The Big Picture - The Movie of the Year Is Here: ‘Boys State’

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Amanda and Sean dive deep into the year’s most provocative and entertaining film, the documentary ‘Boys State,’ an intimate portrait of the summer program that has produced some of the most compelling figures in recent American political history (1:08). Then, Sean is joined by ‘Boys State’ codirectors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss to talk about the casting and production of their extraordinary movie (34:54). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by An American Pickle. An American Pickle stars Seth Rogen as 1920s factory worker Herschel Greenbaum and his great-grandson Ben. When Herschel falls into a vat of pickles, he is perfectly preserved for 100 years and emerges in present-day Brooklyn. An American Pickle tells the uniquely heartwarming story of Herschel and Ben as they learn the meaning of family. Stream the new Max original, An American Pickle, now only only on HBO Max rated PG-13.

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the best movie I've seen in 2020. And that movie is called Boy State. What is Boy State? Well, it's a documentary. It is now available on Apple TV Plus. And I thought it would be appropriate for us to just talk about this film, which I think is fascinating and incredible document of life in 2020 in many ways, specifically the way that we engage with our political system. Amanda, I wanted to talk to you about it because I know that you like the film as well. We're going to talk a bit about what Boys State is, the institution, and also what this movie is and how it captures it. But what did you make of it off the top? So you saw this movie at Sundance, as did our colleague Noah Malalay, and you both raved about it. And I didn't get to see it at Sundance, so I caught up with it about six months later with all of the

expectation that goes along with you guys being like, this is the best movie I've ever seen. I was wrapped. This is a very tight documentary that is about a summer camp program. And we'll explain the program a bit more. It's kind of complex. I still have some questions about how Boys State, the summer camp program works, but whatever. And I was just completely enmeshed. And it's one of those documentaries where you're like, I can't believe that you got this on tape. And also, I can't believe that you got this on tape. And also it speaks so profoundly to the moment in which I'm watching it, even though it was filmed during the summer of 2018. Yeah. Later in this episode, you can hear a conversation with me and Amanda McBain and Jesse Moss, the filmmakers behind the movie.

And they explained a bit about how they captured what you're describing. And there are several moments in this movie that will make you say, this must be scripted. This can't be real. I mean, in many ways, it seems like archetypal, narrative, dramatic movie making. But it is very real. I mean, in many ways, it seems like archetypal narrative, dramatic movie making, but it is very real. And Boys State, the institution is very real. So what is Boys State? It is, as you say, it's a sort of a summer camp. It's a summer leadership program. I assume you as a high achieving young person, you must have been a part of some programs like this. I got sent to arts camp. I never did the politics

camp. I did have to go to Girl Scout camp once, even though I wasn't a Girl Scout. But this is sponsored by the American Legion. And I only really interacted with the American Legion in that sometimes we had our middle school dances at an American Legion clubhouse. Okay. So the American Legion does sponsor this program. They nominate high school juniors and they come in and they interview and they talk about their idea of the country and patriotism and the idea of public service and what that means to them. And it's essentially a training program for politicos, aspiring politicos. And that's a fascinating thing. Me growing up, I went to basketball camp. I was an aspiring professional basketball player. Unfortunately,

I am incredibly slow and can't jump and can't shoot. So that was never going to happen for me. And for some people at Boys State, and there is a Girls State as well, we should say, that in most states in this country, they offer this program. There are a lot of people who aspire to a kind of public service, or at least to get a sort of a sense of civic duty, which is not necessarily the same thing as public service. And this has been happening since 1937. And there is a long list of famous and accomplished alumni in boys and girls state, more specifically boys state. It probably won't surprise people to

hear. Just a short list of incredibly well-known people who participated in this program includes Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Justice Samuel Alito, James Gandolfini, my boy Roger Ebert, Michael Jordan, Tom Cotton, Rush Limbaugh, Cory Booker. So, you know, luminaries or lowlights, depending on your point of view of the world, quite a list of people there. And the program itself is kind of interesting. So essentially, I feel like we're talking around

