The Big Picture - 'Endgame' Reigns in Theaters, While Netflix Rules at Home—What's the Future? Plus ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile’ Director Joe Berlinger | Interview

Episode Date: May 7, 2019

We discuss the continued dominance of ‘Avengers: Endgame’ at the box office and the ramifications for wide-release movies and smaller festival darlings alike (1:30) before analyzing Zac Efron’s portrayal of Ted Bundy (26:40) in Netflix's ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile.’ Then the film's director, Joe Berlinger, joins the show to discuss his documentary work, his second narrative film, and its companion documentary (31:40). Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Amanda Dobbins, Joe Berlinger Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Season 8 of Game of Thrones is underway, and you can stay up to date with the Ringer staff as we make our way through the final episodes of the series. On the podcast side, listen to Binge Mode Game of Thrones with Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion, The Watch with Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald, and a pre-capable series on the Recapables feed

where we'll make predictions on episodes to come. In addition to our Sunday night Twitter after show called Talk the Thrones, our YouTube channel has tons of other Game of Thrones related content, which you can find at youtube.com slash theringer. And for even more Thrones coverage, head over to theringer.com. I'm Sean Fennessey. And I'm Amandabins and this is the big picture a conversation show about life in the end game and it certainly feels that way because there are not a whole

lot of movies out in the world right now at least not in movie theaters later on in this show I'll be talking about a movie that is on Netflix it is called extremely wicked shockingly vile and evil it is sort of a biopic of the serial killer Ted Bundy, and it's directed by Joe Berlinger, the extraordinarily successful and thoughtful documentary filmmaker making his second narrative feature film. Interesting conversation with him about some of his struggles making Blair Witch 2, Book of Shadows, a movie we have long forgotten about, and making this movie, which features Zac Efron as Ted Bundy. But Amanda and I are going to talk a little bit about the movie that is dominating the world and kind of what that means.

We mentioned this last week, what Avengers Endgame's success means for Hollywood in general. I actually felt it more acutely this weekend. The movie, of course, is over $2.2 billion worldwide. It has made more than $645 million in the United States. It made $145 million this weekend, which would be an extraordinarily good opening weekend for virtually any other movie on earth. And it just doesn't seem like there's much else going on

in movie world besides this. Amanda, I didn't see any movies this weekend. There weren't very many movies to see. Did you see a movie? I certainly tried. And I looked at, you know, we live near the Hollywood Arclight, one of the great movie theaters in Los Angeles. And I queued up the listings and it was like 95 showings of Endgame, Ugly Dolls, which is not the film for me and my

husband. I'll just put it that way. And, you know, basically nothing else. There was Longshot and we'd already seen Longshot. And Longshot would have been a perfect alternative if I hadn't already seen it. Counterprogramming. Yeah, but otherwise, I think there were like five movies showing at the Arclight. Yeah, and I think the thing that's tricky is it's not that there are no movies showing anywhere.

If you work hard, you can go to repertory theaters, you can go to smaller theaters. There are fewer of those than ever, but the fact that there are fewer movies actually being released into theaters, I think, is notable. And Ugly Dolls, Longshot, and The Intruder being the big studio releases this week all struggled. Ugly Dolls made $8.5 million. Longshot made $10 million.

The Intruder made $11 million. Now, The Intruder is released by Screen Gems, this division of Sony that tends to do very well with African-American-themed thrillers and comedies. Longshot is a Lionsgate movie. Well, we loved a Longshot. We advocated pretty hard for Longshot. We devoted an entire episode to Charlize Theron. That didn't do that well. Ugly Dolls, I don't know.

You know, even by my standards of support animation, it didn't really cross the threshold of interest for me. And because of that, because of the fact that these movies didn't really connect with audiences, you get the feeling that Endgame is continuing to kind of overwhelm. And it's not Endgame's fault. It's not Disney's fault. It's not anybody's fault. It's just, it has created this open, this sort of sinkhole of content in a way. And I think part of this might be, there's a little bit of Game of Thrones going on here too. That remains sort of the cultural event going on around us. I guess so. It's a little chicken and egg, right?

Because if you want to go to the movies and you've already seen Endgame, you don't have that many options. And also, at the same time, people really only go to the movies now to see things like Endgame. We talked a lot about Longshot, which is a movie you and I both really loved. And it's just a killer Friday night at home, rent a movie, date night situation. So I do think to your point, there are a lot of people like, well, there's Game of Thrones. There are other things that I can watch at home

with my elite entertainment system with everything at my fingertips so I can wait. And I don't need to go to the theater to see Longshot. So in that sense, I understand why the theaters are like, okay, well, we'll just do 95 million Avengers showings every day because it's the only thing that gets people to the theaters. But we are in this vicious cycle where people aren't really going and then the theaters aren't really serving.

And yeah, I don't know how it ends. I mean, I have some thoughts, but... Yeah, I mean, I'm fired up for my first 4K at-home viewing of Ugly Dolls with my Sonos Beam. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be crystal clear. I don't know where it goes either. I mean, obviously, there will be more and more event movies and fewer and fewer smaller movies. That's been happening for the last 30 years.

That's not going to change anytime soon. Whether or not there are fewer and fewer companies making these movies, I think, is notable. We've seen a lot of shuffling with companies like MGM and Annapurna teaming up to release films going forward. There's some questions about the future of Lionsgate, whether Lionsgate will ever be purchased. There was a long piece in the New York Times about Paramount and Paramount's history a couple of months ago. You know, all of these companies, they need big movies. They need big, noisy movies. You know, Ugly Dolls exists because STX was in search of IP

that they could create not just a single movie, but a series of films and merchandising opportunities and collaborations with fast food restaurants. And, you know, the way that these movies happen now is part of this daisy chain of essentially capitalist creativity, for lack of a better phrase, puts us in a tricky spot. On the other hand, there is something kind of fun about tracking the box office success of a movie like Endgame, which is like a true blue phenomenon and is now

the second highest grossing movie ever made in 11 days, which ticket prices are certainly higher than they were when Titanic was released and when Avatar was released, yada, yada. But even still kind of a crazy achievement. Avatar made $2.8 billion internationally. Do you think that Endgame is going to cross that threshold? And if it does, is that just sort of meaningless? Does it notable in any way?

Can I ask you a question? Sure. How many times has your sister seen Endgame just twice just twice yeah do you think that she'll see it again i would guess so okay because she keeps the second time she she identified a few new things that she noticed i'll say you know they're the russo brothers have started to give interviews and they have started to address some of the potential easter eggs for the marvel heads out there and i feel like that's now going to... There was a rumor this morning about Namor, the Submariner. Are you familiar with that character?

I don't know what you're talking about. What about Captain Britain? Do you know about Captain Britain? Keep talking. Okay. Well, apparently there are insinuations about those two characters, which are somewhat important Marvel characters, whatever. I didn't notice that stuff at all the first time. So now that that stuff's coming to the surface, I think people are gonna be like, oh, I'll go back.

