The Big Picture - A Fyre Festival Documentary Arms Race, and Bing Liu on Creating ‘Minding the Gap’ | Interview (Ep. 118)

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

Rob Harvilla calls in to make sense of the release of two Fyre Festival documentaries in the same week by Netflix and Hulu. Then, ‘Minding the Gap’ director Bing Liu talks about navigating the complicated and personal themes in his documentary. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Bing Liu, Rob Harvilla Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelley, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. The NFL Conference Championships are here, and on the site, Robert Mays is writing about why this year's Chiefs are the team that Andy Reid has been waiting for, and Kevin Clark breaks down the era of the old dominant quarterback. Also, don't forget to check out all of our sports video coverage. We've got Master Sports with Roger Sherman, Slow News Day with Kevin Clark, and NBA Desktop with Jason Concepcion. You can check it all outChief of The Ringer,

and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the wonder of documentary filmmaking. We have a very cool episode this week. In the second half of this episode, I have a conversation with the documentary filmmaker Bing Liu, who just so happened to have directed my favorite movie of 2018. It's called Minding the Gap. It is a beautiful portrait of three young men growing up in Rockford, Illinois, how skateboarding and abuse and complexity in emotional life in the middle of the country happens. Speaking of the middle of the country, though, coming to you live and direct from Ohio, I'm joined by The Ringer's Rob Harvilla. Rob, what's up?

Hello, I'm excellent. Thank you for having me as always. Rob, you're here because we're going to be talking about another documentary, actually two other documentaries that just so happen to be reaching America this week. They are both about the Fyre Festival, which was a real boondoggle, as I recall. Rob, can you just give us a little bit of context on the Fyre Festival before we start talking about these sort of warring documentaries between Hulu and Netflix? Yeah, the Fyre Festival took place in April of 2017. It was billed as the ultimate luxury music festival taking place on a private island in the Bahamas, once owned by Pablo Escobar. It was a joint venture between

a young entrepreneur named Billy McFarland and Ja Rule, the famed rapper, entrepreneur, hero, Ja Rule. And it was supposed to be two weekends, I believe. It was announced by this extremely ridiculously luxe promo video that was a bunch of models from Bella Hadid on down, sort of cavorting on this private island. I think Major Lazer, Blink-182, Disclosure, Migos, allegedly Kanye West were among the artists. It was, you could buy, you know, a bespoke villa for the weekend for like $50,000.

It was just the gold-plated Coachella, like just the ultimate, you know, a bottle of Moet, but a music festival. And it was a complete disaster. You know, it was just logistically ruined from the start and it was it turns out like a scam basically like a criminal enterprise like the fallout on social media it was just this huge burst of schadenfreude as all these eager people fly in from miami to the bahamas and get to the festival and they find out that their luxe villas are actually like FEMA tents, like actual hurricane tents with like one bed in them that's been soaked recently by a rainstorm. You know, there's no food. All the bands have canceled.

You know, there's no infrastructure down to like toilets. It's just, it's, as you say, just the ultimate boondoggle. And, you know, the instant reaction from Twitter is just like, this is hilarious. You know, this is young Instagram drivers getting what they deserve. You know, it was just a very gleeful, disastrous thing, you know. Thankfully and miraculously, like, no one was seriously hurt. Like, nobody died. Like, it sort of stayed in this zone where you could safely make fun of pretty much everyone involved. But the fallout was severe enough that Billy McFarlane,

the main dude behind the festival, is in jail now. Six years, I believe, for wire fraud. Connected to the way he had to keep getting money to try and keep this festival going long enough to run it and have it be a disaster. And he's now in jail, and rule you know is disgraced or further disgraced you know and it's quite remarkable that all of this can sustain two feature-length documentaries um debuting you know four days within four days of each other it's a rich text

it is it's a it's a fascinating thing because i remember specifically when this was all unfolding as i'm sure you do as most people who spend most of their time on the internet do. It was, you know, you mentioned the sort of schadenfreude that we all had watching it unfold, the sort of ridiculousness of the cheese sandwich that was meant to be sort of the luxury meal that found its way to Instagram. There were a series of Twitter accounts

that were documenting things that were unfolding in real time. It does feel like the perfect incident of millennial scammer, you know, the sort of intensity around those ideas. You know, the hipster grifter was sort of the native wound in this thing 10 years ago. And now this was like the knee plus ultra. And it's fascinating that two different documentaries are being made about it. I kind of want to talk about both the quality and differences in those films and also the idea of what it means for two streaming services to have a movie about the exact same thing in the exact same week.

So let's talk a little bit about one that is coming out on Friday, which is Christmas Fire, The Greatest Party That Never Happened. This movie was announced a couple of months ago on Netflix, and we knew it was coming. It was sort of in the planning. You were the planning. You were, you were aware of it, you were preparing for it. And then the second film of course is Hulu's Fire Fraud, but particularly Chris Smith's movie, you know, what did you make of it? And where do you see the biggest differences between that and the Hulu film? I think the Netflix movie is much better than the Hulu movie. I don't think

the Hulu is a disaster or anything, but Netflix is clearly a cut above. And that probably does start with Chris Smith, who did, I believe, American Movie, which is about 10 years old now, but which is one of the better documentaries of the aughts of that decade. He did Jim and Andy, the Jim Carrey, Andy Kaufman documentary, I think from 2017. That was smaller, but was really good. he's a cut above as far as just documentaries go. And I think that the Netflix doc just lays it out really thoroughly and really forensically, like, you know, the origin story of Billy McFarlane and how he met Ja Rule and their partnership and the way that the Fyre apps, Fyre Media started out as just sort of Uber for booking musicians. And then it just lays out really clearly and really enjoyably the drudgery of putting on a music festival.

