EP05 – Rosy on Rosy with Adam Bhala Lough

05.22.2025 - Season: 1 Episode 5

With SXSW in full swing, Ben & Keith walk downtown Austin with director Adam Bhala Lough (Telemarketers) the day before the premiere of Deep Faking Sam Altman. A prolific filmmaker, Adam shares stories behind the scenes of his new doc, gives tips on pitching, and after spending a year chasing AI pioneer Sam Altman, offers a surprisingly rosy view of the AI landscape.

00:00 Welcome to South by Southwest 2025

00:30 Meet Adam Bhala Lough: Prolific Director

01:23 Deep Faking Sam Altman: The New Film

01:49 The Journey of Making the Film

04:33 Challenges and Triumphs in Filmmaking

08:12 Pitching and Networking Secrets

12:59 The Train Keeps Moving

13:41 The Pivot: Embracing New Opportunities

14:29 Creating the Sambot

16:02 Journey to India

17:30 The Future of Documentaries

21:05 AI: A New Tool in Filmmaking

22:53 Closing Thoughts and Reflections

Okay, Ben Austin, Texas.

Our hometown has just been invaded by a hundred thousand tech bros. Film

fans, music lovers are coming when the, uh, music kicks off on Tuesday.

It's south by Southwest Motorcycles in the background south by Southwest 2025.

What does Dock Walks have in store for

day

one?

Well, we're gonna meet, um, Adam Bhala Lough, who is a prolific director.

Uh, he is probably best known for telemarketers and a film we made

about Lil Wayne called The Carter.

And he's here with a new film that, uh, he's gonna tell us all about.

And so that's how we're kicking off the fest.

I don't know him very well, do you?

Yes.

We actually made a film together, uh, about Kid Rock for, uh, roughhouse.

Ooh, another motorcycle.

Which is, uh, David Gordon Green, uh, Jody Hill and Danny McBride's company.

And, uh, we should do a whole episode about that at some point

because that movie never came out.

Will never come out, is somewhat controversial, but that's

how uh, I got to know Adam.

Secret, unknown Kid Rock film episode.

To come.

Yes.

But for today, we're gonna take a nice little dock, walk around

downtown Austin with Adam.

He's in town to premiere his new film, deep Faking Sam Altman.

Yep.

So we're gonna go meet him at his hotel

and we're gonna walk around.

So here we go.

Let's go meet Adam.

Here we go.

On your left,

you are listening to Doc Walks with Ben and Keith.

So.

We're here at South by 2025.

So give us, uh, tell us what you're doing here.

Well, I'm here with a doc feature that I directed called Deep Faking,

Sam Altman, which not only did I direct it, but somehow I ended

up being in front of the camera.

So I'm in it for every single frame of the movie, which is really wild.

'cause I've never been in any of my movies.

I mean, I've been in the background.

I've been in like the audio, like you hear me?

But you were also in telemarketers.

Well, somewhat.

A little bit.

A little bit, but this one is this.

This movie is about me in a major way.

I mean, what it is, what it's about is a dad of two kids trying

to figure out how AI is going to affect his children in the future.

So he goes out on this journey and the obvious first step in the

journey is to interview Sam Altman.

Sam Altman is the.

CEO of open ai, creator of chat, GPT, and he is sort of like the quote unquote, like

father of ai modern AI movement, right?

So the dad being me, I go to try to interview Altman, he snubs me.

So eventually I go to open AI directly and get thrown out.

So you're going full Roger in me.

Yeah.

It's at this point it, the movie's very Roger in me.

I, I basically.

Say it starts out Roger and me and ends like Fitzcarraldo.

That's, that's the elevator pitch.

I love that.

To the movie.

I understand the Roger and me reference, but explain the Fitzcarraldo.

Fitzcarraldo comes after he throws.

After I get thrown out of open ai, I decide, fuck this shit.

I'm gonna deep fake him and I'm gonna do the interview that way.