specifically what it does, but the programs vary by state. But in Texas, where this movie takes place, participants are divided into two groups, the Federalists and the Nationalists. And what do these two groups have to do? And how does that set up the film? They do a lot of things, but the film follows the political campaign aspect of Boys State. And Boys State is a week-long program in texas and kind of the climactic event is an election for governor of the the state the boys state of texas so these two parties the federalists and the nationalists which like by the way just already cast a like quite a shadow over the whole

um the the documentary because they really they adopt these names as teams. And so they're yelling about being Federalists and Nationalists. And anyway, they elect party chairmen. They kind of do a platform, though we should talk about the platform. They have primaries. And they each eventually select one nominee for the governor's race. And then at the end, there is an election and one governor emerges. So, you know, approximately 1,100 boys participate in this process. And that means that out of large groups, one, two, three people have to emerge.

And the reason that this movie happened and the reason that Jesse and Amanda sought to identify a handful of people who would be significant to the process in the given year that they were shooting is because in 2017, the Texas Boys State Legislature voted to secede from the union. And if that doesn't sum up American politics in the Trump era, I don't know what does. The fact that a bunch of teenagers decided they needed to secede from a program which is already imaginary is perfect. We should note that 2017 was when the state legislature of Texas successfully voted to secede from the union. It is apparently a motion that came up for several years, but this time both bodies ratified the secession. And of course, that is an ongoing dialogue in the state of Texas in the true American experience.

You know, there are many Texans who would like to not be a part of this country. Maybe not many there, but there are certainly some. We know that secession is an ongoing conversation in some states around the country. So the point is that Boy State really does in many ways reflect the political system. Or does it? I think the nature or nurture question here is what's essential to this movie and what makes it so fascinating. And even when I talked to Amanda and Jesse, I think that they were unwilling to put their thumb on the scale to say where they felt it lived or died.

But as I said, this movie is just exceptional. And I think it's going to be a little bit challenging for some people to see it because it's only on Apple TV+. It was acquired by Apple and A24 out of Sundance. It was one of the biggest acquisitions. They paid a hefty price tag for the film. And it was a fairly noisy film at Sundance. But I don't know a ton of people who are checking out the Apple TV Plus content on an ongoing basis. You crushed The Morning Show. And then after that, I don't know how much you've been engaging with their original programming. I also watched every episode of Defending Jacob starring Chris Evans. So, and I also watched Beastie Boys documentary.

So I am Beastie Boys story. So I am the number one Apple TV consumer, it would seem. Also Greyhound. Oh, yeah. So we're doing okay. We're actually consuming a decent amount of Apple TV Plus content. Now, I would just recommend people get it for this movie. It is wholly worth it.

This is, you know, a couple of years ago, I spent a lot of time talking about Minding the Gap on this show, and another incredible film about young adolescents and kind of finding yourself and how that's reflective of the world in which we live. This movie is very much in the same league. Moss and McBain made a film in 2014 called The Overnighters, which was absolutely one of the best documentaries of that

year. They're really, really talented. So, you know, I really would encourage people to check that out. If you don't want to know anything else about the movie, probably turn the podcast off and come back to it after you've seen the movie. But we're just going to talk a little bit about the figures that you can find in this story, because they are just extraordinary. Characters is probably an unfair word about real people, but they are the reason that the movie works. And they are kind of characters. And I think that's interesting about it is that you have to keep in mind you're watching, they are 17 at the time of filming. And there are four main characters who have been involved somewhat in the promotion of the film. They were at Sundance.

They've been doing panels. And it's fascinating to me to watch the directors try to grapple with these kind of archetypal characters who are also like very malleable teenage boys. And they're changing all of the time. And saying that it's like a reality show edit is really, really unfair because I think there's like a tremendous amount of nuance. And also frankly, that they found these people and that the story unfolds and the way that it does is miraculous.