Just how hard it is and how long it takes and how unsexy that work is and how fire festival is overall a disaster both from like a moral and like a criminal sense but also just in a logistical sense like the way it was doing from the start and they never thought seriously about lodging they never thought seriously about toilets you know they were doing all this in like a private island or what they claimed was a private island in the bahamas there was no infrastructure they just had no idea what they claimed was a private island in the Bahamas. There was no infrastructure. They just had no idea what they were doing and the hard work that's involved in doing it. And the Netflix documentary just builds that snowball. That's the wrong metaphor for a Bahamas music festival,

but it explains just the sequence of events that leads up to the cheese sandwich, which I just think very thoroughly and very enjoyably. It's well-sourced, both with people who are higher up and people who are more on the ground floor. It's a very thorough accounting of all of this. Yeah, and the one thing that is missing from Fire, the Netflix film, it does appear in the Hulu film. There's a very interesting story on the site right now about Scott Tobias, who profiled Chris Smith this week. But in his reporting, he learned about some of the differences, that primary difference being that Billy McFarland is not properly interviewed

by the Netflix crew, and he is properly interviewed by the Hulu filmmakers. And how he was interviewed and what he asked for is sort of this ethical football that is being pulled back and forth between these two movies. You know, Chris Smith said that Billy requested $250,000 to be interviewed. And then he asked for $150,000. And then he asked for $100,000. Chris Smith being an ethical filmmaker declined to pay Billy McFarlane to participate in this. The Hulu filmmaker said they did pay Billy, but that they didn't pay him that vast sum. They gave him a consulting fee, essentially. And then they shot back and said that the marketing team that known as Fuck Jerry or Jerry Media, social media influencing marketing team, were co-producers on the Netflix film.

And they also were the marketers behind the festival. And so they were also in some ways perhaps responsible for some of this mishegas that we're talking about here. And so what we have here is this fascinating dynamic between two movies that share a lot. And I think if you combined them both, you would have an incredibly vivid and almost perfect evocation of a total millennial nightmare. But with them separated, you do get in the Hulu film, we should talk about that a little bit. You do get to see Billy McFarlane talking in front of a camera and not just sort of captured during the making of the, uh, the making of the festival, which is what the Netflix film shows us. What did you make of Billy? And what did you make of the Hulu film?

Well, you know, I, if you're going to watch one of these movies, I'd say Netflix, if you're going to watch both of them, you know, this might already be ruined, but I would recommend Netflix and then Hulu. I think the Hulu works best as a commentary on, it's like a pretty bitchy subtweet of the Netflix documentary. And so I watched Netflix first. And when I saw Billy McFarlane on camera, like being interviewed for the Hulu documentary, like I had been trained by the Netflix doc to fundamentally distrust anything this person says in any context in which this person is involved, like willingly,

like if he, if he is a willing participant, if he is, you know, acquiesced to it, if he is involved, if he is on the payroll, then like the thing I am watching is fundamentally suspect.

Like, I don't think the Hulu thing, it's any kind of super secular ethical lapse, like not knowing anything about the way documentaries work. Like, it doesn't shock me or scandalize me that they paid him to be in this documentary. I don't think that ruins anything, but the Hulu documentary, it does. His presence and his involvement has, like, the paradoxical effect of making the hulu documentary just seem less legitimate to me i just i i spent the whole time watching it just trying to figure

out the angle you know like this is this is a scam within a scam like why is he doing this like the fact that he's in this and he there's there's there's an angle he's working here there's there's something fundamentally wrong with what I'm seeing. And the Hulu documentary, first of all, it was so distracting the way that documentary relies on clips from The Simpsons or Family Guy or The Office. Or like Billy McFarlane says, it was like a game of whack-a-mole. And they show a shot of a kid playing whack-a-mole. And Billy McFarlane says, yeah, one problem would come up and we'd take care of that. And there'd be another problem. And they show a close-up of a kid playing whack-a-mole and billy mcfarland says yeah one problem would come up and we'd take care of that and there'd be another problem they show a close-up of a kid playing whack-a-mole like just the visual language of the hulu film is like super excitable and super corny to me like i'm

slightly too old to be a millennial but like so i remember that that style was once referred to as mtv style editing like just this very hyperactive sort of corny approach. And so, yeah, I, this, this, the visual language of the who thing was off to me and,

and it's indictments of millennials. Like it's attempt to try and explain the fire festival is something that like millennials brought on themselves, you know, with their selfies and our Kardashians or whatever, like the angle, I think that the who doc is working and the way, the reason Billy McFarland might want to be involved is it does take the heat off him a little bit. It makes it more, not a thing that he did to

people, but a thing that people did to themselves. You know what I mean? Like it, it, it does sort of exonerate him in a certain way, because at end of the hulu documentary like one of the social media guys they ask him like whose fault is this and he says everyone and that's not untrue exactly but like whose fault it is is billy mcfarland but he's in jail for it and he deserves to be in jail for it and i do think that the netflix documentary does a better job of putting the blame squarely on him and like letting it radiate outward like making the argument that everybody is complicit in some way including the people who went to it in the first place but i the who documentary is you know sort of corny visual language and then the focus on indicting millennials as a group i was just sort of skeptical of it from the jump and i think

that affected the way that I took it ultimately. Yeah, there is an interesting dissonance between the two movies too that I noticed, which is, and I watched it in the same order that you did, the Netflix film and then the Hulu film. And I felt like there was something more artful happening in the Netflix film, certainly there. Chris Smith is obviously very, very good at what he does.

