EP041 – If You Love It Enough w/ Rachael J. Morrison

02.19.2026 - Season: 1 Episode 41

It’s time for some JOYBUBBLES! That’s what first-time doc director Rachael J. Morrison believes—and she’s brought her feature doc to Sundance to share the power of JOYBUBBLES with the world. Rachael’s film introduces the world to Joe Engressia, a blind kid who discovered he could whistle a magic tone and hack the analog telephone system—becoming a pioneer in the world of “phone phreaking.” Joe’s story twists and turns as freaking leads to joy… and he inspires generations of outsiders to find their own unique paths through this life.

Rachael comes from years of experience as an archival producer, so it’s no surprise that her first directing effort relies heavily on the use of “emotional archival,” playing at the intersection of audio and visual communication techniques. We’ll learn how she stumbled onto Joe’s story and how four cassette tapes of him narrating his own life completely transformed the film. Those tapes are right up Ben’s alley, and he shares his experience making a cassette-inspired short doc about telephone pranksters, and Keith confesses to benefitting from a college friend who knew how to hack payphones for free long distance back in the 1990s. Anyone who spent time on twentieth-century party lines, or making 3-way calls with friends will be transported into those landline days when the telephone was a great connector. Rachael spent ten years meeting phone phreaks and making this film, and she shares her affinity for jamband bootleg trading, mixtape culture, and the beauty of sitting by the radio with your finger on the record button. Plus: kids sledding in Park City, shout-out to an Errol Morris deep cut, finding inspiration via the obituary page, and appreciation for Joybubbles’ words of ultimate wisdom: if you love something enough, it loves you back.

Discussion Links:

JOYBUBBLES (2026) | GATES OF HEAVEN (1978) | WINNEBAGO MAN (2009) | READING RAINBOW (2024)

Timestamps:

00:00 Arrival in Park City — crisp is the word of the day 00:49 Meet Rachael J. Morrison (and immediately regret going uphill) 02:00 The JOYBUBBLES pitch — on a steep incline 04:00 Born blind, born to hack: Joe Engressia’s story 05:00 Keith’s college payphone hack and red boxes vs. blue boxes 07:00 Finding the story through a New York Times obituary 09:00 Emotional archival vs. see-and-say archival 13:00 Four cassette tapes in a closet change everything 15:00 Joe as proto-podcaster: answering machine radio in the ’80s 17:00 What is a phone phreak? 19:00 Keith’s son gets a landline for Christmas 22:00 Sundance premiere jitters and what audiences might grab onto 23:00 Phone phreaks meet Phish bootleg tape traders 25:00 Mixtape culture and the lost art of analog intention 28:00 Angry Kickstarter backers who turned out to be the biggest fans 30:00 “If you love it enough, it’ll love you back” 32:00 The director-editor relationship: finding your band 37:00 From Bard art school to MoMA library to archival producing 40:00 Fair use and why indie docs depend on it 42:00 Lightning Round: GATES OF HEAVEN, Matt Wolf, and what’s next 46:00 Where to find JOYBUBBLES

Crisp is the word of the day.

'cause that is how I would describe this air.

We're, we're in the mountains, but I think actually this is almost

balmy compared to what I think it's going to be here in a couple days.

Right.

Well, I came from New York and it's actually a lot colder there.

Yeah.

Right now,

see

this?

This feels nice.

So you're on vacation.

Yeah.

I love it.

But it's a work vacation.

It's

working.

Yeah,

yeah,

yeah.

Working and having fun.

Tell us where we are.

We are in.

Park City at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival,

Sundance Film Festival 2026.

And we are here with Rachel J. Morrison.

Rachel J. Morrison.

To my right, to Ben's left.

Hello.

I'm walking down the center of some street.

We're actually walking uphill.

I can already feel myself getting winded.

I know

on your left

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

And up ahead of us here, we have Kim, who is supposed to be off camera,

but we're gonna put her on camera.

She's pretending like she's

not there.

Hi Kim.

Where would we be in the festival world without our publicists, right.

And our teams.

Yes.

Getting the word out true.

That's right.

And today Kim and director Rachel J.

Morrison, are getting the word out about Joy Bubbles.

Yes.

Which you may notice.

For my brand new lid, which is courtesy of the Joy Bubbles team.

So even if this episode doesn't go anywhere, I scored a free hat

and I'm pretty happy about it.

So thank you, Rachel.

You're welcome.

And I am so excited to talk to you about your movie because it is the

kind of documentary that I love.

It's about an unexpected subject that on the face of it seems like

a. How would you make a feature length documentary about that?

Right.

And it's injected with this sort of playful archival usage and

animation over the top of it.

And I just, I love it.

I love the name, I love the subject, and I, it feels very surprising and fresh.

So for an audience, would you give them a description of.

Joy bubbles.

And I'm so winded already.

You guys what?

Man,

this is a real hill.

This is,

I'm like,

we went straight uphill.

Keith,

we jumped.

No,

I have

to randomly episode, to be honest with you.

Normally there's a little more idle chitchat, little more, some bad jokes.

I thought it was an elevator pitch,

but

not a, not an uphill pitch.

uphill S swallow.

I think it's worth stopping and just flipping the camera around.

We debated, why don't we take a leisurely stroll downhill.

Yeah.

Of which that is for a long time.

Yeah, let's do it.

And instead Keith was like, no, let's go straight up this hill.

So it's all your fault.

I didn't think Sound the shape,

didn't think, I didn't think you'd be complaining as much as as you

go up.

Oh, okay.

I was like, let's go back down.

I guess we're still going then

we're going.

We gotta go up to go down.

True.

Um, okay.

All right.

So tell our audience

Yeah.

What Joy Bubbles is about.

Well, joy Bubbles is about a boy who discovered he could whistle a magic tone

and hack into the analog telephone system, and he inspired this whole new history

of tech and hacking through that process.

