ben Louis.

And Andy enjoy

on dog

walks.

On your left,

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

So here we are on a bright crisp for Austin November morning.

It sure is.

And I am here with Louis Alvarez and Andy Coker.

And we actually met when I was in grad school.

Yep.

Paul Eckler's class 2004, so I'm sure you remember it.

oh.

I remember everything actually only from 2004 on.

Okay.

Oh, good.

Well, I,

I've been luck and we were walking around the UT campus here this morning and tell

me what you guys are doing here in Austin.

Well, we have been working on a kind of a long-term project that involves

sort of reinterpreting some of our old politics films that we've been

shooting for 30 years, uh, trying of reinterpreting it for the present day.

And we broke out one of the stories, which was about a state senator

from Houston named Rodney Ellis.

We filmed him in 1995 in the ledge.

And then we caught up with him a couple years ago.

He's now in Houston.

And so we made a little movie about kind of what it means to be an inside man.

If you're progressive and you wanna really kind of have an effect on

politics, it'll really help to have somebody who's kind of inside the

government, you know, pulling the levers.

You're doing God's work that way.

Yeah, I think, think about Rodney is, is that he's kind of one of

these guys, he's sort of larger than life sort of character, right?

And he knows how to pull the levers and he knows.

He knows sort of the, his, the optics of what he's doing.

Yeah.

And so he's able to sort of really, really to sort of, he, he'll, he'll

ingratiate himself if he needs to.

Or he'll be a bastard if he needs to, but he'll do all the things that he needs to

do to kinda get the paddock, you know, to fight the good fight essentially.

Right.

And so for us, instead of waiting to finish the film, because

we're always looking for money.

Like every documentary person, yeah.

We broke out his particular story into a short, and the short was

shown at a film festivals in Round Top and it was a lot of fun.

Here.

Let's, let's cross real quick here.

We're on campus here at ut. This is a first four dock walk.

Taking our lives and our hands here crossing in front of the bus.

So Paul shared the, the short with me and I realized that I did a terrible

job of introducing you guys because the way that we are connected is through Dr.

Paul Steckler, indeed, who was my graduate thesis advisor, Uhhuh, and has been a

long time collaborator of you guys or with you guys, but previous to Paul.

You guys have had a, you've been a filmmaking documentary

team for nearly 50 years now.

Correct.

What's funny for us is we come to Texas and we're like, oh, you're the

guys who work with Paul Stettler.

Right.

And everyone else in the country and say, oh, Paul, you're the

guys who work with Louis Ann.

You're the guy who works with Louis Dead.

I, I wanted to set the record straight.

I'm gonna tell Paul from now on that he's the guy who works with Living Inn.

Well, there's only one of him and there's two of us.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

We actually, this is the 50th year of us partnering Wow.

In professional life.

And you guys live in New York?

We both live in new, we do, we do boroughs.

It's not like, so you guys like hang out together?

It's like, no, Ashley partner.

The success of our relationship is that while we're very, very good friends,

yeah.

We have separate lives.

Tell me about that.

Because I have, I, I own a production company with my best

friend from graduate school.

Mm-hmm.

And we are going on our 20th year.

And so I wonder if you would tell me, like,

do you think there's any secrets?

Yeah.

Well, I think Louis just mentioned it actually.

You know, part of it is, is that we do have, you know, we have, we, we

have a lot of friends in common, but at the same time we also, we do a lot,

we do, we, we have separate lives.

We have, we in fact have separate wives actually step one, step one,

marry

different women.

Yeah.

That's, that's kind of the way it works.

Yeah.

Should we go around the front here?

I bet we can get a really beautiful look at the tower if we go this way.

Also, as a matter of fact, that

this particular corner is, this building is, uh, bow Hall, which

I guess is renovated, I guess it's the, a architectural architects.

This one stood of us.

Yeah.

No, the window.

The, the window to the right.

Oh.

With the beautiful arch windows.

We're gonna flip a camera around to catch it.

Yeah, I

gonna get a little, get a little bit of it here yesterday.

And people were posing in front of it.

It was designed by an architect named Cas Gilbert.

Who people don't remember, but in terms of he was one of the most influential

architects of the early 20th century.

Wow.

Did the Woolworth building in New York, did the Supreme Court building

in Washington, did three state capitals, and we just got a grant

to do a little short film about him.

Yeah.

Everywhere we go, we go, oh, CAS Gilbert building of this town.

Let's go.

Let's go pull out

iPhone and shoot it.

This is because

of this building.

you're No, no, no, no.

We just discovered it.

We just discovered this.

We didn't expect He must work.

In like Minnesota and, and the Northeast, but did two buildings in at

ut and apparently this building in the other building are.

Yeah, this particular style is very relevant to the rest of this campus.

Oh, okay.

And the rest of the campus is essentially all over Texas.

He must have designed on how many hundreds of buildings?

I mean, just hundred.

was an incredibly successful guy and yeah, but, but by the time he died of the

thirties, his brand of Neoclassicism Yeah.

Was, it was to replaced by modernism.

So nobody cared about him sort of professionally.

Right.

For decades now we're discovering that actually he did.

Very beautiful.

The space, the interior spaces are gorgeous.

Yeah.

And now that the, the wars, the modernist wars are really kind of in

floor already and they're settled.

Uhhuh people are appreciating his stuff.

Well, partly also because if you look at these buildings.

You'll really see that they, you know, they stand the test of time.

Sure.

Right.

You know, and now we've come to sort of understand that, well, people are not

gonna be knocking these buildings down.

Right.

First of all, it would probably take like, you know, I don't know, a small

army to touch and knock them down.

