EP036 – Think Like A Filmmaker w/ Alan Berliner

This week, Ben is on a solo mission to a freezing New York City, where legendary filmmaker Alan Berliner guides him through his studio that’s equal parts fine art gallery and documentary laboratory. We’re talking about a 108 drawer sound sculpture that Alan plays like an instrument, flood-destroyed film reels turned gorgeous works of art, and the kind of collections that make you wonder where archiving ends and genius begins. Alan waxes poetic on the fine art vs. filmmaker debate, breaks down why every film portrait is really about the person behind the camera, and encourages thinking like a filmmaker even when you’re not on set. We get into his philosophy on acting at the speed of thought, editing without treatments, trusting your gut and letting the material tell you what it wants. Then there’s his new film, BENITA, a deeply personal work born from decades of friendship and unimaginable loss — Alan’s tribute to a woman whose story yearned to be told, even after she was gone. He opens up about what it means to honor someone through film, and why he believes the documentary world is about to shrink fast. This one’s about honoring both your mentors — in the case of Ben learning from Alan — and your mentee’s — in the case of Alan coming to know Benita. Buckle up for a beautiful, wild walk through Alan Berliner’s studio and his filmmaking career.

DISCUSSION LINKS:

INTIMATE STRANGER (1991) | NOBODY’S BUSINESS (1996) | THE SWEETEST SOUND (2001) | WIDE AWAKE (2006) | FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED (2012) | BENITA (2024) | THE FAMILY ALBUM (1986)

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Welcome to Doc Walks: Ben Solo in NYC 00:49 Meeting Alan Berliner at His Studio 02:42 Audio File: The 108 Drawer Sound Sculpture 07:00 The Object Cabinets: Bells, Keys, and Lock Drawers 11:17 Composing with Drawers: Live Demonstration 14:00 “Slow Dissolve” and Think Like a Filmmaker 19:56 Fine Art vs. Documentary: Does the Distinction Matter? 23:00 Parts and Labor: The 534-Frame Machine Sculpture 30:00 Translucent: Film Reels as Light Sculptures 34:24 The Title Card Lens Installation 40:00 The Martin Luther King Jr. Citizenship Award 45:00 Oklahoma, Graduate School, and Unlikely Origins 50:00 From Grandfather to Father to Self: The Portrait Films 56:00 Never Writing a Treatment: The Intuitive Process 1:03:00 Acting at the Speed of Thought 1:07:00 BENITA: A Collaboration with the Departed 1:16:00 The Documentary Landscape in Crisis 1:22:00 Windows and Mirrors: The Purpose of Portraiture 1:26:00 Advice for Filmmakers: Fascination and Need 1:31:00 Closing and Next Episode Preview

So this week I am in New York and it

is freezing cold.

This is all lies.

We are walking around Austin, Texas, and it's about 70 degrees.

Oh right.

I'm in shorts currently.

But the episode that you're about to hear, oh, is me in New York?

As bundled up as humanly possible.

'cause it is freezing cold.

It's snowing.

We actually had some guests booked who backed out because it was so cold they

didn't really want to go walking coward.

So luckily Alan Berliner invited me over to his studio.

We didn't have to walk outside.

What transpires is one of my favorite things that I've ever done, which

is to get to have a studio tour led by Alan Berlin, which you are

about to witness here on Dog Walks.

So this week on

Dog Walks, Ben Solo in New York studio visit with legendary doc

filmmaker, the one and only Alan.

Alan Berlin.

Here you go.

Check it out.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

On your left.

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

Okay, we are rolling.

Rolling.

And I'm about to do a marker here.

Do I need to 0.2?

Yep.

Okay.

Ready?

Wait, but I'm, I'm,

but it's, it's okay that it's on you.

Okay.

Ready?

Mark.

One, two A. One more.

There we go.

All right.

How'd that feel?

All good.

My hand hurts.

That's good.

No, it's fine.

It's fine.

It was a good sound.

It was for the sound.

I think that means that it

worked.

Yeah.

So

I am here in New York City with one of my filmmaking idols, Alan Berlin, in what

feels like the antithesis of the outside of this studio, which is very bustling.

It's busy, it's cold, it's New York City.

But then I step inside and I see this incredible studio space.

Here at Alan's studio and I am so thrilled to be standing here.

So Alan, I just wanna say first and foremost, thank you for hosting me here at

your studio space and I kind of just want you to take us around and, and just show

me what you're most excited to show me.

Sure.

I'll give you the tour.

Yeah.

A tour.

There's no the tour, but I'll give you a tour.

I'm gonna press this button so I can be point of view.

Let's come over here, uh, towards these cabinets that most people

walk by and think is just the cabinets that I put things on,

but it's not quite just a cabinet.

If there are four black cabinets, each is 27 drawers.

It's a total of 108 drawers.

This is a work that I made, so don't look, don't concern yourself at the

moment with what's on the cabinet.

Or on the wall.

Let's just talk about the cabinet for a second.

Cabinet is a work that I made a long time ago in 1993, and it's called Audio File.

Let me show you what it's first, then I'll tell you at the time, the drawer

that I like to show people to as a sort of way into the work is this

drawer over here called No Trespassing.

Every drawer has its own title, has its own name, and this

one, they're alphabetical.

It goes from all news radio at the left top to wit's end at the

bottom right, and I'll show you both, but here's no trespassing.

So when you open, no tressing, the drawer,

a dog starts barking.

So, um.

Now, just so you know, you can open up one drawer at a time, 2, 10, 30, 57, 82.

You can open up all 108 drawers at the same time, which makes

it a kind of instrument.

I think of it as a sound sculpture certainly.

But it's an instrument.

And here's a drawer called, uh, perfect pitch.

There's a tape recorder in every drawer.

Alright, A cassette tape recorder.

And it used to run on loop cassettes.

There's a loop cassette, 32nd loop cassettes, depending, 'cause there's

poetry here and music and sound effects, all sorts of different kinds of sounds.

But about two years ago, I'll shut it off for a second.

Two years ago I had, I took out all the loop cassettes

and I, I put in digital cards.

So now it's a digital card.

Wow.

Now it's a digital work.

Okay.

So it's been updated.

It's been updated for the 21st century.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, this perfect pitch, um, it just so happens, goes very well with

wit's end the bottom right drawer.

Ah,

ah.

He's screaming in a, for the record, it just so ha You can't plan that.

You can't plan that.

But it just so happened.

Oh

wow.

So how did the idea for this come to you?

Well, I've always kept things in like, like to keep things in drawers.

I'll, I'll show you more drawers that don't have sound and it just.

Well come over here.

I'll show you real quick.

This is not a direct, how should we say, genealogy of audio file, but it's related.

These, there's another set of cabinets, but these have objects.

It's a little kind of museum that I keep, but, so here's like a

drawer called nuts and bolts and, well, what do you, what do you say?

There's nuts and bolts.

Wow.

But the drawer that I wanted to show you initially is a drawer called Bells.

And you might say that is a drawer, but sound.

Yes.

I can see Yes.

The direct line between that and the

sounds sculpture.

Yeah.

So I thought, well, what if there was a draw called opera?

You know, and there is a, this opera in audio file.

And so, um, you know, this has things made of plastic, things made of metal,

things made of wood things, rusted things.

Wow.

Uh, carpet, you know.

Uh, puzzles.

Puzzles.

So for those of you who are, who are not watching this episode and listening,

Alan is showing me, what would you guess?

200, 300 drawers?

Uh, there're again 27.

27 times five.

So that's 135 drawers

here.

135 labeled drawers.

Yeah.

This one is called eye masks and you pull it out and it's full of, you guessed it.

Eye masks.

Yeah.

And these are metal, meticulously labeled.

Symmetrical.

Here's eyeglasses.

Right.

Wow.

Found, given to me.

You know, by the way, just there is a practical side to this.

Dimension to this.

Yeah.

This is my office supply zone.

Rubber bands, paper clips.

Wow.

Right.

Oh, you have one for business cards?

That's so business.

Well, I have two for business cards actually.

Um, yeah, that's one of them.

Oh, that is so smart.

And then, um,

and then,

yeah, here's the more They're both quite full.

Yes.

Quite full.

Have you, have you ever actually looked for somebody's business

card and pulled it outta there?

No.

I, I, I just used to save them.

I mean, if someone gives me one, I'm happy to include it in here.

You have one.

Oh.

Um, I wonder if eventually I didn't give you a business card at some point.

It might, might.

If, if you did, it's here.

Yeah.

So anyway, there's that.

And then shipping and envelopes.

This is interesting because this one is called cutting and it includes

things for taking things apart.

Sure.

Knives and scissors and et cetera.

Razor blade, this is called pasting things for putting things together.

Tape staples, cable ties, you know, all sorts of things like that.

This is for measuring things.

Everything from a. Tape measure to electric, you know, electronic

tapes and rulers, et cetera.

This is for labeling and there is in fact a labeler.

Wow.

You know, et cetera.

So it's just about a kind of efficiency.

This is organization on an entirely different level, and I'm so glad that

you showed us the cutting drawer, because behind this is your editing station?

Yeah, yeah.

Sort of like the command central portion of the, we call it mission control, but

We'll, we'll get to that Mission control.

Okay.

Yeah, we'll get to that.

Yeah.

And of course I can't help but notice also you, you have so many reels.

Well, we're not up to that spindles.

I'm sorry.

The building up to that Jumping ahead.

Okay.

By the

way, this is, this is an interesting category.

Everyone has one of these, or could have one of these if they

wanted to, which is lock and key.

These are all keys and locks and.

And, uh, key chains that I've ever had or that I've found or been given to me.