But this was back in.

The 1950s, sixties and seventies.

I mean, the

description.

And he was also born blind.

I should,

and by the way, one more thing,

mention that.

Yeah.

He was like, he was a lonely kid and he discovered the phone and

he just became obsessed with it.

So he creatively used the phone,

Kim, oh, you wanna go down here?

Down here?

His entire life.

So, whew.

All right.

Now that we can catch our breath here at the top of the hill.

So it is about a blind young man.

Yes.

Who figures out he can use the phone as a means of communication, but

not in the way that we would think.

Right.

More novel way, almost as like a musical instrument.

Yes.

And like unlocking it, hacking it in this way that before watching your movie,

I didn't even know it was possible.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I'd also had no idea that there were people who hacked

into the telephone system.

Well, I'm gonna jump in right here and say, yeah.

I am one of those people I cannot whistle like Joe Acio.

Gracia,

Joe

Gracia.

Yeah.

That's close.

Joy Bubbles.

He goes by my freshman year at college, there was a kid who

lived two doors down from me in the dorm who had a little device.

That he got by hacking together two different things you could

buy at Radio Shack Circum, 1994.

And we'd go to the payphone.

You pick up the payphone, he'd play a little, a little

digital tone that went like,

oh,

and it signaled

who says you can't do it?

It's pretty close.

It's signaled that you would put a quarter in the phone.

Right.

Yeah.

And you would just press the button like seven or eight times and then

you could call your folks back home.

Well, and that's basically free.

What was

doing is getting free long distance

calls, right?

Yeah, that, that's actually called the red box.

Yes.

Red boxes would mimic the coin.

Yeah.

Sound.

Yeah.

And then there were blue boxes.

And that's what Joe would do.

I mean, he could whistle the tones.

was a

human blue

box.

Yeah.

He was a human blue box.

So the blue boxes were like similar devices to the red

box, but it would use the.

Tones that the telephone company used to control the whole system.

You could hack into the phone with that.

So Joe is a, is a young boy.

He is born in the late forties.

Yeah.

He is coming of age in the fifties.

He's on the phone.

He's hearing and putting together how the phone works and he's asking questions.

That's one of my favorite part in the opening of the film is just.

It's his curiosity to know mm-hmm.

That, that draws this information out of people.

On the other end of the line, you just start, he's kinda revealing he

and the linemen who are coming to like, work on the phone lines.

Yeah.

Uh, there's an incredible line that Ben and I both kind

of clocked when we watch it.

We'll come back to that.

Let's, let's put that in pocket.

Okay.

But I wanna know before we get too much further Yeah.

That's the, that's the general, like the entry point to this film.

His car line.

Yeah.

Joe Young, blind man who figures out how to whistle his way to free phone calls.

Right.

How do you, how do you encounter this story?

How do you first get involved?

What is the birth of Joy Bubbles?

The movie premiering here at at Sundance,

I found out about him.

Unfortunately, when he passed away, there was a New York Times

obituary about him, and I read the obituary and I was just immediately

fascinated because like I said.

I did not know that there were people hacking into the phone system.

I didn't know there were hackers before computers.

And then the second half of his life where he becomes Joy

Bubbles was equally fascinating.

This guy has a New York Times obituary.

There's probably a documentary about him or a book about him or some kind of film.

There wasn't, I just kind of sat on it for a while and was doing research

about him and then ended up meeting.

A friend of his, and then it happened from there.

He introduced me to other people and all of a sudden I was meeting all

these people who were in his world.

Okay.

So be honest, we don't know each other at all.

Yeah.

Have you been trolling the New York Times obituaries looking

for your next big story?

Is this an recently, uh, where are you on the hunt?

For like what the next, who, who lived a life that I can, that I could tell.

Well,

it's a great place to look.

Yeah.

If I, now I'm giving away.

Huge secret.

Secret that Secret secrets no one else has ever thought of.

Well, I, I know also from reading about you that you're an archival producer.

Yeah.

So people hire you to find archival Right.

Material.

So I would assume that often a place you're checking.

And you are kind of always scouring around for interesting

archival stories, is that right?

Yeah, totally.

The thing I love about doing research and archival producing is that you

might find something that you're looking for, but then you're also finding other

things completely unrelated to that.

And I do clock those things and save them in a bank.

Yeah.

For later, you're looking at a newspaper page.

There could be anything on that page.

There's the article you're looking for, but then there's the article about.

Uh, someone who collects clocks, I'll kind of save things like that.

We can come across something like that.

And you remember, there's an incredible clockwork sequence in

some 1930s footage, just some 1950s footage that, that you came across.

Are you banking like those, those moments of incredible, like industrial

footage and home movies and news reels?

Yeah.

I mean, it's more like ideas mm-hmm.

That I'll usually find when I'm doing research, but occasionally

I'll find footage that.

It is also inspiring for something that I'm gonna use in the future.

But this film, the archival, was very different from what I

typically do, which is I'm looking for something very specific.

Yeah.

To sort of fill in a blank, if you will.

But for this film, it was really like about finding archival that was emotional

and not, I'm walking down the street.

So I'm gonna find archival of people's feet walking down the street.

What's the emotion of the story that he's telling here, and what

would be nice to look at so that you can really hear what he's saying?

The majority of the film is archival

Yes.

Creation.

Yeah.

Like it's a you, it's a recreate.

It's not a recreation though.

It's a No, it's it's a creation of something new.

Something asynchronous.

Tanking.

Oftentimes voiceover or audio.

Uh, that has no visual attached to it.

Right?

Yeah.

And filling and like painting a picture based off that.

I'm sorry to cut you off, but I'm curious about what you said about

the emotional archival versus like, see and say, gimme an example.