I mean, like the Supreme Court building in, you know, in WA in Washington.

Right.

You know, the Woolworth building was the, in New York was the very

first skyscraper in the world.

It was the tallest building in the world until they built the

Empire State 30 years later.

literally

our thing has always been to try not do the most obvious topic of documentaries.

Yeah.

Okay.

For example, we do stuff about politics and people think you're

doing a story about who's gonna be president or something, right?

No, we do local stories.

'cause those are the most interesting and often the most revelatory.

Right.

The stakes are lower.

Trying to get close to a a presidential campaign.

The last documentarian to do that was in 1960.

Right.

You know, and Richard Cock did it.

Now what you do is you go to city council, somebody running for

city council or state senator.

Yeah.

And they're often driving themselves around and they're

much more willing to be open.

And that's always been our sweet spot.

So Cass Gilbert, the architect story is another one where people don't really

know who he is, but then once you explain it, it's like, eh, kind of interesting.

You see that?

I like Same also.

We only have money to make like a 10 minute film.

I see.

Which is also liberating 'cause it's really like a sketchbook.

You're not gonna sit there and do a Ken Burn style, which

is not our approach anyway.

I think this may be the first.

Film we've ever made about a dead person.

Oh, interesting.

Because we, we just simply don't do that.

I mean, for the most part.

So over 60 years, you guys look for stories that are happening in the present.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And you know, the thing that I love about your work is that it's humorous.

You're, you're, you're tackling serious topics.

Ooh, let's think, look at here, by the way, look here.

Okay.

At the state.

This is always such a beautiful look at it.

It is featured in

several of our documentaries Matter effect.

No, it's beautiful.

No, it is.

It's absolutely true.

Yeah,

definitely true.

Yeah.

made a, the piece we did about the Texas, uh, state legislature in 1995,

the building was actually the star.

I mean, there were all the people in it, but the building, because

our camera guy was really good and he got such beautiful footage, and

the building was sort of like that.

Like the supporting actor To

your, to your point though about, about humor.

Okay.

You know, yeah.

I mean, we always, we sort of came from.

The idea that, you know, when we started making documentaries, and I don't

mean to seem sound really old, but you know, there was a sort of a sense that

documentaries were kind of a kind of an eat your piece sort of thing, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Like, you know, these, this is gonna be good for you.

It's a medicine, right, right.

This is gonna be good for you.

And we sort of were like, well wait a minute, you know, you can, this

is before Michael Moore by the way.

We started say, well, you know, why don't we are, we're kind of funny guys.

We need to entertain our audience as well as, and all our movies have messages.

Just, they all do.

Right?

Okay.

But at the same time, if you're really gonna.

Ultimately consume this stuff, okay?

You really need to have.

Something, some levity in there.

Something to kind of make it Sure.

Make people want to watch A spoonful

sugar helps the medicine go down and that SPO spoon of sugar.

That's sort of what was part always been sort of our brand.

Yeah.

To degree.

So for our audience listening, let's just take off a couple of

like your, your biggest projects.

So starting, was it Native Tongues?

Is that It was called American Tongue.

American

TAs.

Sorry.

American.

So that was the first one that sort of had a. National release,

it was about the way people talk.

Right.

And we had an insane idea where we would get in a van and drive around

and like go to like swap meets and cowboy rodeos and stuff like that.

And at that point, you know.

People just knew the main TV and everybody said, we were all talking like Walter

Cronkite, who used to be a guy who did the news, you know, 50 years ago.

Right.

And it's not true.

There was a lot of regionalism.

Yeah.

And it was really fun, but nobody could really talk about that.

I just talk normal.

You have 10 people saying that in completely different accents.

Right.

There's a truth there about how people think of themselves.

Well, it's also, you know, it ended up being sort almost a, a

film about social class because ultimately people were talking about.

The way they talked and then they would say like, well, yeah, you know,

people, I, I, I, I go, I, if you have a really heavy Southern accent, I go

up north and people make fun of me.

And that sort of starred us, us I think on a kind of a somewhat of a

theme in a lot of our work when we made a film later on, a number of years

later about social pla in America.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's called People Like Us.

We went from a lot of different, went to a lot of different places

and talked to a lot of different people about the way they taught.

About, excuse me, about their class.

Right.

And that was another kind of subject, which for the most

part Americans, you know, class.

What's you talking about?

Class?

What's that?

Right.

Well, it's supposed to be a classless society.

Class.

Society.

And you, we can talk about race kind.

Okay.

Like kind of, it's fraught, but we kind of know the vocabulary.

But with class, no.

In fact, it got to a point where we were having trouble doing anything.

So we actually went to, went to England.

Okay.

For just a while.

We figured out, well, we're gonna go to a place which.

In fact, people talk about class all the time.

Right?

Right.

And if you ask people on the street, what class are you, they're gonna

like tell you about this, they're gonna, oh, I'm working class.

And all those toffs up there on the hill and on blah, blah, blah.

I mean, and we were so happy.

It was like, oh my god, people actually talk about class here.

We went back to America and it was like, uh, class.

Right?

No, no, no.

We don't, we didn't talk.

Well it's,

it's interesting because in the intervening years,

'cause that was 25 years ago.

Yeah.

Um.

We're much more se sensitive to class, especially with the rise of

kind of populism and working class.

Right.

Switching parties from Democrats to Republican.

Yeah.

And even though a lot of it is bullshit.

Yeah, walking in a lot of it, a lot of it is bullshit and

like, you know, lip service.

There is much more consciousness about

that.

Yeah.

There absolutely is.