But I think maybe what you're alluding to is will it have that four or five time attendance that a movie like Titanic certainly did. Yes. I don't know. Things move so much faster nowadays. That's true, except not at the movie theater as we learned this week. And I don't know. We'll talk a little bit more about Detective Pikachu. Yes, Pikachu coming. Oh my God. Whether or not Pikachu has an audience and serves certain needs, which like apparently it does,

God help us all. I don't know that it will dethrone Endgame. So I think I do. If your sister is going to see it a few more times and if they are doing this Easter egg thing and it's the only option, I think that it will, it'll beat Avatar.

It just also seems like it would be fitting for it to... They have just built such an empire and everything was constructed for it to beat all of the records and be the biggest movie of all time. So I'm just kind of like, well, yeah, probably. I got to say, I watched the trailer, the second trailer for Spider-Man Far From Home this morning. And you know I'm a huge Jake Gyllenhaal stan and I was probably more excited for that movie than I ought to say, I watched the trailer, the second trailer for Spider-Man Far From Home this morning. And you know I'm a huge Jake Gyllenhaal stan.

And I was probably more excited for that movie than I ought to be. And then I started seeing a lot of the stuff they were talking about. And then Nick Fury is in the trailer. And it's like Spider-Man's got to save the world. And I did have a little bit of that exhaustion. I was like, we just did this. We just did this. And now we're doing it again.

And the word multiverse was used in the trailer. Sure. Though every single time you talk about reading comic books, I feel the same way. But that's like a rich source of interest for you. And you have been a comics consumer for many years. So in a lot of ways, they have just succeeded in turning this into the comic bookification of movies. Like we I know that they we've talked about how they do that visually and in terms of plot lines or whatever, but just consumption patterns and what an audience expects and how they're invested in it and restarting it. Like, here we are.

They did it. It's it's a massive achievement, even if it's maybe not how you personally like to watch movies. Yeah, it's an acute frustration because I like comic books, but I love movies. And I want more movies. So, you know, I'm not down on Far From Home. It was just notable that in a three-month window, we're just going to reset. And then there's a multiverse problem that we're going to deal with. Let me ask you this.

Through the first four months of the year, there are nine movies that have grossed $100 million. So let's do a little pop quiz. How many of those nine movies? So you put this on the outline, but I didn't Google it. Thank you. Yeah, here I am. So off the top of my head, obviously Endgame, Captain Marvel, Us.

Yes. Okay. So there we go. That's three. There's probably an action movie that I forgot about. Have I seen any of these movies i genuinely don't know it's possible you haven't seen any of them which is kind of amazing did apollo 11 make anybody apollo 11 made eight million dollars which is quite good for a documentary yeah i don't know people like space do you want to keep brainstorming here? Name one and I'll see what I'll do.

Number nine is the Lego Movie 2 colon the second part. Oh, yeah. Okay. That movie made $105 million at the US box office. That seems low. It is considered quote unquote a failure. You know, whatever that means in the parlance of Lego movie successes. This is the fourth Lego movie in about five years. So they may have overstuffed

the ballot box on this one. The Upside is number eight. Oh, right. Which is secretly the movie hit of the year. Are there more January movies hiding that I forgot about? A couple.

One that is very notable. That is Glass. Oh, yeah. Which feels like it was released five years ago. Yeah, this is the thing also where anything before the Oscars just feels like it belongs to last year. But that's true.

That does exist. You know, it wasn't the case last year. You know, last year we had Black Panther. The year before that we had Get Out. It felt like there was a little bit more happening kind of in the first four months of the year. This year is dominated almost entirely by Avengers Endgame, Captain Marvel, and Us to a lesser extent. The other movies on the list are Shazam, which did well. Oh, yeah.

How to Train Your Dragon, The Hidden World, which I believe is the third installment in that series, and Dumbo. Dumbo made that much money. $109 million, which is also considered not as successful as Disney was hoping it would be. Right. And that's going to lead us into the Aladdin and Lion King conversations later this summer. How many of them are doing just in one year? It's perhaps too much.

Yeah. There's something to that about kind of how much of one thing people can take with Marvel that people could take three Marvel movies a year. Can they take three Disney live action remakes a year? We're going to find out. Yeah. Any other, I mean, it's just a weird time for the movies. You know, there is, we're waiting on the rise of Skywalker and there's going to be

some stuff this summer that's going to do well. But as we mentioned a couple of weeks ago when we did like a summer movie preview, it feels like this is not

barring your Men in Black International viewing party that you're going to have. I don't know. I feel like it's going to be a weird time. Yeah, it is so interesting that basically

summer movie season is over on May 6th. Yeah. They have really, and that is all Marvel. They have just kind of moved it up and up over the years, which is fascinating. And I guess, you know, after Oscar season,

there was certainly a hole and no one was filling it. And I don't know, I suppose it makes sense, but it is really weird that no one has figured out a way to compete during the summer months or to match the level of dominance that Marvel has established. It's true. The specialty box office, which of course is like smaller movies in release, is also having a bit of a struggling moment. And there's a couple of reasons for that. And I wanted to talk about that since we're talking about Extremely Wicked this week. You know, these are the movies that come out of

Sundance, that come out of South By, that come out of Tribeca, that come out of the festival circuits that are only released in four theaters on opening weekend or 75 theaters or even a thousand theaters. That's still basically specialty business. It's been kind of a quiet year for that stuff. Historically, there's at least one movie that emerges to make like more than $10 million. Extremely Wicked, of course, was released in a couple of theaters. I think it was in a theater in LA this week. It was. The Los Feliz 3, I believe. Right. Yeah. But it is not in very many movie theaters because it was released directly to Netflix on Friday. This movie was bought at Sundance. And do you think that the release of a movie like this, which could be noisy and have a big marketing campaign around it if it's going out into 2000 theaters, is somehow stymied just going straight

to Netflix? I'm not sure, actually, because it is that impulse. In terms of long shot, you know, I think about long shot and I just think of, that looks great. Everyone I know is excited to see it. And we are just so conditioned now to be like, oh, well, I can watch it at home. For anything that isn't end game, you kind of think, oh, do I need to go to the theater? Do I need to drive? Do I need to, you kind of think, oh, do I need to go to the theater? Do I need to drive? Do I need to make the five hours of time necessary? Or I could just watch this movie and like three other episodes of The Crown or whatever, you know, you're freebasing on Netflix on your own time. So I don't, even if they did a 2000 theater release and did, you know, Zac Efron were out doing all of the talk shows, which I think he was a bit.

But if they were really putting a traditional campaign behind it, how many people will go to a theater versus being like, oh, I'll just wait. I'll watch it at home. We are so conditioned. That's kind of during the Oscar season when I talked to so many people who hadn't seen A Star is Born, who hadn't seen all of these like pretty big studio movies. When you were out stumping for Green Book. Yeah, but it's just people are just like, well, I watch at home and I sympathize with that. It is so much easier and there are so many were catered to being home viewers now. So I'm not sure that they sacrificed a lot by just putting it straight to Netflix.