Like, 'cause that's a fascinating idea.

I would assume that most archival is, could be considered emotional.

Could you just tell the, tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that?

It's not as exciting.

Typically, if you are just finding B-roll to find something that is exactly what

is being said, like what I said before, like you're walking down the street and

you just see like people walking down the street, like that's the archival,

right?

But what if it's like, it's really sad?

So then instead, maybe you're looking at something just completely different.

You're not looking at feet going down the street, you're looking at.

I don't know, rain or some, something like that.

Um,

yeah.

What was the, what was the image at the beginning where he says, the

woman said, oh, you're very lonely.

And she picked him up and held him.

Right.

And what, I forget what you cut to, to illustrate that.

Do you, I'm

trying to think too.

I think it was like a rocking horse or here, let's go up this way so

we can, 'cause this sidewalk is No, it's hard to walk through across.

Yeah.

So that's not typically how I would work.

On other projects, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

You know, like usually I'm finding news footage or I am finding something

that might feel like a little bit more of a recreation, but through,

you know, told, through archival.

So when you work with other directors who hire you to find archival, are they

giving you like very specific, like, I want shots of a crowded New York

Street from the 1970s kind of thing?

Yeah.

Or is it more like.

Well, you're saying like, I want to the audience to feel these

emotions from this time period.

Well, the, if there's an impressionistic style to what you're doing.

Right.

And I think that's when you talk, that's what I hear when you say, you

know, basing off of an emotion, right?

Is it's not, this isn't paint by numbers and, and now we've just gotta find

the exact color red that fills in.

Right.

You know, number 23 slot.

It's an emotional valence that you're checking into and you're having a

reaction to the footage and you know that if you add this footage with this

audio, one plus one can equal three.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I love that.

Um, yeah, I mean, I would say that I don't bring like emotional work

to other projects, but it really depends on what I'm working on at.

It is a more, it is more of a process where they're, people are looking

for something very specific, so.

Okay.

I think what was important with this project is that most of

the movie, maybe 90% of it.

Is Joy Bubbles narrating his own life story,

right?

And

very loud

right behind me.

Someone's building their vacation home.

I had a,

we had to

vote

with the audio.

A film teacher told me a very long time ago, the shot isn't ruined

when the helicopter flies overhead.

As long as you can get

a shot.

A shot of the helicopter.

Of the helicopter.

But that wasn't a helicopter.

You know that.

That's not a helicopter

shit.

So, okay.

I don't wanna get stuck in the nuts and bolts of it, but I do

wanna go back to the beginning.

You read the obituary, right?

You were sparked by the idea, where does the wealth of audio.

Come from.

And how early in the process do you realize you can ostensibly build a

narrative using Joy Bubble's own words, augmenting with current day interviews

with people who knew him, but where does that wealth come from and and

where is like the, the light bulb moment for you that this can be the spine?

Yeah, so I. I went around just shooting, you know, talking head interviews, Uhhuh.

I wasn't really sure what the shape of the movie was gonna be.

And then I met a woman who's in the film named Cynthia, and she's an

author and she was gonna write a book about Joy Bubbles, and she never

did, but she was like, I have all these cassette tapes in my closet.

Oh, by the way, wow.

Like the archival producer.

A documentary Director's Dream

Uhhuh.

And yeah, there were like four cassette, you know, 90 minute cassette tapes and

he was narrating his whole life story and that completely changed the film.

Why was he doing that?

He was giving her information for, for her book.

Gotcha.

So they were kind of sitting down together.

She's not really asking him questions, but he was just, you know, kind of told

this whole life story from like birth.

Oh.

Up until the early

eighties.

What an amazing find.

Yeah.

For you.

That's incredible.

Over the years, I found other audio of him

right

through people.

So it's kind of, it's just as much of a collage of audio

as it is the visual events.

And that's why, you know, I really wanted him to tell his own story

and his own voice because he had passed away also because he's blind.

He's someone with a disability.

And so that felt really important.

And then the visual elements.

Although they're important are there to kind of like heighten the audio.

So you're really like listening to him, right.

Getting into like a meditative state of listening to

Well, and he's a great storyteller.

He's really adept at telling his own story.

Yeah.

And so I'm not surprised she's not prompting him with a ton of

questions because he's, he strikes us.

Right outta the gate is like somebody who, who's great at communications.

Well, 'cause he uses the telephone.

That's why I was like, that's his instrument.

So it, it makes total sense in a way that it would come across so

complete and sort of well-rehearsed.

'cause I bet he's done that hundreds of times.

Sorry.

Uh, Keith, we should stop and talk about where we're, where

we are, what we're seeing.

Yeah.

So for our audience, we are.

A couple blocks off of Main Street.

We're in the neighborhood.

We just walked past the corner of Norfolk and 12th.

Oh.

And there's the public library right across the way,

which is home to screenings.

But there's also, you know, just like a tremendous Norman

Rockwell scene unfolding.

Before our eyes over here, Rachel, will you describe the, the, the picture ahead?

There

are many people with their dogs hanging out in the, in a field of snow

with children sledding in the background here it's very.

Yes, it is very cool.

I am, I'm envious of these kids growing up here with such

a Hello prime sledding hill.

Yeah.

Let's walk across this, this frozen tundra.

Sure.

It's

risky.

Oh yeah.

Okay.

I know I'm a risk taking,

mean, I'm worried about Kim, but I, okay.

I'm a little worried about Kim in our high heels too.

Are you okay, Kim?

Kim's working hard over there.

She's dressed for success.

And she's gonna have a,

Ooh, it is icy.

just wait.

Yeah.

Okay.

So there is a standing archive.

It's been sitting in a closet.

Yeah, it's been waiting for the right person to come along.

And of course you are that person.

Why are you that person?

What in this story, Fellini says, all art is autobiography.