At the

time, in 2000, 2000 when we were filming, yeah.

Um, we were able to just get people to open up in ways that

they were very unselfconscious.

how did two guys from New York come to make political films, humorous films?

Largely said in Texas or the south?

Well, we actually are from New York.

No, I mean we we're actually, no, no.

In Louisiana.

We led in, we met in New Orleans.

Ah, that's where you met Paul.

Yeah.

Subsequently, but we met each other.

We were Vista volunteers, which was a, uh, then I was called AmeriCorps, and

actually it made it's vista peace for us.

Really, it's make that exist anymore in the, the Trump administration.

It was basically using video to do community organizing.

Yeah.

In, in a time when the video was new technology, like where you could

actually go out with a, what was called a porter pack, a little camera.

So we started making films there.

Okay.

And it was really helpful 'cause first of all, we honed our craft.

Nobody else was making films for the most part down there.

There were zillions of stories.

'cause it was Louisiana.

You have to imagine everybody's a character.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And we, and also, they're obsessed politically.

They say it's the fourth meal that Louisianans eat every day.

Everybody's aware of their f title.

We sort of got into politics.

Then we met Paul, who of course, politics is his most operandi.

Right.

And so we started making films together and that's, that's

how we ended up doing it.

But, but the humor was always the essence of it.

Yeah.

And it's taking it too seriously.

Okay.

But taking it very seriously at the same time.

This is really a tight walk.

I love

that so much about your work because I. Also work in humorous documentaries.

And when you tell people that they're, they're almost like gobsmack.

Like they don't understand like Right.

Documentaries are not supposed to be funny.

I don't really understand that reaction because life is very funny.

Well, it's sort of like such tragedy and yes, there's

hardship and of course, right.

But like the way we get through that is with humor and, and anybody who's

told a good story at a dinner party

Yeah.

Knows, would know that.

Right.

Would know.

Well, and you know, it's funny because we always think that, well.

We, we are making movies about the human comedy and it sort of

encompasses a lot of different things.

Right.

You know, and he, so we did get our start in Louisiana and it's a matter of

fact, the movie we made before American Tongues was called Yeah, you Right.

Which is the way people in New Orleans where they wanted to agree with you.

They say, Hey, yeah, you're right.

Yeah, you right.

When we encountered New Orleans for the first time, it was kind of like,

well, you see the architecture and the food and that kind of stuff that

people, you know, stereotypically enjoy.

But also the way they talked was really weird.

It like didn't make any sense because like working class white people talked

like they were from Brooklyn and it was just like, what is, what's going on here?

It was just so weird.

Right.

Well it turns out it's the same people who migrated from into New York also

migrated south, so the Italians and the Irish and the Jews and all that and that.

Right.

So they all kind of mushed together.

And they created with a lot of southernism.

It sounded this, this kind of a very unique way of speaking.

That's how we got started.

One of the challenges for us is that the topics that our early

films were about were largely.

Ephemeral.

It wasn't like non or non-visual.

Yeah, yeah, they're non-visual.

It wasn't like, oh we're, you know, this is about a guy who's like trying

to build church and we're gonna follow him from the beginning to the end.

No, it was about the way people talk.

Like how did they feel about that social class?

It's not something that's tangible, and so it's like we set

ourselves on incredibly difficult.

Tasks and one of the, without

realizing it, I don't think I, I don't know what we were doing exactly.

People look at the movies

now.

The movies are very funny.

Yes.

And they kind of hit the mark.

They do what they need to do and people go, oh, it must have been really fun to

make that actually, like you have no idea.

Oh my God.

Entire time.

No, when you're like stuck in the middle of a small town in West Virginia.

Right.

People aren't talking to you, you know, because you're outsiders and

like, you really just need to get them just saying a couple words.

So glad you hit on that point about, because I have never been able to

raise money very well for my movies or get grant support because if

it's funny or if it has a humorous bent or if it's not something very.

Concrete.

It's real.

I find it's very hard to, yeah.

Get people to understand.

I think it's frivolous.

Yeah.

I think it's either frivolous or lightweight or whatever, whatever.

Know.

It's funny because it

used to be that, you know, if you were making a film in Texas about

something about Texas, nobody nationally would care, like a PBS or something.

'cause oh, you're regional.

It's not important that, you know, that's not important.

We want, you know, major issues, national issues, that sort of thing.

Sure.

Well, now at least that has changed.

Because now if you, you know, you're making somebody starting

off, you always say like, well make a movie about something.

You know, something that you have access to that maybe somebody else

does that's now valuable because that's considered to be somewhat universal.

Before that was like, yeah, we don't care about you.

I was gonna answer your original question because I think that's

really key to anybody who's trying to pitch a project, which is that.

Yes, you are to a certain degree the creature of the people

who want to give you money.

Yeah.

And so you do have to tailor your project to each source without like deforming and

not lying, oh, how we do this about this.

And I'm gonna tell the other people the same project.

I'm gonna tell 'em a completely different set of facts.

Right.

But it is a challenge if you're trying to do something that's

all buttoned up and serious.

And it seems like on a level that it's gonna be sort of emotionally serious.

That's what most funding sources are giving you money.

They want to do that, right?

So I wanna do something funny or I wanna do this seriously, but it's

gonna mostly be, you know, funny because I wanna engage people.

There are very few sources.

That are kind of willing to take the chance on that.

Right?

Yeah.

Right.

So all you can do is sort of show them previous films, like Winnebago

Man is ultimately a very serious film, but it's also very funny.

Right, right, right.

you can show them, see what I did, see what I did.

So how did you guys build a 50 year career on, you know, making comedic?