But there is intentionality with how these characters are placed in the story. And the fact that they're also so young is, I mean, it's fascinating. I think that your reality show note is fair. I actually posed the question to Amanda and Jesse in which, because there is essentially a confessional style structure here where, as you say, the film is verite, it's fly on the wall. They've got crews surrounding these kids and trying to capture the right kids. And a lot of casting went into this movie as it does with most documentaries. They had to identify who were going to be the right people to follow. And it's just remarkable,

three of the four main characters, they cast before they even started shooting the film. And so they have done the work that the real world or the real housewives of Beverly Hills does, but they've also, you know, done the obviously very different kind of verite documentary filmmaking work. And they've kind of combined the two, the two strategies and it, it, it works so, so well. And it is simultaneously, um, very pop, but very sophisticated. And that's part of the reason why the movie works so well. And I think people are going to respond to it so much. So let's talk about these kids. As I said, three of the four they found beforehand, including Steven Garza, who I think is the ostensible protagonist of this film. He seems at first like kind of a retiring young man. He's the son of a

undocumented immigrant from Mexico. And he's a fairly progressive young guy. He's the son of an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, and he's a fairly progressive young guy. And somewhere along the way, it feels like he transforms. And it feels like a real-time kind of Frank Capra story of political evolution in a way, but without ever abandoning what makes him so pure in the first place. What did you make of Garza? Yeah, so this movie doesn't exist without him. And he is pretty miraculous. The first shot that you see of him is he's going to the bus to go to Boy State and he's

wearing a Beto for Senate t-shirt. And the first 20 minutes, so we'll explain a bit more about the system but in order to become a candidate i think for any office you have to get a certain number of nominated signatures and so he's um going around 30 yeah going around trying to get the individual signatures and doing kind of personal campaigning and he is positioned a bit as the outsider um i think really in all senses of the word both in terms of politics it will not surprise you to learn that uh texas teenage boys tend to be a bit more conservative in their inherited politics um and the boy state

gathering is um noticeably white it should it should be pointed out. And he just also seems kind of, he's not, Steven Garza doesn't immediately have the biggest personality. And there are a lot of big talking Texas teenagers in this movie. And so he is trying to navigate these various systems and then gives like one of the top five cinematic moments in documentaries that I can imagine the speech that he gives in the primaries which kind of vaults him to being one of the main candidates and one of the main parts of the story I have it's shocking because he suddenly become he gives this beautiful heartfelt really politically savvy speech and he clearly has that innate gift of um both messaging but knowing what to say in the moment it seems pretty unscripted a lot of the the things that he says and it kind of comes

out of nowhere and it is like astonishing and invigorating. And you're suddenly so attached to him as a character. And I don't know what they would have done if they didn't have him. Well, perhaps they might've leaned a little bit on the character who I guess comes closest to being a co-protagonist of the film. And he's, I think he might be the first young man we meet in the movie. His name is Ben Feinstein. And Ben, you know, is a very, very, very, very compelling figure as well in many ways and very complicated figure. He's a double amputee. And when we first meet him, he is seen playing with his Ronald Reagan doll. And he is a young conservative from

Texas. And he is very, very smart and very, very motivated. And he reminded me of a lot of very familiar figures in the world of politics. And in the film, he initially sets out to be a candidate and he, you can see that he is a bit uncomfortable as the forward facing mouthpiece for something, but he is very comfortable behind the scenes strategizing. And so he makes a decision to essentially become party chair and become the organizer and the, and the, well, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, I don't know whether it's less, I took it less as like his discomfort in being public and rather than reading the field and understanding very quickly that his best opportunity was going to be as party chairman. He is strategically very gifted