I think it's kind of an acknowledgement of the way the viewing conditions, which, you know, Netflix also created, which is its own interesting complication. But I don't know. Do you think like millions of people go see this movie? I don't know. I think it's all relative to the time in which it's released too because obviously we just spent an entire segment talking about endgame and how that's overwhelmed a lot of stuff so that would be a significant factor that there are certainly some people who think that long shot should not have been released inside this window that it should have come out before endgame or it should

have come out later in the summer feels like maybe an august comedy it's released they moved around a little bit movie like this similarly you wouldn't want to drop it on the same day it is it would be counter-programming but kind of an odd counter-programming choice. It's not necessarily like a big old fun night out at the movies. The one thing that is challenging to me is, and this is very subjective, but I spend a lot of time advocating

for movies over television, but I think that television is having a very nice moment right now. There are a lot of shows that are on TV and on streaming services. There's a lot of talk about how Hulu is having a great 2019. HBO Sunday Night is like really, in addition to Thrones,

which a lot of people have complicated feelings about both Veep and Barry are in the midst of like kind of hall of fame seasons of TV right now. And it's Veep's final season forever. I mean, so that's happening. You know, I'm personally invested in like Fosse Verdon. I'm invested in what we do in the shadows. I'm like a longtime survivor watcher there are all these shows that are on right now that just for me personally I'm spending a lot of my home capital on sure you know there's only so much home time you can spend watching stuff too and still be in a marriage or with your family or you know doing work at home whatever it is that you do in your free time and so inevitably like a Netflix movie that is never going to leave the service, but is there now doesn't have the same urgency unless there's like a big conversation

around it somewhere. And I saw that it seemed like some people were talking about the movie on Friday, but then over the weekend, I didn't see so much. And then by Sunday you're in like NBA playoffs, Game of Thrones world on Twitter. And then it's like, what happened to extremely wicked? And that's a tricky thing. And is that better or worse than a very slow build in a number of theaters across two or three months? It's very hard to say. Yeah, it's interesting. The thing about Extremely Wicked is that just because the conversation didn't happen over the last two days doesn't mean that it won't. And the true crime thing is so popular right now and on the internet. And there are a lot of people who are trained to watching documentaries at home and then looking

on Reddit to try to solve the crime themselves. And they're listening to podcasts. And it is kind of a homebound experience. People just putting detective hats on their own. People just putting detective hats on their own time. So just because it hasn't happened yet, I like, I think those people may find each other. And it's just another case where Netflix is building specific viewing segments, like, and they can be so specific. So you just talked about like eight shows that you really love. And I think that there are other people who have like really full viewing lives right now just watching like Great British Bake Off and whatever, you know, animated series that Netflix just released and like Friends reruns. And you it is you can personalize it to a deep extent.

So they're not even playing for opening weekend anymore, I think, though that of opening weekend probably means, and the conversation probably means more to you and me than it does to actual Netflix because they're just trying to train people to spend a certain number of hours each day. That's definitely true. It's very smart. It's complicated somewhat by the number of things that they release, I suppose. I mean, to me, in some ways, if I'm like, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to stream a movie at home. The advent of the Criterion channel for me is like, that's actually my first destination. And there's a reason for that because almost every single movie that is on that service, I know is at least quote unquote important or interesting or has, will teach me something new.

And it's because Criterion has impeccable taste and that I trust that taste. That's personal for me. So, but so companies like Netflix that are spending That's personal for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So companies like Netflix that are spending a lot of money on original films, it puts them in a difficult position. You know, this is something that we'll be talking about probably as long as we do this show.

This Sundance, I thought, was kind of an interesting test case too because most of the movies that were there that were big successes have not been released yet and most of them will be in theaters. They will not be on streaming services.

There was one more which we'll talk about in a minute which is called Knock Down the House which also premiered last week on Netflix. But still to come, you've got Late Night, which we're both excited about. The Farewell, we're both excited about. Booksmart, we've seen. That's a South by. We love that movie. The Souvenir, I loved. Blinded by the Light, a lot of good buzz about that. Big Time Adolescence, Clemency. These are all in the same vein as Extremely W wicked. They're either docudramas or they're personal auteur-driven smaller films

or they're sort of like askew comedies that wouldn't necessarily fit in the long shot mold. All those movies are all going into theaters. Whether they survive or not, it's really hard to say. You know, will there be a hereditary? Will there be a moonlight coming out of that mix? TBD? I hope so. Yeah.

It's really hard for us to know right now. Then there's others. You mentioned Apollo 11. That's done actually pretty well. It's really the only specialty film that's been put into theaters that has actually done good business this year. Stuff like Ask Dr. Ruth, Leaving Neverland, those both went to TV. I think it's worth noting with Apollo 11, it was an IMAX release and you go and it's an experience. It's like halfway to an Epcot ride. That's right. And that's something where you got to leave your house and you go. It's the end gaming of specialty movies too.

I mean, you have to like eventize these movies to make them mean something, which is fascinating. Knock Down the House to me is so interesting because I think that that actually, I saw it in a movie theater and I thought it was a great movie theater experience. It's a very rousing and stirring movie. I think even regardless of your personal politics, seeing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the three other women during their race run for Congress in the 2018 midterms, I had the kind of experience I want to have in a movie theater. I'm invested in the characters. I'm following closely what's happening to them. I'm really excited about the rise and fall and curious about why things happen and why they didn't happen. It's just involving.

And this is a movie that I could have seen doing a similar thing that RBG did last year. It's not going to have a chance to do that because it's on Netflix. Have you seen Noctilene? I have. So what were your impressions of it? And do you think it's ill-served by being on Netflix? No, because the target audience is on Netflix and will find it and meme it. I thought it was fascinating because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just has the media presence. And we know that because we have seen her. That is why she has become a national figure, because she has that innate quality. She's a star. She's also extremely

accomplished and smart. And I really admire her politics and everything that innate quality. She's a star. She's also extremely accomplished and smart. And I really admire her politics and everything that she does. I do not mean to diminish her as a politician or a woman in any way, but she has the extra ability that makes people want to pay attention to her. People want to listen to her, which is a major political attribute. And you can just, it's fascinating because you just, she takes up the whole movie and it's ostensibly about four women. And it is about four women. And part of the reason that she takes up the whole movie is because she won and the other three did not.

But the comparisons between AOC and the other three women are really clarifying in a lot of ways. And it just feels like a really valuable political document or media document of just how things work in 2019. Yeah, I mean, we use the phrase rock star to describe AOC during the run, but it's really more movie star. Yeah. And you can see it in real time. I think she's obviously an extraordinarily polarizing figure. There's some people who don't like her politics at all. I walked out of the movie literally feeling like that was, she will be the president in 10 years because so few people are able to translate their passion and their ideas simultaneously. And the movie is just a, it's just

like a trainer course for her life. You know, it just like teaches you why you might think that she's an important person. In some ways it's kind of like agit propaganda, you know, and it works in that way too. And there's something complex about that. You know, it is, it isn't, it's a theoretically an objective portrait, but it's verite. And so we're close and there's a level of empathy with the politics that are portrayed in the movie. I think you're right that young people who are inspired by the women in the film are on Netflix.

So it's the right audience. But I do also, I could also see a world in which a movie like this became kind of a theater going phenomenon to some extent. So it's fascinating to have, to not have that, to not see that. I agree with that. I think also this is another case where it is kind of early days for this movie. The meme possibilities that are already inherent with AOC. I think you've talked about this a lot with movies on Netflix. You can revisit scenes. You can revisit parts of it. You can screenshot it. And that is how she is an online figure. She's an online celebrity. She's used it to her advantage. And I just think it being there will connect with more people. It may not connect with the older specialty box office demographic who loved RBG, but it can live on and it can, and being on Netflix gives it to more people who will be interested in it and invest in it.