And it just is a little bit more elegant in the way he makes his films. But at the end of the Hulu film, there's also this sort of implication of the broader ideas of scammer culture. And then all of a sudden, very quickly, we're seeing like the image of Donald Trump. And that's become such an easy shorthand

to explain how we got to everywhere. I watched this very interesting movie that HBO aired in conjunction with Vice in December called Panic! The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis. And that was a very sophisticated, very access-reliant telling of how everything happened in 2008. And that movie arrives at a conclusion about Donald Trump. And that felt reasonable to me because in many ways, the populist movement is born out of outrage around whatever, the bailout for the banks, yada, yada. I'm not totally sure there's a pure connection between a con artist like Billy McFarlane, who has been around in America for as long as America whatever the bailout for the banks yada yada i'm not totally sure there's a pure connection between

a con artist like billy mcfarland who has been around in america for as long as america has been alive and the idea of us having donald trump as the president so even setting aside some of that sort of simpsons and family guy shorthand that they're using in this movie what did you think about sort of the broader implications that both of these movies are trying to make about who we are in 2019 no i agree I agree completely that I, I, the way that Hulu doc was going and the argument it was making, like I was braced for a Trump thing, you know, I was ready for it when it arrived. And I agree that that it's not,

that that's wrong. Exactly. It's, it's, it's, but it's, it's, it's a stretch and it's unnecessary and it is sort of a cheap way to bring, you know, your idea, tap it into the zeitgeist. And I don't think that you had to do that. I think there's already plenty to work with on a societal level. I think there are already plenty of broader points you can make

without dragging Trump into it. You know, it's always nice when you can watch a piece of entertainment that does not attempt to tie itself to politics right now in any way if it doesn't have to. And so, yeah, again again like i it's just for a couple seconds but the who documentary uses footage remember when there were like eight

teenage girls at a baseball game who were all taking selfies at the same time yes and like the announcers found them and started making fun of them and they became like this viral things like these girls are at like a diamondbacks and rockies game, you know, in April or whatever. It's just terminally boring. It's just let them live. You know what I'm saying? Like what they're doing is fundamentally more interesting than like a Paul Goldschmidt at bat or whatever. I don't know if that's a current baseball reference. No, that's great. You nailed it. I rolled my eyes at Donald Trump, but I rolled my eyes harder at like the constant selfie thing. You know, like everything also has to be black mirror. You know, everything has to go back to the fact selfie thing you know like everything also has to be black mirror

you know everything has to go back to the fact that you know the internet and our phone and twitter have melted our brains and that explains everything you know and that explains a person like billy mcfarland but as you say like you know it's certainly this is a digital update you know of the classic scammer story but this is not a new idea. You know, what's new about it is the scale and the delivery system and the instant sort of disaster of it and the instant sort of schadenfreude party that developed around it. Like, those are new and those are updated, but just the idea of a scammer,

the idea of just an illegal enterprise like this is a very new thing. He comes from a very long lineage and like trump is in that lineage for sure but like you don't need to reach for that every time and i i did appreciate that that netflix kept the focus you know where it was strongest so i want to talk a little bit about netflix and hulu but before we do that the other thing that's interesting to me about these two films is that they're both born of publications the netflix film is co-produced with vice and the hulu film is co-produced with both billboard and mike which i thought was kind of fascinating um obviously there were reporters covering this story in real time and those reporters are then used as sort of narrator figures in both of the

films um the the uneasy alliance between heavy journalism and heavy entertainment is unique here and the comparison has been made many times already and i think it in some ways it's very apt that this was the deep impact versus armageddon of our time and the fact that these two movies are coming out and they're both being released on streaming services uh i find fascinating hulu of course kind of surprise dropped their movie on Monday. And I think a lot of people watched it quickly. I have heard already that it is considered a huge success for Hulu. Just given the conversation they've driven to their platform, which isn't always nearly as buzzy as Netflix, what do you make of the sort of showdown that these two

companies are having? You know, I'm not a Vice lover or a Vice hater. You know, there's a fundamental alarm bell that trips in my head whenever I'm watching a Vice lover or a Vice hater. You know, there's a fundamental alarm bell that trips in my head whenever, you know, I'm watching a Vice product. But I do think that the Netflix doc, which Vice was involved with, I, you know, Vice, there were people who just aggregated everything that happened, right? There was like, here are all the wacky tweets coming out of a fire festival, you know, leading off with a cheese sandwich, you know, and like the villas and everything. Like there was that kind of journalism, you know, which is not noble, but which, you know, it's not a terrible thing. You know, everybody did that kind of thing.

And the Hulu documentary for me, the talking heads that were journalists were not hard reporting this subject. You know, I love Gia Celentino at the New Yorker. Like I think she had really smart, really funny things to say, but the journalists in the Hulu documentary were sort of watching from the sidelines. Whereas if I'm not mistaken, like Vice did do reporting, intense reporting on Billy McFarlane, like following the Fyre Festival and like uncovered some of the wire staff uncovered, like, you know, the wacky scam he had going where he was selling like Victoria Secret fashion show tickets with some 20-year-old kid in a New York City penthouse after the Fyre Festival. He was already on to the next scam. The Vice connection to the Netflix documentary feels a little more credible to me.

Maybe credible isn't the word, but they had more to do with the story than the journalists in the Hulu documentary had to do with the story. I'm sure that they did good reporting, like Bloomberg, the New Yorker, of course, but I feel like Vice had more of a claim to this story, and that it made more sense that they were involved. And again, we don't need to get into Vice's history. There's a fundamental skepticism I think a lot of people rightly have when they are involved. And that extends, as you say, to like the weird sub-PR battle that's also going on here. But yeah, I think that, again, the Netflix documentary was a little more credible, a little more in the thick of it in that sense as well.

