Frame & Reference Podcast - 30: "Dick Johnson Is Dead” Director Kristen Johnson

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

On todays episode of the Frame & Reference Podcast, Kenny talks with director Kristen Johnson about her film "Dick Johnson Is Dead." Kristen is an accomplished, multi-talented documentary filmmaker with credits such as “Cameraperson”, “Deadline” & “The Above.” Make sure to check out “Dick Johnson Is Dead” now streaming on Netflix! Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coasts leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out Filmtools.com for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for the latest news coming out of the industry. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for more!

Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today we're talking with Kirsten Johnson, the director and DP of Dick Johnson is dead, as well as camera person, which is on the Criterion Collection. And I know this because I just bought it before I knew that I was going to interview her. There is nothing that I can say that will make what you're about to hear better. This is easily one of my favorite interviews so far out of the 31 that I've done. And so all there is is for you to listen to it. So I'm going to shut up now, as always, and let you enjoy this fantastic conversation that I had with Kirsten Johnson.

So the way I always start these is just asking how what got you into or filmmaking even because you're pretty prolific as a artist in general. But like what kind of got you started in filmmaking? Was that like a childhood thing or did you come upon it later? Ooh, you know what I love about life and filmmaking in general as you always can come up with a new place to start or a new origin story. Yeah, what is it today? There is not just one.

That is for certain, for sure and for certain. But, you know, I think since you all are focused on cinematography, what I can share is that, obviously, I am a visual maximalist and love images of all kinds. but I was trying to get into film school in France. And a bunch of people there laughed at me because they were like, you're an American. There's no way you're getting into film school in France. And I realized like, huh, that's probably true.

That's probably not going to happen. So I was sort of talking to different people and they're like, ooh, definitely do not try to get in to the film school. as a director, but maybe you can sneak in through a side door and those were all the technical departments. So there was an image department, a sound department, an editing department, a producing department. And I was like, hmm, it's image for me. And I did in fact get into the department l'image, which was the sort of gateway to discovering the camera is the center of

everything. So I've never looked back. You know, it's funny because I had a similar thing was not, it wasn't like, don't try to be a director, but I learned pretty early on that everyone wanted to be a director in film school. And I was like, well, I don't necessarily need to direct. I don't, I don't have that like urge to tell a specific story or anything. But, you know, like you're saying, I love images. So it's like, I'll do cinematography. And that was right when the five D came out. And something changed. It was a huge, well, the red, at first it was the red, but everyone still knew they couldn't afford it and it was complicated.

But then when it was a consumer product that could make a, I hate this phrase, but like cinematic image, huge air quotes, suddenly everyone wanted to be a cinematographer. And almost no one wanted direct. And even today, I have the hardest time finding like directors to work with, which is ridiculous because there's a million directors. but versus how many camera people you can find, let's just say online, or the number of people who are like, oh, I know how to do your job. Have you experienced that kind of that wave or seen that at all? Well, you know, I mean, you're just taking me to such an interesting place thinking about the 5D moment because I was coming off of having filmed with Laura Poitras on several of her films that were, you know, focused on the Middle East and it was sort of the beginning of the Arab Spring in air quotes

also and the thing that was quite amazing that we discovered and and I experienced in visiting Egypt was that there was this whole world of people who had not been allowed to film in the streets and it was the sort of shifting of the political power, and the 5D looked like a still camera. And it gave all of these people a way to film what was happening without getting imprisoned. So my take on the 5D in that moment in time was just this huge opening for people throughout the Middle East,

but I think in many places in the world where they could pass as people who were just taking still images with no sound when in fact they were taking sound and moving images and were able to document all kinds of abuses of power that were happening. So I have a little sweet spot in my heart for the 5D in its subversive capacity. But it also, you know, like you're here looking at me on Zoom with like a soft filter behind you. You're still tapped into the 5D aesthetic, my man, right? This is a C500 mark two. There you go.

And it looks great. You look beautiful. And there's something about seeing you in focus and the world out of focus behind you that does give cinematic pleasure. There's no question about it. Yeah. It's actually fascinating. You bring up the photojournalist thing because I remember that's how they advertised it at first. was oh look if for journalists you can shoot video too it wasn't intended it only shot 30p

and there was no options right it was just video and uh i had never i was like oh yeah i guess you know if you're shooting i didn't i didn't even think so far as to think the middle east i was always thinking like oh just someone in i don't know new york recording something and going like oh better switch to video um but yeah that's fascinating well it sure depends what your reference is right like Like, you know, if you live in a world where it is illegal to have a video camera in the streets and then it turns out that this, you know, still camera, in quotes, can do the job. It's a game changer and it was part of how political change happened in a number of the countries during the Arab Spring was the kind of video documentation that all kinds of people

were doing and not even necessarily people who considered themselves journalists, but just people who could get their hands on a 5D. But yeah, I think that's what I sort of love about camera work. Like it's the camera work of other people that helps us imagine their realities, right? And we talk about this thing of visual language, but I sort of believe like each human at each moment in our lives, we have a visual language of our own that we haven't yet discovered but if we can if we can start speaking it then uh we we give people something to look at that they never imagined yeah it is you split me into two brains here i do that oh i do it too

brain splitter yeah um the first one being how long did it take uh the government to catch uh to get hip to the fact that people were shooting video on the DSLRs? You know, they were pretty quick to it. They were pretty quick to it and, you know, like, as with any government, it has many arms and one arm doesn't know what the other one is doing. And so I think lots of people slipped through for a long time and then other people were treated very punitively even when they weren't shooting video and they were just taking photos, right?