Well, you know,

there were,

there were

ups

and

downs.

There were ups

and

downs.

There's a, there's a famous, there's a, some famous actor died in the 19th

century apparently his last words were.

Dyin is easy.

Comedy.

Comedy is hard.

And it's true.

Well, if you ever watch a film trying to be funny.

and it's not, it's just like, it's cringe I think we found our

episode title, gentlemen Dyin is Easy comedy.

is hard You think?

Well,

you know, you're talking about like comedians by, by and large comedians are

depressed.

Yeah.

They're depressed people.

Right.

You know, people don't

seem depressed to me.

Well, we're not comedians per se, you know, we're not comedians per se.

Well, we're putting the whole thing on now, you know?

I realize that actually.

Yeah.

I have to go home and like you, I've been drinking since six o'clock

in the

morning.

You know?

Well, Keith, my co-host often talks about the tangibles and

the intangibles of what we do.

Right?

And the tangibles can sometimes be depressing, but the intangibles.

Are the thing that I think keeps us coming back and wanting to

do this work over and over.

Right.

So can you talk about what some of those intangibles are for you guys

personally?

I love going behind the scenes.

Yeah.

We just finished a big project that we got to hang out with a bunch of

kind of international class artists.

Oh, cool.

And it was great, like spending two days with like the world's greatest fashion

designer, a woman named Iris Van Herin.

And, uh, Amsterdam was like, yes, come to my, come to my studio.

We'll have two days together.

Wow.

And just hanging out in that atmosphere.

Yeah.

And even though very little have it made it into the final film,

it's really like a, a career high point in terms of enjoying things.

Right.

So there's a little bit of just sort of selfishness there, but

you also think that it informs.

How you address the next shoot and the next person.

And we learned a lot about sort of artistic creativity 'cause that's what

the theme of the series was about.

And then you think about it in your own work.

That's one of the intangibles Absolutely.

That we do.

And the other thing is telling stories.

It's harder these days because everybody's got a camera and

everybody's got a YouTube camera.

Yeah.

Look at what we, I mean, case in point, right?

Right.

Exactly.

But the idea that you were telling stories that otherwise wouldn't be told.

So PBS wanted a series for Mother's Day back in the nineties, and

we pitched a show where all we would do was interview mothers.

Oh, I love that.

Of all different walks of life.

Some, some, several of her from Austin.

Okay.

And just ask them about.

Being a mother.

Yeah.

And some of the mothers were like scary, you know?

And some of the mothers were, we wish they were your mother.

But it was kind of an example of these women had been waiting all

their life to be asked about being a mother and they were not, they were

just regular, like we call civilians.

They were normies and you got amazing stories.

Yeah.

That never would've gotten out.

Right.

So you gave them, you, you're doing describe Ation I love so much, which

is like you're giving somebody a stage on which to like perform themselves.

That is correct.

To the correct

and all these, all these women had never been on camera before.

Yeah.

That was, that was part of our, part of our thing is sort of

like, so stories professional.

The stories were fresh.

If you're talking to a mother about having a child, for goodness sakes, what

could be the most important, oh, perhaps the most important thing in their life.

Delivering.

Well, some people would say like,

I can't believe how painful it was.

I felt like I was being cracked in half.

It was like stuff like that.

But either, then there were some of the mothers who were very

sweet, And some of them were like.

Oh my God.

You do not want this person as your mother,

but, but I, I remember interviewing an Indiana woman,

and she was like a secretary.

She was not prepossessing physically, and she was just hilarious.

She was like a total natural documentary subject, but her husband and children were

watching from like in back of the camera.

Yeah.

And I looked at them and they were like, who is this woman?

Woman?

I mean, obviously she's lived her life for almost 50 years

waiting for, they had never seen, she was waiting for that moment.

And I said to her, I said, you are so great.

You should do more this.

She said, Nope, I'm done.

Well, we had another,

let's, let's pause right here.

Sorry guys.

What the hell is this?

Anyway?

It looks like canoes.

Yeah, they look like canoes

wherever.

Put

together.

Okay.

What do you think the name of that sculpture is?

Uh oh.

this like a test here?

Does everybody in Texas knows it?

Failing

it to the future?

Uh, ooh.

I was gonna say like row, row, row, row, row, row, row.

Caly.

The person who

didn't have a sense of humor beyond the idea of well.

Steel canoes

there just amazed me, I think, amazed me about this stuff is like

somebody wired this having, not somebody, but clearly like an, you

know, a body of people wired this.

Yes.

Yeah.

Because there's so this, you know, how did this, how did this happen?

Somebody probably studied very hard at one of the top art schools in the country

to help this artist in their studio.

Right, right.

And think of the studio, or was it like an airplane hanger somewhere?

Well, it's funny because we just did, we just completed

this series called Confluence.

Which was all about art and technology and the marriage therein.

I saw that, and this is exactly the kind of stuff where the artists

would just do a sketch, right?

But it was up to an engineer.

Yes.

And a whole tech team to make it work and make sure that didn't

fall on people and all that.

Well, now we have to go find out what the actual,

okay.

Let's go find.

Okay, we'll go.

I'll go.

We all our

guests here to

guess what it's called, and then they're blown away by the, this, an actual title.

All right.

It is called.

Monochrome for Austin.

That's it.

All right.

Oh, that's really a marvel of engineering.

Engineering.

See, there it is.

The engineer Never.

Okay.

70 aluminum canoes.

70, and they are carefully caned bound on, on steel cables.

It's a whimsical sculpture, so

it's a marvel of engineering, but not a marvel of titling.