and he really can see the field and in a way that few other teenagers in this movie can. Yes, you're probably right. And but that in its way, that reflects, I think, on the way a lot of behind the scenes figures in the world of American politics tend to make their decisions. They see the playing field, they see where they can have the most success, and they make a calculated decision. And so Ben makes this calculated decision. And it makes him essentially oppositional to Steven Garza since Ben is a federalist. And Ben is also a very unvarnished person who makes a lot of kind of stirring speeches in his

own way, although I think they probably don't reflect necessarily our politics. And Ben really kind of takes the movie over at times with his stirring dialogue and frankly, his bad faith action. He does a lot of things that send chills down your spine if you follow American politics closely. Well, when I said the reality show edit, I was talking a lot about Ben. Ben gets the villain edit. And the politics of the movie a little bit kind of do highlight, they're with his family at the beginning and he is, as you said, clearly very bright and has studied all of this and i think um in a lot of ways the most practical um of any of the characters who are who are featured um but the movie does also make a point of of showing his transition and and casting against Steven Garza. And I think that is

both what happened and a little bit in the edit. Yeah. Well, Amanda and Jesse also talked about that too and kind of what it's been like for him to see himself on screen as this person and what that's meant for him. So there is something interesting to that because he is tenacious and ambitious in a way that so many people that live in Washington, D.C. and do this work are for a living. So they're kind of the two primary figures,

but then there's two, I would say equally fascinating people in the movie as well. Tremendous. You want to talk about Rene? Oh my God, Rene. So Rene Otero, who becomes the party chairman for the Nationalists. So he has the same job as Ben, but for Steven Garza's party.

So I guess the Nationalists become the slightly more liberal party, at least in who they elect. And Rene is just an order. He has the presence. He has the lines. He has to stand up in front of a group of over 500 Texas teenagers, which just teenage boys specifically, which just really seems like a nightmare to me personally, and deal with their nonsense and eventually is targeted for impeachment and defeats that pretty quickly and then is also targeted by ben and his party for various social media um trolling essentially and he's like swift voted, but, um, you know, in Texas in, in 2018 and he's so fascinating because in the same ways we should know that he is, um, he's, uh, a black participant in boys camp, which again, what we see, at least on the screen, it's not a huge amount of diversity.

And so, yeah. And, and, and, and at some some point he the social media attacks do take on like a a racist undertone and he points those out and you're watching him both deal with being the target of all this and processing it and putting in perspective he has like a tremendous amount of perspective for a 17 year old in terms of what he's going to deal with and what he's going to take personally and what he's just not going to deal with. And also how far that perspective can go in a situation like this. best one-liners and also like a tremendous amount of insight from this political system because he kind of says you know when i came to this camp i thought it was just going to be like conservative mind-washing camp for a week and then by the end he's like i i think that every liberal liberal

should have to go through this in order to understand how the other side is thinking um and also has some choice words about ben kind of this is the the the quote that says it all in this movie at one point he goes i think he's a fantastic politician but i don't think a fantastic politician is a compliment either so renee quite a figure yeah and i i think on the one hand he's such a great order as said, that there's bound to be memes that come out of this movie that feature his quotes. You know, the screenshot of the Rene experience. But Rene and Ben and Steven are, like I said, just immensely sophisticated and subtle thinkers for 17-year-olds. And they are operating at a level that I certainly was not operating at.

Now, the fourth character in the film, I would say is self-aware in his own way, but he bears the hallmarks of a lot more 17-year-olds that I knew when I was growing up. His name's Robert McDougal and he's a candidate for the Nationalist Party. And you have very deftly described him here as Tim Riggins goes to government camp. Yeah.