Rob, thanks so much for explaining this ridiculous scammer apocalypse. Anytime. Thanks again to Rob Harvilla for explaining the Fyre Fest dueling documentaries. Now let's go to my conversation with filmmaker Bing Liu. I'm really, really, really delighted to be joined by Bing Liu. Bing, thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me. So, Bing, this is actually my favorite movie of the year, the movie that you made, My Name is Gap. I've been trying to evangelize for it over the last year, and I have neglected to purposefully ask you to be on this show because I was a little afraid of demystifying the wonderful film that you've made. I actually didn't read a lot of interviews with you. I tried to stay away from

it because I was really, really moved by it. Somehow I've gotten over whatever my sensitivities are. So I'm excited to talk to you about this. And I kind of want to start at the beginning, but I don't want you to have to repeat too much of what you've been repeating for the last 12 months. But specifically, I want to know when you knew Minding the Gap was going to be a film. Well, I was 23. I set out to do a project to get people like skateboarders engaged with violence in the home. And my idea was if I can get, I guess, hometown heroes, for lack of a better word, in different communities across the country to engage and talk about this stuff on camera. And then, you know, do some sort of experimental skate video or some you know long-form project then i could achieve that um where were

you at that stage of your life what were you doing uh i'd graduated uh university uh like a year and a half prior to starting the project i was a literature major I was just about to join local 600, um, to work in camera department. Uh, I was living in Chicago, um, traveling around a lot for various reasons, skate trips work, you know, um, and I had a couple of short docs under my belt. Um, when I was a teen, I think what I was more interested in was scripted. Um, but I think I just sort of fell into doing these couple of short doc projects and I just fell in love with nonfiction. And so I went around the country and, you know, because I think I'd had all these conversations and I felt like they just always happen in a vacuum. You know, I knew that a lot of young people were able to get to this place where they could talk about vulnerable feelings or they can talk about, you know, things that were traumatic that happened at home. But I wasn't seeing it, you know, done in this way that made it seem like, okay, we can actually have this be more public than we think.

So I went around the country and started interviewing people. You know, some people were famous, you know, to the extent that they were pro. Other people were, you know, just like influencers in the community. And sometimes I would just run into people that are really interesting, you know, really like influencers in the community and sometimes i would just run into people that are really interesting you know and we'd sit down and talk um but the pattern of uh violence in the home of a big rift between parents and and children was pretty clear so i had all this footage i was you know sort of just cutting things as I went along. And then I found out about Cartemquin Films because a friend of mine had a wife of his who was doing outreach work for one of their films. And she told me about this fellowship for, you know, mid-career documentary filmmakers trying to finish their project.

And I applied, I think, with two days left in the in the submission process deadline um got in and when i got in that's when i started watching car time films um you know it's the first time i'd seen hoop dreams any steve james work and i was like okay like i think this is like i want to do this film sort of in this form, you know, like character driven, verite. That's probably the moment where I think was a catalyst for what Mind in the Gap would ultimately become. And were you sitting on this, I guess, kind of vault or archive of stuff that you'd been filming throughout the stages of your life? Not really. Like I filmed a lot of stuff and it was always like for the sake of a project that I would put out. Um, so it wasn't a

lot of, I mean, I think what you're talking about is very, you know, reverse engineered. I actually didn't meet Kier until a year in when I went back to Rockford and I was looking for people to follow there. Um, most of that stuff was shot by other people. Uh, so that scene where Kier is getting into a fight at the skate park breaks his his board in anger. I was 18 and he was 11. I had no idea who he was. But then later when I did an interview with him, decided to follow him because he's so charismatic. And I saw my own story in his kind of right off the bat. Then time went along, I'm following him and Zach. For a long time, it was just a straightforward present day Barite doc. And then something happens in the film where the mother of Zach's child reveals him to be

abusive. So I have to think about how to ethically move forward. And from that, I put myself in the film. And because of that, I had to figure out how to put myself in the film. And one of the ways we did that was just building in who I was in terms of filming since I was a little kid. And so then that's when I went into the archival. But I was just looking for really just evidence and ways to tell the story of my own growth as a filmer rather than looking for Zach and Kier because I didn't really have, you know, I didn't know Kier. And Zach I hung out with a handful of times before I moved to Chicago

because he lived in a town over actually, a suburb of Rockford. So I don't know, that's a long-winded, that's a historical way to answer your question. It's interesting though, because casting is a part of documentary in a way. And like, I feel like people don't necessarily see that. And in some ways i feel like i couldn't see it when i was watching your film there's something kind of seamless about it and it seems like they're

you know everybody is kind of woven together very clearly um is there a version of this movie that featured not kier and not zach and two other people uh there's a version of this film that featured you know like a melange of people from across the country. Kiara being one of them. When did you decide to sort of abandon that approach? When I started working with Cartemquin, you know, and at that point, you know, it was just hard. I didn't have any funding. I was going to all these places like Portland, Florida, LA, New York, St. Louis, just on my own.

It was hard to keep following these people all over on my own dime in my own time. So it was sort of out of expediency that I just kept going back to Rockford, driving the hour and a half instead of flying to Portland, for example. What are those conversations like when you're talking to a young man or even a teenager and saying, like, I'd like for you to share intimate details of your life with me because for a film I'm making and you don't really know me. Like, how do you build trust with somebody, especially a young person, to make something like this? I think you just don't build it up. You don't build it up like that at all. You just ease into it.

You know, you just slowly ask more and more intimate questions. And I think if you do that, you know, and if you do it from a place that's not out of judgment, but out of curiosity, you know, and I think young people have a really sensitive antenna for that, you know, like where you're coming from, what your motives are. So that's what I did. You know, I just slowly kept asking more and more intimate questions without explaining to them what we're doing, except that, you know, they knew from like the Facebook page of the film that it was a film about skateboarders relationships with their fathers. So to a certain extent, you know, they weren't surprised that this isn't necessarily

about skateboarding. Um, so yeah, that's, that's just how it was. And sometimes, you know, they were just closed off. They didn't want to talk. Um, other times they would surprise me about how deep they would go. Did you ever get the sense that either zach or kira at any point were uncomfortable or unwilling to participate in the story as you were going along because it feels like it covers a pretty long period of time yeah i mean they would sometimes just flat out say no like i really wanted to um get at kira's uh you know like his, his life of dating and as the life of, you know, like women in his life. And, you know, anytime I tried to film him hanging out with girls, like it was, you know, he was just like, eh, no, you know, like, I don't, I don't think