Wow.

You know, here's a key, an actual functional one.

A key with a lock.

With a lock.

A lock with a key I should say.

'cause a lot of these are orphans, you know, it's the key without the

lock or the lock without the key.

Right.

You know, but anyway, so, and that's a heavy drawer by

the way.

'cause it's all metal.

Right.

Well that's interesting that you use that phrase orphans because so much of

what I know about your process and your work is that you are sort of a home,

a, a repository for orphaned media.

You collect other people's family photo albums, other people's home movies.

So that's interesting.

The, the term orphan.

Very true.

I always tell people, if you want to give me your stuff, I'll hold it here.

And many people have over the years.

Yeah.

You know, I'll save it for them.

I'll hold it if they want it back, you know, I'll give it a place.

And if it makes its way into your work, then that's part of the tax then Yeah.

Then I always say, but if I turn it into something else, I can't Exactly.

Give it back to you.

Not without a fight anyway.

Yeah.

So let's go back to audio file.

Okay.

I gave you the gist of it.

Um, I'll just, I'll just, I've, I've only opened one and two drawers at a time.

I'll just do something with multiple drawers opening, just to give you a

sense of how you can compose with it a little, little more elaborately.

So here's a drill called ascending.

Remember, it's alphabetical.

Here's a drill called descending.

Here's a drill called symbol.

Here's a drill called G Minor.

There's a drill called random notes,

three minute egg.

Hmm.

Not working.

Wow.

Whoa.

Oh, there went, I Did you hear?

Okay?

You heard?

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

I'm hear it.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, it's working.

It's working.

Intensive care.

Perfect pitch works well in this composition too.

Fast forward from videotape,

draw call, canned laughter.

Canned laughter.

Anyway, that's 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 drawers open.

They're 108.

We could keep going.

Wow.

You're like a one man orchestra.

Yeah.

Wow.

It's supposed to be a little fun.

It's supposed to be fun.

It's beautiful.

And you know what's interesting about that is that that's almost a live

demonstration of what I think that I understand about your editing process.

And I've, I've heard you described, or I've read, you described as a one man

orchestra in that you write, shoot, edit, direct, produce your films.

Yeah.

And that there are this multilayered sensory experience.

Right.

A lot of the time.

And we just saw a version of that in action.

Right.

Do you agree with that assessment?

I agree with that.

Sure.

We could talk about more about that.

'cause that's come up with this new film that I just made.

Oh great.

Everything that you see around you, lemme, lemme point it.

Everything that's around us here, all these reels, I'll

just give you an example.

This, this, uh, this is a nine part work.

It's titled Slow Dissolve.

And it moves from a, a reel of film that's untouched and pristine to one that's

been damaged in a flood a little bit to another that's been damaged in a flood

a little bit more to another that's been damaged in a flood yet a little bit more

to another that's been damaged in a flood.

Yes, you get it more.

And then more, and then more, and then more.

And then finally we're at, we're at this, uh, place of, um, just

grain, you know, uh, dust, you know.

Wow.

And, uh, this is about what a filmmaker does with the elements of film.

The tools of film, of motion picture film, right.

When in this case he, when I don't use them to make films anymore, right.

So I'm just still making films.

I'm still working with 60 millimeter film reels, tools leader, actual film.

And the like.

Um, but in this, you know, it's no longer about a projected light beam on a screen.

It's now, now I've changed the, I, I've exchange, if you will, the, the theater,

the dark room for a lit gallery wall.

Yeah.

So everything that you see around here is a part of that.

The body of work in its totality is called Think Like a Filmmaker.

Oh,

think Like a Filmmaker.

Think Like a filmmaker.

That might be the title of your episode.

We always take a phrase Love it.

Love it.

Yeah.

And that, I think, think Like a filmmaker with Alan Berliner Sounds Right.

I endorse that.

Yeah.

So there are a lot of different parts to think like a filmmaker.

So this is a, a gallery experience on this side of the partition.

Everything, the,

the both sides.

Okay.

It just, there's just so much of it.

There's no, from my perspective, there's not an empty wall in the whole place.

So, you know, but I just wanna give you an example, like,

I call them special effects.

Like this could never exist in real life with red hair and black and white hair.

There's no, you can't do that.

Right?

So this is a sort of, it's a special effect.

It's, it could only exist through the magical intervention of someone who

knows how to create an illusion, right?

It's a magic trick.

This actually can't exist either.

Um, in real life, you know, this one certainly can't exist in

real life because there's film here and there's no film here.

Swine also can't exist in real life.

Another special effect because there's, there's only film on the outside.

Wow.

There's another, a thread through a lot of the work.

It's what I call square the circle.

These were actual reels of film that I then squared the circle.

I literally, I worked with a metalsmith, excuse me, to square the circle.

All these three used to be wow, circular reels, you know?

And then.

I squared this through there, there are a lot of them hanging around.

And so for our listeners who aren't watching this, I'm looking at, at 16

millimeter reels of film on the wall, hung as an art show in a gallery, and all of

the reels have been manipulated in this really novel, very beautiful way to, as

Alan is saying, to basically not be like, you could ever see the reels of film, uh,

in, if they were being used functionally.

So they're all colored or the circle, the circular reels

have been turned into squares.

What else am I, there's more there.

You'll see I've done a lot of things.

This is a little sequence.

It goes from a reel with a color to a reel with black reel with different color.

Then it becomes wire.

Oh, wow.

Then the wire gets to be a little more chaotic and wilder.

Yeah.

And then finally there's using wire instead of film.

And then you see that we end up with, and, and those of those of people

who are watching or listening who.

Uh, have played with, worked with 60 millimeter film.

You know that if you turn your head look the wrong way while you're

winding film, you can make spaghetti.

Right.

A mess.

Like, you know, wild spaghetti.

And that's what, that's an illusion.

But you did that purposefully.

I did it for that one.

Of course, of course.

Of course.

I can't show you everything because it would take too much time.

Yeah.

There's so much to look at.

It's incredible.

This is, this is a, you know, when I made this work, I started to think

about that film was metal and plastic.

So this is a, um, metal reel, and I found, uh, plumbers use this stuff,

there's a word for it, I, I keep forgetting when they want to, uh, attach

things to the walls, pipes and stuff.

Oh yeah, sure.

Right.

There's a word for it.

But anyway, it has a hole in it, like a sprocket hole.

And so it's metal film, metal metal machine.

Wow.

Metal reel, metal film.

Take up all metal objects.

Unbelievable projector.

This is two reels that are, um, interconnected, you know?

Wow.

It's an object.

No, I'll skip this stuff 'cause there's a lot of details.

We don't have so much time for that.

Okay.

Um,

well, Alan, I, I'm sitting here thinking like I, I know you as a documentary film

maker, you make these beautiful personal essay films, but so far you've showed

me all of your sculptural works Yeah.

And, and your audio installations.

And I'm so interested in, in the fact that we're focusing on you as

like, as a fine artist in a way, rather than as a documentarian.

And I wonder, like, do you see a distinction between those things?

Or do you, does it all sort of just fall under the umbrella of work for you?

Well, it's

work.

I don't really, when I come here to this studio, I don't

really think of it as work.

I think of it as play.

And that's even what, even for both the sculptural stuff and the films, so, right.

Sure.

I've been doing this even when I was not graduated from

college as an undergraduate.

Yeah, I had a senior thesis and then they gave me a room to have a gallery show.

Wow.

That's when I'm like 20 years old.

So I've been doing this for a very long

time.

Very long.

Yeah.

I was gonna say the collecting couldn't have come later in life.

Yeah.

It seems like that was probably

how

you

were as a kid too.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So this was all part of who I am.

And yeah, there was a time when I had to like figure out the rhythm of that.

And so I would do some, like, I would do audio file.

I made audio file in between a film I made called Intimate Stranger.

Yeah.

And then a film that I made called Nobody's Business.

Ah.

It was in between, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And so it used to be that it was like film and installation project, film

installation part was kind of rhythm.

Yeah.

This time it landed differently.

COVID, you know, I had to, I did, I started this during COVID.

I couldn't do, I couldn't make a film then, so, uh,

it's how I breathe, you know?

Right.

That's just, it's what I do, period.

I love it.

Thanks.

That's great.

Thanks.

Okay.

Just real quick, so this is another one of these Square the circle.

These, these are reels that this, that's a regular 60 millimeter film reel.

But when you square the circle, you get this sort of weather vein shape.

So this is sort of like a, a grid, if you will, of that.

And then of course, there are different people have around the

world, have different color reels and different shape reels, you

know, and then there's different color leader, plastic color leader.

So I, I, I have a couple of works like this.

This is called Kodachrome, but I also have a work called Ectochrome and

other works that are in grid form.

But this is an example of that.

Um, then these here, they were all reels, circular reels, like, you

know, like regular reels, right?

And, um, I had each of them.

Uh, squared, the circle squared.

So I had all these, uh, reels, the circle squared, and then I glued them together.

So this is like now a sculptural object.

Wow.

You know,

that is, and so where are you getting all these 16 millimeter

films?

Well, first of all, I collect things and save things.

So I, I had a lot of it.

And now a lot of people have given me, when they know that I'm doing

stuff out of it, they, I mean, that's what COVID was for me.

I was, I thought to myself, what am I gonna do during COVID?

How can I, I can't really make a film.

And so I went into the basement.

I found all these boxes of, all filled with reels and wow.

Leader and film and stuff that I'd saved.

And I realized that for me, COVID was, and I'm not trying to downplay

the gravity of what COVID was.

Sure.

But for me as an artist, COVID was my rainy day.