So I think, you know, I'm speaking in general terms about like a world of different scenarios because, you know, it's like multiple countries going through multiple political changes. But there is no question that if you look at the body of journalistic work, activism work, and then also cinematic work that started to come out of the region in the period when there was new access to cameras that were smaller and sort of didn't advertise themselves as having cinematic possibilities. I myself shot in Afghanistan, it became a short film called The Above and some of the footage I used in Camera Person, but I was using like the tiniest camera. I was using a JVC, HMU that I swear to God had like a camera, like a screen the size of a

credit card. It was so small. I couldn't even see anything that was on it, but it was a real concern for me. I was like, I don't want to be a giant white American woman filming on a giant camera. Like, I'm already really standing out here. Let me go for something more modest that I can sort of tuck in my bag and I can move in and out of situations quickly without people being aware that I am filming and that really made a difference in what it was possible to film that little teeny tiny camera which actually had pretty good resolution and created an image that had some stain power yeah so that's actually something that a lot of the documentarians have brought up on this podcast which is you know for cinema use it seems that we build cameras to be bigger and

bigger and bigger. And in documentary work, it's like, if I could literally, one of the jokes we had was like, if you could literally film with a cell phone and it was good enough for what you were doing, we would. Knowing that smaller cameras, not, I mean, geez, I have these Fuji film XT3s that are just out of control image quality-wise, but let's say generally smaller or even older cameras because modern cameras are amazing. having less image quality.

What do you think psychologically that does to the viewer when watching maybe something shot with a JBC handicam versus if you had a full camera package with you? Well, you split my brain in a bunch of things. So, you know, the way I think about it is images come from like a human plus a camera plus other humans. and then images are born. And so that, you know, just by yourself, without a lens or without a camera, you can make images by drawing them, right? There's all kinds of ways that humans have made images throughout history, but the moving image, we make with cameras. And those cameras sort of imprint the images that are made.

of them with some of their qualities. But they also, you know, now we have all kinds of cameras that can act by themselves, right? Surveillance cameras, drones, all kinds of cameras that don't need humans to a certain extent to create images. What I'm talking about here, I would say, is the human plus camera equation. And I think lots of people who think about, you know, sort of what do I wish to make and what is the camera that I might be capable of making it with, you know, one of the things that people think about is how much does it cost? Can I afford it? Can I handle the infrastructure of it? But there are all these uncontrollable, uncontrolled factors that are a part of it. It's like, where are we in history, right? Like in what year was I born and what

existed as technology when I was alive? And so, you know, when I made camera, person, it came from probably one of the most excruciatingly transitional periods in cinematography where we were moving out of film cameras in documentary work into the digital realm. But we were working with these video cameras that were standard definition, that had integrated lenses. And if we were to compare them to a simple iPhone today, it was just a radically different quality of image. And yet, when I look at that footage from those periods of time, it says the 1990s to me.

It says the 2000s to me. And that has a quality to it. And we can create those qualities like retrospectively by applying all kinds of color timing or VFX. There's all kinds of ways that you could sort of re-imprint footage with the quality of a particular time period. But I think in some ways of cinema as time travel in general. And you can simulate different moments in time,

but the actual sort of evidence of certain moments in time is embedded in the qualities of a camera. And so for me to be in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the years I was there, say 2009 till 2012, it mattered to me to have a little tiny camera. And I might have been right, I might have been wrong about that. But my feeling was I don't want to be an intimidating presence. I don't want to be a threatening presence.

And I think one of the things I like to think about with camera work is that cameras do many things simultaneously. Not all of them good, not all of them bad. And it matters how the human who is holding them interacts with other people, right? And so it doesn't matter on a certain level, little or big. If you show up with a camera, then there's a little red light that's going.

And even if you put black tape over it, what you are bringing into the space is the concept of the future. And what you're also bringing into the space is the presence of death, right? We're recording something and at some point, the people who recorded and the people who were recorded will no longer exist, but these images that we are recording now might.

Right. So all of that, right, is sort of what a camera does. And so I like making these sort of multiple, these lists of contradictory things that cameras do. And I also like making lists of like, why is someone letting themselves be filmed? What are their wishes and hopes? So I try to hold, whenever I'm filming,

I'm trying to hold like lots of contradictory ideas in my mind simultaneously about sort of what's possible with what I'm filming on an aspirational level, but also to think about like all the sort of power struggles embedded in the action. So, you know, is it okay that I'm making a film with my father who has dementia? In moment X, it feels fine. In moment Y, it's like, whoa, this doesn't feel safe at all. In moment Z, ooh, I'm so glad we're doing this, you know, on and on. So that's what's intriguing to me is sort of the contradictions in our work. And I think often we try to

oversimplify what's happening and we also i think in some ways we we use all the details of the technical stuff sort of as a cudgel or a bludgeon or like or like i know things and i'm going to tell you things about all this gear and you don't know it um or we we use gear to intimidate and i i like to think of gear as like it's it's it's connected to its moment in history. There are cameras that we end up loving. They're cameras that like hurt our hands and there are cameras that fail us. But to sort of always remember that cameras are giving us this gift that enables us to record images that we as humans cannot do in the same way without them. So I have a lot of love and gratitude towards cameras.

And I try to avoid intimidating people with them as much as I can. Sure. Yeah, you know, you said, you know, they have their place in time, which is funny because now the qualities that we tried to replicate on digital, trying to make it look like film. I've noticed now younger filmmakers are trying to replicate mini-db. I made an article about the XL2 and added some video and tons of people in the comments are like, oh, my God, this is so nostalgic. It makes me feel like a kid again.

And I'm like, it's, wow. We're trying so hard to get away from this. 28 days later is going to come back around and be like a new amazing film. Totally. I mean, it was great. I mean, it's like fashion. It's like, but it's also aspirational. You know, I think so much of cinema is seeing work that other people have done and aspiring to it and saying, oh, I wish I had made that movie.

You know, because often a film or a piece of, you know, imagery, like it, it. it gets at something that we can't even explain to ourselves. But when we see it, we recognize it. We're like, oh, yes. And it also sort of gives us hope, like, oh, maybe someday I can express this thing inside of me that I can't even put words to, right? So I think often, you know, we're, it's part of how we create is by mimicry or quoting other people. people, but in many ways it's sort of aspiring to them.