No, no, no.

what this reminded me when we were saying about how you bring everybody

here to, uh, do this test, which you might wanna incorporate this in future,

future shoots, but that was actually one of our tool early toolboxes tool

kit toolkit pieces, which is to do man on the person on the street interviews.

Yeah.

Oh, toolbox box.

Which, which we actually are on record is loathing, except that every 15th

interview you get a piece of gold.

That's the problem though is 'cause, because the ratio of junk to actually

something that's really good.

Yeah.

Is like, you know, so you gotta stand there for a lot.

You gotta talk to a lot of people before you get this stuff.

I will say however, that our collaborator, Paul Steckler loves

doing Fox pop and I will say that 'cause both of us will kind of go.

Oh shit, I don't do that anymore.

And Paul will be like, oh, come on.

We can do some more.

And I can take a look at him and he is going like, we can do more.

Come on guys, we can do more.

Well,

it's

also, but eventually we do.

Eventually we do.

We kind of get dragged out onto the street again and we start doing it again.

But, okay.

It's

also, to me, it's one of these essential understandings of making

documentary films is that you actually don't know when to stop.

Properly in case you don't know what you're gonna get.

We've been in many places where it's like three in the morning, I

think we can stop shooting guys.

But you always second guess that.

Yeah, always.

Especially as we get older, we're younger, it's like, sure, we'll just

hang out till 4:00 AM if we have to.

Sure.

And then now it's kinda like, you know what?

I really wanna go to sleep here.

No.

But

in fact it's absolutely true.

And we've had some of our, literally some of the best things we have ever shot

because we said, one of us anyway said.

Well, why don't we just hang out another five more minutes.

Yeah.

You know, and it just so happens that suddenly that guy, you

know, he was incredible and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

people say, why can't you, you know what?

Take you so long to film, film this, make this movie.

And I say, yeah, well, if he knew all PE attack, which 90% of we

couldn't use, we, we would do that.

Right?

It doesn't work like that.

I mean this as a high compliment, but it strikes me that.

Talking about the voice of the people, which is VAX Pop, right?

Making comedic documentaries, right, that are not about famous

people that are regionally specific.

Those things are probably the hardest things to find

financing for right now, right?

When we live in this age of the three Cs, right?

Celebrity crime and cults.

Yeah.

Boy, that's good.

I like that.

Yeah, that's, that's what gets funded in terms of nonfiction works these days.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

will say I agree, but I will say that documentaries have gotten

much looser about funny stuff, so you will see true crime

documentaries where there's somebody.

really Eccentric.

Where you laugh out loud.

I'm pitching one of those right now.

There you go.

We're But we're having a hard time.

You're having

a hard time.

Well, look, Aaron, I think we're having a hard time pitching

almost anything now, right?

That that isn't crime.

It isn't crime and celebrity.

how are you guys contending with that, you know, as a, as a team that

has worked together for 50 years and has this like amazing body of work.

Like how is it that you guys are.

Still getting work made.

And what is sort of the thing that's driving you still, like as we're, as

the landscape is shifting so radically

intellectually, nothing beats making documentary films.

I mean, you, you're using every synapse in your brain to make something work.

You know, technical stuff, the creative, the emotional stuff.

So we just do it.

I don't wanna say we do it for free because we're sort

of doing a lot for free now.

Yeah.

It's a dollar an hour when you, when you average out our pay.

But the models are just.

Some of it's luck.

Yeah.

did this big series, A rich guy wrote a check for the whole series 'cause

he was passionate about it and we were in the right place at the right time.

And

which one was that one?

That was Confluence.

The one you were finished last year.

Three hours series the to

It was, it was a very passion, passionate idea of his.

Yeah.

And tell me about Confluence.

Well, confluence is a three hour series.

It was on PBS last year.

It still sits around somewhere up, up on PBS passport.

And it's all about the con convergence of art, science, and technology.

And, uh, started just before COVID actually, we had our first RD grant,

and then a week, about a week or two after, after we could have had our

first meeting together with our team.

Yeah.

Everything shut down.

So all of a sudden everybody's on Zoom.

Yes.

And the curious thing about that was, is that nobody was doing

anything, including the people who you might wanna have in your movie.

So you could actually get in touch with them.

Like on zoo,

we had an architect who designs, he designs like 110 story buildings

in China and all around the world.

Very successful.

And he says, I'm used in my backyard assembly furniture.

You normally go to China twice a month.

What do you

want?

Yeah.

So that helped a lot in terms of just simply us being able to understand,

getting to people, understand what we were actually trying to do.

Things about making documentaries is, you can write about all

about the kind of stuff.

That you think you wanna put in your documentary so that you

can try to convince people to give you money to make them.

And then on the other hand, it's like, well, what are you actually

gonna put in your documentary?

Well, what's really gonna happen?

What's really gonna happen?

And of course the whole idea is that you don't really know.

If you did know well, then well, it'd be kinda like a typing exercise, right?

I mean, it'd be like if you already knew everything was gonna happen.

The whole point is, is for us anyway.

It's to use the material we have organically Tell us, almost tell us

what the movie is supposed to be about.

This is really

pretty.

I've never been here.

Yeah.

Isn't this nice?

Yeah.

So we're right across from the film building.

It's the, uh, brutalist building behind us here.

But this courtyard has this, this beautiful, beautiful tree.

Oh wow.

This great view of the tower.

And look, we've got it all to ourselves.

This is really wild.

Yeah.

Nobody here.

There is nobody here.

I know that you guys have.

An appointment at the Ransom Center.

We've got about, we do 15 more minutes or so here.

Okay.