Yeah.

I said, why did I, why'd you save all to myself?

Why'd you save all this stuff?

I guess you were waiting for a rainy day.

Yeah.

When you figure out what to do with it.

Right.

COVID was my rainy day for this.

Some people were making banana bread.

Absolutely.

And you were making sculptures.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So again, all of these are all objects, metal objects, sculptures.

Wow.

Made from cinematic things.

This one I cut an arc out, you know, it's a like a, yeah.

The, the, what's missing from there would basically be this.

So for our listeners, this is a tabletop full of 16 millimeter film reels that

are stacked and then cut into shapes.

That you have not seen before.

And they're in varying patterns and colors.

And this is just an entirely new way to think about how to use 16 millimeter film.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

Now let's go to this thing behind me.

Okay.

I'm gonna turn it on.

It turns on, uh, down here.

This is a work.

Um, Ben, if you go down there to the left for a bit, this is

a work that's called Parts and Labor, and that's the title card.

Oh, right here.

Parts and Labor.

Wow.

Wow.

This had its genesis.

During COVID.

When I save, as you can tell, I save a lot of little things.

And during COVID, what I did a lot is I took things apart.

Okay.

I like taking, I'm not good at putting, well, I like to put things together, but

I'm not, I'm not electronically attuned.

I'm not.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I, I don't really know how things work, but I like to take things apart.

Okay.

And then organize the parts.

And so, um, this, um, this is a, uh, it's about 22, 23 feet long.

Wow.

And it's, uh, 534 frames.

And it's kind of like a scroll.

It's kind of like a storyboard.

It's kind of like a, a cinematic, an unfolding cinema set of cinematic,

intersecting, cinematic sequences.

But it's also a machine.

All right?

There are electronics behind here and it's filled with cinematic logic.

'cause things are moving.

You could follow the sequence of things, um, horizontally.

Yeah.

You know, there were sequences vertically, it moves through zones of Right.

An animation, like sequences in like a storyboard kind of way.

It moves through.

Very complicated to make.

It took a long time.

I believe it.

Yeah.

And you're right now that you mentioned the logic, 'cause it does look

like each frame talks to the other

one.

Everything is exactly where it is for a re wow.

I mean, I could talk you through, you got 10 hours, I'll

talk you through everything,

you know, and they're, and they're like washers and they're razor blades

and their springs, and there's all kinds of rust, rust, razor blades, too

little parts that all make interesting shapes and colors and textures.

This is, I've never seen anything like this.

Well, thanks.

Music is coming out of this speaker.

Okay.

There's a digital clock over here.

This is by, by the way, it's another thing is that it's a monument.

That's, is that the right word?

A monument.

But it's, it's a homage.

An homage too.

Uh, analog media, an old rotary telephone.

You know, this is a, this is a motion sensor.

Oh, wow.

That fan will not move unless someone's in the purview of this Wow.

Thing.

That fan is spinning all the time.

Okay.

There is actually a video camera here that's a video monitor.

Oh, you're kidding.

In a, in a transparency frame.

You know, like this slide.

So there we are, right there.

Oh, yeah.

I did a shot of that.

It's all i'll, I'll walk outta the way.

Yeah.

This, uh, this light, which looks like it's illuminated uhhuh, can you see it?

Yeah.

Yep.

It's not really, because that's a laser beam that's going through and

through that aperture to light it up.

Wow.

Here's an analog clock, you know.

Wow.

Um, again, you know, that's from a, a 45 record lp.

Yeah.

Lp.

Yeah.

Um, that's an old Kodak lens.

A filter rather.

That's a type, that's a typewriter ribbon.

And I can't help but notice that things have kind of gone from like monochrome.

Yep.

To black and white.

Yep.

To now we're in a red

zone.

That's right.

And then a blue, a loose to blue.

That's an old pencil.

That's a pencil sharp mirror.

Oh, by the way, this is, uh, this view meter uhhuh is

the vu meter for that music.

Oh, come on for real, Alan.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's an analog watch face.

That's a counter.

This is incredible.

Thanks.

That's a dump truck that's dumped a lot of stuff over here.

I have a reference to cinema and projection.

The light is shining through these various Oh, right.

Lenses and, and, uh, prisms, you know.

Wow.

And then, uh, it moves through all the different colors to a sort of spectral

phase where, um, it all culminates here.

And I admit I made a mistake when I made it at the beginning.

I thought that I should make the on off button part of the work.

Mm. Okay.

And that's what this was going to be.

And I learned from making things like audio file and other interactive things.

When you give someone the opportunity to turn it on and off,

that's what someone's gonna do.

Ah, you know, play God right all the time.

So I thought that's, and they'll break it.

Or suit, who knows?

Not a good thing.

So, but I said if I leave it here, someone's gonna wanna still play with it.

So you see how everything kind of culminates here.

So now if someone presses this, it makes the sound of electricity, which

looks like that's where we ended up here with all these modulating

colors, you know, at the end here.

Wow.

So for as long as you hold it down, it'll make sound, the sound

of electricity and these colors.

So not the on-off button can either be hidden.

Or somewhere offsite with that box on the floor.

Incredible.

Yeah.

Incredible.

Anyway, it's called Parts and Labor and again, 534 frames.

Wow.

Of information.

And it's as meticulous as one of your films.

I mean, it's put together so beautifully.

Just

yeah.

It's just how I do it.

Wow.

So, but

thank you.

Incredible.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

Just another quick thing.

This is a real, hold on.

I'm gonna flip this around for a second.

This is a real composed entirely of movie tickets.

Wow.

Paper movie tickets.

Oh, come on.

Yeah.

So of different colors.

That's incredible.

And it's going through a

splicer.

It's going through a splicer.

And I've actually cut off, hold on.

You see the splicer?

I've cut off one of them, you know, emit one over here.

You see that?

And then I assembled the colors in the same order.

On this thing, I'm not quite sure what you call it, but you see it at

Chinese restaurants or something.

Right.

And uh, so I consider this a single frame animation.

Wow, Alan.

Just the time it would've taken you to do that is incredible.

But anyway, so that's, I get the.

You know, the movie tickets and the splicer and the reel,

this film strip of the tickets.

Wow.

And then the film result at the end.

And again, for those of you listening, this is a, this is probably a 35

millimeter, it's a, uh, film reel completely filled all the way to

the very edge with paper admit one ticket rolls of all different colors.

So the amount of time it would've taken you to put those together

and to thread that through.

And then to have it go through the splicer and then on top of where you stab tickets.

Yeah, you have the same color coordinated tickets in a pattern,

creating a sculptural shape next to it.

So I would guess this was probably hundreds of hours.

Well, it was a long time.

A long time.

Yeah.

Okay.

So moving right along.

By the way, this shot right here makes it seem like there are

a lot of things around here.

It's all grid things.

But I'm gonna turn this piece on.

This is.

What I'm about to show you is like 15 or so examples of a work, a

body of work within Think like a filmmaker that I call translucent.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

I have to turn it.

So this piece is called translucent.

Yeah.

These are just examples of translucent.

But I have, by the way, see all these white boxes around Uhhuh?

That's more work that can't, there's no, I've like 200 or more

pieces that I can only show anyway.

It doesn't matter.

There's a lot.

There's a lot.

There are a lot more of these too.

Wow.

Okay.

Just take another angle here for you.

So a bank of light boxes just lit up and they are interspersed amongst

metallic shelves that completely cover the walls here of your studio.

And in front of the light boxes are 16 millimeter film reels that have all been.

Manipulated, carved, etched into different sculptures?

Well, usually in the traditional way of thinking of cinema film is put on,

a film is run through a projector, and the shadow of that film is

what we see on the screen, right?

The shadow.

The film runs through the light.

A light goes through the film strip, it's goes through a lens

and it's projected on the screen.

This acknowledges that film is translucent, but I'm

not projecting anything.

I'm using the actual object of the film as the translucent object.

The film is the translucent object, and I'll just say it a different way.

For instance, you see this part right here, okay?

That's called film.

Filmmakers would know this is something called Clear leader.

All right, this is 16 millimeter film.

Everything here is real.

So if you projected this on the screen, ran it through projector, it

would be a rectangle of white light.

Okay.

This is also clear leader, but it has a little bit of a blue tint.

If you projected that on the screen, it would be a rectangle of light blue

light, this, which is the same as this.

If you projected that on the screen, it would be a kind of midnight

blue rectangle on the screen.

But you know, clear leader is made.

I didn't know this as now I know very well, but at the time I didn't

realize it was so many different tonalities of clear leader.

Like it could be white, but it could be a little off white or or yellow,

yellowish or goldish or orange or even a darker, a dark, like a red, an amber.

So I start to play with it, you know?

And then I found color reels that are plastic that have

different transparencies.

Here's black and that sort of off-white gold color.

This is actually, uh, computer chips.

A roll of computer chips.

That looks like eight millimeter film.

Oh, come on.

Really?

That's for real.

Yeah.

Same thing here.

This moray is from computer chips, but that's an actual reel.

Um, that's incredible.

It's, uh, an eight millimeter reel,

and you got it to moray in those patterns.

It's just when you wind it on it, that's what it looks like.

Wow.

Yeah.

Here's a, a one with a blue, you know, three different kinds of

blue is like minimal compositions, geometric compositions, orange

and blue, different blues.

This is, remember square the circle?

I, I pointed out the, uh, the wind, the weather vane thing.

Yeah.

So this is just winding white, white leader on a, a square, a a reel.

That's whose circle has been squared.

And this black here is film.

It's not a reel.

Wow.