And then the more we aspire, we sort of realize, oh, wait, that's their language that they developed at this moment in history. How do I develop my language at this moment in history or our language, right? But I think a lot of times we're so uncomfortable with the newness of our own undiscovered visual language that we want to fall back on, ooh, I saw this thing and it looked cool. Let me try to make it like that, as opposed to being like, what's this weird thing that I seem to be making? It's making me very uncomfortable. And but then sometimes you bring work like that out into the world.

People are like, whoa, you're so ahead of the curve. You know, it's funny you say that because I've had a camera in my hand basically my entire life since I was legitimately for it. There's footage of me making commercials like quick and bright commercials. I don't even remember the product quick and bright. But when I was four years old, and I would say two years ago, I finally became comfortable with saying, yeah, I can make an image that'll look good or like that I like. And what was the breakthrough moment? It was simultaneously.

So I did, you know, I'm a big research guy. I'm a big nerd, so I got, I have hundreds of American cinematographers, whole bunches of cinematography books back there, and, you know, just blasting through all them, Blu-ray commentaries, which, by the way, congrats on the, on the criterion for camera person. I happened to buy that two, three weeks ago, because they had that Barnes & Noble 50% off sale, and I was like, oh, all right, documentary about camera people, done. And then now I'm sitting here interviewing you.

beautiful and yeah and i'm so excited because dick johnson's dead is going to be at criterion too so is it oh that's yeah that's amazing yeah we'll get to the film um but yeah it so it was reading all those things and realizing that the cinematographers i looked up to were often winging it and they built that winging itness off of the back of experience and i was like well i don't have experience as much as much as i'd like so i was like i guess i just have to forget everything and do it and if i do it enough i'll fail enough and then i'll know it and that ended up being the truth there was you know i not to say that i like ruined some people's projects but they just weren't as they weren't what you were saying like i didn't see what i wanted it was close but i couldn't

like and then i'd try something out or or i would not do something thinking that i was maybe being a derivative and then I'd be like take that thing away maybe for instance top light I've learned that I just really love top light I use it for everything and the couple times I got rid of it I was like oh that's not my thing I don't I don't like that at all put it back you know and being able to adjust that in a way that looks natural and good and not just plot you know it's that um specificity that I was able to do naturally if that makes any sense it really does And I love like when one starts to identify, like, ooh, I really like top light, right? And it may be like, oh, you end up like overusing it at a certain point.

Yeah. But then you might try it in a situation. I was like, doesn't call for top light. But suddenly it's just like, top light is just what makes you see it in a new way. What I love trying to figure out is like, why? Why do you love top light? you know like that that getting at that kind of stuff i think is so um fascinating but a couple of the words that you used um are meaningful to me you know i think a lot about um not knowing and a lot

of the apprenticeship of becoming a cinematographer or becoming a filmmaker like it's sort of this overwhelming sense of i don't know how to do this i'm not going to be able to do that I don't have enough people. I don't have enough money. There's a way in which it can be very overwhelming in this sense that I wish to do these things and yet they are out of my reach. And where I like to flip it a little bit is to say, and it's part of what I've learned from being a part of documentary filmmaking, is that the world is deeply complex. And any of us who pretend to know what's going on, we're just being fools. So how do we, how do we sort of embrace a relationship to not knowing and to discovering in the context of our work without, you know, letting people

down or creating working situations that are disrespectful to people or wasting people's money or, you know, all of those things, right? But I think what I like to sort of fight for, in some ways is like a cinema of not knowing and a cinematography of not knowing, one in which we're searching for things. And then I think a lot about the word failure is a really strong word for all of us. But it's a feeling that one experiences while one is making things. And I would say especially during camera work and especially during documentary camera work, like, like just constant feeling of failing because you are failing. Like you're like running behind someone, you're out of focus,

the light is going, the light is failing. And so there's this sort of constant sense of like, oh, should I be getting from that angle? No, I didn't move too late, that person moved. But in fact, you are engaged with the vibrancy and complexity of the world and of course you are failing. Like that's the only thing you can be doing because you're behind it all, right?

You're like in relation to it all, but wow, are you, you don't know what other people are thinking. You don't know what other people are going to do. I mean, maybe the one thing you know is what the sun's going to do, but even then, as you know, all the time, you're just like, oh, the sun just did something that blew my mind, right? And so, you know, I love, I love like, I don't know. getting a kinder relationship with failing and failure, like as a part of my core way of being. And that's not, I'm not setting out to fail, but I'm just acknowledging that that coping with

the feeling of failing or coping with the feeling of inadequacy is a part of the work of being a creative person and in some ways of being like a loving person because you're sort of constantly failing the people you love by misunderstanding them. And so I like to think like I think failure is an important word for me and I like to not only position it as a negative word. Yeah, it's I think what other thing I thought of is something that tag that made me a better cinematographer is simplification, not trying to do too much, you know. And that can help you not fail. It's just by like, what Alejandro Mejia was like, if you have one light, you have one problem. If you have two lights, you have two problems. But that's a great way to think about it.

But to the point of failure, I read this book by Stephen Pressfield called The War of Art. I think in that he talked specifically about this. But there's like that book, there was Jocco Wilnick, he's a Navy SEAL. He's got a book called Extreme Ownership. He talks about it. Johnny Knoxville said it. And it's literally, if you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough. Failure is the education, the culmination of experience that makes you, you. If you aren't, because I think I agree with you, failure is the word we have for it. But I think we need another word or another way to describe trying and, like, what do athletes? athletes do. Athletes try a whole bunch and then they're tested at some point and maybe they

ace it, maybe they don't, but it's never the end. It's not the last time they're ever going to compete. It's just another one. Yeah. Yeah. And there's just like, you know, this sort of incredible moment in the Olympics with the guys doing the high jump, the guy from Qatar and the Italian guy whose names, neither of whom I know or can remember. But like, that they hit a certain point and then they both kept failing and the Olympic committee was like okay do you want to just keep keep trying and they were like how about two golds and they got to share them we need a new word yeah because I think because I've I've I've had this interesting a buddy of mine was a pro motocross rider like he was sponsored he rode for Red Bull that's how I met him and he quit all

that to become a fine artist. And I've watched him apply his athletic mindset to art, which has made him unstoppable. I mean, he just literally has been, he's every day is just painting, painting, painting, and it changes and it's not like a slog for him. I mean, sometimes it is obviously, but like, um, it's relentless. And it's interesting because most artists that I know seem to fall into it. It's like, it feels like something frustrating I've seen. It's like a lot of artists are like, oh, I guess I have to create. It's so difficult to get up.