So you're, you're making this new short film Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

About, uh, an architect.

Yeah.

Okay.

But this is a follow up to when you asked about funding.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

So this is one of the things we're actually telling this

publicly for the first time.

So I have no idea how it's going to be received.

Okay.

But we got.

A little bit of money from the NEA National Endowment for the Arts, which

everyone thinks is dormant under.

the Trump administration, Well, it turns out they're not.

They simply, as they say, realigned with the administration priorities.

There's this thing that's supposed to happen.

They're building the so-called Garden of Heroes for the 250 anniversary, where

they want to have statues of like 150 Americans who they consider to be sort

of like a Hall of Fame kind of thing.

They had an RFP request for proposals.

Yep.

And they said, do a art project on one of these subjects.

And it could be like a dance performance, it could be, it could be any numbers.

It wasn't necessarily for Phil, but somebody sent us the link.

And we went.

Okay.

And what we did, which is we love to do, yeah.

We love to reverse engineer RFPs.

Okay.

'cause if somebody says, Ben, I'm gonna give you $25,000.

Do whatever you want.

That's right.

It's a little panicky.

Yeah.

If somebody says, Ben, $25,000, it's gotta be a two crime story

with a funny thread in it.

You go, okay, I can, I can probably build a proposal.

Right?

Like you need some

guardrails.

Yeah.

Some direction.

One of the things we learned from this series about artists.

Is that all artists kind of need that, otherwise they lock up.

Interesting.

They need to have, like the guy who builds a hundred story building says,

I need to have like zoning regs, right.

And know what the building space is.

Right.

And then I can do what I need to do.

Artists can be, can really paralyzed and I think you could find even

filmmakers could be paralyzed.

Somebody said, make a movie about anything you want.

Anything?

Okay.

Anything, Keith, anything you want too wide open.

So we looked at the list.

And one of the names that we, we passed up, you know, Sojourner

Truth, Barbara Jordan, William F.

Buckley.

These are all people who, there's a lot of perfectly good stuff.

Oh, here go.

Maybe we let this guy go.

Okay.

Go.

Go ahead.

Say this is.

Good filmmaking right here.

We gotta let that.

All right.

There we go.

Loud.

This is, this is what happened.

This is what happened.

Is this, is this a new sponsor?

I think this is, no, this is just B roll.

It's just B roll.

No, we're gonna, we'll tag them, we'll tag them on social media and

say, the thing that I coming to learn

about, uh, this new, uh, technology, this new modern age we're living

in, is that it's all a roll.

All a roll.

That is that.

That's probably true.

Very interesting.

That's probably true.

Interviewing you now.

Well, well actually, so there is no editing then.

We don't actually need editing anymore.

Right.

It's debatable.

It's all live.

It's all real.

It's, it's so real.

Everybody wants authenticity right now.

Yes, they do.

Yes they do.

Yes they

do.

And considering that AI is like completely inauthentic, right?

That then that's what's people can make.

Movies are.

Cause my godson's in Los Angeles and he's starting a company

whereby he's making movies.

Where there is no movie, there is nothing.

Okay.

There are no people, there's no scenes.

Everything is is generated by ai.

Wow.

And he sent me like a little two minute thing.

It's, he likes to make horror movies So it's kind of like that kind of a genre.

Yeah.

And uh, I have to say.

I was hard pressed to tell the difference.

Wow.

And it's just, yeah.

So, I mean, so

wait, it's photorealistic like, it, it's

it's both.

Yes, it is.

It is photorealistic.

It's kind of a, you know, Sora two sort of thing.

Yeah.

Right.

You know, but, but at the same time he's doing a lot of, you know, weird angles

and, you know, that kind of thing.

A lot of tilts and stuff.

Right.

Um, uh, but having said that, the ver militude is kind of like.

Freaky.

Yeah.

Freaky.

Well.

So how are you guys thinking about that?

Like as lifelong documentarians?

You know, we're watching attendance at movies, fall, funding for

the arts go out the window.

Stop.

Don't say that anymore.

Stop.

We're watching, you know, a a, a new generation No, absolutely.

Of young people coming up who don't turn the TV on.

Right.

You know, who watch things on their phones.

Right?

Well,

I mean, you know, the.

The deal now is, is that people, it has been foretold for some time now, that 90

minute docks, the long, the long form dock

Yeah.

Is kind of, well, it's a dead format.

Well, it's not dead of course.

Right.

Like no format really dies that way.

Yeah.

But it certainly has been eclipsed, you know, by shorter pieces because

as the, the, the, the stereotype business that our attention spans have

gotten much shorter and blah, blah, blah, blah, which of course is true.

But at the same time, for all we know, maybe there'll be a counter

reaction and then people will start wanting to have something

that's actually deeper and longer.

I don't know.

The, the problem I suppose is where's it gonna go?

We have all sorts of distribution channels, you've got streaming

channels and all that stuff.

But for the most part, most of the work that they want is pretty well defined.

Just the way you described it earlier.

Yeah.

You know, crime and celebrity and that kind of cults and so.

It's sort of algorithmically based in terms of their audiences, and each

one of these streamers has their own way of looking at what it is that

they think their audience wants.

And that's what they want.

That's what they wanna give them.

I would say that, you know, look, we are, this is a turtle

crossing by the way.

Can we put that out?

Yes.

Here, I got it.

Look at this.

I don't often

see that on campuses, but I suppose, oh, you know why?

Look, we see him right there.

Where is he?

There's our guy.

Yeah, they're

there in the

pool.

Let's go in the, let's go

check

him out.

Oh, there, there they are.

Yeah.