I agree. I mean, speaking of politically charged movies, I would be remiss if I did not mention one more specialty movie that succeeded this year, which is Unplanned. I haven't seen Unplanned, so I'm not going to make a judgment on Unplanned, though I can briefly describe what the story of Unplanned is. Unplanned stars Ashley Bratcher, and it follows the life of a woman named Abby Johnson, who was a clinic director for Planned Parenthood, and her subsequent conversion to anti-abortion activism.

Now this slides into the sort of spiritual slash conservative independent film strategy, which has worked over the years with God is Not Dead and films like that, and has also the Dinesh D'Souza sort of ideological conservative documentary format. Those films are successful. This film has also been successful. On a budget of $6 million, it's already made $18 million in the U.S. It's distributed by a company called Pure Flix. You can imagine what pure means in this iteration. So there is a kind of micro-targeting thing happening,

which is find your audience and super serve them. That's what Knock Down the House is. And that's sort of what Unplanned is, I think. That's the successful strategy for Netflix. It is giving 3 million really passionate's the successful strategy for Netflix. It is giving 3 million really passionate people the thing that they need. And Netflix can work at scale so they can give each 3 million different type of people their weird subset of interests. But yeah, I think it's very, very hard to create a broad-reaching mainstream hit and it's really marvel is

grandfathered in and otherwise you got to serve your target audience if you could be super served what movie would you want would it be about harry and megan markle's baby like a cradle to grave biopic no i think that baby's gonna have a hard life i congratulations to them but seems like a tough circumstance. I mean, I'm getting it because they're making a Downton Abbey sequel. You know? Yeah. Like, it works for me, too.

The Crown exists. They're making Late Night, which stars Emma Thompson, my true hero, as a late night comedian, which is not totally my thing, but she's a gal in a guy's world. So I love that. There are plenty of things that feel like oh i'm very excited about and i couldn't drag you kicking or screaming to any of them so i like downton i'm into down that's true but it's true there's stuff we like and there's stuff we love yeah right so a lot of people like endgame a lot of people love it but a lot of people like it and like i'm really excited about midsummer the, the Ari Aster movie. Not nearly, not one one thousandth as many people are going to love that movie. Yeah, no way.

So there's serve and there's super serve. And I feel like super serve is on the side of right. Before we get to Joe Berlinger, let's just talk very quickly about Shockingly Evil. One of the debates around a movie like this is does it valorize or romanticize or just unreasonably portray a very awful person in any kind of positive light by spending this much time on their story? I don't know how familiar you are with Bundy's story, or if you watched Joe Berlinger's documentary series that aired earlier this year. I watched snippets of it after watching Extremely Wicked because I was curious.

So I've seen part of it. And, you know, I think I was probably more familiar with Ted Bundy as kind of a pop cultural reference point than the specific crimes, though I then did do some reading and it's, you know, it's horrific. So fairly familiar, but I wasn't familiar with this side of the story, specifically the woman who he had a relationship with for a long time. His long-term girlfriend

played by Lily Collins in this film. It's an interesting way into telling his story. The Bundy Tapes docuseries, I think, is certainly a primary document of an awful person.

And like, anytime you have that, somebody who's just done extraordinary things, and I don't mean that, I mean that in the pejorative sense, anytime you have that, it makes for kind of an interesting watch at the bare minimum

so in that documentary series that the one thing that you don't get in some ways is the perspective of someone like this like Lily Collins's character and I think that it is mostly faithful to that perspective though there are a lot of times where we're just watching Zac Efron be like zany charmer serial killer guy yes though that I think is a little bit more on the performance than the actual approach of the film yeah but if you watch if you watch footage of Bundy it's like he's got it feels like he's getting pretty close sort of but there is is he too handsome even for Bundy well I have no idea why he was so swole. And they just showed him naked.

That seemed really weird. I mean, maybe that's true to Ted Bundy's life, but that just seemed like Zac Efron literally flexing, which, you know, power to him. I was going to say, this sounds like you complaining about Zac Efron being swole. It was weird. I was just kind of like,

why am I suddenly looking at his 16-pack right now? This doesn't really fit with the movie. He got there and... You know Zac and I train together, right? I was just kind of like, why am I suddenly looking at his 16-pack right now? This doesn't really fit with the movie. He got there. You know Zach and I train together, right? Yeah, that's great. You can see it all right here. Yeah, totally. He got there in some ways.

I mean, he's obviously a charming former Disney star. There is, if you go and you watch the Ted Bundy tapes, there is something manic and slightly edgier when you're watching them that I don't really think that Efron captures the depth of what's going on there. Now, obviously, that's hard to do because he was a legitimate psychopath. But I think that there is something, he leans into the charm, but perhaps not the edge of the charm that I think is central to not understanding but portraying technically. Yeah and we very rarely see any of the evil acts that he's doing because it's seen through this different perspective. Right you know and I like that

when you talk about the concern of glorifying or just kind of serving the I find kind of morbid true crime fandom and they do not show the. They don't spend a lot of time focusing on the acts itself, which I liked that choice. I think if it glorifies anyone, it glorifies the Lily Collins character, which is interesting, though I suppose she's not responsible for anything. So I guess there's not a lot of harm in it. You still do feel the absence of the victims, especially towards the end the way that he, not just the way that he lied, but the way that he used the kind of aw shucks persona to act in defiance. In this movie, and it was interesting when I talked to Berlinger, he'll mention this too, there was a feeling of not, there was a strategy originally with the script to not reveal that this movie was about

Ted Bundy, to wait until the very end, the third act to reveal that it was actually Bundy who they were portraying and not just some guy. So because you don't see those acts, there's this sort of like mystery box element. It's like, is he really doing this? Is he not doing this? Once you realize, once you learn that this movie is about Ted Bundy, it's kind of like that there's some dramatic air out of the balloon. Yeah, that's true. It makes it much more of like a psychological portrait and much more of a portrait of a

woman trapped in a situation that is incredibly difficult for her to navigate. And it doesn't necessarily diminish the movie, but it's like, we all know who Ted Bundy is not just as a pop cultural figure, but as a specifically after Berlinger's documentary series, right. As a figure of straight awfulness.

Um, Amanda, I don't want to belabor the conversation about Ted Bundy anymore. Uh, I would recommend it and I would recommend you stick around and listen to this podcast. Thanks again to Amanda Dobbins. Now let's go to my conversation with the filmmaker Joe Berlinger. Delighted to be joined by the filmmaker Joe Berlinger. Joe, thanks for being here. Hey, thanks for having me.