'cause at this point I also am.

Under contract by the financiers to get an interview with Sam Altman.

'cause that's the reason they came on board the project and put up the

money was 'cause I told him I could get an interview with Sam Altman.

'cause I've interviewed everybody, so why not?

So he seemed like an easy one to get right.

And I had his phone number, personal phone number, and you know, I had, um, pretty

direct connections to him, so I figured it'd be easy, but it didn't happen.

So I was like, okay, well what if I get an what if I interview

his, an AI version of Sam Altman?

That should count right?

For, for the contract.

So I set out to do that.

Awesome.

And did it count

clearly?

did.

It clearly did.

Yes.

They loved it.

Well, you know, they loved what it became During the course of making it,

obviously, they were like freaked out.

They were like, what the fuck is going on?

What are you doing?

Why are you going to India And spending our money on making And how freaked out

were you the person making it?

I was having fun because I, I knew that every time I failed

and fell on my face that it was.

Gonna be good cinema.

Yeah.

And it was gonna be funny.

So you kind of knew once Sam Altman said no to the interview request that

the movie was gonna be about you, or did you, did you conceive of the movie

to be about you from the beginning?

In the beginning it was really, it was yes to, to answer your question

directly, I, I knew that making a movie about ai and I knew of some other

movies that were coming about it, about coming out, were being made about ai.

Specifically, Gibney is doing like a, a, a huge series that breaks down

the history and he talks to all the titans, you know, blah, blah, blah.

I knew I didn't want to do something like that.

So if I was gonna do something about ai, it needed to be deeply

personal and deeply human.

So that was the initial, like impetus, like making the movie, to like injecting

myself and my family into the movie.

Yeah.

Is that I wanted it to be a hu like human movie Yeah.

About ai.

So that, that was the initial, initial impetus.

When you're riding this journey and you're making the decisions about what to do

and what not to do, as the world is kind of, you know, uh, throwing curve balls,

who are you bouncing these ideas off?

Do you have a producer or an editor?

A your wife?

Yeah.

Who, who are you working with?

Um, Christian Vasquez.

Amazing, amazing producer.

I, I stole 'em from Lance Oppenheim.

He was the producer on Ren Fair.

And, um, I asked Lance, I was like, I need a young, smart, funny.

Super talented on the ground producer to do this movie with me,

and he ended up being in the movie.

Like, I was like, you're in the movie now, dude.

Like you're going to be a character in the movie.

So he's sort of like the Robin to my Batman.

That's, and he's fantastic.

He's, he's, he's producing Lance's new movie right now with

Robert Pattinson in New Orleans.

Okay.

So you're making this AI doc and you start out like the impetus for it.

Like, do you remember the moment, uh, that you thought, I wanna do this?

probably goes all the way back to when I was a little kid watching

Terminator two, which was like definitely a life-changing film for me.

It's definitely part of why I became a filmmaker.

Yeah, 'cause you started as a narrative filmmaker and

then switched to documentary.

What was it that made you make the Switch?

It was the little Wayne documentary of the Carter.

You know, I was struggling to get movies made for a long time, but

after I made the Carter, it became a lot easier to get documentaries made.

So I was like, I'm just gonna do this.

Fuck actors.

They suck.

Well, unless their companies are producing your

films.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That's what they're good for.

Well, that's interesting 'cause one of the things that I admire about you so much is

you seem to always have projects in the pipeline, and my experience has not been

that documentaries are easy to get made.

I, I find that they're very hard.

So how is it that you've been able to, you know, keep this kind of

steady stream of box being produced?

I don't know.

I guess a lot of luck and, and perseverance.

Yeah.

Being at the right place at the right time.

Convincing the right people, you know,

because, well, you seem particularly great at that.

Like just even the story you told us about, you know, being interested in AI

and then saying with certainty, I can go interview Sam Altman to the point

that you can get a financier on board.

Yeah.