And I think I agree with Fellini in this instance.

Is that true for you?

Is there an autobiographical look at Rachel J. Morrison

in the life of Joy Bubbles?

Is there a pull through for you?

Yeah, I mean, loneliness is a big part of the story and I certainly

have had moments where I feel lonely.

I mean, I think that's also what's so universal about the story.

But yeah, that I think that also drew me in.

And then the creative ways.

That he found to bring people to him, and that was through the phone.

Always through the phone, but not just like phone.

Freaking later in his life, he had these fun lines that he

would host on a answering machine and people would call in and.

They listen to a recording that he made.

This is like a radio show.

Oh, no way.

And that's so cool.

You guys didn't get to the end of the film.

Not yet.

So you have that to the quarter two, but

so it was almost like his version of like a public access show or something.

You were, yeah, but it was all audio.

I mean, it's like we podcast.

What?

Oh,

and it's, it's, I kind of look at it as like he was hacking, broadcasting.

Yeah.

Because at the time radio was live, or at least there was a schedule.

You couldn't say like, we can now, like, oh, I'm gonna listen

to this podcast at 5:00 PM today.

You would just go, oh, it's on at two on Saturday.

I have to listen to it then.

But you could always call, well, never again.

Right?

Or you could, but you could always call his number for one week when you

had it up, you'd change it every week.

Could always call anytime of the day and listen to that recording.

Why not listen to it again?

Listen to part of it, you know, like you would with.

A podcast, but this is in the eighties and nineties.

Wow.

And I particularly love this because the term phone freak.

Yeah.

I was not familiar with, I'm

gonna need a definition here.

Yeah.

What is a phone freak?

A phone freak is just someone who can hack.

I mean, most simply just someone who could hack into the telephone and

make free long distance calls, which back then were really expensive.

I mean, we just take it for granted now.

Right.

It's hard to imagine having to pay.

A lot of money.

Well,

we do pay, we just com.

We committed to carrying a thousand dollars phone in our pocket everywhere

we go, and pretending like we haven't just like shoveled the money over.

That's, that's a good point.

Very true.

Yeah, because I remember fighting my parents over long

distance calls in the eighties.

Absolutely.

And you're right, like we just got, I was telling Ben this earlier,

my son is 10 years old and for Christmas we got him a landline.

Oh, cool.

It's called a tin can.

Oh, those are cool.

They're really cool.

I want one.

They're great.

Yeah.

Like it's a, it is like a princess style phone from the late seventies Yeah.

That we chose

and you program in who he can call and who can call in.

It works just like a regular phone, but it has parental controls where you have

speed dial to make his life easier.

And he can't use it before 8:00 AM or after 8:00 PM And when my wife told us.

He, she wanted this for him.

I thought, you know, he's 10.

He hasn't asked for it and we haven't exposed him to a lot of technology.

Like he doesn't have an Apple watch or iPhone.

We don't even have video games at the house.

So I wasn't excited about introducing this communication technology 'cause

I just thought, well, we're opening the door to all the things we're

scared of in society right now.

But I was completely wrong.

Yeah, because what it did, he immediately got into this really

cute habit of hopping on with his.

Five or six little friends and he'll call them and they haven't figured out

it has threeway calling and I'm kind of like not sharing that with him yet

until, yeah.

'cause once he finds that out it's over.

But if he's anything like me in high school, yeah, then it's just hours.

Something.

Well, last night he was on right before I, before I had

to start packing to come here.

He was on with his friend and he told his friend a joke and his friend's like,

I wanna tell the other friend the joke.

I'll call you back in five minutes and he literally hung up on him to go

call someone else to share the joke and then call back to tell him how the

other kid laughed at the Joker didn't.

And it's just opened up his life so much.

And so you talk about like loneliness, you know, he's an only

child and he's stuck hanging out with me and my wife all the time.

And you know, I make him watching Antiques Roadshow and other

stuff that I'm interested in.

So Theo is a phone freak, is what

you're saying?

Well, he hasn't quite figured out the hacking on his own,

but he might not be that far.

He is a genius, creative little kid, but there's just something like.

There's something that feels so baked into our lives as kids.

Yeah.

That in a way is gone now.

For sure.

And, and so in the small way we've recaptured just that with this

little landline, this tin can.

And so yeah.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that 'cause what I was watching your film and Yes.

We still have more to watch and we're excited to that you

were hitting like so many.

Little overlaps of like conversations that my wife and I are having, filmic,

conversations that I love having and somebody who loves playing in archival.

Mm-hmm.

My first film was about blind teenagers and just like you handed me a card with

braille on it in 2009, I was handing people a card with braille on it.

At South By Southwest, there's something that you capture in this character.

That just got me kind of excited.

And his name is Joy Bubbles,

Eric.

So if Joy Bubbles bummed you out, that would be a real bummer.

Well, I'm a little worried about the third act twist that must be

coming, and we haven't gotten there yet, and I'm not gonna ask you to

spoil the movie one way or another.

Mm-hmm.

But in the same way I, I, I got us off talking about Fellini

and, and what your draws to it.

And you kind of talked about loneliness and finding connection.

Have people seen this film?

I know you're about to world premiere, so you haven't seen it with like a

big audience the way you're about to.

But have other people seen the film?

Have people associated with the film, those people who knew Joy Bubbles?

Do you share the film and kind of get, have feedback screenings or any

of that as, as a part of the process?

Yeah.

I mean, I've had feedback screenings with, you know, friends, colleagues,

people who've worked on the movie.

I haven't shown it to a lot of people who don't already know the story in some way.

Okay.

Because I've been talking about it to people for years.

Yeah.

So I'm really excited.

Okay.

For the premiere.

So you don't know what people are going to grab onto or not about this film yet?

Not really.

I mean, it's very, it's honestly like a pretty complex story.