Joe, you have an incredible resume. one of the great documentarians resumes, and you have two projects this year, both about the same person. One is a doc, one is a feature film. They're both about Ted Bundy. Now, Ted Bundy, of course, is a legendary serial killer in many ways, and you are a legendary filmmaker in many ways. I'm wondering why it took this long for you to tackle these dual projects. Oh, I mean, I don't think I actually was thinking about doing this for a very long time. It just, you know, a lot of this was just happenstance because a lot has been done on Bundy. And so I never thought I had anything to add to the dialogue until January of 2017, Stephen Michaud and Hugh Ainsworth, who are authors of the book Conversations with a Killer that came

out several decades ago. Steven is a huge fan of my true crime stuff. And he reached out to me and said, hey, the book I wrote, which I was aware of, he said the tapes were in my closet and was wondering if you thought there was a show here. Because obviously, true crime has never been more popular, which we can talk about as to why. And with the advent of streaming and whatnot and unscripted series, he thought that I think there was something there. And I said, well, I mean, to be honest, a lot has been done on Bundy, so the bar is kind of high, but let me listen to the tapes and tell you what I think.

And so I got the tapes and started listening and was utterly chilled and immediately felt there was something because it's rare you get to go deep inside the mind of the killer that way. And Bundy has always fascinated me because he destroys our stereotype of what we want to think a serial killer is. is some dark dude. Of course, they are dark dudes, but some social outcast who's unattractive and lives in some far remote corner of the human condition. And that if you happen to get a glimpse of them, they are these horrible looking, as I say, social outcasts, because that gives us comfort that they're easily identifiable and then somehow we can avoid them. What Bundy teaches us is just the opposite, that people who most often we trust and like can do evil things, whether it's a priest who commits pedophilia and holds mass the next day or somebody like Ted Bundy who was well liked by all his friends and had a living girlfriend and was a horrible, vicious, psychotic serial killer. And so when I heard these tapes

and had all these feelings like there's a new way in to tell the story, I immediately gravitated towards it. And we pitched it to Netflix and it got set up as a four-part doc series. And never imagining I would do a scripted movie as well. You know, again, it seems like this master plan of mine that I was going to, you know, be the guy who does Bundy in 2019. But I was sitting down with my agent, Michael Cooper at CAA. We're having lunch. And I was, this is now April of 2017. And I was saying to him, boy, because he's a true crime nut. That's why, that's one of the reasons he signed me.

His name is Love Being Your Agent. Well, and he's actually not crime nut. That's why that's one of the reasons he signed me. I was going to say, I must love being your agent. Well, and he's actually not really a directing agent. I'm one of his few director clients. He's really more of a talent agent, has lots of big name actor clients, but he loves my true crime stuff. And we met because we're both friends with Lars Ulrich of Metallica. I mean, that shows you how all these things are strangely interconnected. But I was just going, cause I know Michael's a big true crime fan. So I was just going on and on about how cool these tapes were. And a light bulb went off in his head. Cause he knows I've been trying to, you know, do a scripted movie for a while. And, you know, I, I just, you know, everything I, I, I had read

up until that point, wasn't interesting to me to take me out of being so busy in documentaries. And so he remembered the script called Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile that is on what's called the Hollywood Blacklist. And I'm sure most of your listeners know the Hollywood Blacklist is a list of scripts that executives love and for one reason or other haven't been made, but people really like the script, like these scripts. And so Extremely Wicked is a script that's been kicking around for six or seven years. He suggested I read it because of my enthusiasm for what I was doing with the Bundy tapes. And I read it. I remember I texted him somewhere over Denver because I was reading it on the way home. And I read it. I remember I texted him somewhere over Denver because I was reading it on the way home. And I said, this is amazing. I love the point of view. And the point

of view was through his longtime girlfriend. So it wasn't immediately like a procedural tracking down a serial killer and the police putting the clues together and arresting the bad guy at the end. It was much more of a psychological thriller, you know, situating the audience into the POV of somebody who thought he was innocent. And I thought that was an interesting take. So I told him I loved the script. This is now mid-April of 2017. How far into Conversations with a Killer are you at this point? Just prep, you know, like research and pulling stuff together, but enough to know that Bundy was, you know, enough to know there was a good tapes documentary series and enough that I was waxing poetically to him

about how interesting I think the doc series was going to be. And so I read the script in April of 2017. He said, well, let me connect you to the producer. The guy who held the rights to the script was a guy named Michael Costigan, who has tried several times to get the movie made. Jodie Foster at one point was attached to direct and it kind of crumbled. Why? I don't know. Another director was attached to direct in some other iteration. And so I gave him my take, you know, as your listeners know, to get a job, you got give a take so my take on the on the script was

you know i felt there was a few flaws in the script as brilliant as it was um that was impeding it from people green lighting it and i mean in a nutshell i felt like um the script depended upon not knowing it's ted bundy literally into the final reveal of the movie, which makes a great read. But in this day and age, the moment a movie gets set up, and especially with somebody like Zac Efron, it became clear this is the Ted Bundy movie. So I wanted to lean into that. Let's know it's Ted Bundy, but let's make this relationship between the two of them feel so strong that you suspend your intellectual knowledge that it's Bundy for the first part of the movie. And you actually start becoming

invested in that relationship. And by the end of the movie, when he finally reveals who he is and what he's done, the audience feels the same kind of revulsion and betrayal that Lily Collins's character, Liz, feels at the end of the movie. And for me, that gave me a reason to make the film, because to me, the lessons of Bundy can't be overstated, which is you can't, you know, just because my experience that the people who do worse in life are often the people you least expect and most often trust, whether it's, you know, as I said, the priest who commits pedophilia and then holds mass the next day and is a spiritual leader to many, but he has this dark secret and compartmentalized life, or frankly, whether it's, you know, the people responsible for the opioid epidemic. Those executives not only repressed research to show that OxyContin was addictive, they actually told their sales forces to lie about the truth. And yet, I'm sure those people have a wonderful

circle of friends, museums that are dying to take their money not anymore and they're considered model citizens with wonderful friends and family yet that's compartmentalized evil so this idea of how we how we pretend to be one thing especially in our highly curated instagram social media lives and how we pretend to be one thing, but often are another, i just immediately gravitated towards the script and thought it'd be you know terrific again never dreaming because it would get made so quickly you know we all know how hard and long it takes to do an indie movie but literally you know i read the script mid-april by the end of the end of april i was on the phone with the producers giving him my spiel about how i would do the film which was to lean a little more into I read the script mid-April. By the end of April, I was on the phone with the producers,

giving him my spiel about how I would do the film, which was to lean a little more into knowing it's Bundy. And also the original tone of the script was much more lighthearted and catch me if you can, and then takes that horrifying twist at the very end of the movie, oh, it's Ted Bundy. I felt like you can't have a light film about Bundy. There's elements of lightness in my film, but it goes much darker and more real. end of the movie oh it's ted bundy i felt like you can't have a light film about bundy there's elements of lightness in my film but it goes much darker and more real than the original script for

example i included lots of real archival footage in my feature film because i wanted people to understand that this is a real story and all these strange things actually really did happen. But by the end of April, Michael Costigan said, yes, let's do it. And then as again, sometimes things work out. There was a weekly meeting of CAA agents and my Michael Cooper, my agent said, what are their clients doing? And Zac Efron's agent, because Zac's also at CAA, so Zac's agent said, oh, Zac should take a read of this because he's looking to do something different. And so I was asked, do you want Zac to read it? Which isn't as light a decision as it might seem because Zac's at the level where it has to be a reading offer. Meaning if Zac reads it and wants to do it, you got to give him the job. He won't read it unless he's going to be offered the job.