You know, and then here's more of that sort of sunset radiating white,

you know, here's a Kodak reel.

Incredible.

You know.

Alan, I just love that your brain works this way.

This is normally not what people see.

Right?

This part of the film, they're watching the film that is encased in these objects.

Right.

But you are making the objects the star of the show.

Well, thank

you.

Thank you.

And so, I don't know if I can cover it here, but I'll just give you an example.

It's only been, it's been exhibited once, but when it's exhibited on a wooden shelf,

and I can, these are rewinds and I can screw the rewinds into the, A wooden

shelf, viewers C can come and turn.

Wow.

You know, and turn you getting that

it, it creates all sorts of optical illusions.

Yeah.

Different shapes that take place if things go in reverse.

Different kind of things.

Wow.

And I have like.

50 of these reels.

It's just 15.

These might, to be honest with you, these aren't even the best ones.

Wow.

But it

doesn't matter.

They're good enough

Alan.

This is incredible.

Nice.

Yes.

And, and then you're flanked by just an unbelievable amount of binders

and boxes labeled the here the reel

here is you have red boxes, orange boxes, yellow, red is black and white film.

Orange is sound.

Yellow is color.

Film green are home movies, 16 millimeter course.

The blue is my family home.

Movies that I took, that my father took from my family.

The purple, the violet is, uh, photographs that I gather from around

the world, but also love letters and found ephemera from around the world.

And then the black are photographs.

I cut outta the newspaper, the New York Times for over 40 years, although

that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I have boxes and boxes, more of them.

This is just what I was doing in the early days of that.

And then these two shelves up here are found photo albums.

Orphan family photo albums.

Wow.

These are the, all the loose sleeves are files.

I just decided a long time ago, why have everything in file cabinets

when I could, if I put them in loose sleeves, uh, I could take them with

me on the subway and read things on the way home and it would be Wow.

You know, and I could continually to add to it.

So that's what, that's so, so in

this one right here, that's labeled television, like what would

be, what would be in that one?

Well, not

to be confused with video art or video editing, or visual perception.

Let's see.

Pick a card.

Pick a card.

Pick a card.

Any card.

Pick a card.

Any card.

So these are, well, here's an article from May 28th, 1992.

Bush says, Bush says, school children watch too much tv.

How viewers get addicted to television, grow addicted to television.

And so

these are Xerox copies of Xerox copies of newspaper articles are newspaper articles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

I once had a job where I could sneak in at night to the Xerox machines.

Life without television is a pressing issue In Fiji, Soviet TV viewers

here in Moscow denounced the video age and the wall that opened BBC

study finds US TV more violent.

Wow.

US portrayals of tv, portrayals of girls cited literally

entranced by television children metabolize more slowly, et cetera.

So it's articles on the dark side of television.

Alan, you are an archivist.

This

is really, well, that's just one of the incredible things going on around here.

Oh, you know, it's not the best light for this, but come.

Okay.

You know, Ben, I'm a filmmaker and I like title sequences.

Okay, sure.

I haven't had the kind of exhibition of this the way I want to.

And I hope to one day anyone listening,

if any of this intrigues you let me know.

But if this would be the first thing that you would see if you walked into a gallery

and this work was exhibited, okay, come over here, I'll give you the best shot.

So that's the title of the film.

Oh, come on.

And that's what we said the title of the episode should be.

Yeah.

So it's called, it's, it's a piece of Clear Leader in which with a

sharpie, and that's how filmmakers write on film on clear leader with

a sharpie, think like a filmmaker.

It's, it's being magnified by this lens.

It's being articulated by these other lenses.

So this is the title, short, a title shot.

Wow.

You

come into the gallery, this is what you would see.

Oh my gosh, Alan, this is incredible.

Right?

And the truth is what, what, what makes us the bet would better

is it depends what's behind it.

Okay.

Right now I have that wall over there with the reel with all the movie tickets.

Yeah.

But if I move those, those walls are on wheels.

If I took those away and it was daylight, which it's sort of waning

now, the daylight, but what it, it would be more interesting visually.

That's all.

Well, everything is is soft focus in the background there.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it depends where you stand and everything.

Okay.

But you can see it through your, you can see it.

Yeah.

I, well, I can see like a filmmaker, at least I can, I can see it

better with my naked eye, but I think it will pick up in here.

I'm gonna actually go

behind it myself to see,

is it be, can you see me?

You are magnified quite a bit too

much, right?

Yeah.

I can see it now.

I can read it through the camera.

Wow.

I love this so much.

Thanks.

So are you gonna make a film out of No.

This work?

No, this would be as the title for the gallery show.

It would be the title.

If you

walked in the gallery, that's the first thing you'd see.

This would be it.

I wanna show you one more thing while I have the, while

I have you here real quick.

Okay.

Yes.

This is a very important piece of the work.

Can I bring you over here please?

Yeah.

Um, by the way, this is, uh, by yarn will it yarn that I wound on the film.

Wow.

It's soft, you know?

It's soft.

Wow.

Yeah.

And this looks like a different film reel.

It's 35 millimeter.

It's a, it's a wire.

It's called a wire reel.

Okay.

Yeah.

This one over here, that's an actual piece of a tree.

That's a

wood

cut.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a piece of a tree.

And so the metaphor here is that this centricity, the winding,

like all films contain film that's wound is the story of the tree.

Wow.

It's a story.

Right?

Right.

It's like, so it's a great metaphor for the whole thing.

And it's much as it's the story of the tree, it's also the story

of the era in which the tree grew.

Wow.

For people who know how to decode that.

Right?

Yeah.

And this too.

This is, this is wood?

No.

Yeah, it's veneer That's 60, right?

That, yeah.

That's made of wood unpainted that I found that was 60 millimeters wide.

So all I had to do was wind it on this reel.

So these two are wood.

And this is wood too.

So you made a wood film reel

with

a Yeah, well I, with a wooden, I bought wooden figurine.

Yeah.

And I grew the wooden figurine and the mannequin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is incredible.

Okay, I wanna show you one more thing and then, we'll, I feel like

I've heard that a few times now.

Yeah.

Oh, and one more thing.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I'm gonna, I'll let you stand here.

You stay here.

Say, actually stay.

Come take a step back.

Okay.

You've got a wide angle.

You wide angle.

I've got a wide angle.

Okay.

So I'm gonna turn the light on for more drama.

Okay.

You ready?

Ready.

Wow.

This is the edit room for all that stuff.

Ah.

So this is your workshop.

This is my

workshop.

This is incredible.

Yeah.

It used to just be the archive room before COVID, but kind of got taken over.

Oh, sure.

You can see the archive boxes?

Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

Those I took out from there because I put translucent in.

Um, wow.

But here, this is fallen over.

That's not good.

Yeah.

But anyway, this is

UE one.

So then you have boxes that,

those are the outtake.

There's not outtakes.

Those are the papers and the important, uh, remains of every film I've made.

Wow.

So you see this is, you know, these are the papers worth saving from Wide awake.

These are the papers worth saving from the Swedish sound.

These six are the paper, everything that was worth saver from nobody's business.

Intimate Stranger, the Family album.

Wow.

Um, et cetera, et cetera.

And then other installation projects I've made and so forth.

So this room is filled with unfinished works and works that are ideas that are a

little evolved, that are seeds for ideas.

Yeah, bad ideas works that didn't quite make it, but are still worth

keeping around because they're suggesting possibilities for the future.

I just have to decode all that, but everything's here for a

reason to remind me of something.

Wow.

You know, Alan, I can see now why you are the first film director that we've

spoken to on our podcast, who's every film is in the MoMA's permanent collection.

I see.

Oh, well, thank you.

Because you are so clearly working at sort of the intersection

between film and fine art.

That's a little bit of a

problem too, because the film, people say, well, that's art.

And the art people say, well, that's film, you know, so I have

to find people who understand the.

Intersection and the connections and the right that you can do both and be both

and, and how each of these different parts of the practice inform one another.

That's right.

That's really what it's about for me.

That makes sense.

So when you think of yourself, when you meet somebody new for the

first time, how do you describe yourself or what you do to them?

You know, listen, I've had galleries, openings, and I'm the,

the artist, you know, and when I'm a filmmaker, I'm the filmmaker.

I, I don't really, those words don't really mean a lot to me.

Yeah.

I just do what I do.

Yeah.

You know, it doesn't matter because even in that like.

Uh oh.

He's, are these documentaries, these experimental

documentaries, are they essays?

Are they portraits?

What, what, who, what do you do?

I don't care.

Those words are just see the film and let's talk about it.

The words don't matter to me so much.

Are you the producer?

You the director, the editor.

You are the writer.

What, what?

You know, those aren't even the important credits.

And see that thing up there, the uh, the cardboard things?

Yeah.

That's a reel of a film.

Just so you know, I've been doing this for a really long time.

I made that in 1977.

No way.

You weren't even born yet.

I was born that year.

Okay.

And the year that you were born in me then.

And that's, you see the corrugated cardboard?

Yeah.

That's, they're broken into frames and there's like a sequence of things.

And that's the feed, that's the reel that's full.

The, the cardboard reel below it, which is nothing.

That's the takeup reel.

Oh, amazing.

And I thread

them to a viewer through a viewer, which I have here somewhere.

And that's, that's a paper film.

I used to make paper films.

I still do.

Wow.

But I, that's a paper film that I made.

You know, what is something that's so interesting to me about you

is that you grew up in Queens.

Yeah.

You went to undergrad here in New York, and then you went to graduate

school in Oklahoma, which I am, I'm from Kansas and Oklahoma.

Sure.

So you went to the University of Oklahoma down the street from where I grew up.