There's a lot going on, so I think people are gonna find different parts of it.

Interesting.

You know, there's the phone freak part.

He's someone who's blind.

And there's the joy bubbles part that,

yeah.

That I'm very excited about because I love that man.

I want to talk about phone freaks in the sense of, you mentioned

that you'd seen him Winnebago, man.

Mm-hmm.

And it feels like phone freaks are a precursor to like underground tape

traders that was happening pre YouTube where it was like this kind of niche

community around this, uh, kind of antiquated technology, which at the

time wasn't antiquated, I guess.

But now we look back on the fondness because you had to.

Pass VHS tapes around.

Right.

And you could only watch it if you had the physical copy.

And you know, having a landline phone was a prerequisite to.

Being able to hack the way that he was doing and then having a answering machine

to call in and listen to messages.

And were you ever a part of a community like that?

Were you like a

I, yeah.

I traded tapes in high school.

I was into jam bands.

Oh.

Which my embarrassing monish and.

The Grateful Dead.

Yes.

And so it was this really funny

Fish is embarrassing.

Grateful Dead.

Not so much.

I know.

Grateful Dead's kind of my moment.

They're cool now.

Yeah,

fish

is.

I went to the sphere and saw him boy before Bob Weir died and it was worth it.

Irp.

But yeah, it was this funny moment in tech where I had the internet.

I had a computer.

But you couldn't burn CDs yet.

Right.

So I would find communities on the internet and we would trade

tapes in the mail, and we would just copy a tape to another tape.

Yeah.

Oh, you

were.

And then trade that

you were,

you were, and like make art for like the, like the JJJ liner name.

So you also have like.

50 of them in my parents.

Were you going to Shakedown Street and selling ganja goo balls and the

whole nine yards space cakes and, uh,

no comment.

Rachel J. Morrison kick down so I can get down.

But yeah, I was all about like an analog world.

You know?

I love cassette tapes.

I still do.

Yeah.

I don't mean, there was something about the time that it took, like you had to be

so intentional and like Yeah, if you would mess up, you had to start over and rewind.

Remember spending, like, you know, if I was, if I was wooing a

potential girlfriend, I'd spend, you know, hours if not days right.

For compiling like a perfect mix tape, you know,

or RA waiting for a song to play on the radio and being like, ah,

God, to record it.

Yes,

yes, yes.

I guess there's something about my growing up and my childhood similar

to kind of the analog world of.

Joy Bubbles growing up.

Ben, I think you seize on an idea here of comparing the phone freaks to the tape

lending communities of the eighties and the nineties and, and then where you're

going, Rachel, but tying it into jam band and tapers and, and those kind of people

who aren't content to let in a, in a media striated world of the fifties, sixties,

seventies, eighties, even in the nineties where there's, there's basically three.

Voices loud in any area, right?

Yeah.

Three channels, three newspapers, you know, a few publishers.

And so the people who are drawn to that are people who find

their own way to communicate.

Sure.

Right?

They create their own paths.

You know, for me in college it was passing around like Jessica White.

Tapes.

Yeah.

And like the stuff that became shut up little man.

Yeah.

And you know, early Jerky Boys,

right.

Which is, they

were the Beatles of prank phone calls.

I made a prank phone call doc, a short one about, I grew up in

Kansas and Oklahoma Uhhuh, and there was this very famous Oklahoma

prank call tape called Park Grubs.

And I made a, a 20 minute

Oh, like you play it when you called the person?

No, like, like they were.

Maestros at prank calling people and they would listen, record it.

Oh, that

prank.

Okay.

Yeah, it was like jerky boys, but funnier and weirder and an Oklahoma twist on it.

I wanna see that.

And we made a version where we had to do a lot of like archival and we faked

actually a lot of the archival in that film where we got, uh, some kids who

there were like basically four members and we got them, cast 'em all around

the same age and shot it on super eight and with high eight cameras.

And then used it as like stylized, right?

Reenactment, but it also cuts against actual VHS that we had of them.

And so I think it passes and you don't necessarily know.

So asking you how did, how you use like, so there's not a lot

of footage of him necessarily, but there's a lot of his voice.

Right.

And so this is where that emotional archival came in.

Yeah.

But then you also found a lot of his friends, right?

That or people who knew of him that would like call into the.

Number, things like that.

I mean, a whole group of people.

People who were phone freaks, who knew him, who were his friends.

Yeah.

Some of whom he never met in person.

They were just friends over the phone and then yeah, friends that he had,

he has wanna lockdown this way.

And then, yeah, people who called into his fun lines, who,

you know, one of whom never.

Met him and I did a Kickstarter a while back, and so, I mean, there

would be no way for me to find someone who called into his fund line.

Right.

But when I did the Kickstarter, a bunch of people emailed me and they were like, oh

my gosh, I used to call him all the time.

Cool.

And you know, they still remembered him.

And it's like people,

it was like you put the word out and people were excited

to tell you their stories.

Yeah.

And I mean, and their stories were amazing and I ended up talking to a lot of those

people and interviewing some of them.

But yeah, he's the kind of person where, you know, someone who knew him would

kind of Google him every once in a while and be like, what happened to him?

Yeah.

So you mentioned Kickstarter.

How long did it take you to make the film and how did you fund it as you were going?

It took me a decade.

Yeah.

And

really it took you 10 years.

Yeah, it took me a long time.

Did the Kickstarter, that was great.

And then, you know, just along the way, a group of really awesome people came in,

man, congratulations.

This must feel amazing to have worked on something for 10 years

that is premiering at Sundance.

I mean, that's the best premiere you could have.

It's a perfect tee up to the line that grabbed me in the movie.

And me, don't you try to co-opt

this teth.

When the line happened, I gave, I had a big like smiling nod and I kind of

locked it in my brain and right after that, Ben said, Ooh, that's a good line.