So I had to think for a second, do I want Zach Efron? And I immediately thought it was a brilliant idea. I think he's a terrific actor. I think he's taken on some more serious roles in some of his movies that may not necessarily have worked. But I don't think it's because of his performance. Those movies didn't fully work. I thought he was a great actor. And more importantly, if he was willing to, first of all, do this movie,

which had to be done for no money. So if he was willing to take a 99% pay cut versus Baywatch, he was obviously committed to doing it, and it would probably get financed. But I would never pick somebody for their financeability. But the fact that he, you know, if I didn't think he could deliver the goods, because it's my reputation, you know, at the end of the day. But the fact that he was also willing to kind of play with his teen heartthrob image like that, whether it was conscious or unconscious. For me, it allowed me as a documentarian to take something real, like his real life persona for a certain demographic who, there's a certain demographic of Zac Efron fans, Zac can do no wrong. And that's

who Bundy was. They just couldn't believe that bundy could ever do anything you know that he was accused of so that gave me a little like like clay to play with as a documentary filmmaker you know that brings something real into the movie making process so zach read it pretty quickly to his credit you know because sometimes in these indie films that you're trying to set up it takes the actor six months to read it he read it in a week i happen to be strangely enough on the skeleton coast of namibia because i'm making a surfing film about this surf legend called named robbie nash oh yeah um you know uh and so i was shooting him a long story there but i was actually like in a really remote location zach was promoting i think I think, Baywatch in Australia.

So I was, you know, he was in Australia. I was in Namibia. So it took a beat to get us on the phone. But we had an amazing conversation. We both said the right things to make us each excited about doing this. And so by the second, you know, by the second week of May, Zach had signed on, which was the start of Cannes, and the producers took it to Cannes, and within five seconds, the movie sold. So from the moment I read the script to the moment it was a greenlit movie, it was about six weeks, which it never happens.

That is insane. It never happens, because obviously I don't have a long track record making feature films. It's a tough script, tough subject. Let me ask you about that, though. Has it been challenging for you to get feature work despite the documentary work that you've been doing for the last 40 years, 35 years? Well, I did this little film called Blair Witch 2 a couple of decades ago. I'm familiar. I like that movie. Well, thank you this little film called Blair Witch 2 a couple of decades ago. I'm familiar. I like that movie.

Well, thank you. Thank you. Many people just had a knee-jerk reaction that they had to hate it. And in fairness, I disavowed the movie when it came out because I had my director's cut. Like if somebody could get a hold of the DVD of Blair Witch 2, there's a great commentary. Because I refused to do the DVD, the director's commentary. I said, if you're going to ask me to do the DVD commentary, I will only sign the release and do it if you let me really talk about how you screwed up my movie and at the 12th hour,

put the movie into a meat grinder and changed my original intent to the film. And so surprisingly, they did. So that DVD commentary actually, when it first came out was kind of a, you know, it was kind of a cult classic of a director, really explaining how the studio screwed him all along the way. Um, and so that experience, you know, with my documentaries, I am the author of my work, you know, uh, you know, you know, when you're doing unscripted series for like a Netflix or whatever, of course, they give you notes and you have to juggle notes or whatever. But for the most part, I'm respected as a maker of stuff. And particularly on my feature docs like the Tony Robbins film or Metallica or whatever, what I say basically goes.

It doesn't mean I'm not collaborative. It doesn't mean I can't listen to ideas, but I'm in charge. And the experience of making, actually, we left the set of Blair Witch 2, everyone excited, thinking we made a really cool satire that made fun of the whole idea of doing a sequel. It was a very self-reflexive, self-aware kind of satire on the dangers of blurring the line between fiction and reality because Blair Witch 2 was sold, sorry, the original Blair Witch was sold as a real documentary and people were tricked into going to the movie theater. And Heather, Josh, and Mike, the characters in Blair Witch were put

on the cover of Newsweek and Time and everyone was celebrating this trick. And i thought as a real documentarian well first of all it drives me crazy when those of us who make beautifully crafted well shot well edited films that the language of real means you shake the camera enough and people think it's real i find that like just bizarre that bad shooting is equals reality which is what blair which one or the original bear which was about. And then the second thing that really disturbed me, because I am a journalist first and foremost, and ever since the grand old days of Edward R. Murrow and the sanctity of the newsroom back then, we've seen just an erosion of the line between fiction and reality, between entertainment and news, between things being done for ratings as opposed to purely journalism, and the fact that Blair Witch 2 was celebrated as this great marketing hoax, and not one news outlet said, hey, wait a second,

is there something wrong with tricking people into going to a movie theater pretending it's a real documentary? Not one thought piece on that. And that bothered me a lot. And boy, the themes in my original director's cut of Blair Witch 2 about the dangers of blurring the line between fiction and reality couldn't have been more prescient for where we are today, where alternative news, alternative facts, fake news, the pressure to tell stories for ratings instead of purely journalistic reasons has never been greater. And that's what the original Blair Witch 2 was all about. But getting back to your original question, it wasn't so much that I was having difficulty getting a film off the ground. I was scared to go back into that jungle because, not scared, I guess,

but I had had such a, I was used to calling the shots and that experience of seeing your film get, literally, they sliced it and diced it against my will and reshot some stuff that I didn't think should be in the movie. And most notably, the whole point of the whole legacy of the original Blair Witch was that violence is left off screen.

And they, some idiotic marketing director came in at the 12th hour and said, wait, we have to see the recreations of these killings. And this horrible, anyway, so there are elements of the film. If you take out all of the gory recreations of the killings from Blair Witch 2, and you take the interrogation scene, which is now sprinkled throughout the movie, and you rejoin it as one eight-minute scene, that's a big reveal at the half of the, you know, sound, you know, they just put one needle drop current hit after the other because they wanted to sell a soundtrack. It was all about money. Artisan was, you know, basing its IPO. This was the IPO craze in 2000. They were basing their IPO on the success of Blair Witch 2. They were looking to wring every dollar out of it,

and lots of bad decisions were made because of money first and creativity was like 12th on the list. So what was it like for you to be back on a feature set almost 20 years later then? I loved it. I mean, I would say in the last three or four years, I've actually wanted to revisit because I feel like my career has gotten to the point where, you know, when I first started making documentaries, if you didn't sell your documentary to HBO or PBS, you weren't making your documentary. I mean, it's amazing how mainstream nonfiction has become. We used to be on the, you know, on the extreme fringe of the entertainment business, knocking on the window, hey, pay attention to us, let us in, let us in. And, you know, I couldn't have imagined that unscripted content would be so mainstream right now and so popular and so many players and Hulu,