it'd be a good idea for you to come, but then, you know, other times it's like surprising how much access they give me and how much they just don't care that the camera's there. So I don't know. I can't really speak for them about how and when they decide to give me access or not. But I do know that I think it felt good to have attention, to be heard, and to have your life be visible. Did you sense that they wanted to know specifically how you were building the stories and building the movie? Or were they sort of more blasé about what you were building the stories and building the movie or were they sort of more blase about what you were doing to to show them to the world there was an immense trust from them because i later found out how much they looked up to me how much they looked up to my

work um when i was a teenager you know making these things that influenced you know what they wanted to do like how they you know saw the escape videos they were making. They probably thought of it as like a experimental escape video and just trusted that, you know, uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't like, you know, throw them under the bus or something. What was the thinking behind making escape, experimental escape videos as a teenager? Was it because you said you were thinking of narrative filmmaking, was it just learning how to have a camera in your hands and figure out what that was like? Or were you leaning towards something different? I think it was about getting validation. Like that's the nugget of it all. I mean, yeah, you know, I really wanted to improve my videos. I wanted to, you know, be creative. I fell into an artsy or friend group

when I was a teenager, people that, you know, really valued a sense of just pushing the edge or, you know, doing, being of just pushing the edge or you know doing being different doing something different um so that's what i strived for and then you know i think in my mind being a filmmaker wasn't like i'm you know a vocational career path it was more like like a form of being an artist and so you know i looked up to people like harmony corinne you know people like link later who just just did their thing you know, I looked up to people like Harmony Corrine, you know, people like Linklater who just did their thing, you know, it just seemed like an extension of expression. I don't want to get too far ahead, but can you still see that as a future for yourself, potentially transitioning into making films like those guys? Yeah, I've always wanted to.

I mean, the first films I did when I was a teen, like the first one I remember doing, it was sort of a takeoff of Waking Life. I just took people that I saw as like the interesting, I guess like freaks and geeks of the Rockford community. And, you know, we sort of, you know, improv this philosophical conversation that bled from character to character driven by, you know, incidental events that would happen. So yeah, I mean, I could definitely,

they're always going to be an influence because of what they did for me, which has made me feel like my community or at least topography of how I was feeling as an adolescent was heard and able to be expressed. Have you heard from kind of Rockford at large since the film? I'm curious how the people who live there feel about the portrayal of their town.

Most people like it for the same reason that I think, in a weird way, Zach and Kier really liked being a part of the film in the sense that they just feel heard. I mean, Rockford is large. It's 150,000 people, but no one's ever heard of it. And the press that is written about it for the past couple of decades has been very negative. So I think they're just, you know, like really owning the film in many ways. Recently, the mayor and a couple other people just put out opinion pieces in the Rockford paper, you know, both praising the film and really liking that the film is shedding light on some of the issues in Rockford, but sort of making a case that they want to improve the community as well.

I guess that activist nature is an interesting aspect of the film because your original thinking around it was showing sort of a disconnect in families and the reason people start doing things that they do in their lives. Is it important for you, for your films to not just have people thinking about things, but to be trying to change things? Yeah. I mean, I, I remember I wanted to be a writer. Um, I wanted to be a writer, but, and teach English as a way to actually make money. Wow. That's a crazy idea. Like that was my idea going into, going into, you know, graduating high school. And it was, it was for the purpose of making a difference and changing people's lives in the way that i think it changed my life i think

a lot of stories a lot of books a lot of movies and a lot of music that i experienced as an adolescent really helped me survive um and you know i just thought you know film is a really great mass mass media sort of way of doing it. So it was always in the periphery of my mind, but it didn't seem attainable enough for me to actually pursue. So I think Binding the Gap comes from that spirit of trying to, I guess in essence, trying to give the younger version of myself or people like me when I was growing up this tool, this reflection

of their lives, I can help them. Who are the formative people for you? Who are the writers? Who are the, you know, it seems pretty clear that the mountain goats and John Darnielle and as it was a big influence, but were there writers that you were kind of modeling yourself after? Uh, yeah, David Foster Wallace has been the biggest. I mean, the way that he just deconstructs things and, you know, makes things seem so, I don't know, granular and ridiculous and funny and, you know, even though I couldn't control certain things in my reality around me, I could, I guess, you know, see beyond it and help myself learn what I can and can't control. How much of this project did your mother know about before you introduced yourself into the story? I'm curious, were you frequently talking to her and saying, here's what I'm doing and here's what I'm thinking and here's the idea of it? I wasn't. We became pretty estranged as I got older, as I got into my teen years.

I just spent less and less time at home. And then when I moved to Chicago, there was this one big fight that my stepfather had with me right before I moved. And he forbade me from, you know, staying in the house anymore. So once I moved to Chicago, it was like, I just kind of had, I didn't, I felt like I didn't have a family. Um, but when I started making the film, that's when I started coming to Rockford regularly and throughout the course of making the film, my mom finally decided to divorce my stepfather. Um, he was making it difficult. He was dragging it out. But she began living in her own apartment and I started going over there. And for the first time, I felt like I had a place to stay

that wasn't just like a friend's couch when I was coming to Rockford and needing to stay the night. And that was when I started trying to talk about the past, talk about everything that happened, trying to make sense of it with both her and my brother for the first time. It was so painful and difficult. You know, it was very much just like trying to, you know, have faith that, you know, this really bitter medicine is going to end up helping. But I think it was so difficult that it just, you know, those conversations never last longer than 15, 20 minutes without us changing the subject or, you know, leaving the room or something.