And then I thought I better bring it up first on the podcast

because Ben's gonna take all the credit for noticing the good line.

And to be fair.

That's accurate.

Yeah.

We know each other well at this point, but we're gonna share credit on this one.

We both, and we won't be the only ones who responded to it, but it

speaks to working for 10 years on something like this and then getting

a chance to share it here at Sundance.

If you love something enough, it loves you back.

That's a bad memory of the line.

Ben, do you remember by the, I think that's

right.

If you love something, it will

love you back.

Yeah.

If you love the phone enough, it'll love you back.

I is what?

I think he's,

well, he does say that and then he says it without the phone.

He says it in sort of like this, like, oh, that's a parable for life.

Which I think is why we both went

Yeah.

'cause it is a parable for, but that is like, I think independent filmmaking

and, and documentary filmmaking is something that you have to love it and it

won't love you back unless you love it.

It, it often won't Love you back.

And you get slapped in the face with the reality of how

little it will love you back.

Even

when you do love it sometimes doesn't love you back.

Yes.

And then you just have to love harder.

We were talking about this in the airport today.

I'm talking about this right now.

I've got a lot of projects in development and I'm trying to

figure out like where my passion is.

Yeah.

As a storyteller, like we work so hard to get these things done, and sometimes

you have to pivot and have multiple projects going at the same time.

Right.

And there's like a shiny object over here that'll kind of get your

eye, but it doesn't necessarily get your heart and mm-hmm.

You may not realize it until it's a little too late.

When you're in the project and you kind of can't make heads or tails

of why the project isn't singing

right,

and you realize like, oh, because it doesn't sing to me, how can I

expect to sing for other people if it doesn't sing for me?

Did you, during that 10 years, have ever have times when the

project felt imperiled, where you felt like walking away or you felt

like this is never gonna get done

over the course?

Of that amount of time.

I definitely had moments where I thought it was never gonna get done.

Yeah.

And I had a lot of angry Kickstarter background, but no, then I

realized the people who were upset were actually my biggest fans.

'cause they just kept checking in and going, wait, I really wanna see this.

Yeah.

So I kind of like ended up, at first I was hurt, but then I kind

of realized I had to embrace it.

So how did you keep going knowing that, you know, this was a

10 year, often uphill battle.

What was it that that touched you in a fight?

He's

just, yeah, like he's just such a compelling person.

I just couldn't stop thinking about him.

And you know, it took me a long time too, because I didn't go

to school for documentary film.

I really didn't know what I was doing when I started, and then

I became an archival producer.

And so through that process, really learned a lot more about filmmaking.

I made a short along the way.

And then I just, you know, slowly assembled a team of really awesome

people who are super creative, collaborative, knew what they

were doing, and we got it in.

Talk to us about that team and, and, and specifically what I want to know is the

relationship between director and editor.

Sure.

Specifically 'cause this film.

All archival films are so, I mean, all documentaries are dependent on a great

dynamic between director and editor.

Yeah.

And editor does so much lifting, but in archival especially, especially

when it's impressionistic, archival.

Mm-hmm.

Because it's subjective.

Right.

And there's, there's not a right answer.

You're not looking for a one-to-one.

Right.

And so what's that dynamic we talk about, you and Bradford and where he comes from,

how you guys connected and how it worked?

Sure.

Well, I'll talk first about Patrick Lawrence, who started off

editing the film and he's amazing.

And you know, he kind of laid the whole groundwork for the movie.

Basically made a radio edit, which I think made a lot of sense for this film.

So we had all this audio and just spent a lot of time like

sifting through all of it.

And figuring out what the story would be and laying that whole thing down.

And then when Bradford came on, it was kind of like adding

the visuals on top of it.

And of course still working on the story too, but really

like flushing the whole thing.

Patrick Lawrence.

Yeah.

Where's he based and how did, how did that relationship kick off?

He is in Los Angeles and I was there at the time and he had

worked with the producer, one of the producers, Sarah Winhall.

On some films and yeah, so that's how we got introduced.

He loved the story and he was amazing to work with.

And then a couple years went by.

And Radford I had already known about, 'cause I love his documentary films

and his editing work and a bunch of different people who don't know

each other but know me, know him.

And there was like this course of like six months where like five

different people were like, you know, you should really work with Bradford.

And I hadn't met him.

I didn't know him yet.

And it was kinda like when the fourth or fifth person told me, I was

like, I gotta see if he's available.

I gotta meet

this guy.

Yeah.

And yeah, we got along really well.

He is so awesome to collaborate with.

Like he and Patrick, you know, when you meet really awesome people and

you work with them so well, it's like.

Just don't wanna work with anyone else.

Right, right.

Yeah.

It's like being in a band, you know when you find somebody that like

can bring your vision to life and improve it and really gets you, yeah.

You want to just work with them on every project.

We all have similar tastes, so

yeah.

Obviously that works really well.

And so are you sitting in the edit bay?

Are you watching cuts Every couple of weeks?

I, I'll be honest with you, I'm asking selfishly because yeah, like Ben just

said, like I've made four feature docs.

I edited the first one and the next three were all edited by Austin

Reedy Uhhuh, who I'd be happy to edit everything I do forever and ever.

But I realized that like when I watch films, I don't

know how anyone else does it.

I didn't come up working for anybody, and I didn't go to film school, and

so I didn't get to that education and something like this, like I

said a moment ago, it's subjective.

The choices really could go.

So many different directions.

Yeah.

Uh, and I'm just like, I just wanna hear as much as you can share, as

much as it makes sense to you, what those roles are and who kind of

where you stop and the editor begins.

Who's tie breaking, who's driving?

Well, working with Patrick, you know, we're starting from zero, so we have like

all these tapes and all these transcripts and he worked on his own, but then we

would get together a lot, you know?