Amazon, Netflix, and there's just... A lot of your work really paved the way for that stuff, though, too. I mean, particularly the kinds of films that people are getting into bidding wars for, I feel like, is built and I with Brothers Keeper all kind of hit around the same time, and we were each trying to expand the definition of what a documentary could be each in our own way. You know, Errol Morris' Thin Blue Line, you know, was the first documentary to really embrace, or you could say re-embrace, because Nanook of the north north was actually a lot of recreations but you know he was the first you know arrow was the first post-modern

documentarian who you know really made uh recreations and cinematography of documentaries you know as rich as a scripted movie uh ro and me, of course, you know, Michael Moore was using documentary as a social justice tool with filmmaker as on-camera curmudgeon. You know, a lot of filmmakers, particularly Morgan Spurlock, followed thereafter. And I think what we were trying to do with Brothers Keeper was to make a documentary that kind of looked and felt like a narrative film in the sense of embracing dramatic structure, like selectively withholding the right information to the right dramatic moment, not being afraid to raise questions without answering them, in the academy, you know, a really compelling opening title sequence for Brothers Keeper,

which, you know, today is tame. You know, the opening title sequence for Brothers Keeper is tame by today's standards, but using an opening title sequence was kind of unheard of in a doc. Like it somehow was anti-journalistic if you tried to make your movie feel like your documentary feel like a movie um and the biggest thing that we got such flack on which today is so common is we had um i hired jay unger and molly mason these

traditional fiddle musicians to do this compelling kind of country fiddle, you know, score. And the documentarians back then who, you know, had been around for a long time said, well, you can't have an original music score in a documentary that is, that communicates how you should feel about the scene and it's not objective and all that stuff. So my personal belief is that all filmmaking is extremely subjective. You know, from the angle you choose to shoot to the footage you leave on the floor, any documentary is a thousand subjective decisions. That doesn't mean you're free to do anything. That doesn't, you know, you're still bound by certain journalistic rules. You can't put words into people's mouths. You can't overly manipulate chronology. You notice I say overly manipulate because any documentarian who

says they don't manipulate chronology is kidding themselves. I mean, the act of presenting something that takes place over a year, but presenting it in two hours is a manipulation of chronology. So Bruce and I said that, you know, because the Verite documentarians of the 60s who we were emulating, they actually said there's no such thing as a director on a film and you're capturing objective reality. And I don't believe that's true. You're not capturing objective reality. You're capturing not the literal truth about a situation, you're capturing the emotional truth of a situation. The literal truth of Brother's Keeper would be you'd have to sit through three weeks of murder trial.

You'd have to watch all my dailies. The literal truth of Paradise Lost is you'd have to watch the six weeks of murder trial we filmed instead of the one hour of murder trial that ends up in a two and a half hour film. You're trusting the filmmaker to give you the emotional truth of a situation. So if you're going for the emotional truth, instead of literally the literal truth, why can't you have the film, you know,

the narrative filmmakers, some of their tools at your disposal. Again, you can't script dialogue and to put words into people's mouths, but you can have a certain editing style and presentation style that makes it compelling and unfolding in a dramatic way while still being truthful. I wanted to ask you about Brother's Keeper actually, because I guess I revisited probably a couple of years ago on Netflix and I feel like it was hard to see for a while there.

And I feel like a lot of people discovered it there. And I'm wondering if that was part of how the Tony Robbins film came to be and part of how this partnership on these two Bundy projects, because it seems like a pretty good avenue for your work. Yeah. I mean, look, the fact that Brothers Keeper went on Netflix has nothing to do with the larger embrace by me of Netflix. I mean, actually, I did a movie called Crude, which was the last movie that read Envelope Entertainment, which was Netflix's predecessor of... When Netflix first decided to go into the production business,

they dipped their toe in with this thing called Red Envelope, which was not fully financed movies but they'd make equity investments and that was kind of an experiment and so i did this film crude with them and then i'm a partner at radical media and radical media has done quite a few things with them as well um but that's uh tony robbins was my first full-up you know collaboration with netflix um you know as a filmmaker in their new mode of having you know at that time i think maybe they had like 90 million subscribers in 140 countries or whatever now i think it's 130 million subscribers in 190 countries but i love working for netflix you know i sound like I'm a commercial here, but you asked

me about it. I mean, filmmakers want eyeballs, and these guys know how to deliver eyeballs. I mean, Brothers Keeper famously was, well, not famously, but to some, we went to Sundance, we won a prize, everyone thought the movie was cool, but the tradition of documentaries in the box office was still very sporadic. And nobody wanted to release the film. They kept telling us, you know, if you, you know, nobody's going to want to see a film about a bunch of smelly old farm brothers who all sleep in the same bed together and don't change their clothes. And I believe there was a market for the film. So we self, you know, we did our own 16 to 35 millimeter blow up.

And we, you. And back then, digital didn't exist. You had to shoot on film, originate on film, and end up with a negative to have release prints and then blow it up to 35. We probably had half a dozen release prints that we schlepped around the country. And Bruce and I would high five each other if 300 people saw the film in a weekend. We thought that we'd gone to heaven. 300 people saw our film in a weekend. We thought that. We'd gone to heaven. 300 people saw our movie in Boise, Idaho. With Netflix, I delivered the Tony Robbins film. They did this amazing marketing.

Tony is hugely popular around the world. And I just remember it happened to be in Los Angeles because we did a big press day, an LA premiere. And then I was sitting on the balcony of my hotel, you know, having, having my film industry moment looking at my phone, just like, cause I was also new to social media. I was a late adopter. But if you looked at the hashtag, I am not your guru, the, the moment the movie dropped, I mean, just literally my phone,

every second there was like somebody on, you know, hashtagging every second there was like somebody, you know, hashtagging, I am not your guru, you know, screening party in Vietnam, screening party in, you know, Columbus, Georgia, you know, you name the place, there was people were watching it. And that film did amazing numbers. And, you know, in my travels, after that movie came out, more people have mentioned that movie to me than all my other films combined. That's the power of getting something out there. And same thing with Conversations with a Killer. You took over like a whole weekend for people.

Oh, my God. That must be a fascinating experience. I couldn't believe. I mean, for somebody who, you know, I mean, I've always had a little cult following. But, you know, I'm still not a well-known filmmaker. And I'm, you know, in the general public. And, you know, I'm still not a well-known filmmaker and I'm, you know, into, in the general public and, you know, I'm, you know, I'm kind of like a culty guy. You know, there are people who really like my stuff, but, you know, more people know the names of my films than know my name. That's just the way it's been. And it still is obviously, but, but to,

to hit that kind of an audience, I mean, um, conversations with the killer just like, was like the number one global trend on twitter which like blew my mind i mean i'd like to think a lot of it has to do with the filmmaking but a lot of it also has to do with just how well these guys market stuff and interestingly you know people think oh what a master plan to do the doc and the movie and netflix doing both but the reality was um the movie was an accident as i explained before and even the fact that they both came out at the same time was a bit of an accident when we started the zach efron movie um the original intention by the producers um was to have it ready for toronto

didn't make that deadline because we pushed the production a bit because once Lily Collins signed on, both Zach and Lily had availability issues. So we pushed a few months. So I was always hoping to get into Sundance, but you can't plan on getting into Sundance. I mean, they reject a lot of movies. And who knew how the movie was going to turn out? And so Conversations with the Killer, it was determined by all of us to release it January 24th, which was the 30th anniversary of Bundy's execution. Felt like a good time to release the doc series. That also coincidentally happens to be the first day of Sundance.