I mean, when i asked her to interview it was pretty late in the process kiera had moved to denver a year before i interviewed her i just told her you know i want to talk to you on camera about dennis you know my stepfather and she was like okay let's pick a day you know it's very simple um I think throughout, in the interview, I found out, you know, I think why she just, why she agreed to do it. But I didn't, yeah, I guess I didn't think much of it.

Did it ever occur to you as you were sort of spending more time with her and starting to rebuild that relationship that it helped you understand the film more and unlock something about the movie that you were trying to make? It didn't, no. It was just like a blurry, I mean, it was like a re-traumatizing experience, I think, for both of us. Many times in that interview, I just froze up and I think I just kept grasping onto the survival mechanisms

that I had developed over a lifetime to just, you know, keep on focus. I just, I almost felt like I was having an out of body experience, you know, looking at myself as a filmmaker and trying to just hold on to, hold on to, I guess, like the purpose of every question I was asking, just trying to get her to keep talking. Uh, no, I mean, I had no idea how it fit into the film. I just had, I, you know, like many of the shoots that I went on, I was like, you know, I trust that this is going to be very useful in the film. You know, I understand that most of storytelling and documentary filmmaking is in the editing. So, you know, we'll figure it out. How much did Keir and Zach know about how much of your life was going to be in the film? Did

you say to them, you know, I'm also trying to find ways to communicate about my life? Not beyond, not beyond what you hear in the, you know, those moments in the film where I, you know, reach out and give them something about myself and the question that I'm asking. They were both very surprised when they saw the, when they saw the fine cut and, um, you know, saw how much of my story was central to the story. Can you give me a little bit of the timeline there about when you had a cut

and you started showing it to the world and then leading into sort of festivals, seeing it and then it becoming a public document. Um, when does that all start to take shape? Uh, well, I mean,

I was always cutting along the way. it was sort of a bedroom project um i think the first real rough cut screening i had was summer 2015 at cartemquin and then from there i just kept having rough cut screenings you know um are you working as a camera person on television shows at this point yeah i was like was like, you know, being a second AC on like Shameless or, you know, Sense8 or whatever at the time. And so I'd use all my free time to just chisel away at Mind in the Gap. What did you think the future of a movie like this would be at around that time? Was it like, I'm going to submit to Sundance. I want this to be something that the world sees. It'll be on a streaming platform. Or were you just like, this is a

very important personal thing to me? It was sort of somewhere in between. I didn't have any, I guess I didn't have any confidence that we would get into Sundance or a festival like Sundance until I met Josh Altman and showed him a rough cut in like middle of 2017. He took a look at my rough cut and then i gave him a bunch of transcripts and then um from there he was like i think we could get this into sundance and that was the first time i'd you know thought that oh it might actually be possible because he had cut several

films i'd gotten to sundance and you know i trusted his judgment can you tell me just a little bit about steve and working with him and trying and what he kind of imparted to you? Yeah, he actually, it was more like he found me through seeing a cut of mine in a gap at the recommendation of Justine Nagin, who was the executive director of Cartemquin at the time when he was looking for young diverse filmmakers to do america to me with him and so we had coffee um middle of 2015 and uh he hired me soon afterwards and then we spent a year plus you know doing america to me so that takes us into mid-2016 um we start finding out that you know we're close to getting funding from uh pbs and at that time um we were like okay this film is like becoming something that's viable in the marketplace that

you know might be able to get out into the world in a major way we should ask steve to come on board as an ep and that's when i asked him and he immediately said yes um and then he just kept looking at cuts anytime he had free time which wasn't that often um and then you know he was a great guiding force especially in the distribution process you know trying to figure out how we're gonna do this cross distribution between pov um our broadcaster and and hulu which is sort of you know newly coming into the into the game in terms of original docs. I've been thinking a lot about what must the note process be like for something that is

so highly personal, you know? In Verite, obviously, there's something kind of journalistic about it and observational, but you're blending that with something so memoristic. And what is it like for someone to say, like, well, I don't think this part works about something that is very personal to you? I think in a way, I mean, even beyond the rough cut screenings, I just, I kept showing the film to people. And I think it helped in a way because by the final year, I just saw myself as a character, you know, it was just kind of easy to separate i think the reason why uh i was able to keep that distance was because i didn't i think almost to the end i didn't want to be i was so scared that it was going to be seen as a personal doc that you know in a way that would make it seem navel gazing or something or you know self-indulgent and so because that fear that fear

drove me to just always try to see myself as a character and you know try self-indulgent. And so, because that fear, that fear drove me to just always try to see myself as a character and, you know, try to think about the purpose of like, why I'm actually in the film. At what point did you realize putting it into Sundance would put it at kind of like, was it, this would be at sort of at a higher altitude, the radar would be a little bit wider for it. And what was it like to kind of realize that a lot of people were probably going to see your movie? I don't know. didn't i always tried to hedge against expectations so you know getting into Sundance was like oh my god you know like we did we i freaked out you know but uh yeah i think even now i just tried to you know um remind myself this is my first time doing this

i don't know how this all works or what any of this means. Obviously Sundance has a lot of buzz and hype for independent filmmakers, but yeah, I mean, I didn't know what was going to happen. Did anything significant come out of the movie at any time? I'm kind of curious if there were either storylines or ideas that you felt like didn't fit or wouldn't work with the story that you were trying to tell? I mean, Josh, when we first started working together, he was consulting and he told me to cut a version of Kiera's story on its own and then cut a version of Zach's story on its own.

And I did. And they're like, okay, these are working. And then he was like, cut a story, your own story on its own. And I was like, you know, it was less obvious how it was going to work. So he was like, are you, would you be prepared to, you know, cut yourself out of the film? And I was like, no, not really. I think it has to be in there. So when you cut the single stories for Kieran, Zach, were they at feature length or just sort of in what you had in the film? Uh, they were longer than, you know, there's more, there's always more scenes. We had,

you know, I had just a ton of scenes that didn were longer than, you know, there's more, there's always more scenes. We had, you know, I had just a ton of scenes that didn't end up making it. Some are really powerful, like Zach and Nina going to get, you know, Nina, um, induced for pregnancy.