And, you know, there's certain brain chemistries lean into certain, you know, professions and whatever. But to watch someone who's been literally like sculpted his entire life into being a certain way. applying that to art is fascinating to me and I've always tried to replicate that sort of idea

and one of those things is failure where he does the way he described motocross was you can't think about the finish line you have to think about the next turn and if you crash on that turn you have to get up as fast as possible and keep going because the next turn is still there

yeah and so well the point being he just crashing is not failure well crashing is not failure and and and being sort of intensely in the present is what athletes have to be right which i think is you know when you can do that with a camera uh you're doing some interesting work um and i mean i think it's

very powerful what you're saying um about just the like you try you try you try you try part of athleticism and and where I think it's challenging for people who who don't come from athleticism and who come into creativity is that you know athleticism has very clear benchmarks right so there's a there's an amount of time that you're trying to sprint that you know distance in there's a a particular height you're trying to reach whereas the the criterion for what makes something artistically valuable is constantly shifting, is subjective. And I think in many ways, many of us who are drawn toward this work have incredibly critical

minds. And our encounters with art make us even more critical in some ways, right? Because we see lots of work that doesn't speak to us and we're like, ah, you know, there wasn't that much effort in that and what were they thinking and that doesn't. and see that, you know, and we're sort of encouraged, we're constantly encouraged to have a critical nature in response to our work, which I think a lot of is incredibly healthy, but then we turn that into our inward towards ourselves

when we're trying to make things. And, you know, I mean, it's interesting to hear you, hear your, you describe yourself as someone who's had a camera for so many years of your life. And only recently did you feel like, oh, okay, I can make something that I can feel kind of good about, right? And I would say, like, look at camera person. You know, I made that so deep into the middle of my life, right?

When I was 51, I guess is when I made camera person, right? And to finally feel like, ooh, I got at something I needed to get at. But it takes so much time to, in some ways, get through our own critical voice, the critical voices of others who've, you know, rejected our project for which, you know, fund we applied to or the person who said this or whatever. But we are inwardly critical. It's an outwardly critical world and sort of the standards for what has value are shifting. And so I think that that's one of the challenges that we all face as filmmakers, as artists, as camera people, right? It's sort of how do we value our critical capacities, but also not let them disable our capacity to make things. And that's a tricky balance. Like that's not easy for anybody, I don't think.

Yeah, it's like extreme executive function having to set your own. goals having to set your own benchmarks being happy with because oh man that now that I think about it that's definitely something that happens is you set kind of a maybe a visual benchmark for yourself or something like that something you wish to achieve and then it takes just a little longer than you'd hope and then that that target that you would sort of set arbitrarily based on external factors shifts and now you're not happy with hitting the first target that has happened to me plenty of times where you're like I'm going to I'm going to be the first person whatever I'm going to be the first person to make it look like this, and then everyone's done it before you because you didn't maybe apply yourself.

Right, right. I mean, so, you know, where I'm at, and I would say, like, which feels like a really, for me, an interesting place is that it was so unfamiliar to me what we ended up making with camera person. Like I was so sort of, I didn't recognize it. It didn't look like something that I had made, even though it was made from all of this footage that I had shot over many years. But the way that it ended up coming together was like a discovery for me.

And that experience, despite being like very uncomfortable, I was like, ooh, that's interesting. And that's a lot of how I went into making Dick Johnson is dead. But I think in general now, in embrace, this moment in my life in terms of like how you how one is able to to to like search in good faith for something interesting that work that sort of just giving me this new freedom to just like not worry so much about whether this is you know good got there first better than all these kinds of like very like judgmental terms that we put on work.

It's more like, okay, like was I present? Is there? And even like to say like the word sincerity, I mean, I used to just be like, oh, like I'm such a, I used to really give myself a hard time for being such an earnest person or such a sincere person. But I think part of that is like, as opposed to like irony or distance,

like you can make fun of sincerity. but you know you talked about Johnny Knoxville earlier who you know I just like adore jackass the work of it the like humanity of it the pain of it the humor of it and um like those guys are incredibly sincere on a certain level you know like they are they are really hanging out there in the breeze on a on a on a literal and physical level and their humanity is really present and some of that humanity is like messed up and like hey guys take care of yourselves and also just like it's euphoric yeah it was fun I grew up watching all those and I've you know it was fun to watch that show and then realize that it was um spike

Jones uh it it was fascinating to me watching jackass and then seeing these cool music videos that I liked and Oscar nominated or winning films and realizing they were all Spike Jones and going like, oh, wow. So you can, because that's, that is kind of one of those things, one of the many things that got me into filmmaking was, oh, we can do all that. We don't have to do the one thing. That's right. That's right.

Yeah, that's the other sort of word I think about a lot as permission. Like who gives you permission? How do you get permission? You know, I guess in some ways like permission is like trust. But, you know, that Spike Johnson. Jones inspires us, gives us permission to experiment more, gives us, you know, permission for humor, you know, just like the visual pleasure of some of Spike Jones' work. It's just like, oh, you know, it gives you permission to dream, you know.

I'm just thinking that Kylie Minogue video where she's like going in circles and circles and circles in that French corner and like the world gets more and more complicated. And it's just like, that video is all about permission. Like, you know, don't be so literal. which anybody who gives us permission to be less literal, I'm on board. Yeah, that's, I think you've touched on a lot of things that I've been, that have kind of been occurring to me recently. A lot of that being like, I don't know if it's the literality,

literality of it, but. Like that. I like it. The glitterity and the literality. But it's that idea of like trusting yourself to just do what needs to be done, to feel it. I think we're having problems these days as a culture of feeling. Everything is very brain-centric and nothing is very, is that technically correct? Well, who cares?