Without knowing the definitive answer to that question, but saying that

you could, like, that's chutzpah.

I think you gotta do, I think

you gotta, you gotta think like that and act like that.

I like to, to say that.

Movie making, even documentary filmmaking still has a level of like PT Barnum.

No matter how serious and like social justice your project is,

you still need a little bit of like PT Barnum to get your shit sold.

Unless you live in like a communist country and like the

Eastern block, you're convincing a bunch of rich people, you know?

Or some like studio execs.

Yeah.

So.

You, you need a level of that in order to, to get your shit made.

You have this ability, it seems like, to get very close to

influential people pretty quickly.

Like how do, how do you do that?

I think it really helps to have certain people vouch for you.

That's the number one thing.

But also once you get in the room with people, you just, these are, these are,

okay, so I'll give you, I'll give you one like really good example, like one little,

that I think is a, a great word of.

Advice for filmmakers.

I made this documentary, this whole documentary series about

skateboarding for Netflix.

They were partnered with a thing called Street League Skateboarding, which

was sort of like the, the NFL or the NBA of professional skateboarding.

It's like a league.

And they wanted me to do a doc about street league skateboarding

and about that specific league.

And the league was.

Owned and run by Rob Ick.

He's one of the most well-known professional skateboarders in history.

And he also has like 8 billion shows on MTV.

Right.

Okay.

So Rob Darick's a very smart guy.

He's also a guy who can see through you in like a, just in a minute.

And he's a guy who everybody comes to, to try to get money out of.

So,

so you, well, before you tell, so you had to meet with him, I had to meet with

him to basically get his, uh, blessing.

To get his, blessing you to be the director of.

The doc

something.

Yeah.

Okay.

Exactly.

So when I, when I, when I sat down with Rob, first of all, it helped

because he had seen the Carter.

He was like, he was like, oh, I fucking love that movie.

Like, brilliant movie.

So the conversation was around, I think three minutes long.

Three minutes.

I had like

three minutes to pitch him.

Oh my God.

This

idea,

okay.

So I pitched him the idea and he was like, okay, so how much, how

much money do you need from me?

And I said, I don't need any money from you.

Nothing.

To keep your wallet in your pocket.

He's like, well, what, what do you need from me?

I'm like, I, I don't need anything from you except just access.

That's it.

And he was kind of like surprised because I think he thought I was gonna come

in and ask him for a million dollars, which is like what everybody does.

But I was like, no, I don't need anything from you, dude.

Like, I'll go get the money.

You just get me the, the access.

So by the time I'd like gotten into the parking lot and was

driving off, he like, hit up Steve and he was like, let's do this.

So the moral of that story to you is that you knew basically that if you went

in there to ask him for something, that would be kind of the end of it, whereas

like you, yeah, you put him at ease.

Everybody all day.

These these guys that are like kind of like at the top of whatever,

top of the food chain, right?

All day, every day.

All anybody does is come in and ask them to give them something.

Ask them for money, ask them for something.

Yeah,

I think he was pretty relieved.

I didn't ask him for any money at all.

Rather, I, I positioned it like I'm giving him an opportunity

to be a part of something cool.

If he wants, if he wants to.

Was that meeting do or die for you?

Uh, yeah, pretty much.

That was a, that was a very rough patch in my career where I was

just like, I had nothing going on.

I pretty desperately needed to like, get a project going.

So we made that film.

And it did really well.

It was, uh, it was during the era of like VOD, there was like a, a small

window of like a few years where like you could put something on, on iTunes

or Apple, like iMovie and sell it right for like 9 99 and people would

actually pay for it and download it.

Wow.

And VOD is video on demand?

Yeah, it was

pre, pre streaming and it was sold really well.

It was like the number one documentary.

In the Apple store for like three weeks.

So you were talking about going into this pitch, it's do or die.

You're not asking for money, you're asking for access, and

kind of like a stamp of approval.