She was a week late and then they botched her epidural and she flatlined and died and it was really traumatic. And she felt like, you know, she really missed out on that moment of like giving birth and holding your child. She just sort of like woke up, you know, and was like, what's going on? So things like that.

There was one major storyline that I followed for a few years and ended up cutting in the final year. And that was this 13 year old boy, Max, and his father, Rick. So Rick would just drop off 13 year old-old Max to go hang out and skate with Zach and Kier. And so you're thinking like, oh my God, is this like good fathering or is this like, you know, a little bit, you know, too laissez-faire? But then you realize, you know, his dad is a really thoughtful person. You know, he grew up skating. He grew up with a lot of trauma in his own household and you know he admits to having hit max um and he you know really represents this father who can analyze and you know speak for like how parents can just make mistakes and how if they're not careful they can

repeat the patterns of what happened in their own childhoods totally the theme of the film but i think like ultimately it was, they didn't have much of an arc. They were so special and unique, but that's an example of something that I had to slowly and just continuously struggle with through the end, which is putting story first.

We had so many issues I wanted to delve into, but to put story first is what ultimately made the film work and probably the best example is um kiera's racial identity for the longest time people really wanted to take race out of it because they were like it's too distracting you know there's too many themes and it's mostly about parenthood and fatherhood and you know all these things but this racial aspect is just like you know skewing it um there's no room but i think what that what they were responding to was that um you know it was just kierre sort of speaking almost like in a stilted you know issue driven way about race because i

just kept asking him over the years like what is what how do you feel about being a black scape or how you feel about your friends you know like saying that thing that they just said um and i think it was always like academic in a way and then once the film was sort of working near the end of 2017 um it was like well what's kira's story you know it's like he moves out of rockford it's all the steps that lead towards that moment and it's him sort of having this cathartic moment where he finally sort of makes peace in a way with his father. So like, what if, what, you know, and he said a couple of times that, you know, his father taught him these lessons. Like, what if that's the key? You know, so I called him up, this was in November. We were like, you know, rushing to picture lock. And I was like, Kira, what does your dad tell you

exactly like about about about growing up being black and uh he had all these things to say so i bought a plane ticket the next day i flew out to denver um did one last pickup interview with him and you know massaged it into um all those scenes that really speak to him uh sort of growing into his racial identity and no one's ever really complained about you know the racial theme since it seems completely ever really complained about, you know, the racial theme since. It seems completely logical in the movie when you watch it too. I mean, it's also just like a representation of people who live in that town or

nearby. And if he's black, then exploring that seems to make sense to me. Yeah. I'm sure you've been getting this a lot, but I'm, I'm curious to know specifically why you think there's a little skateboarding boomlet right now happening in movies and what that, is that just the generational timing thing? It's just a coincidence,

but what do you, cause your film is not a skateboarding film per se, but it's so endemic to the story. I'm curious why you think this is happening. I do think it, I think it's just coincidence. I don't, you know, I feel like I'd be plucking at straws and, um, sort of, uh, you know, fabricating some sort of connection there. I think it's pretty just coincidental. I do think it's interesting that there's a very New York-centric skate culture film, a very LA-centric skate culture film, and then Mine in the Gap, which is sort of outside of those big cities.

What is the skating communities, what are they like in sort of the middle of the country? Because those are not the Harmony Corrine skating cultures that we've seen. They're not the Spike Jonze skating cultures that we've seen over the past 20, 25 years. Like, did you sense that they had their own identities after you'd been talking to skaters for this project from the very beginning? In a weird way, they didn't. They were missing that. They felt like this empty, vacuous feeling of skate identity. They looked towards California and New york for you know who

to be as a skateboarder um and i think you know that uh symptomatic of something deeper it's a symptomatic of you know maybe this sort of um midwest complex of you know not feeling like you're you're in the best place in the country um and i think that extends the skateboarding um but i don't think it's all But I don't think it's all, I also don't think it's just, you know, I think like the identity complex comes from actual socioeconomic factors. You know, there's just less opportunity

and less going on sometimes. But I think that it's like how I sort of am always going to identify with. And I'm glad Mind on the App exists because I think, you know i just think about like that 15 year old boy in rural arkansas at his like local parking lot skating with like duct tape around his shoes you know like that kid uh you know it's just as much the core of skateboarding as you know someone wearing a supreme shirt in new york you know like yes

maybe more than that kid. What's your relationship to Zach and Kier like right now? It's good. We just spent a week at Cinema Eye in New York. It's always changing. I mean, Kier's pretty young. He's 22. I just turned 30.

So he's just playing music, living in Phoenix, Arizona now. Just got a new job. he has some sponsors now uh so i think he's just you know being young and figuring himself out uh zach is he has had some life situations of you know are making him grow up a little bit more he's having a second child with sam who uh he's engaged with now. They just bought a house. I don't know. I mean, I think here more recently has just really appreciated being in the film

and the whole experience and all the experiences it's given him this year in terms of travel and meeting new people. And Zach, Zach and I, I'm excited to see how our relationship is going to develop over the years. Um, you know, just because so much of what I do with press and interviews, you know, deals with talking about these issues of domestic violence and violence in the home. So he knows my stance on it. Um um but i think he really appreciates that you know i don't i don't villainize him i'm not you know blaming him exactly um do you sense that he has there's

been any kind of enlightening factor for either one of them around the ideas that you were trying or trying to communicate or just that they are who they are and they kind of are continuing on their path despite being portrayed in a movie, which is, I presume, a profound experience for most people. I think Kier definitely has been affected. But I think, you know, people need to sort of learn on their own in a way. I feel like in the way that therapists do sometimes, I was just a mediator to try to like get Kier to sort of see what he needed to see himself. And the most explicit thing that he always says is, you know, I used to be so scared of expressing emotions.