Does it feel correct? Does it feel good? Do we feel anything? Do we feel, right? Yeah, and I mean, I do think that that's cinema's power is in sensation. It's in, you know, it allows us access to our feelings. And there is a way, I think, you know you think about human body plus a machine equals images there is a way in which

our relationship to the many machines of our lives sometimes disconnects us from the reality of our bodies and then obviously you know the head body like disconnect that can happen but but if you can be in your body while you are filming i think that translates in the images. I think people can feel it and see it. And in some ways, I thought that hypothetically, and then camera person and Dick Johnson is dead sort of proved it to me. You know, it's like, oh, that's a messed up image. Like, you know, the camera's on the ground and you're seeing our dirty carpet in our house, but you're feeling me, you're feeling the pain of my dad just apologized for having dementia because he knows how bad it is, right? And that's what matters

in the scene not um it does matter how the image looks but it is the image looks a certain way because it is conveying feeling that is happening between two people yeah in in uh dick johnson is it hard to shorten the film to just your dad's name in dick johnson he's like he's like huh yeah exactly all the time he's like what i thought it was called long live dick johnson i'm like nope Nope, get used to it, but in the film, you talk about sort of this idea, and this is something I've thought about too, because like I'll be at a family function and people are like, oh, take pictures of this, oh, film this, oh, do that. And I'm like, I do that for work.

I don't want to be the camera person when I'm just hanging out, you know, or if we're friends, it's always, I'm not in any of my friend's photos because they always hand me the cell phone to take the picture. Or if I have a camera, they're like, ooh, use. yeah do you think it's incumbent upon us to take on that burden as as filmmakers if we are the sort of storytellers of our friend groups do we just do that even if it is frustrating because obviously like if you listen to yourself you're like a little bit like hey man let me just like be at the party and have a good time I don't want to be working um and

you know, I think we get these, people don't know, like, you know, how hard one has to work to get some beautiful images, right? Like, and, you know, you learn it if you ever film a friend's wedding. You're just like, oh, my goodness, I just filmed for 36 hours straight, right? And so, you know, I think sometimes our friends can't imagine what it took to arrive at certain images. So they're like, hey, it's easy for you. But what I like to think about is, you know, like images are relationships. And they are relationships with the people who make them.

And then they're relationships with people who see them in the future. So like, you know, you and I are meeting because you have seen images that I've been a part of making. And then we get to have a relationship. We get to know each other. We find each other. And then we go forward into the future. And so I think of like how many different kinds of relationships one can have and that in some ways, you know, we get to make choices as camera people about how we interact, what we film, how long we film for. And so if you think of it like a relationship in some ways,

And then think of like, how do I want to be in this? Do I want to be in this? And so is it only a relationship of obligation, right? If you're asking me to be at this party and I'm obligated to film the whole thing, but maybe that person didn't say that at all. They were just saying, like, can you, I trust you, can you convey some of the joy of this, right? Then maybe you'll be like, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, when I look at Dick Johnson instead, I'm not a person who always has a camera in my hand. I've spent many years filming for work. But with my family, I don't film for very long or that often. And that was sort of the way I approached this film. I only filmed when I knew something was inevitable, you know, that it was going to be emotional, right? Like, we're selling our house.

it's going to be emotional. And those would be the moments when I would bring out the camera. And so, you know, I think we have to take ownership as image makers of our role in whatever relationship of images it is. So, yeah, don't let yourself be bullied, right? Don't do things you don't want to do in your relationship. Like, you know, and sometimes there's obligation and sometimes there's duty. And, you know, a lot of the things I think about are like, who do I owe? Who do I, who do I owe something to, right? And I, I owe if my sister is getting married, not that I have one, but if she were to be getting married, I would love to give her some images of that moment, but I would also love to be present fully as a human. And that was one of the things that we figured out with the funeral.

um that we shot for dick johnson is dead and and the producers i worked with great producers i have great relationships with producers because they are so critical to this process so maryland ness katy chevony marine ryan they helped me figure out we were doing a you know fake funeral for my dad i couldn't have a camera in my hand at all times at some points i needed to only be a daughter at some points i needed to be the person that all of my father's friends knew who needed to make contact with them. So it was a really, we did this for sort of really interesting choreography of when I would and wouldn't have a camera.

But even that, we couldn't all pre-plan. And the moment that you see my father walking down the aisle at the end of his funeral was actually filmed by Nadia Holgren, who's this very talented cinematographer, who was one of the team who was working. But she came up to me and took the camera out of my hands, um and film that shot of my dad so that i could be a part of my family as opposed to being outside of my family in my that moment and that's trust between like fellow cinematographers

um and i just you know there's like a real gentleness and now he's an old friend as well as being a great director and cinematographer and she just like you know sort of touched my arm gently and just took the camera out of my hands gently and i let her do it and she got a shot i know never could have filmed because I needed to be in that moment as a daughter yeah that uh you fucking got me with that one uh that oh geez I saw in a different interview you did where you had explicitly said uh the EMT scene was um scripted but like the when the date flashed that's when you got me that date title card I was like you mother and then I was on the ride for the next whatever it was 10 minutes and uh yeah fucking got me um so very very very very very very

very effective well the the the the funeral scene is kind of a jackass-esque you know in they literally in jackass three i think they fake a funeral and then you you didn't have him tumble out of the uh uh casket but i will say i assume it was i don't know if it was trying to be funny or whatever but the horn the the guy playing the horn is fucking hilarious and I felt so bad laughing at it but it's so funny and that you know it's not the sound that he actually made right oh okay okay okay that sound all right you know because we were playing in this movie with like what can cinema do what can cinema do for us like how does cinema transport us how can cinema put my father back together when he's falling apart and um we