How do you, like, how do you prep for a pitch and, and what are some

differences that you've encountered that kind of, some of your signature moves.

Yeah.

How do you prep for a

pitch?

How do I prep for a pitch?

Get, hopefully get a good night of sleep.

Eat a NICE's breakfast, eat a good breakfast.

I get caffeinated.

But yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing is walk into to a pitch.

Like you're presenting an opportunity for somebody.

So you're not asking, you're more, you're not asking for anything.

You're, you're, you're basically saying like, Hey, we're

going along for this ride.

This is gonna be a cool ride.

Like, come along with us.

You don't have to if you don't want to, but like, it could be fun and.

That's about it.

That's great advice.

So you're getting them excited.

Yeah.

Like I, I remember Jay ddu Plus told me once, he was like, everybody

wants to jump aboard a moving train.

Nobody wants to help you get something.

No one wants going push the train up the hill.

Yeah.

They want to, they want to join the ride.

Yeah.

That's, that's what I, I always said, even from the beginning.

My career was like, you have to go in into it at all times with the

attitude of like, this train is moving, it's moving very fast, and

it's gonna move forward without you, whether you're on a part of it or not.

We're still gonna do it anyways.

The train's gonna keep going.

Yeah.

We'd love to have you onboard the train.

If, but if not, like, we're, we're gonna keep going.

Like, I don't think it's wise to give people.

All the power either that like we, oh, we desperate, we need you.

We can't do this without you.

Like we desperately need you.

'cause that's not, that's also not a good position to be in.

Right.

Okay.

So I wanna bring this back around.

Yeah.

We started out by talking about deep faking Sam Altman and

trying to gain access to Sam.

That access was denied and so you had to pivot.

Can you talk to us a little bit more about that moment, the decision

making process for you, and then what that opened up for you for the film?

Yeah, I mean, opened up is a great way to put it.

I felt like I had reached a dead end, but the truth was that I just reached a

giant open door to something completely different and even more interesting.

And there's a moment in the film too where I'm, where I'm telling Christian,

we're walking together in San Francisco.

And I'm like, and and that moment was when, uh, the Scar

Jo controversy happened, right?

Like, oh, with using her voice.

Using her voice, right.

I was like.

That day, I was like, we should do the same thing to him.

We should steal his voice and we should, we should create, uh, an

LLM, uh, basically a brain, like a chatbot loaded in with all his

information, all his interviews, everything, and interview that.

Wow.

And the creation of that was an, and then deepfake, an actor, right.

Get an actor.

You have to have an actor actually sit in the chair, get,

have an actor sit in the chair.

So I interviewed Rain Wilson for it.

No way.

He said no.

Oh.

He was like this.

He was like, wait, you're not gonna use my face.

Fuck you.

He was great.

Um, is that the film?

It is in the film.

Great.

I interviewed, um, Michael Ian Black and uh, John Cameron Mitchell.

And see,

these are great names.

So how are you getting these guys?

Is this through your agent?

Is this through Kevin Hart?

So Rain came through.

I think I'm going the wrong way.

That's all right.

We're we're walking.

Yeah.

Rain came through.

Kevin, uh, John Cameron Mitchell is a friend of a friend and

I've known him for a long time.

Really sweet guy, awesome guy.

And then Michael Lee in Black also came through Kevin.

Cool.

And okay.

Um, obviously we, I reached out to a lot of other people who, who didn't even

want to do the, the audition, but yeah.

So we had to deep fake the actor.

But here's where the story really opens up.

'cause I just basically ascribed to you the first 20 minutes of the movie.

Where the story really opens up is at that point I go, I'm in San Francisco

and I'm trying to find somebody to do this work, like a company to do this

work, but no one wants to do it 'cause they're all scared of Sam Altman.

Right.

So I find this guy on the internet in India, who it's called the Indian

Deep Faker, and he has a bunch of viral videos and it's, it's one of

the funniest scenes in the movie.