Yeah.

And I can't imagine the culture shock that you must have experienced.

Right?

Yeah.

Going to ou What was that time like for you?

Well, you know, that's a perfect, um, um, question for, for this part of

the conversation because Oklahoma, in effect, you excuse the expression 'cause

it's mostly associated with sports.

Yeah.

But Oklahoma recruited me interest to teach.

Get a master's degree in MFA at the School of Art.

You wanna continue here?

Right here?

Um, it's up to you.

Or you wanna go sit down on chairs?

Uh,

let's go sit down.

Okay.

That'd be nice.

Hold on.

Wait.

You know something here?

Just, uh, just to make a nice shout out of it, Ben, when you leave, you, when you

leave the room, I'll turn the lights off.

Go ahead.

Oh, I love it.

Okay.

Ready?

Wait.

No, I'm not ready.

Okay, go ahead.

Okay, action.

So I'll tell you all the Oklahoma stuff and we'll sit down here.

Okay.

I'll sit here.

You'll sit here.

Great.

But before, I just wanna show you one thing.

Yeah.

I think that could be an alternate title for this episode.

Right?

One more thing, one more thing.

More thing.

The nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me about my studio is that there's a

lot of stuff in here, but it feels calm.

I absolutely agree with that.

And that meant a lot to me because I didn't do that on purpose.

And I do feel calm when I come here.

Hmm.

It is a safe place for me.

It's my haven.

Okay.

Right.

It's a little chaotic now.

'cause there's, I've maxed out on the wall space and I've been explo like, you

know, there's no, this should be, this is like the dollar table, you know, there's

like all the little things, you know.

But in any event,

oh, I love this.

The tape dispenser.

Yeah.

With film Negative.

It's actually,

no, it's, that's, uh, typewriter, uh, ribbon.

Oh it is?

Oh yeah.

It's fell

down from here.

But that's what it should be.

It's wow.

Yeah.

As typewriter ribbon.

Here look at this here.

That's red film.

Right, right.

And look green on the other.

Oh, wow.

You don't see that?

No, you don't see that.

I don't even know how you start to make something like that.

Well, that's another, this is a fishing, uh, reel from a fishing rod.

Wow.

You know, 60 millimeter wide.

Unbelievable.

Okay.

So someone would said to me, if you had to take one thing outta here,

what's the most important thing?

And I have an answer.

Okay.

And it's a no-brainer for me.

When I was 12 years old, I'm going to, I'm not gonna tell you how old

I am, but someone can do the math.

When I was 12 years old in 1968, that was the year that Martin

Luther King was assassinated.

Mm-hmm.

And the school that I went to gave an award called the Martin Luther

King Junior Citizenship Award.

Wow.

First in honor of his passing his, and there was like a special assembly

and a whole school was there.

And I, because they didn't tell me what was going on.

And then my mother's there, they gave me this award, the Martin Luther King,

the Junior Citizenship Award in 1968.

PS 1 0 4 in Queens.

Wow.

And I got this plaque, and to me that's like the most important

thing that's in this whole place.

Wow.

I'm so connected to that.

And what does that represent for you?

You know, I,

well,

that's a good citizen.

I know.

That's a, that's a silly answer.

Um, I, I'm not sure, uh, I was 12 years old, so I don't know how

much in control I was of who I was.

Yeah.

How well I knew what I was or anything.

But I'm just glad that the teachers and the principal and the people at

the school who initiated this award thought enough of me as a 12-year-old.

Actually I wasn't even 12 year, I was 11.

But the point is someone thought enough of me for whatever reason to give

me that, and that's enough for me.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I, I could go into more detail about what I did at the school.

And all the different roles I had and all that, but that's not, it's

not necessary for now because we have more things to talk about.

But on some level, when I was 11 years old at PS 1 0 4 in Queens,

it was like the peak of my life actually, to be honest with you.

But I don't need to go into the details.

Everything then has just been down.

It's

just been downhill from there.

Yeah.

You

peaked early.

I peaked early, yeah.

Okay, so I just wanted to say that.

That's great.

That's, and this whole place with all these things, you know, ceiling to

floor, all these things, it's this thing.

Oh, that's a good shot.

Hold on.

I got my reflection in this one.

Oh yeah.

Citizen Alan Berliner.

Yeah, citizen of the world.

Okay.

Okay.

A little shaky, but I think that's good.

All right.

So you were gonna tell me your story.

So, yeah.

So OU in effect recruited me and the university, the school of Art at the

University of Oklahoma recruited me.

They gave me a, uh, fellowship to, for an m an MFA fellowship.

They asked me to teach.

They paid me for teaching.

They gave me a faculty studio and a faculty office, and it was pretty amazing.

Although I had no idea what any of those things meant, but it just felt good.

So I taught film there with all the love and care and passion that I still have

to this day, except because I was the only filmmaker at the beginning and not

then there wasn't much a community of filmmakers at the graduate school level.

All my friends now were painters and sculptors and photographers

and mixed media artists, et cetera.

So.

Guess what?

They brought me there to be a filmmaker, to teach film.

And I taught film, but I didn't make any films when I was there in film.

Which film

makes a lot of sense because you are the second person who I consider to be kind

of a mentor to me who has gone to ou.

And I know from talking to Bradley Beasley, who we've

had on the podcast Yeah.

Who went to ou, that their film program is really mixed

in with the fine arts program.

Yeah.

And it's, it was very experimental.

Right, exactly.

Performance, art, installation, sculpture.

Absolutely.

And he would make the wildest videos that would count as Right.

Course credit, and they never, you know, uh, at the time James Benning was teaching

there and John Connect and, I mean, James

Benning taught at ou.

Yeah, yeah.

We, our, our company produced a film that was about, uh, Richard

Linkletter and James Benning's No kidding, uh, relationship.

Yeah.

It's a documentary about the two of them.

I haven't seen that.

I'd love to see it.

Yeah, I'll, I'll send it to you.

That'd be great.

And by the way, I mean, not that they would have any problem with

it, they, but the administration of the School of Art, I never got

hassled, but I didn't make any films.

And just so you know, there were very few places in the country

where, where you could study experimental film at that time, right?

Like on a handful.

Yeah.

There were openings at two of them.

I don't know.

I, I put my hat in the ring by sending out as one did when you, I

sent slides like transparencies, you know, thinking, well, you know, we're

in this experimental film world.

What about a filmmaker doesn't make films, but does whatever, you know,

paper films I was making and, and.

Early ancestors of everything you see here.

Right.

And guess what?

Didn't get a job.

Maybe it wasn't good enough.

Even though it was the late seventies, they, no one bought into that.

Mm. It was too weird still.

Yeah.

Who knows?

I just didn't get a job.

So I came back to New York.

But if I had gotten a job at, you know, Milwaukee or Hampshire

College or one of the few places, my life would be totally different.

Interesting.

You know?

And so was that your intention going into a graduate program like that was to go

be an art I, I guess professor to teach?

Yeah, I guess so.

I remember, uh, Larry Heim, who was my professor at Binghamton, when we

talked about, 'cause they contacted him about me, someone told them about me.

So they contacted him and I said to him, so this is Oklahoma.

Like, you know, where is that?

And he said, in the arts, it's what you do.

It's not where you do it.

Ah.

That was a big insight for me.

And that's true.

I would recco, I would say that to anyone.

I feel like in a way that has been a lesson that I learned the hard way.

Oh, really?

Because after Winnebago Man, which is where you and I met Sure, sure.

That was such a unexpected success.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For me.

Mm-hmm.

I was on this night show, got managers and agents in Hollywood.

I was having lunch with celebrities.

I was being told that I could write my ticket.

Yeah.

And I did the Cliched LA thing where I said, well, I'm done with

documentaries and I'm gonna go make big budget feature Hollywood comedies.

Right.

And I, if I had to do over, I would've brought all my friends along with me and

I would've stayed making the films Right.

That I was making, that I fell in love with making.

And I feel like part of me doing this podcast, part of all my work since

then has been almost like an amends as like, uh, I made a misstep and now I'm

coming back to correct it in some way.

Right.

Because I think that documentary.

Much in the same way that art making and sculptural pieces have always

been, and, and collecting and archiving have been part of your personality.

Yeah.

I feel like there is sort of like a documentary gene that people have.

Sure.

Where you make people comfortable or you're attracted to nonfiction stories

or you just have the innate curiosity about real life storytelling that

you, you in a way you can't teach.

It's like you have it or you don't.

Absolutely.

I agree.

Do you agree with that?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, Alan, I, um, very early on in my career as a documentary of filmmaker, I

discovered your film, nobody's business, and I very quickly devoured the rest of

your films that you had made at that time.

I watched, um.

Oh, oh gosh.

Intimate Stranger.

Thank you.

Intimate Stranger, which was, that was your first

film, correct?

Actually, the family album was my first film.

Oh, the family album.

Long film feature then.

Okay.

Intimate Strangers about my Grandfather and

Nobody's was about my father.

It was about your father and then so we, the sound was

about you, so that's your name.

Very interesting.

You can sort of trace that.

You started with making a film about all families.

Yeah.

And about your grandfather, then your father, then you Yeah, that's,

I never thought of it in that way.

Yeah.

Did you understand that you were doing that while you were doing well?

Everyone said.

Everyone said you're getting closer to and deeper towards something.

Yeah.

Which is you.

When are you gonna make a film about you?

Interesting.

And because the thing about the family album, you know, which had the good

fortune of showing at Sundance, and people would interview me and the journalists

and say, well, you, you're like, you're an or q and a questions, you know?

Wow.

You're a real, you're an expert on the family, you're an expert on the family.