sort of said, you know, like, we're going to allow ourselves to use any tool cinema can give us because we're desperate. My dad has dementia. He's dying. We're trying to keep him alive forever. We're trying to put him back together. So we'll do anything, right? Was part of it. And certainly, you know, Jackass was absolutely an inspiration. I totally forgot that they ever did a fake funeral. I'm sure I saw that movie, but I totally didn't remember that. But that's what I love also of like how influence sort of spirals around in us and we don't even remember that it mattered to us. But, you know, this Dick Johnson is dead is like inspired by like Charles Adams and Harold and Maud and Groundhog Day. And, you know, the list could go on and on. And I think any, any, anything that we make in some ways,

it like has its inspirations, but we're trying to like refashion it into something that matters a lot to us and hopefully to other people. people. But you do got to pay homage to people. And I definitely pay homage to the jackass folks. Yeah. To jog your memory in the film they did, the way that they got everyone was they said, oh, this guy just passed away and he's only got this one family member. And they were pulling people off the street and going, could you just sit in to make them feel okay? And then they and then they had Knoxville fall out of the out of the cot, out of the casket to all these random people. people. So your dad was a, or is a psychologist. He's a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist. Yeah. I get jumbled up. How did growing up in that environment affect your filmmaking? And how did it affect

this film specifically? Such a great question. You know, I think my father was really good at keeping his work compartmentalized from our lives. Like he was not one of those psychiatrists' fathers who was like telling you the psychology behind why you were doing something. He, and it's funny that I talk all this, you know, talk about images as relationships because his line about psychiatry was, you know,

that he wasn't sure it was possible to, to heal certain mental illnesses that, you know, that they are states, but that the relationship with the therapist themselves, the relationship between therapists and patients might have a shot at doing some healing. And so, you know, he would say it's the relationship that heals. And he had a lot of long-term relationships with patients. And, you know, I think that I think that that, I was aware of that over time. Oh, you know, that patient is still in my father's life. And, you know, and my understanding of what a doctor was was like,

oh, someone who like someone was sick and then they got better and it was over. But I had this sense of like their ongoing relationships that happen. And so that was part of it. But my dad is just like a fantastic listener, as are you. And when you leave the space, space to listen to other people, you know, things happen. And that is true in documentary work also. And so I would say like listening and compassion were things that were a part of who my dad

was and why I felt so lucky to be his kid and why I don't want him to die, why I don't want him to have dementia. I don't want him to disappear because. because he just always made me feel valued as a human. And that's a more rare thing among people than we would hope. Yeah. No, you almost verbatim quoted Jenna Rocher. She shot the Billy Elish documentary, interviewed her a while.

That's such a great job on that. Yeah, and she's done some amazing work outside of that as well. She's great. But yeah, she said listening and, I think listening and compassion were like the two main things that she said made a great documentary cinematographer. Wow. Well, and there you go. Like, think about that. That's not a camera.

That's not how much gear you have, right? Like, and you could do that with a cell phone, you know. A lot of that documentary, her documentary was shot on a cell phone by her parents. Oh, and you were watching that film saying like, how? like how did they get this right because it felt so intimate and you're like whoa how do I get to be in this space with these people and feel so much trust in the room wow that's cool I can't wait to meet her now that that you've quoted her in that way yeah yeah she's cool um so it's funny you uh kind of asking the same question twice just slightly different but you you had mentioned that you grew up at

Venice. And I didn't grow up at Venice, but I grew up in their school system. No way. Yeah, I went to the Pacific Union College High School. Wow. So when you Northern California. In Anguon, yeah. And so what's funny is going to that school, they were actually very kind about the fact that I wasn't their religion. Like, they made us take religion classes and if there was anything very specifically Adventist that they needed as like a what would you call like a homework or something like that or an assignment they would let me either not do it or do something else or explain a different version you know whatever the case maybe but I will say that going to that school did um really bring out my punk rock

factor I don't think I was I was into all kinds of music growing up but then like going to that high school made me like real fuck the system kind of person for some reason uh and they were all very nice and like the adventists are great but uh just there was there was kind of some cognitive dissonance going on that i was watching in these adults and i was just like you're talking about being you know the loving everyone's welcome but women can't be pastors got it cool cool cool cool cool you know that kind of thing did did growing are you still adventist do you still go to church I am not. I am no longer a seventh-day Adventist, but I, in some ways, like, it will forever be a part of me because it was part of the construct in which I was raised. And, you know, it's really cool to meet someone like you who was not a believer, but who was sort of witness to the world.

Yeah. Yeah. And I would love in some ways, like, I bet you have insights into me that very few people do because you might recognize me. I mean, I would agree with you in many ways. There's a lot of compassion. There's a lot of compassion in people who are trying to be religious or spiritual. Like, there's a wish for compassion. And then, you know, and I say this like across the board that, you know, humans come up with systems, constructs of how do we make sense of the world, and there is dissonance.

You know, try as we might to be anti-racist, we fail. Try, you know, all these different things that we know we must fight for in some ways. We recognize these moments of hypocrisy within ourselves or like literally last night, my nine-year-old kid said to me, I just read in the paper that it's code read for humanity with climate change. and he said what are we doing about it okay that was a hard conversation to have it's that's uh i could talk about this for another hour because he was crying tears were going and and and i was like felix you are right on we have not done enough we need to do more it's hard to know what to do as individuals like big powerful people and systems need to do things but we all need to keep changing