And that really strikes a chord because Robert is a handsome young guy. He's certainly got a bro affectation. He is amused and pleased with himself in a way. And he's quite certain that the way that he is positioning himself is going to be successful. Now, there is a twist here because he is running as a nationalist. He thinks he's going to be able to run on a kind of conservative party platform. And he finds himself strangely in a party that is not what he expected it to be. It's the party chair is a young black guy from Chicago. And the eventual candidate for governor is a young

Mexican guy whose father was an undocumented immigrant. And so he's kind of a man without a country in a unique way. And so it creates this fascinating distorting effect in the film. And it also forces Robert to be fairly confessional in the confessional when it becomes clear that the politics that he's espousing during his campaign run are not really his politics. And in fact, he's a far more liberal person than the character that he has created in an effort to be successful at Boys State. And there's so much cynicism in the choice that this young guy has made, but also the way that he communicates about his cynicism is so fascinating. And when he kind of gives up the ghost on this and starts telling the filmmakers who did not know that this is how he felt and what he was going to say, when he

starts telling them, you know, for example, my views on abortion wouldn't line up with the boys out there, so I chose to change my stance. That is politics in America for a hundred years. The fact that there are people who willfully go on television and lie or stand on the Senate floor and lie about what they think is the right thing to do. And they cloak it in the safety, the blanket of ethics and morals and belief is such a fascinating thing. Well, I think it's Robert who at the end says, what this taught me is now I understand why politicians lie and something to that effect. And to me, what is both somewhat hilarious about this kid who is really just like, you know, an eight-year-old in like a very long coat, you know, giving politics speeches at

times. He's just like, how did I get here? But also like very confident like yes i too will be the adult at the convention is the way that he speaks um but i wouldn't have said cynicism just because there's like to me there's almost a lack of intentionality to the way that he's making the decisions he's just kind of following uh everyone following everyone and he's not savvy enough to be truly cynical somehow and just get swept along, which is scarier in a way if that is what's happening in our political system and the lesson that he takes away. It's just like, oh, well, now I get

why people lie. I get why this doesn't happen because I didn't really know what was happening to me either. I think you're right that there is something unknowing about his actions, but because he's such a jockish type of guy, he falls into the win at all costs strategy. And if you grow up playing football or baseball, you're told you do everything you can to win short of cheating. And lying in politics, unfortunately, is not cheating. And so Ben has his strategy for how to succeed at all costs, and Robert has his. And Ben just happens to be a little bit smarter and a little bit more sophisticated. So he's able to navigate the field a little bit more delicately than Robert, who fairly early in the film is

revealed to be maybe not the major player we thought he was going to be. Robert is just kind of like an unexamined course of politics, which also has its dangers as well. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by An American Pickle. An American Pickle star Seth Rogen is Herschel Greenbaum, a 1920s American immigrant who was accidentally brined in a vat of pickles for 100 years, emerging in present day New York City. Seth Rogen as Herschel Greenbaum, a 1920s American immigrant who was accidentally brined in a vat of pickles for 100 years, emerging in present-day New York City. Seth Rogen also plays Herschel's only surviving relative, his great-grandson Ben, a mild-mannered computer coder living in Brooklyn. From the producers of The Disaster Artist, then 50-50, An American Pickle tells the uniquely heartwarming story of two men from two different generations who must

learn the true lot of ways. And that's, I guess, a slightly complicated comment because we haven't seen a lot of the movies that we thought would have been the movies of this year. But, you know, what else strikes you about it? What are the things that you took away from it that are not just about the characters or the story? Well, I was taken aback a little bit by the actual politics. Well, I guess the politics are what we see because it's people interacting with each other. But so much of this movie is about, do you like me? Do you not like me? Like, will you be on my side how can it's about personalities which we know to be true about politics but the discussion of policy is um

pretty spare at points and when it is it is definitely a 17 year olds 17 year old texas males um version of policy and you know to be fair to the 1100 something boys who went to boy state we don't get to see all of their legislative process we don't actually get read their party platforms we we are shown a specific uh type of discussion but it seems like all the texas teenage boys care about are guns and being able to have guns, making sure that abortion is not legal, and then banning Priuses and seceding from the union. Those are the major policy platform initiatives that are discussed. And in fact, Stephen Garza, who we mentioned, his involvement in the March for Our Lives movement becomes a major plot point in the campaign.