Actually, I love that we're doing this because when I was teaching Uhhuh while

I was, uh, fresh outta grad school, yeah.

One of my pre-teaching rituals was to listen to music and walk, go on a quick

walk, and I would always come here.

And here they are and see the turtle pond and I haven't been here in a long time.

Watch over there.

Yeah.

They, they are, they're the guys over there.

There's like three of 'em over there.

Sunning themselves, you know.

I'm not worrying about, you know, melanomas or anything of that sort,

or AI or how they young or consuming their media.

Looks pretty good to be a turtle right now.

Yeah.

Really.

Well, you move slow, but you get things done on your own pace, you know?

Well, so, so actually as I was, I was about to say this, is that,

you know, we are, we are late career filmmakers at this point.

We're not mid anymore, and at a certain point you just say.

Well, they hell with it.

I just wanna do what I want to do.

Like we're doing this 10 minute movie about an architect.

It's like stakes are low other than our own professional

integrity and, and interest in, in making something interesting.

Right.

And we was gonna do, its, that's where good idea.

And I believe that that ultimately satisfies and it

leads to the best work off.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, I sort of, sort of going back to your roots in a sense, right?

Yeah.

'cause when you first started making movies, you're following your nose.

And my wife always just decision, always just said like.

You know, well, you know, your first documentary is your best, which I

can debate somewhat, but, but having watched some of our early stuff,

I know what she's talking about.

Right.

Because what she's saying is that you were learning by doing.

Yeah.

And effectively.

And back in New Orleans where we lived, where we started off, there really

wasn't anybody to kind of tell us, you should point your camera here, or

you should edit, make this edit here.

In fact, we would, we would often come to New York with our rough cuts to kind

of talk to other filmmakers and sort of to get some real genuine feedback.

Well,

my favorite.

You should run sound under your cutaways instead of just cutting the sound out.

Because of the first film, it was a quite sophisticated film, but every time there's

like a cutaway, the sound just drops out.

Like, why did we do that?

The

next one is like, I think we can run it underneath.

You guys are touching on, uh, a, a great point here, which is that we

hope that this podcast is for aspiring filmmakers, just, you know, starting out.

Excellent.

And so we'd like to do a lightning round at the end, and the first question

is always, what would your advice be?

To a young filmmaker right now for certain, well, it's

almost the same advice that we probably would've given a long time ago, and that

was find something in your own life.

Find something in your own environment.

Find something that you think you have access to that perhaps maybe

somebody else doesn't, and then you'll be able to document that.

You'll be able to do something with that, which maybe nobody else could do.

Find and develop your own stories essentially.

I mean, the same thing you said with to writers is like write, which you know,

part of it is.

Go do it where nobody else is.

I mean, we started in New Orleans and 50 years ago, right?

There wasn't anybody else doing documentaries about New Orleans.

Well, now I would say run away from New Orleans because there's 38,000

feature films and people doing it.

Goda, are you from Tulsa?

Are you from the panhandle?

Right.

Absolutely.

There are stories there.

There are human beings.

Yeah.

And people don't know those stories.

It's a good place to screw up also because it's like if a tree falls

in the forest and nobody's around, if you screw up your film Right,

nobody

will really know and you'll

learn a lots.

Right.

I always used to tell students that too when I taught, which is like if you don't

make a film that you look back on and are embarrassed of when you're a student's.

You're doing it wrong.

You're supposed to push yourself and you're supposed to be bad right now.

That's right.

So go try a bunch of things and fail and it's perfectly fine.

The other piece of advice, which I'm sure every filmmaker says,

is that you often need to have enormous changes at the last minute.

Some of our greatest successes have been rearranging scenes in a. Like literally a

week to go before you have to be locked.

And suddenly it's like, you know what?

This scene that never quite fit you put that first.

We had a movie, we couldn't come up with a good opening.

Yeah.

And we had a piece of a scene that was later, much later in the film

said, okay, we're gonna cut that in half, put it up front, start that,

and then say eight months earlier and go to the rest of the movie.

Well, and you know, so funny.

Fiction filmmakers to figure that out.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you have to kind of relearn the same tricks every

move.

Well, it's sort of like one of, one of the other secret things

is that very often the beginnings and the ends are interchangeable.

Certainly for documentaries which aren't necessarily telling a narrative

story of linears, a linear story.

Yeah.

It's in fact, often beginnings and endings are

often very similar.

Okay.

So this isn't one of our traditional lightning round questions, but Right.

This subject came up recently Okay.

On another episode.

Okay.

And Keith felt felt very adamant that co-directing Uhhuh

only works if you're related.

And I made the point because I've co-directed right a fair amount of

times that that's not true, not true, and that you can co-direct very well.

And so I want you guys to make the, the case for co-directing.

Well, we can make the case forward and against it.

Yeah.

You got No, that's absolutely true.

So part of it is the two of us have been together for half a century.

Right.

We sort of know also division of labor he shoots.

I don't get really involved in the, the look of things.

I do the audio, I often do the questions, but he pitches and

we kind of know each other.

So we're sort of, oh, we should have him be shooting special.

You taking the camera over this.

Right.

Okay.

Now I gotta shoot.

I'm sorry.

I was

pointing out.

So you need to river.

Yeah, I gotta switch it right now.

But it's kind of interesting because on the Confluence series

there were four directors.

Wow.

Okay.

With very different life experiences.

Okay.

You know, one guy was under 40, one of the producers was over 80, you know, but

everybody was equally involved, so, but there were like very different styles.

There was, you know, one, one producer came out of advertising, so they had

a very kind of experience of like, we come in, we shoot, we're done.