But, you know, I was sitting there inside being like, oh, my goodness. And it's, you know, we're all complicit in a lot of rough stuff in this world. And you try to explain to a nine-year-old and you're caught out, you know. So I think the hypocrisy, like if you're going to school within a system that claims to have certain values, there's just inevitable failure. of those values, right? And so that, you know, even those Seventh-The Adventists were saying in the 1970s when I was growing up, you know, God loves all people and we're all, you know, his rainbow children. It was like, those were racist times. And there was racism present. And as a kid, I was picking up on it and saying, like, what's going on here? Just in the same way that you were

picking up on the dissonances. And just in the same way, my nine-year-old kid is picking up on the distances of us and what are we doing with our lives right now because we're in environmental crises and what are we doing? Yeah, it's a the internet has done wonderful things and I'm probably the most tech savvy nerdiest amongst my peers and friend group, but I would almost do anything to burn it to the ground because I don't think um I don't think access to that kind of information especially when sensationalized is good for anyone under the age 27. I don't think a nine-year-old should be able to read an article that has synthesized a report to say, yeah, okay, yes, they did say code read, but your son, I am assuming, did not read

the report, just read whatever the person wrote, because I saw that exact thing. On Reddit, there was tons of, like, 20-year-olds going, like, why am I even in college if the world is going to be over in 2050? Like, how much, we talk about people getting locked up in the pandemic and being all fucked up in the head about it, but, like, what are we doing to kids when we're telling them at the very beginning work hard and you're going to have a great life also you're not nothing you know is going to exist when you become of age that is like the craziest thing in the world to me that were like i'm lucky that i grew up pre-internet so i know how to turn that off whereas these kids only only use the internet for input um seeing the hypocrisies amongst uh the church or anyone

else was something i saw people do it wasn't something i was reading about i could see it with my eyes there was still racism in the church it was very it was very subtle though it was very like oh you know that that families just needs extra help and I'm like no they don't they're oh you know that kind of thing but yeah it's that's that's a topic I could literally rant about for hours because well and I think you know this is this is this is this is what we must think about as image makers right when there's just like this sea of imagery how do we make meaningful work and what does it take to get through the noise of all of it and try to engage with significant questions, you know, all of those.

And, you know, sometimes it's like, oh, a really absurdist thing. Like you come up with an absurdist conceit where, like, it's going to be a comedy about death and dementia because, you know, it's hard. Like, people know it's painful. I don't want to face the pain. And, you know, I think transparency and respect for other people, like, that combination is pretty powerful. And, you know, I don't want to hide it from my kid until he's 27 that climate change is happening. And also, I need to equip him with an understanding that the choices in his life matter, that it's not, you know, we're not unsubernation.

suicide watch here, right? Right. But how do you do that? I think that's a work in progress. We haven't faced this before as humans. And we're going to make a lot of mistakes and we're clearly we've made a lot of mistakes. So, you know, back to our conversation about failure, right? And I think it's a lot to put on ourselves of like, how do I make a film that's going

to matter at this moment in history? Like, impossible to ask. and yet like let's try and how do we be you know how do we be both ambitious and kind and respectful of other humans in the attempt to do it yeah a friend of mine just made a documentary about the santa field test lab up here in semy valley and basically there was a massive nuclear meltdown in los angeles in the 60s and no one knows about it because Boeing and NASA I don't ever heard about. So it's called In the Dark of the Valley.

It's hard to get a hold of right now because it just came out. But even the timeliness of that was becoming more and more difficult. I couldn't release it during the pandemic. All right, another year out. Are they going to watch this thing about something that happened in 2019 even? That can become difficult. And in regards to timing, I think you were able to do something rather remarkable with this film because I've lost three grandparents, all who ended up coming down

with dementia and it's scared and I was I was too young to kind of get it but it um scared the shit out of me being around them and not having them my grandma I remember kind of towards the end she looked at me and she said you look a lot like my husband who had passed away before that and I do kind of look like him but like that I was 24 25 and it's still like it just it feels um it's really unsettling and And so to make an entire movie about it, first, I give you incredible props for that because that must have been incredibly difficult. But also the catharsis must have been great to finally have this product.

And I assume you accomplished the goal of sort of creating this ever-living document. Well, right, I did and I didn't. It's both a failure and a success. Sure. I like, you know, I like to say, like, it's called Dick Johnson is dead and it's a fiction film, but someday it'll be a documentary, right? And, you know, I give you respect and love for, you know, the loss of three grandparents to dementia. It's complete unsettling. It's a great word to describe dementia.

It's bewildering. It's, you know, just emotionally anguishing. And, you know, it's profound. It's just sort of profound questions that are raised by it of like, you know, sort of what is life and what is death? What is a self? And, you know, one of the questions that I think is, you know, like interesting in terms of cinemas, like, does the end of our lives define us? We who make movies, you know, there are beginnings and there are endings. And our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our. Are the endings of our films closed? Are they open-ended? Do they, you know, are we left with more questions than answers? All those kinds of things are what interests me in cinema.

And I do think, you know, in some ways, I think cinema is the way that humans grapple with mortality. And the fact that there are beginnings and endings and that there are, that we create stories, right, is a part of how we narrativeize. our existence, but in fact, you know, story, a story is sort of inadequate to, to even begin to describe what we're experiencing as humans and certainly inadequate to begin to describe dementia. But, you know, I didn't know there was a pandemic coming. With releasing the film, I realized to my pain how many people have someone that they love who has had or, is experiencing dementia. It's incredibly common.

And I think there's a lot of suffering that's going on in silence. So I'm really glad that I've made a film that has some humor in it and has lots of love in it and that sort of allows people to speak more about it. Because, you know, it's real, like how powerful and emotional the experience of it is. And someone like you, you,

you experienced it young and then how do you think about you know your parents future your future do you know like oof that was too much i'm going to you know not think about it or are there ways to think about it that feel emotionally safe who knows you know yeah well one thing that it did do was it kind of codified uh going back speaking of contradictions uh it it codified the idea that like i probably should be documenting more of those around me, especially those of age, while they're still themselves, just in case. Like even, you know, but even so, I actually misspoke to two of my grandparents had dementia. One of them got, had prostate cancer and similar, uh, uh, wilting happened.

And it was just that that kind of, um, was similar. It all felt the same, which is very strange. but one of them, with prostate cancer, we knew what was happening. With dementia, it's like, where does this end? Right. Is this like, is this forever now? You know, so it is a very powerful thing. And you pulled off a great magic trick with it because it isn't like,

I thought I knew what parts were scripted and what parts were documentary. And it's, that intertwining is very lovely. Thank you. And, you know, I nothing was scripted. That's the thing that's crazy about it. I mean, we used tricks of cinema. You know, we used a phantom camera. We shot in slow motion. But even like, you know, there's VFX, you know. And we decided to, to like, you know, but we hired actual ambulance drivers, EMT guys. And we were like, show us what it's like. And I hadn't storyboarded anything. I was like, what would I do in this situation? And if I draw, if I, this was happening, what might happen? So, um, you know, there was nothing, there were things that were imagined in the film.