I used to be so scared that people would make fun of me. Um, but now I'm just, I feel so comfortable, you know, I just like say what's on my mind. I say what I feel and it feels so much more healthy. Um, in terms of emotional expression, um, you know In terms of emotional expression, you know, Zach talks about how, you know, some of those things that we've talked about in the film is very atypical. Like he's never talked about anything close to that vulnerable in his regular life ever. And, you know, he hasn't like become this open, emotional person per se, but to me personally, you know, he reaches out like once a month and, you know, lets me know what's going on internally in a way that I never noticed him doing when we were making the film. You know,

I think for a long time while I was making the film, I thought like, oh, this guy just doesn't maybe operate on an emotional level like Kier Maybe, you know, I, I might, but I think it turned out, you know, especially through that one interview in the film that, um, he does have that inner life. It's just repressed under many, many layers of,

um, I don't know, something. Did you sense that the movie would have a kind of radicalizing effect or that that therapeutic idea that you're talking about could be happening in real time? Or is it only with, you know, some, some distance from it and knowing him later on that you see that that was at play yeah i think people maybe think of therapy as these like really cathartic um like

stilted moments um of like crying or like having a breakdown but um you know therapy is sort of like an exercise you know i think in the same way that we sometimes there's some people go exercise their bodies to stay fit physically. You know, therapy is very much about exercising your soul in a way, exercising your emotions to maintain, you know, the other gears and the oil. So I forgot your question. That was a great answer it struck me well at the end of the film that it felt a little bit like it could be a seven up situation in which we like return to these figures seven years from now 12 years from now whatever has that crossed your mind of finding ways to re-explore your inner life with their

lives too yeah it has I think the surprise factor is no longer there. So it's like, you know, I think that'll be a challenge to go back and do that. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely open to that. I do think about that sometimes, but I'm the type of person who just sort of lives project to project. And I think if it seems right in the future, I think it'd be worth re-approaching. So you mentioned American to Me, which is a series

that you worked on with Steve James. I'm curious how you pick your next project as a filmmaker, this being such a personal story and being so clearly divined by experience in your life and then seeing people, how do you make the next choice to say, this is either in keeping with something thematically in my mind, or I want to try something completely different or new? Well, there's a project that came to me in early 2017 from a company here in LA called Concordia. They wanted to explore possibly doing a film about these gun violence reduction programs in Chicago that, um, you know, teach trades and also life skills to young men, most identified as, you know,

being involved in, um, what's happening in Chicago neighborhoods. Um, so I did a short development piece, you know, shot some, went out to LA. That's how I met Josh Altman. They had worked with Josh before and they assigned me to him and we worked really well. But through that process, you know, I really latched on to this sort of like emotional, you know, behavioral work that they were doing within the program. And that I, you know, found compelling enough to pursue making a feature film on. josh and i became co-directors and we got funding and started shooting um earlier last year um so that's what you know the next project is going to be and then there's another uh project that came my way um more recently about millennial love and intimacy and that's something that really interests me because,

again, it goes back to something that I feel like I would have wanted to see when I was growing up, not really having a guidebook for some of these things, like what love is, what healthy love is. And these things take so long, so you're just living in these themes. And so it sounds nice to be living in the theme of love. That's interesting. I mean, I wonder how you build the tension around a story like that too. You know, that's one of the gifts of your movie right now is that there is like, there's something that keeps drawing us back throughout the film that kind of, there's almost like a mystery box element in some ways to try and understand what this movie is really about and saying until you get about halfway through. How do you intend to cast a movie about millennial love?

Is that on Craigslist? How do you find people who can communicate? Well, it's like with all documentaries. It's about how emotionally open they are, how on board they are, how much they understand like what they're actually signing up for. But for the sake of this project specifically, you know, without going into too much detail, you know, I believe that love exists as a cycle. And that's the thing that is the common thread between, you know, not just my generation, but most generations that I've, you know, come to see.

And so it's about casting people in different stages of that cycle. And there's always going to be the natural anticipation and tension of knowing whether or not this is going to work out or not, this relationship or this type of love that's happened. I want to ask you a little bit about um the way that a movie like minding the gap is evaluated by the public um you obviously won a prize at sundance you probably made the best reviewed film of 2018 and now you're into award season i'm curious what it's been like to see um your this very personal film like kind of go into the horse race a little bit and what it's like to

have it talked about in this way has that been a bit um strange or disassociating at all for you yeah it is a little dissociating but um i think that's where i go back to david foster wallace you know i think about his experiences on the cruise ship or at the illinois state fair or at the adult video awards i'm like okay like this, like this, I'm, you know, it's really uncomfortable. Um, you know, it's awkward because like you're pitting competition against art. And, uh, you know, so I just spend a lot of my time just deconstructing things in my mind and, you know, making awkward jokes with other filmmakers. So, um, being, I end every episode of this show asking filmmakers,

what's the last great thing that they've seen? I'm curious. What's the last great thing that you have seen? Shoplifters. Yeah. I finally saw Shoplifters. Speak on it. Last week.

It is so amazing. Like, it's just, you know, it's so warm and loving. It's like this film that, you know, doesn't, I feel like there's so many films about really cold, uninviting worlds. This world is just sort of like the normal world that I think a lot of us sort of know. But the love in the characters and the striving for love and warmth in the characters is so heartwarming. It's like a family that I would want to live with. That's a great way to end this, Bing. Thanks so much for doing this. Thank you.

Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture. Thank you to Bing Liu and to Rob Harvilla. Please tune in next Tuesday morning. It will be January 22nd, and we will know who the nominees for the 91st Academy Awards are. Amanda Dobbins and I will be here breaking it all down for you. See you then.