I'm like explaining to him what I want to do and telling him like every,

it's like no one wants to do this in America and like, would he consider,

and he's like, yeah, I'm down.

Come on, come, come over to push car, come to India.

And so then like, then we're on a plane going to India and trying

to figure out how to do that.

So it really opens up.

To like a whole other, and that's the fitzcarraldo piece where it's like

pushing the boat up the, up the mountain, carrying the, carrying the boat over

the mountain, which is like creating this, this fake Sam Altman, right?

This, that I call sambot, creating the sambot, getting doing the

interview, which is a whole ordeal.

In India, we, we did the interview, but then coming back to the US

with Sambot and living with it.

Living with it for like.

Months.

Oh my God, I didn't know this level of connect and my put like, it

becomes like part of my family.

Oh man,

yeah,

this sounds so, I can't wait to see this movie.

And I, it's, it's, it gets weird.

It's sad.

That's what I like most about it, I think, is that it just goes.

Places where you don't expect it to go, it just gets fucking weird.

Well, and I know you have to go 'cause you have another interview.

So, you know, last question here, and this is a big one, but we talk

a lot in the podcast so far about the future of documentary, right?

And you're a, a very interesting person to ask this question because you've

just made a documentary about ai.

We're at this pivotal time where people are, you know, watching more TikTok

than they are long form documentaries.

Uh, they're making like half the amount of TV shows that they've ever made before.

Essentially, it feels like our industry's a little bit in peril and it's

because of large part new technology.

So, as somebody who makes long form docs and who has just made one about

new technology, like where do you see the state of the industry now?

Where do you see it going?

Like what, what did you learn from making this film basically?

Yeah.

I mean, that's a hard question to unpack.

I think that I definitely, I have to say not, and not, I guess not

so much for documentaries, but documentaries are a part of this.

I was really excited and proud of Sean Baker and everything

he achieved at the Oscars.

'cause that's great.

For independent film, a movie that was made for $6 million.

That was in the theaters.

People went to the theaters to see it.

I mean, granted it was the, the lowest attendance in theaters

of any best picture winner.

But still,

but it won five Oscars, it won five Oscars.

We're we're talking about a Nora.

Yeah.

So I, I, I think, at least for the time being, that's, that's gonna, I.

It lifts, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats and I think that that

will carry over into documentaries.

The one thing I'm seeing that goes beyond technology that's actually really

disturbing to me is like, you see a movie like no other Land, and I was with

those guys, I hung out with those guys at the, um, cinema Ion a couple months ago.

They just won the Oscar.

They couldn't get their film distributed.

No one would touch it.

It was too, too hot.

Right?

Like no one would touch it.

And that, that's a little disturbing to me.

And that obviously has nothing to do with technology.

Mm-hmm.

And,

and that's the film about, um, the relationship between a Israeli and a Yeah.

Gaza.

It's, it's,

it's a, it's, yeah, it's a film about Gaza, both the one filmmaker's

Palestinian and the other's Israeli.

That's quite disturbing and I hope that we can get past that.

Mm-hmm.

But.

I am em very emboldened by a Nora and what happened at the Oscars

and uh, I think that'll be.

At least for the time being will be really good for independent

films and docu documentaries that specifically should go to to theatrical.

Mm-hmm.

this is inter, it sounds like what you're saying, docs, I feel, I feel

like I feel good about the state of affairs, at least for a few years

because of the success of an aura.

What Sean was able to do with that.

Mm-hmm.

It was pretty, pretty incredible.

Yeah.

It, it's, so, I expected you to go totally the other way.

That's really interesting that you have like a rosy positive view of

the future of this after having made an AI documentary, so that's great.

Yeah.

'cause we, we've heard the opposite argument a lot lately, so I'm

glad we're hearing a, uh, sort of a positive view, a rosy picture.

Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't call it rosy.

I would, but I, and, and, and I probably wouldn't be talking like this if it.