And I'm not an expert in anything really.

But the point is, I said to myself.

Excuse me.

How can you be an expert?

Let me rephrase.

You can't be an expert on the family unless you're an

expert on your own family.

Mm. That seemed rhetorically and, and personally true to me.

Yes.

Yeah.

So I knew about my grandfather, uh, who, uh, had been in the middle of writing

his autobiography when I was a kid, and then he died in the middle of it.

And my uncle boxed up all of the papers and all the, he saved

every letter, every he ever wrote.

He has saved every letter he ever received and the envelopes,

he just saved everything.

Wow.

So in my uncle's office for almost 20 years after he died, there was, um, these

15 or so very large boxes growing, moldy and dusty and everything, and I just said.

Whatever's in that, where ever what's ever, whatever's in those boxes, I'm

gonna make a film about my grandfather.

And was that your, is that what pulled you into documentary or had you always

been interested in documentary film?

Can

I, uh, be

really honest

with you, yes.

I never thought about documentary.

Yeah.

I wasn't, I never thought of myself.

I've never even told anyone.

I'm a documentary filmmaker.

I never, it's not what I ever wanted to be or thought of myself or identified

as I just said, I'm gonna make a film about my grandfather, whatever it is.

You know, it just so happens that the documentary film community was a place

that was interested in that kind of work.

And then people describe them as essays.

I'm okay with that, you know, personal filmmaking.

I'm okay with that.

You know, experimental documentary.

Okay.

If, if you must, you know, I never set out to become a documentary filmmaker.

I don't, I, I still to some extent don't identify, although that is

the church that would have me.

I get that.

I'm just

making

my films.

That's

all.

I deeply relate to that I was a creative writing major and for me

it was always about telling stories.

Yeah.

And the way that I did it and could do it and had access to it

just came out as documentaries.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's always kind of gone that way for me.

I don't even think I understood what a documentary was until college

when somebody told me, here's the history of documentary filmmaking.

Sure.

You know, but

now there are documentary courses all over the country and Sure.

People teach and people are taught and you know, there's a cannon and all that stuff.

Right.

You know.

But it's interesting 'cause I connect the story I just told you about the boxes.

And my grandfather's, by the way, even when I said to his family,

my mother and her three brothers.

My, my three uncles and my mother, I what, you know, what was so special about him?

Because I didn't really know that he wanted to write his autobiography.

Mm. Like,

that's pretty bold, narcissistic thing to do.

Right.

And I don't even say that negatively.

You know, I'm not about him.

And they said, we don't know, you know, doesn't make he lived an interesting life.

Okay.

A lot of people lead interesting lives.

Sure.

But he thought it was something beyond that, apparently.

Wow.

Or he just thought his life was interesting.

And listen, it was also his retirement project.

Yeah.

You know, but he thought he had something to offer.

He thought he a legacy to leave.

Sure.

You know, that's fine.

I, you know, but when I, when I said, 'cause the way I introduced

this new film that I've made Benita

mm-hmm.

Is I say like, all of my films.

And I'm really thinking back, especially to the, well, to every film, but even

especially to the one with my grandfather, intimate stranger with Benita.

Her family gave me her archive.

They gave me her journals, her notebooks, her photographs, her letters.

But they also gave me 40 hard drives.

Wow.

Okay.

And so the way that I introduced Bonita is it began as a hunch, which turned into

a leap of faith, which eventually became what I refer to as a sustaining intuition.

I don't know what I'm gonna do.

I don't know what form the film will take, how, how the story will get told.

I never make a treatment.

I've never written a treatment in my life, to be honest with you, ever.

And so whatever's there I will work with.

And I didn't know what it was gonna be like with my father and

with my grandfather, nor with my father or even my cousin Edwin.

I made a film that my cousin, Edwin first cousin wants removed.

I didn't know.

I mean, I know it's a journey and I know I'm gonna discover things along the way.

I'm gonna put things together.

I'm gonna make discoveries.

I'm gonna.

Start here and end up there.

However, you know, whatever it is, I'm gonna take a, I'm gonna take,

it's gonna be a, a storytelling adventure one way or the other.

And I did that with this new film Benita too.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started.

And, um, I'm okay with that, you know.

But can I just ask you, as somebody who, you know, you've won three Emmys,

you've had films play at Sundance.

You, you were allotted, uh, successful supported filmmaker.

You have had to get grants, raise money to make your films.

How is it possible that you've never written a treatment experience?

I've never had to.

I don't know why I never had to.

So when you got a MacArthur grant for, I never got a MacArthur grant.

I got a Guggenheim Fellowship.

That's what I'm thing.

So

Rocka fellows.

So when you beat fellowships, I mean, I've written a proposal.

Okay.

My proposal's not a treatment.

I see.

You know, I mean, for instance, I made a film called The Sweetest Sound

about my name.

Yes.

One of my all time favorites.

Thanks.

I tell that story all the time about how you found every Allen

Berliner in the world and invited them to your house for dinner.

Went to dinner.

Exactly.

So, such a

beautiful idea.

Well, thanks.

But the point is, I wrote a proposal, which I said, I'm gonna invite

them to dinner, and I intend to ask them some questions, but I have

no idea what they're gonna say.

You know, you can't predict that.

And whatever they say, you know, like, where will that lead me to what que what

new questions will that lead me to ask?

You can't predict that.

Mm-hmm.

You don't wanna predict that.

Right.

The way I often say is like if you write a treatment, if you write something

that in which your film's gonna start here and end there, you know, then

all you're gonna know is that line.

You know?

Right.

That's not what filmmaking is.

What about stuff that happens underneath the line or above

the line, or outside the line?

On this side or that, or through the line.

Right.

Or zigzag.

You know, if that's, if the whole idea is just to get from here to there, that's

all you'll, and if you get there, okay, you succeeded, you achieve something.

Yeah.

But I'm not interested in that.

You know,

you're interested in the process

of discovery.

I'm interested in the process where it takes me.

So

can I ask you, I, because I, I understand that the reason where we're

sitting, I've heard you say that you set it up this way so that you could.

Have a thought and then very quickly act on it.

Act at the speed of thought.

Act at the speed of thought.

Yeah.

And so you have all of this meticulously labeled archival material available

to you so that when you have a thought while you're working on a

film, you can jump up and grab Right.

A piece of archival material to then use in your film.

And so I'm wondering, and and based off of what you just said, that

you don't know where you're going often when you're telling the story.

Do you feel like your job as an artist is similar to how Rick Rubin has

described it, where you're almost like an antenna and the ideas come to you,

you are sort of accessing a wavelength that maybe is specific to you and

that you are then able to act on that.

And often it's this intuitive sort of almost other worldly.

Um, muse, for lack of a better word, that that is driving you to tell these stories?

Like, is that, is that sort of too highfalutin?

No, no, no.

I mean, I,

I respect that.

I accept that.

That's certainly, it's not how I would, it's not the word.

Those are not the words I would use.

Yes.

Please tell me the words you would do.

Yeah.

Well, I, I, I can try and there are a lot of different ways I think about what I do.

Yeah.

You know, I like the word antenna.

Mm-hmm.

You know, in the case of this Bonita film that the film Bonita that I just finished,

I certainly was channeling Bonita, you know, bringing her into the room with me.

In fact, I think of the film as a collaboration, which is a special case.

Yeah.

In, in, in, in, in the case of, uh, of that particular project, I brought up

Intimate Stranger and I brought up Benita.

In both cases, the first part of working on the film is, I wouldn't call it

research, but in the case of Benita, let's just say I spent a year just reading Herb.

Notebooks and journals and looking through the hard drives, 40 hard drives.

Wow.

You know, so it would take, could take me two weeks to just get through one of them.

And by the way, there would be folders with 8,000 photographs

just with numbers for names.

You know, like our cell phones give IMG and then a number.

Right.

There'd be, you know, maybe the folder would have a name, you know, wow.

Shots in Central Park or something, and then would just be 8,000.

And you know, you don't know what's there unless you look, I'm

patient, I'm obsessive, you know, I'm passionate about what I do.

I'm persistent, so I look through everyone.

Wow.

That's what I do.

If I'm in a bad mood, or not usually in a bad mood, but if I'm

tired, I'll get to it the next day.

But I wanna make sure that I look through everything.

Wow.

Okay.

Because that's the due diligence that I, my son is a filmmaker.

And he does fiction.

Okay.

But I often have told him that it's harder to cut the onions in the kitchen

than it is to actually cook the meal.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

Mm-hmm.

By way of analogy, and I mean that, like, I spent a year pulling

things, looking for things, making notes on things without necessarily

understanding how I would do anything.

Right.

But at least I knew the landscape.

Right.

You know, you sort of, you, you understood the ingredients.

Absolutely.

I'm making notes and things, and I'm having ideas and so it's really

about associate, you know it, yeah.

The antenna.

I like, I like the idea of antenna, but it's really about this intuitive

process of taking things in, making connections between things.

Mm-hmm.

Allowing things to gestate and grow and evolve, you know, because

I do things mostly by myself.

There's a kind of synthesis that takes place.

That doesn't get vetted out into the world until later.

You know, I don't have a producer that I'm talking to.

I mean, I talk to my wife Sherry a lot about what I'm doing.

Yeah.

And she, you know, in the case of Benita, she was her childhood friend.

Oh.

So she knew her.

And that's who Sheri introduced

me.

I was gonna ask you about that because Benita is the first film that

you've made about somebody who isn't a direct family member of yours.

That's correct.

Yeah.

But she was a close friend and fellow filmmaker

Sherry knew her for, in high school.

They went to high school together.