You know?

And I remember there was a shoot and, and he was great.

He was a great collaborator.

Yeah, he was very good.

But I remember one shoot where he said, okay, we're gonna go to the next shot.

It was like, no, there's a moment here.

Let's just shoot a little bit longer.

And then these two guys started talking and we got a little documentary.

We got a

little more, got a little, on the other hand, I, I would say

he was also a very good shooter.

Okay.

Being my side, being a shooter myself, and he was, you know, he actually

did some things that I wouldn't not necessarily have thought of.

I always feel like whenever I work with another DP, I'm always learning something.

Yeah.

I really, am I picking up something right from the way in which they do

things, even though I've been shooting for like, you know, half a century.

But in terms, in terms of the kind of creative decision making, some

of it was rocky and some Oh yeah.

Of it wasn't.

Yeah.

I think one of the things that's most important is for.

Whoever you're working with, when you understand you've got something

good, if one person says, why are we talking to this person?

He's boring.

That's, and you think that No, they're not boring.

There's something there.

Right?

You guys, you have to be aligned.

Okay.

It's not like anybody's right or wrong, but you need to be aligned,

you know?

And usually even, you know, with Lily and I working together for so long,

we know each other's predilections.

We know each other.

What, what, what we're gonna like and what we, what we're not gonna like.

And for the most part, that's aligned.

Yeah, for the most part we, we all know even and working with Paul as well.

Yeah.

As much as we might feel like, well he might say, ah, I really love that.

And classically we would do an interview and Paul would say, oh,

that's such a great interview.

And both Lou and I would look at each other like, nah, I don't think so.

But then we look at our material and very often he is right and we

just kind of come away with it.

It kind of, you know, we're, we're a little bit more jaundiced when it comes to

like doing things than perhaps what he is.

Right.

But that's the kind of thing that goes on.

Yeah.

When you're working together with nobody for a long time,

it's tough.

It is tough to collaborate and if you start getting bogged down in like minutia

of like fighting with each other right.

It just becomes toxic.

Yeah.

I have to say, part of being, having a co-director and a co-producer, it is so

useful not only for division of labor.

Huh.

But to just have somebody give you a reality check, do you

think this is a good idea?

Or what about that?

And you know, maybe he's got a better idea than me.

It doesn't happen much, but everyone's well,

great.

Thinking about collaborating is that this way you get someone to

collaborate with, you know, the bad thing about collaborating is that you

have to collaborate with somebody.

Okay, the last question, 'cause I know we're walking through

the ransom center here, right?

What is the thing that you guys cannot stop thinking about right now?

Oh, uh, my next dirty chai.

Uh,

your next cup of coffee.

I like

that.

No, what I like actually, and this shoot's been really fun, is.

This technology.

Yeah.

This is totally new to me.

Yeah.

And the idea that this is stuff we used to dream about, you know, when

we first started off, and to see it actually be there and so easy to use.

Oh, it's fantastic.

And to give you your a roll and the idea is to keep from happening.

I agree.

I, I'm, I'm not super tech forward, but I'm tech forward enough to really love.

Right.

You can do that.

That's great.

Right.

That's, yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

That's awesome.

Well, thank you guys so much for doing this.

It's been a true pleasure.

Absolutely great to see good work.

Thank you guys for the work that

you've done.

I really, really love it.

So,

Keith, that was my interview with Louie and Andy Louis and Andy, Louis

Alvarez, Andy Coker, those guys I. Have a wealth of experience and

like, kind of like their own little corner of the industry, 50 years.

That is

so incredible that they have been at it that long.

And I love that they have such a great sense of humor and that

they're still such good friends.

Uh, what'd you find?

I found like a magnet.

Huh?

Look at that.

For those of you who don't know, Keith is kind of a scavenger.

He picks up little pieces of metal or like interesting

objects and find on the ground.

We call them

metal trinkets and we make little robots out of them.

There's Sarah and Theo.

Yeah.

Alright.

Crafty bunch.

I love it.

We'd like to craft it up.

So Louie and Andy, thank you guys for coming on Dock Walks and thank

y'all for tuning in and thank you Ben for handling that one without me.

Well, thank you Keith.

And

those were new.

I'm, I don't know, just for being key.

So Louie and Andy came from New York to Austin where we did the episode

and next week I'm going from Austin to New York and I have the immense.

Pleasure of getting to go and film an episode with Alan Berliner

at his home studio, and I cannot

wait.

This is another episode that I am, you have the immense pleasure

and I have the immense jealousy.

This is a A Doc Walks studio visit.

Alan Berlin is one of my all time favorite filmmakers.

He has an archivist brain on a level that is hard to explain yet

You have to be in the studio to really understand and I can't wait

to go and share it with all of you.

So next week we have my studio visit with Alan Berliner, and I can't wait

for you to see that one Keith, and for you guys to see that at home.

That'll be great.

Thank y'all.

Happy New Year.

Enjoy.

Whatever it is you're about to go do.

I don't know.

That's it.

I should stop talking

you.

Yeah, I think that's it.

We'll see you guys next week.

Catch you next time.

On Dog Walks.

Dog Walks is presented, directed, created, edited by myself and this guy.

Hello.

We couldn't do it without co-producer Dayton Thompson.

No, we couldn't.

Thank you.

Dayton continues to knock it outta the park.

Thank you, Dayton.

And, uh, thanks to the folks at the Bear, the folks at Go Val.

We have a team of

interns that are working hard

for us.

And, uh, thank you for sticking around.

If you're still here, you're a diehard and we appreciate you.

We'll catch you next time.

Doc

Walks,