And just talk, make cards on a bulletin board, you know, kind

of your classic workflow and

looking for the three x structure.

Yeah.

With the cards.

Yeah.

And like it was just, it was, it was a lot to sift through

watching all the interviews.

I just have many, many hours of him talking from different places.

So not just the tapes from Cynthia, but other sources of tapes.

It was difficult 'cause.

The material is just so rich.

So just figuring out which stories are the best and all of that.

But yeah, we would hang out and then he would work on his own and you know,

he'd send me things, I would watch them, listen to them, give him notes.

That was kind of our collaboration.

And then Bradford and I actually, we were, we had coffee a couple

times, but we mostly worked remote.

He would send me things.

Isn't

he?

He talked on the phone a lot.

Do I remember correctly that he's somewhere like Alabama or

he is in LA now?

Who am I thinking of that?

He was in Alabama for a while.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

All right.

'cause when I met him and they were premiering reading Rainbow, they were

living in a small town in Alabama or

something.

Yeah, I think, yeah, you're right.

But no, we were both in LA and we met in person and we got along and

he was available and I was so stoked.

So he would call me like almost every day and talk about things.

With me, ideas that he had or things he wanted to change, whatever.

I don't really like working with someone where they sort of disappear for a week.

Yeah.

And you're like, oh, it's 'cause they're, they're doing something genius.

You know?

And then they give you something back and you're like, oh, I

really wish I was knowing you were doing that three days ago.

You know, so.

Right.

Yeah.

But it's funny now with everyone being virtual.

To live 10 minutes away from someone and you know,

still working.

You still are.

Yeah.

But I mean, it worked out really great.

I ended up moving to New York this year and it was basically the same experience.

Well, I'm curious to know, you mentioned that you didn't

go to school for filmmaking.

Yeah.

And so I, I want to know where you went to school, what you studied,

and then how you found your way into becoming an archival producer.

Sure.

Because that's such a specific.

Part of the film business that I think, frankly, not a lot

of people know even exists.

Right.

Yeah.

I went to Bard and I studied studio art

with a concentration.

Yeah.

Where

just art.

Just making art,

art,

sculpture, painting, drawing.

And then while I was in school, I worked at the art library and

I was like, this is a cool job.

This would be a cool day job to have while I'm trying to have an art practice.

So.

Moved to New York and I ended up working at MoMA and their library,

which is just a total dream job.

Yeah, amazing.

And then I moved out to LA and I was like, there must be something, like

a research job for documentary films.

I didn't know what it was.

I didn't know it was called an archival producer, but I ended up meeting some

people and just kind of got really lucky.

Fell into it.

Like research has always been.

You know, research is my background.

That and making art so that all comes together in the film.

Yeah.

So if somebody's listening who wants to get into archival research and producing,

how would you recommend they do that?

Make a bunch of friends and get on a project with another archival

producer so you can learn the ropes.

Yeah.

I was lucky to have gotten hired on a project with someone else who.

I've been doing it for years and you know, showed me how it all works and yeah.

Ar archival producing strikes me as like the kind of job that is

similar to like music supervising.

Mm-hmm.

One of the few roles that is equal parts creative and administrative.

Yeah.

Right.

No, if you don't like doing spreadsheets, it is not the job for you.

It's not just like having fun on the internet looking stuff up.

It's a lot of spreadsheets.

Spreadsheets and the

licensings portion of it too.

Like do you do, are you negotiating

Yeah.

Those licenses.

Yeah, I do.

I, I do all of that.

So it's like doing the research, organizing everything in a spreadsheet

and then getting permission.

So for our listeners who may not understand what we're talking about.

Yeah.

When you license a clip, yeah.

When you find a piece of archival you want to use in your movie, you

have to reach out to the person.

Who owns that or who made it.

Mm-hmm.

And strike an agreement with them to pay them for a, for the use of that clip.

I think it's pretty basic, but I also think this is for people starting out.

So like

I don't think it's basic all though, because it's like sometimes you're talking

to somebody who's got a trove of home movies and it's never even occurred to

them that they could license a thing.

Sometimes you're talking to a Hollywood studio who's like making a fortune.

Kind of doling out this important and treasured library that they've got.

Sometimes you're in between with nonprofit libraries and

university institutions, it's like there's no one stop way to do it.

Right.

Like every No conversation is a unique relationship.

Yeah.

And also fair use.

Right.

Which is a huge, I'm not even gonna get into that.

No.

Let's get into it just a little.

Let's do it a little.

There's a lot of fair use in dry bubbles.

Yes.

Well, and then every film I've ever made.

Yeah.

Because I, because as an indie Yeah.

Everything I've worked,

yeah.

Doc director, you big

stuff,

you can't pay often to, you know, to license a scene from

30 Rock or whatever it is.

Totally.

Yeah.

So fair use is a way that you can use it for free if you're commenting on it,

right?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

There's a variety of approaches, but fairies is limited.

It's United States.

It's the United States Doctrine.

It's not an international doctrine.

So if your film is gonna get out and have a worldwide audience,

right,

fair use isn't gonna always cut it.

Well, we're back at the car, we're breathing heavy 'cause

we're walked up the hill.

We wanna be respectful of your time and Kim's high heels.

So at the end here, we want to do a lightning round.

Well, let's jump right to the lightning round though before

we get to the lightning round.

We've been

catch our breath.

We've cut our breath.

We're catching our breath, right?

We've taken a loop.

Around this cute little neighborhood.

We've been having a lovely walk and getting to know Rachel and,

and her work, joy Bubbles, which is premiering here at Sundance.

You folks aren't gonna get a chance to see it for a little while,

but I hope that we have planted enough of a seed where you, you are excited about

and holding onto it and that we will not only re-broadcast this conversation

when the film is widely available.