They were friends, like best friends for a year.

And then they didn't see each other for like 30 years.

Wow.

You know?

So.

And did you work with her professionally prior to this work?

She,

no, never.

Sherry introduced me to her.

Sherry saw that she was, um, hadn't become a filmmaker.

Sherry's married to a filmmaker.

So she suggested Benita to come to an event that I was, where

I was presenting some stuff.

Benita did.

She introduced us.

We said to Benita, I said, nice to meet you.

We'd love to see your films.

Benita sent us some DVDs of her work.

I looked, I was rather impressed.

I made an, we scheduled a time that I could give her some feedback in person.

We met, um, then through,

you know, some mysterious process, I somehow became Benita's mentor.

You know, it was never formally asked.

Yeah.

That I know of.

Yeah.

But it just sort of happened.

And so, um, when Venita took her life and the family contacted with me, and

I'd never, I didn't know anything about her family, her mother, her sister,

they contacted me and because Venita had mentioned them to me, so they knew that

Venita trusted me and they knew that I had a friendship with her and so forth.

And so, not to get too deep into the story, but they had originally

asked me if I would be interested in finishing the film that Benita

had been working on when she died.

Mm-hmm.

And.

I talked it over with Sherry.

It's not something that I would, no one could finish Benita's films.

Right.

They're rather unique and

they were her, they're her

spirit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I won't go into the details now, but I made some discoveries in her hard drives

that changed the way I look at her life, changed the way I understand her death.

Changed the way it

informed the way, and changed the way I thought about structuring the film.

Hmm.

I never would've known.

Right.

You know, unless I hadn't done that.

And this film is about a a, a friend of your wives who became your mentee,

who took her life, who became a friend.

I became a creative advisor to her.

You were mentioning earlier that she's not a family member.

Right.

Right.

And I became her mentor.

Alright.

And when someone passes away, when someone takes their life

by suicide, they're shock.

Right.

And once you get past and it takes a long time to get past the what, where,

when, how, and why that happened.

What's normal?

How how'd she do it?

Where'd she do it?

Who found her?

All those kind of questions, which are normal, that's natural ever.

I started to think about my relationship with her and I thought about this mentor

mentoring thing and I started to think things like mentoring is a lot more

than just giving her notes on her films.

You know, that shot's on too long.

Maybe you could put that sequence over here and flip that and extend that shot.

It's way beyond that.

Mentoring is about, amongst other things, it's about trying to help someone

understand that they have a process, they have a way of looking at the world.

They have a a way of going about.

Processing the world, interpreting the world, and transforming the

world, taking the world apart.

And then what art is in many ways is putting the world back together.

And so it's, it's about mentoring way beyond this idea of giving

notes on this specific project.

It's about

enabling someone to trust their process.

You show them that it's there, then now you have to trust it and believe in it.

You know, even, even if it means, you know, you get lost,

like you're still on a path.

It's okay.

It's okay to get lost.

Mm-hmm.

Because part of the process is you're finding your way back again.

All of that.

And so I thought that with all the films I've ever made, I

always, it's very common mistake.

I always thought it's like, oh, I'm making a film about my grandfather.

I'm making a film about my father, I'm making film about my cousin.

Like it's about them as if it's, you know, something outside of me.

But in the end.

Every portrait I've ever made has always been about my

relationship with that person.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

In the case of my family, you know, father, grandfather, cousin, and it

is true, when you make a film about a family member, one of the main

implicit assumptions is that anything that I learn about them, I'm learning

about me genetically, genealogically, culturally, personally, there's something

about our family connectedness that whether there's anything to teach me

or something that I can internalize and maybe understand myself better

in some way, that's like a given.

But that's one of the challenges here in the case of Benita, that I

didn't have that implicit assumption, but I did have this relationship

with her, which was very unique.

We were friends.

She trusted me, and I believed in her and or.

Did she believe in me and I trusted her.

I'm, it's all, it's all good.

Mm-hmm.

But the point is, and I thought to myself, someone who I was trying to believe

in herself to learn how to believe in herself and her process took her life.

You know, did I fail her?

Of course.

I, you know, she had many, she was in relationship with many

different people in her world.

But I'm just taking my relationship with her,

giving it a,

taking it to seriously, to the utmost levels.

Mm-hmm.

Did I fail her?

I don't know.

Is this something I could have said different, said differently?

Is there anything I could have done differently?

Both.

You know, so I, I had that, that relationship was something worth exploring

and became a perspective, a prism through which to look at my relationship with.

Be.

So that's one of the big storytelling.

And in the end, based on my friendship with her and based on our working

relationship, I decided to make the film a kind of collaboration outside of the

interviews and a couple of photographs and a couple little obvious things.

Everything in the film is something I got from Benita's Archive.

Wow.

Everything.

Yeah.

From the music to the, to every shot.

I mean, it's all Bonita's archive, so it's a collage.

Really?

That's incredible.

I can't wait to see this film.

And so it premiered at Duck n yc.

Yeah.

And where can people see this?

Well, now that's it.

It just, it premiered Duck NYC.

It had two screenings and then it just played at a theater in the New

York called the CTV Firehouse Cinema.

Mm-hmm.

Played for seven days.

It was actually an academy qualifying, uh, run.

First time I've ever shown my film theatrically.

Ever.

Really?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, with one small caveat in 1990.

One or 92 that taught me that I don't think that your films are ever gonna show

theatrically 'cause it's not gonna work.

'cause that didn't work.

And so I let go of that of any aspiration really.

It didn't, it wasn't a goal and it never was a goal.

And so, you know, I had the good fortune of showing intimate Stranger nobody's

business, the family album and the Swedes sound all in public television.

Yep.

Those were all on POV.

Right.

All on POV.

Yeah.

So I was reaching people, lots of people that way.

Yes.

And then wide awake and first cousin once removed, we're on HBO and they

were, that also reached a lot of people.

So I've sort of been saved the, uh, humiliation of, um, not

having the film shown anywhere.

Well, I just wanna address your, what sounds like.

You saying that not having a theatrical experience was in some way a

disappointment because from where I sit, you having premiered films at Sundance,

winning Emmys, having films play on HBO, those are all pinnacle experiences

for documentary filmmakers to have.

And that any documentary filmmaker, given any one of those would feel like they had

achieved something really significant.

So

I, and I, I don't mean to, I, I don't mean to, there's a word

for someone who talks like that.

I don't mean to be, it's not hubris Yeah.

That I'm expressing here hardly.

Yeah.

It's actually the opposite.

It's resign humility.

Right.

You know, and it's acceptance of the limitations of what I do.

Yeah.

You know, and I, I embrace them.

I don't,

you

know, but I mean, many filmmakers also want their films to be shown in theaters.

Right.

That's, that's the.

That's the thing, you know.

Well, and you're such an interesting person to have this conversation

with because as somebody who has been supported by POV, uh, which is, you

know, A-P-P-B-S channel and, uh, is fund largely funded by the Corporation

Room for Public Broadcasting.

Yep.

And then, as we just mentioned, your film's played on HBO, which just this

week it was announced that Netflix is acquiring Warner Brothers, which means

Netflix is going to potentially own HBO.

It seems fairly dire out there right now for documentary filmmakers.

And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are around this landscape.

Well, it's not a good,

it's not good.

You know, the world, the documentary world as we know it, if all that stuff goes

through is a lot to get a lot smaller.

Yeah.

And the choices and the range and the, um, the land and the landscape, the canvas.

Is about to get a lot more circumscribed and then under the control and under

the, um, auspices of fewer people.

Well,

fewer people means fewer visions.

Mm-hmm.

For what cinema can be, what storytelling can be, what documentary can be with

implied cautionary notes here about more business oriented decisions would be

made as opposed to taking chances mm-hmm.

On things.

Even the things that, especially the things that I do.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I've always sometimes have to pinch myself that HBO let me make the

films and embrace the films that I made.

I mean, wow.

I can't believe, and they let me make my film.

Right.

They really did.

Yeah.

You know, and I'm, I'm incredibly grateful and still incredulous

really about the whole thing.

Yeah.

You know, so that's likely to change, you know?

Mm-hmm.

In this new era that we live in.

Yeah.

But it's only a symptom.

It's only another symptom of.

Very broad

political, cultural changes in the media landscape that, that are frightening.

Yeah.

To be honest with you, another thing that links, links my films is that,

think about the portraits now, grandfather, father

or cousin and Al Bonita.

What do they share?

They share the idea, the apriori idea that none of these people is anyone who

should, by any objective standpoint or viewpoint, um, deserves public attention.

They're not biographies waiting to be written, you know?

Right.

They're not the Charlie Sheen

biopic.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, and I always love the idea that, again, I wasn't, these

are not like career moves.

You don't make these kind of films that, you know, I wouldn't describe any of

the films I made as good career moves, but I like the fact that I found myself.

This place where I'm making films about ordinary people.

Mm-hmm.

Unsung people.

Right.

I like that.

It's not a reason that I do what I do.

Yeah.

But I'm okay there.

Yeah.

You know, even my cousin Edwin, I'm gonna bring this back to

the Bonita thing in a second.

Even my cousin Edwin.

And one way of describing first cousin once removed is that it's the

last five years of a life of a poet and translator who met as he, as he

metamorphosized through the journey, the sad journey of Alzheimer's disease.

Okay.

But the thing is, Edwin doesn't have to be a great poet for that

to be any more or less true.

Or any more true.

Edwin was a poet.

The real deal.

Self-defined.

Self-identified teacher of poetry, writer of poetry published, you know?

But listen, Edwin, one of Edwin's little private struggles, remorse.