Sure. But there was nothing that was scripted. And, and I think that is an affirmation of this idea of like, that knowing is impossible when it comes to the afterlife, uh, after death, um, right? We can't know. We don't know. And that was part of what, and even in relation to dementia, it's just like, what is the person inside experiencing?

I can't know what my father's experiencing. I have clues, there's some evidence. And yet, I really don't know. So it is a film about not knowing, but a film about valuing the people that we love and trying to like struggle through it with them with a sense of humor. Yeah, and that's, I think, just for people listening.

It is a very, I mean, hopefully people listening have already seen it because we just ruined a bunch of, yeah, but it is a very feel good movie. Yeah, there are plenty of spoilers here, but, you know, it was funny when we were, when the film was first coming out, we were really worried of like, should we even tell people that Dick Johnson is still alive? And, you know, I don't think you can spoil this movie because it's about, it's about the unexecisement. in the way emotions catch you off guard and we all know that's what life is really about like we don't see it coming we don't see love coming we don't see death coming we don't see the pandemic coming we don't see the end of this podcast ever coming I was about to say we've gone a little bit over after I made the joke earlier about they can go along one thing I did want to say before wrapping up that you had said the you had talking about the Adventist

you had mentioned oh they don't uh they don't drink alcohol and what was the other one they don't because don't eat meat well don't dance don't dance the one you left out that i was super surprised that they don't drink caffeine yeah post them i know i know that's near and dear your heart red bull guy i mean you know it's you know there's so many you know adventism like came into being um at the end of the 19th century and there's so many fascinating things that come out of it. It was like, you know, like, you know, Kellogg was an Adventist and they invented cereal because they didn't think you should be eating ham and, you know, all these kinds of, you know, fascinating sort of historical, like, oh, they didn't want you to eat cinnamon.

And it was like, why? Or pepper or eggs. Too exciting, you know, like, so there's always sort of like fascinating theories about health. And yet one of the things I find amazing is that Adventists are some of the, they are in the blue zones, right? They are among the long, living people in the world. So Adventists and their dietary choices like are making some sense somehow. So, you know, there are lots of things about Adventism that I'm so glad that I was raised with.

And then there are other parts of it that I'm like, not for me anymore. And it was really fun to sort of open up that part of myself and its relationship to cinema. And, you know, part of why early Adventists didn't like cinema, I think, was it was an alternative narrative. Like, you know, this version of the world's going to happen. There's going to be an apocalypse. This is a story.

And we are selling it as the truth. Yeah. So we don't want you to look over here too much at how narratives are built. that the fact that there can be different narratives we need you to believe this one and this one book is the Bible and this one leader is Ellen G. White and you know what I love about cinema is the multiplicity of it that there are many languages there are many ways to approach any subject and that we have sort of constant discovery and pleasure and joy in it and the other thing that's funny about Adventists, you know, in their early resistance to cinema. I don't think it's as

rigid now as it was in my childhood and certainly not the beginning of Adventism, but they were resistant to magic tricks. You know, because the beginnings of cinema. And I was a magician. They hated it. Yeah. I bet they did because it's, it's, I mean, it's so interesting, right, to think about how like religion itself is a form of a magic trick, right? Like, it's getting people to believe that something that you can't see is there or, you know, et cetera. And so, like, you know, you know, to say that that humans can be magicians is to say there are not prophets or they're not gods right um and so you know the early cinema you know from melias to people you know doing little like wind it up and look through a little viewfinder and see a ghost or a devil those things

were threatening to adventists and alternate alternate imaginings of what happened after people died, right? So I just sort of love that I was like finally felt free enough to include my history with Seventh-day Adventism in conjunction with the history of the love I have for cinema in one movie where it made sense to bring those two wildly different things together. And I've talked about this before, but I got a chance

to meet Harold Ramos. And I told him that, you know, watching Groundhog Day was part of how, like, it sort of freed me in some ways from the constraints of religion. And it was like it happened during the movie, like just sort of the endless repetition of like you wake up the next day and like, you do something bad and it doesn't matter or you do this. And somehow that like opened something in me. And that man cried when I told him that. And I, and I wish I, I don't know why that made him cry. I would love to know why me saying like Groundhog Day made me like finally feel more free from the way that religion had constrained me.

And I'd love to know, I wish I could ask him about that. I wish he wasn't dead so I could know more about that. But I love what you're saying about your background and your relationship to Adventism and to magic. and I was I was the worst possible person to be put in that school there's a whole story there I can't wait to read the memoir I would love to talk to you more about it yeah so we'll get you out of here but the thing that I'm I've actually changed the last questions that I ask everyone because they they've I've had a hard time articulating it and everyone always goes oh shit I don't know it changes every day so I've changed it now to two things from the last one which was

one thing. First one, off the top of your head, some advice that you were given in a, in a filmmaking capacity, or something that has, you know, affected your filmmaking that was, that really stuck with you. And one movie you recommend people watch. Oh, off the top of my head, I'm recommending all these sleepless nights, which is a fabulous Polish film that I just adore. That's a documentary about emotion. And it's really fun. And, uh, and And, you know, I think you just gave me some advice, like feel. Well, feel while you're working. I'm going to ride that cloud for the next forever.

Right? I think that's it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for spending the hour and a half with me. I really appreciate that. I loved that conversation. So much fun, Kenny. And offline, we're doing our Adventism and magic conversation.

Please. I'm all in. And let's set up at Zoom. Yeah, yeah, just, hey, I'm working from home. So whenever you want to sit down and talk again, I'm 100% game. I'm totally reaching out to you. I cannot wait. It's going to be good.

Frame and reference is an Albot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the F-At-Armack's logo was designed by Nate Truax of Truax branding company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard. by going to provideocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash Alibot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.