But the decision to release the doc series on January 24th was made before we knew we were going to Sundance. But then we get into Sundance with the feature and so within a couple of days you know thursday the 24th was the first day of sundance and the doc series dropped globally started immediately doing well so saturday night at the eccles at sundance where our screening was with two days into the doxy. People were just pumped and primed for this movie, and it did amazingly well. But Netflix had initially said, because I gave them kind of a first look at the movie, they had passed on doing the scripted movie, frankly, until Sundance. It kind of blew up at Sundance, and conversations with the killer was so strong

that even though we had a little bit of a bidding war and other people interested in releasing the movie, we all decided that, you know, Netflix changed its mind and decided, okay, maybe we should do this. And it just felt like the right decision. Was it significantly different from other films that you had worked on that way? Was it a different kind of heat or buzz when you're at a festival with a movie? Well, this, you know, they do send you in nicer cars. And you do have a few perks when there's movie stars involved rather than documentary. Although, you know, the great thing about Sundance is they've always treated documentaries as not the bastard child of the film industry, but, you know, equal footing. So Sundance has always been great.

But, you know, the world, for whatever reason, and it's less so now, which is great, but the world treats a scripted movie somehow with greater import than a documentary. Although that's changing. But in most of my formative years, that was, that was always the case. But, um, I've been blessed to have had seven films at Sundance, six of empty-handed. I had the locked in a condo all night negotiating because the buyers had to have it the next day, which was Metallica, some kind of monster. I mean, I think we sold that just the DVD, which when the DVD was king. Yeah.

This is, you know, this is, uh, uh, Sundance was that, that was January, 2004 when the DVD was still king. That thing went for $3 million to Paramount just for the home entertainment rights. Again, to other people, I don't want people to think I'm making all this dough. Uh, most, most of that money went elsewhere to the producers of the movie. Um, so I've had that experience. I've had the experience of, you know, I made a film about the Armenian genocide, which was liked. I happen to think it's one of my best films, but it's called Intent to Destroy.

I think it's really smart and intelligent. And it was kind of a yawn. Even within my own industry, people couldn't have cared less about it and didn't sell and was mediocre, mediocrely received and got a decent distribution deal, but not what I think it should have. And then, then we had this experience where it was, you know, right out of the gate. It was, it was the first time I was at the Eccles, which is the big venue. And so it was an amazing premiere, like standing ovation, people loving it.

You could feel the energy in the room. And immediately after the screening, people wanted to buy the movie. So that was fun. And then we had a little bit of a bidding war and ultimately Netflix snapped it up. Does that inform the decisions that you make about what projects to pick? Because-

Not in the least. Okay. Because you've done every kind of movie too. Yeah, not in the least. mean you know the strange thing is project i've come to realize this rather late in my career so it's made me a little more relaxed is i generally push along several things at once because you never know which one is going to click um and time and time again, the thing that I think is going to happen the most ends up happening the least. And the one that is meant to happen, the doors just kind of open and you get the access, you get the fine. I don me choosing them. Obviously, I have some influence because I'm picking subjects matters. You know, for those who don't know, it's about pollution in the Amazon by bad oil drilling practices. And this lawyer came to me who was representing these indigenous people in Ecuador, really thinking I should make the film. And I was like, you know, I don't know if I want to make a film in the Amazon.

You know, I got young children at home. I'm not sure I want to be away that much. It's going to have to be in Spanish and in Quechua, which is the indigenous language down there. It's like, it just doesn't feel like something I can raise money for. And this guy, Steven Donziger, kept after me, like, let me just show you. Let me show you. So I said, okay, look, I will go down to the Amazon.

You'll take the time to show me, but I can't promise you I'm going to make the film. And I remember we were canoeing to an indigenous village where these people rely on the water for sustenance, transportation, washing, and it was polluted. And these guys were eating canned tuna in the middle of the Amazon, these giant vats of canned tuna that like the worst kind of bargain basement brand that you would get at the equivalent of the Ecuadorian Costco. That's what these guys were eating because they needed to supplement what they couldn't catch anymore. By the time I got home to my house and took a glass of water from my sink that was clear and drinkable. And I tucked my young child into bed and thought about my life.

I felt like I would be a real schmuck. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't make the movie. And so I felt like the universe was tapping me on the shoulder saying, hey, you got to make this movie. So I feel like the subjects kind of choose me as much as i choose them and um sometimes it's like a lesson i need to learn at the time you know the metallica film you know had just come off of this awful experience of blair witch where the reviews were not just bad just mean and vicious and you know me. And it really put me into a funk in part because it's just painful to read that shit. Um, and so the big lesson there is you can't

validate yourself by your good reviews because you'll have to invalidate yourself by the bad reviews because, you know, brothers keeper and paradise lost were the films I did before Blair, Blair witch, and those got great reviews. And so like, if you're going to believe your reviews on the way up, you're going to, you have to believe your reviews on the way down. And so I felt I was just in a real funk. And it's a complicated story, but I would not have, if Blair Witch 2 had been a success, I never would have, the circumstances never would have arisen for me to go do the Metallica film.

And the first time I was sitting in that room filming icons of male testosterone and these legends in the music business having their creative and existential crisis that was very similar to my own existential and creative crisis that I was going through as a result of kind of the worldwide belly flop of Blair Witch 2, I just felt like, God, I can't, I don't know if this is going to turn into a film, but I can't believe I'm sitting here listening to all this stuff.

This is so good for me, like to hear and to learn. So it's this strange alchemy of how projects come to be. I'm always pushing things along and it always surprises me which ones actually happen. Joe, I have a million more questions, but we're running out of time. I do end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? So I'm curious, what's the last great thing you've seen?

Oh, you know, I rewatched The Conformist recently. Oh, yeah, Bertolucci. Yeah, which I love. What spoke to you about it? I don't know. Just it was this language of cinema that just was so original and this voice that was so original. And I just found it so compelling. You know, I find a lot of films today to be very self-conscious where it's hard to lose yourself, where you're aware of the filmmaking.

And that movie has this incredible sense of style. And yet I found myself, despite the language barrier, obviously reading subtitles is distancing. I just found myself just fully, fully losing myself in a way. And partially when you're in the business and you make films, of course, you're very aware. So, you know, I think there's an extra burden to make a filmmaker feel like they can just focus on the story, which I think is, you know, I was ruminating on why I think film criticism has just become a horrible dying art. There's some great critics out there, but most people are about, gotcha, I'm smarter than you. I'm going to tell you why this isn't as popular as it should be. And I think those filmmakers lack,

sorry, those critics lack empathy. If you're going to evaluate a work, you need to be open to allowing yourself to enter into the world lacks and what's the film I'm going. The critics now tell you what film they want you to make as opposed to entering the world of the film you've made. I know this is a long, wacky answer, but the Bertolucci film just reminded me of how magical it can be to enter a world and just be lost in it, even if you know how films are made. That's a world you know and just be lost in it even if you know what you know how films are made that's a great recommendation joe thanks for doing all right cool thank you appreciate it thanks again to amanda dobbins and of course joe berlinger please tune into the big picture later this week where I will be having a conversation with Werner Herzog yes Werner Herzog and maybe talking about some other movies in release maybe Pokemon Detective Pikachu maybe not

tune in to find out