It's held against him by all of the young Texas boys who are concerned about their access to guns. So that does not align with my politics. Let's just say that. And then also I just found the way that 17-year-old boys talk and yell at each other to just be really personally alienating because I've never been a teenage boy and haven't spent a lot of time around them. And it was a lot. Yeah, I would say that in some respects, those ideas that they talk about in that film, they may be reflective of a version of Texas life that I'm not as familiar with. So I guess I want to be a version of Texas life that I'm not as familiar with. So I don't, I guess I want to be a little bit thoughtful about that, but it also feels like a very antiquated set of policy issues and concerns because I, I just recall in the nineties abortion and gun control

being sort of like the, like the bellwether decision makers, aside from the economy in terms of how people voted. Those were big time talking points and they were definitional in choosing whether you were a Democrat or a Republican. And our politics have gotten so distorted and warped in this country, especially our national politics, forget our state politics, that not to say that abortion and gun control are not serious and significant issues, but they're issues that are like stretchable and that you can yell about. And so they fit at Boys State, but they don't necessarily, that's the one thing about this, I think, that doesn't feel necessarily

true to where we are in this country, you know, and what the system kind of creates. I think the point you're making about Stephen Garza's participation in March for Our Lives and that, that feels actually a lot closer to where our politics are, which is like, almost, it's almost like panopticon effect of politics where it's not so much what you believe in. It's like what you did that I found on social media that I can then use against you in the court of politics. And that to me is where the movie is kind of is much more sophisticated and is showing something that feels closer to what our kind of national political dialogue is about. Yeah, I think that's true. Though I do think in the sense that guns and abortion are extremely hot button, divisive social issues that have been things that people really argue about and take up a ton of space, but are not really connected to, you know, economic policy or I mean, you know, they all are, especially in terms of the ability to get an abortion and how it affects your life.

So don't let anyone tell you that's not an economic issue. I will now get off my soapbox. But the idea that people become consumed with one social issue and focus all their time and energy to the point of not talking about all the other issues that might affect them and that, um, politics and campaigns become like really like hot ideological wars, sometimes even based on like outdated information or not really examining the nuance ever. It's just kind of like,

I was told to be angry about this and this is now how I define myself and I'm against this or for this to the extent to the exclusion of everything else that really rang true to me. And I think also to some extent. And again, this is like probably unfair to a lot of the young kids who are there and know a lot and worked really hard and just didn't have their kind of nerdy policy discussions shown in this movie. But there's a great point when they're all campaigning in the primary element of the governor race, the gubernatorial election, I should say. And I believe it's Ben who is still in the governor's race at that point, and people are asking him about his platform.

And he's like, my platform is where the party is. I'm just following the party. And it's the idea of does a political affiliation dictate your views or do your views dictate your party affiliation? And at some point, the actual views and policy and ideas seem to get lost in the fighting. And that seemed very clear to me when people just kept yelling about guns and succeeding from the union the whole time. Yeah, it is at turns chilling and heart-rending

and funny and very disturbing. There are moments of this movie that just like broke my heart with how dark what they seem to say about young people. And you've asked a question here that I was asking myself too as I finished the movie, which is, did teenagers learn this behavior from politics or did politics learn it from teenagers? And how does this cycle build itself and how does it sustain itself?

And you can see it plainly here. We literally have a program in almost every state in the union that essentially sponsors the real time. I don't, I don't, uh, you know, what's the like finishing school really for, for bad faith politics. And there are going to be some really good people who come out of it. And some people who, who, who mean, well, I thought of Cory Booker a few times here because, you know, let's just set aside kind of like how we feel about Cory Booker as a politician. I don't think that's necessarily relevant to the conversation. But Cory Booker has always struck me as a very savvy and gifted politician in terms of communicating his message. And you can almost draw a direct line from the way that Cory Booker communicates now

to the way that you're trained to communicate at a place like Boys State to the kind of the lessons that it reinforces about how to capture people's attention, how to get a message, how to find issues that are important to you, how to stoke debate, but also seem above the fray. You know, there are some kind of interesting, some more nuanced aspects to the political

system that the movie unearths too. And, you know, the same could be said for other people that we mentioned at the top of the show. The same could be said for Rush Limbaugh. The same could probably be said for Roger Ebert and the way that Roger Ebert created a kind of political discourse around his taste. And God knows, like young men in this country have no problem telling people how they feel about stuff.