One of source of his private remorse is that he can never even be poet

laureate of Rhode Island, you know?

Mm-hmm.

The tiny state of Rhode Island.

He never got to be poet laureate.

And I don't, I, I say that lovingly, but it didn't matter to me.

He was a real poet and he was losing his mind.

And so I understood after making that film that there was such a

thing as a poet's Alzheimer's.

Mm-hmm.

You know, like who you are, what you do affects how affects your

journey through memory loss.

And if you take it seriously as a family member or a friend, or even a, a, a person

who's giving psychological help or to the family or to the person, like if you think

about that, a poet's Alzheimer's, then.

That's how you might, that can help you approach that person.

My mother's losing her memory.

Yeah.

You know, and she was a singer.

Guess what?

She can't even talk.

She has no short term memory.

But guess what?

I sing with her, she sings back with me.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

A singer's Alzheimer's.

Wow.

You know, in seven languages.

'cause that's how she used to take pride in it.

You know, French, Spanish, Arabic, whatever it is.

And so, because of what I learned from the Edwin film, from making,

uh, first guys once removed, it affects how I relate to my mother.

Hmm.

And so all I'm saying is about Bonita.

I'm not trying to make this film to say, you know, Benita someone

who, what was under the radar, she was unsung and underappreciated.

And I want to give her Right, make her famous and show you that she should

have, if people think that she was worthy as a filmmaker and my film opened

them up to her work, that's great.

They wanna look at her films.

I'm happy that they're on a website.

You can look at them.

It's all good.

But for the purposes of my story.

Benita was an artist, a real artist.

Identified as an artist, lived like an artist, suffered like an artist,

struggled like an artist, and conquered her mental health struggles

and, and cope with them because she was an artist.

Hmm.

So this was an artist's depression, an artist's anxiety, a filmmaker's.

And so that's the point, you know?

Yeah.

It's not, she should have been

famous.

Right.

You know, you missed it.

But that's what I love so much about your work is that you, without intending

to do it, you are essentially saying that every person has a story that

is worthy of attention and focus and it contains beauty and reverence

and that that is a radical idea.

Well, I don't think it's so radical to me.

It's common sense, but you've said it beautifully.

I don't know if I can improve on that.

Thank you for.

Saying that and expressing that, but I very much believe in that.

Yeah.

You know,

I mean, in the end, any film that I've made, in the case of these

portraits especially, it's about the meaning of a life lived.

And every life has meaning and every life has something to teach us.

You know, in fact, I say in the end of the film, the film has an epilogue.

And I say to Benita, I, I address Benita in the epilogue.

And I say that, I like to think that there's a little bit of a little part of

each of us inside your story, you know?

And that doesn't even have to be about mental health struggles,

you know, or suicidal ideation.

It could be because you're a filmmaker.

It could be because you love dogs.

Could be because you hate your job.

You know, the film's about a lot of things.

Yeah.

But there are any number of them.

Right.

That people can intersect with Benita's story.

Yeah.

We live complicated lives with lots of parts.

Mm-hmm.

And they're interconnected.

And the way that I'd like to describe it in essence is that, at least for

the films that I make, I like the films to be both windows and mirrors.

Hmm.

You know, windows in the sense that when you're sitting in a room or sitting in

your living room watching the screen, the monitor, or in a theater where

you're watching the, the projection, you're learning about someone's life.

You know, someone who's not you, a woman, an artist, a filmmaker lived

in New York City, but something you're, you're learning about a life

lived somewhere out in the world.

And that's, you know, respectfully, there's an inherent fascination.

In a project of portraiture because we learn about other people that way.

The mirror part is where, for me, it becomes, there are added dimensions of

interest, fascination, and actually depth, which is that if the, if the film that

you're watching, if that window can become a mirror, and then you recognize some

parts of yourself, a part of yourself, or part of your relationship with someone

who's like that, or if you are like that, and some real relationship

with someone else, whatever it is, that there's something in that, in

the story of that person that makes you reflect on your own life, on

your own circumstances, on your own

job, on your own mental health, on your own creative life, whatever

it is, if it zaps you, touches you.

Some kind of warm shock of recognition, then I've succeeded

window and mirror simultaneously.

Sometimes at the same time, sometimes intermittently.

But you know, that's, that's, to me, that's where it comes together,

and that's what I aspire to do.

And, you know, you don't need to be famous for that to happen.

It doesn't have to be someone who's in the cultural, a known cultural figure in the

cultural, in the zeitgeist as we see it.

You know, because that's, every life holds that kind of resonance, you know?

Yeah.

If it's done right.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

Beautiful.

Thanks.

Um, last question.

Sure.

This podcast, as I, as I've told you going into it, is we, we hope that this is for

filmmakers who are just starting out Sure.

Or who are just, you know, there's a blossoming love of documentary happening.

They're learning from Sure.

Elder statesmen like yourself.

So what would your advice be to a filmmaker just starting out?

I read something that you wrote.

Do you want me to, to kickstart it for you?

Sure.

I mean, I have a lot of things to say,

but I don't, but tell me, kickstart, the bit that I read was about how you

needed to follow something that you were irrationally curious or passionate about.

Yeah.

Well, I, for me, the two big criteria are fascination and need,

you know, but I don't like to impose that on everyone, because

everyone can have their own equation.

It has to be something that I'm willing to spend a long time on.

Mm-hmm.

Because I have endless fascination that I can learn, you know, I can

read about, I can learn about, I can grow with over time, but the, for me,

the most, even perhaps more important is something I really need to do.

Hmm.

You know?

Mm-hmm.

Like, I, it gnaws at me if I don't do it.

Yeah.

It's, you know, and, and so.

That's sort of like the oct, the high octane in the tank, right?

The need, yes, yes.

Fascination and need.

I would say that jumping around a little bit, that filmmaking is hard.

Could be one of the hardest things that you're ever gonna do.

But I mean, it's also fun.

So if you can figure out an equation to make what's hard, also fun,

you know, people are at their best when they're having fun.

So figure out a way to make what's really difficult.

Also fun.

That's how you grow, that's how you like, that's how you learn.

You know?

And again, it gets back to that we were talking about earlier about mentoring.

Yeah.

You know, understand that you have each of everyone who's listening, you have

your own way of processing the world, of thinking about the world, and.

There's nothing wrong with making mistakes.

It's okay to have bad ideas.

You learn from your mistakes.

You learn from your bad ideas because that's part of how you grow.

It's again, it's all about growing.

Mm-hmm.

You know, no film is made like right away snap.

Like that.

There's no such thing.

I hope no one thinks that's remotely possible, you know?

So understand that things take a little time.

Trial and error is an important human experience in making things.

And you get better by doing.

You know, don't be afraid.

Don't self-sabotage.

And I don't have enough money.

I don't really understand what I have to do.

You don't even have to understand everything about

your film before you begin.

And I'm a big believer in that.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, there has to be room to figure it out.

Right.

You know?

Yeah.

And trust.

You have to trust yourself.

You supposed to be hard and it's supposed to be fun.

Figure out, make that equation work for you

and whatever you're doing.

I love it.

And I just want to say here at the end, a heartfelt thank you

for the movies that you've made, the work that you've produced.

Because I feel like they have inspired me.

They have touched me, they made me laugh.

They made me think about film in a new way.

Um, and they have brought me and my stepdad closer together.

That's great.

I've shared a story off camera with you about how my stepdad in

North Central Kansas is a very have no nonsense small town lawyer.

And he doesn't like a lot of movies that I bring home.

And nobody's business is one of his all time favorites that

we still quote to each other.

And he's a lot like your dad in the sense that he thinks of himself

as small grain of sand in a large world of the beach, so to speak.

Sure.

And seeing your dad.

The treatment of being the star of his own movie.

Right.

Unwillingly sure tickled him so much and I think it sort of helped open

up his aperture to the idea that all kinds of people are deserving

of that same kind of treatment.

And there's, there's a real love to the, to the films that you make,

and I thank you and I have, I feel like I have learned that lesson

from you vicariously, so thank you.

Well, thank you.

And I appreciate that.

And I just would say whatever he, he's also probably more

open to what you do Yeah.

Through that.

Yes.

It's, it's allowed him to understand what you do and, and on many levels, you know,

that's helpful to your relationship.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

That's great.

So you're a filmmaker, you're an artist, you're a relationship

coach, you're a therapist,

whatever.

It's all, um, you know, that's why the credits mean nothing, you know, really.

I mean, producer, director, editor, writer, I mean, those are jobs, you know?

Right.

But I'm also, you know, uh, father, son, husband, brother, cousin, uncle, you

know, I'm a detective, private detective.

I'm an anthropologist.

I'm a, an archeologist.

I'm an archivist, I'm a librarian, a biographer, sociologists psychologist.

I mean, these are roles that we have right in our work, right.

That are off the radar, you know, but they're the aptitudes and the affinities

that shape the approach that allow for all these different strains and threads of a.

Being and of storytelling to enrich the, to enrich the telling of the, the, the

ex, the portrait of the person.

But no matter all those other things, you think like a filmmaker.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Love it Alan.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next time on Doc Walks.

Next time is all about Impact.

We're talking Impact with Courtney Cook.

Courtney is a long time POV impact producer and educational consultant.

She is a writer, she's an educator.

She's got strong opinions on the state of presenting films in

this modern world to connect with audiences in an impactful way.

So if you're looking for impact, you're looking for next week's

episode with Courtney Cook.

Doc 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 thanks to the folks at the Bear, the folks at Go Valley.

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 die hard and we appreciate you.

We'll catch you next time on

Dock

Walks.

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