Um, but most people come into Sundance looking for distribution.

I want to get kind of like, what's the lowdown on the future for Joy Bubbles?

What do you know and what do you hope?

Uh, I know nothing.

Okay.

Market.

So you're premiering, hoping to find a market is to find a buyer, you're saying?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And you're probably working with a sales agent?

Sales reps, yes.

And we got connected through your PR team.

Yes.

At 42 West.

So you've got everything in place.

You're Yes.

You're here to sell your film?

Yeah.

Cool.

I mean, mostly because I want.

Lots of people to experience this movie.

Yeah.

You know, that's the goal.

Like the more people who can check out Joy Bubbles, the better.

I mean, you make it for an audience,

so the more joy that will bubble up.

True.

Thank, thank you for allowing me.

Yeah, I've

been, she's jaded New Yorker.

She's not, she, she's not, she's not so impressed with your aex.

Neither

is my

wife.

So, yeah.

Let's get it.

What do you hope people get away get with like, what joy bubbling do you like?

What is the, is there a message you, you hope to film?

Kind of communicates

beyond?

Yeah.

I think sharing love and communication and connecting with people.

Is really like the heart and sort of the universal message of the film,

like in its most simplistic way.

That's great.

And you're doing that by making a doc about it and here to share it

and communicate and spread that.

So kudos.

That's really awesome.

Yeah.

Thanks for sharing this time with us.

Yeah, thank you.

This is really fun.

Okay, we, let's do quick lightning round.

Quick lightning.

Okay.

So this is, these are supposed to be brief.

We usually are guilty of stretching them out, but let's see.

I'm bad at recall.

Oh no, it's not about that.

It's not about Three questions.

My favorite movie.

Well, one of them is Let's, it's not favorite, but it's not favorite.

Okay.

It's not favorite.

It's the Gateway drug movie.

What was the doc that you saw that a light bulb went off and you

said, I want to make documentaries.

Yeah.

The first or the Early

Gates of heaven.

Oh, Errol Morris's first talk.

Why?

I just love that movie.

It's so strange.

And it's, it's art, you know?

Yes.

It's beautiful.

Like there are docs that are art and there are other docs, but he's really an artist.

Yeah.

And that movie is just when I saw it, years and years and years and years ago.

Yeah.

It like

where were you in your life when you saw it?

I mean, I wasn't making docs, I had no intention of making docs, but I was like

an art school student, so, you know,

loved it.

This scene I will always remember.

Is the wide shot of the owner of the pet cemetery at his desk.

It's symmetrically framed.

It's beautiful.

There's all the things on the wall behind him and he's answering a

very staid interview question.

Yeah.

And one of the plaques falls off the wall and his reaction in that moment is,

it just says everything about, that's what makes Errol Morris an artist.

It doing to include that and to like linger in that moment is something

that I think a lot of people would cut out and he revels in that.

Yeah.

I love the way he set up all the talking heads in that film because he really

thought about where they were sitting.

Yes.

Yeah.

Cool.

Okay.

That's a great one.

We haven't heard that one yet.

That's,

I'm gonna jump in with one who is a dream collaborator for you, especially

like you're an archival producer, you're helping people bring their vision to life.

You bring your own vision to life with, uh, by building a team.

Who out there haven't you worked with, but you would be pretty

excited to if, if your phone rang.

This is like.

Such an obvious question for me, Matt Wolf.

Oh, that's why you watched the Matt Wolf episode that you said.

Well, yeah, I'm obsessed with him.

Yeah.

Envy his career.

Always uses archival in such a beautiful way.

I really wish I'd worked on

that now.

It's so good.

Okay, and then last one, what can you not stop thinking about right now?

I can't stop thinking about the background noise, which we have

to get another shot of here.

Yeah, that helicopter there.

Enormous crane right behind us right

now, or like right now.

Right, right now, like in

life?

Yes.

Um, I'm really excited about the rollout of the film.

I'm excited to see what happens, where it plays, how it's received,

and then I'm excited about a new project that I'm starting.

Ooh.

Telephone already.

Hints.

Give us

hints.

Bread

crumbs

off camera.

I, I get it.

I get it.

I not giving it away, I get not wanting to jinx some now.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you're thinking about your film you're premiering and

then the film you're starting.

Yeah.

Good for you.

Yeah.

Cool.

This has been awesome.

Thank you so much for your, yeah, thank you.

Have a great festival.

Can people find the movie?

I think it's either Joy Bubbles movie or Joy Bubbles.

The movie is both Instagram and Oh, but very small hold.

This episode is sponsored in part by the Austin Film Society, the 40-year-old

film institution founded by Richard Linkletter, Austin Film Society supports

non-fiction filmmaking year round through its monthly doc nights series at a FS

Cinema, along with its annual documentary film festival doc days held every May.

Learn more@austinfilm.org.

This episode is also sponsored by the longtime.

The long Time is a one of a kind event space located in Austin, Texas.

Hosting everything from Sandlot baseball to commercial film shoots,

art exhibitions to surprise weddings.

It's the perfect home for your next creative gathering.

The long time is the home of the Texas Playboys Baseball Club, the

host of the Annual Wizard Rodeo, and available for private events year round.

Learn more@thelongtime.com.

Next time on Duck Walks, we are still at Sundance, at least

as far as these episodes go.

We're taking it to the Streets main street.

That is Ben and I will greet the people.

We will track down filmmakers, film fans, film programmers, anyone really willing

to step up to the mic and share their thoughts on this year's Sundance, this

year's slate of films, and this year in independent filmmaking coming up.

So please join us next time.

And Doc Walks.

Doc Walks is created, produced, and edited by my friend Ben Stein, Bower of the Bear.

Hello, and my friend Keith Maitland of Go Valley.

Thanks for tuning in.