Hadn't happened at the Oscars, but like it was pretty

unprecedented what Sean achieved.

And like, I'm hearing people in the industry talking like

about indie film coming back.

But in a real way, you know, you, you guys make, uh, indie, you guys

make fictional indie films too, so.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I think there's going to be more of a place for that, at least in

the next, at least in the near future.

When this

movie comes out, what do you want people to take away from it?

What I want people to take away from it for sure.

Like AI is scary, right?

There's parts of it that are, that are for sure scary.

I think AI is like a toddler, very, very smart toddler that we're raising.

You know, we have to be really careful how we raise it, but I think we're,

I think we're going to be okay.

I think this gate's all gonna be okay.

And Rosie On Rosie.

Yeah.

So I, so I'm hoping that people watch the movie.

I, I, I think the audience for this movie is cer is, is basically anybody who has

an interest in ai, but also people who are kind of slightly concerned about

how it's gonna affect their future.

And so I hope they see it.

And what I took away from it as a filmmaker is that it's just

another tool in the toolkit for us.

It's not going to, to take all our jobs.

There's a line at the end of the movie, which wraps it all back to Terminator

two, where I'm like, the T one thousand's not coming for my job anytime soon.

Like that's sort of what I, what I, what I gleaned from the year long

process of, of, of making the movie.

I. Awesome

man.

Rosie on, Rosie is right.

Yeah.

Two, I I love it.

Disappointed.

You guys are, I'm, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Sounds like you've been getting a lot of, uh, uh, uh, ne negativity in your podcast.

I think people,

people are, people are concerned, people are scared, but here you are,

you're on the eve of your premiere.

I would, I would hope that you're confident and excited for the future.

Sure.

Yeah.

That's, that's where you should be.

Yes.

Thank you for doing this, man.

It was great to reconnect and hang out for a minute.

Awesome.

Cool.

Alright, man.

Well, I'll see you, uh, at the, at the premiere tomorrow night or, yeah.

Yeah.

appreciate it.

It was fun.

Yeah, looking forward to seeing it.

It's gonna be exciting.

Cool.

All right.

Thank you guys.

Thanks Adam.

Thank you, Ben.

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

Walking out of Adam Bal Low's hotel room, and I have to admit

feeling a little bit rosy.

Um, I'm glad to know.

He sees a, a path forward, um, and doesn't feel like the AI is going to infringe on

all of our rights, our jobs, our ideas.

And I have to say, I mean, I've, he's reflecting a feeling that I

think I have in my gut as far as it being another tool in the toolbox.

And it kinda gets back to that off repeated quote that I don't

know who said it, but I should.

Um, AI isn't coming to take your job.

The person who knows how to use ai.

Is coming to get your job.

Ah,

I like that.

So, so that's a vote to embrace AI and learn it rather than run from

it and start wringing your hands.

I think there's enough hand wringing in this world.

I'm, I'm ready to be Roy.

Um, I like it, man.

I was not expecting that from you or from Adam.

And I'm glad that we got more of a dose of like, no, we gotta be

PT Barnum, we gotta be showman.

We gotta, we gotta be the T 2000, we gotta be T 2000.

And, uh, I'll be back

and persevere.

Let's, uh, let's hit the corner.

Let's leave that there.

Let's hit the corner and just take some tone.

'cause we never get enough of that.

It's true.

Oh,

okay.

This is tone for on the street.

Oh, boy.

Right.

Is a, uh, party bus is coming.

All right.

Here we go.

Woo hoo.

I gotta go sign up and get my badge.

All right, let's do it.

All right.

Cutting for now.

Bye everybody.

Thanks.

Doc Walkers

next time on Doc Walks with Ben and Keith.

There's no Keith.

Ben's off to New York City to walk and talk with filmmaker Matt Wolf,

director of the new Peewee Herman documentary premiering this week on HBO.

Check it out.

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

Hello, and my friend Keith Maitland of Go Valley.

Thanks for tuning in.