But it's so interesting that there is something so specifically designed to further this in an ongoing way. I don't know. And I think I assume that we both would love to see a movie about Girl State and the way that that is organized, the way that that operates and how it differs

and is similar to Boy State. I absolutely would. I'm fascinated to see what it becomes. I'm both afraid and really, I can't tell whether it would be a lot more vicious and ultimately ideologically disappointing or whether it would just be like really boring because all the girls would just follow the rules and be like, okay, here we go.

You know, and I think a lot of that has to do with what state you put it in. I mean, like a Texas girl state would be like a really fascinating. I actually was thinking about this because I fear that a Texas girl state would just be a week of being like, are you a feminist or not? And then at the end, the person who is not the feminist or doesn't like that word, but, you know, thinks that women are equal or sort of wins the election. And then I'd be like, cool. But it it would be tough. I was surprised by how vicious all the boys were to each other in this movie.

I don't, again, like I said, I don't really have a lot of access to like a large group of teenage boys. I tried to avoid that in high school. I don't know. It just seems like a lot of video games and other stuff that I don't want to be a part of. But girls are usually, quote, meaner than boys. And I thought all of the boys were absolutely horrible to each other in this movie. And I, I thought that was interesting. And I think maybe girl state would actually be less vicious,

which would be nice. Hopefully one day we'll see it. It'd be nice to see a sequel of sorts to this movie. In the meantime, let's let's talk to, to Jesse Moss and Amanda McBain about how they made to this movie. In the meantime, let's talk to Jesse Moss and Amanda McBain about how they made this extraordinary movie.

Delighted to be joined by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBain. Guys, thank you for joining me here on the show. Thanks for having me on. So I saw Boy State at Sundance and I flipped for it and I think I saw it under the right circumstances, which is that I knew nothing about the film

and I knew nothing about Boys State at all. And I'm wondering when you guys first became aware of this institution. I first learned about it when I saw that picture of Bill Clinton as a young man shaking JFK's hand in the Rose Garden. He was at Boys Nation and that was 1992. And neither of us had gone through the program. And I didn't think about it after that until we read about the program in the Washington Post in 2017. At the time, we were struggling to process the election results, the election of Donald Trump, I think like many Americans, confronting the divisions in our country. And I think when we read about Boy State seceding from the union in Texas, that act of sort

of that provocative act somehow just connected with us and I think sort of rediscovered the program and what it stands for and that it brings kids together who have different politics and in the same space allows them to actually talk to each other and explore this question of civil discourse, which seems to be disappearing from our body politic. So that was the inspiration. What did you do to enter this world? You know, how did you negotiate your way into, you know, capturing what happens at, at, at Boy State in Texas? That's a good question. And I think, you know, to go from reading an article to, um, where we, you know, day one of filming is, is a, is a long project. And sometimes with Verite Films in particular, where you're

really going to embed and you're going to spend a lot of time and you're really going to follow every minute, you have to make sure that that's something you're going to want to do. And I think, you know, we didn't know much about the program. We didn't know whether they'd be open to us and the kind of filmmaking that we want to do um because they'd gotten some negative press coverage for that secession vote so um but all you can do is call and all they can do is say no um but to their credit they did not they texas you know took my call from san francisco and um i think that was kind of the beginning of me feeling like oh wow there might be something really interesting here because we're coming from very different politics

and we're already having this conversation. And they came to realize that our mission sort of aligned in the sense that they really wanted someone to come and spend a lot of time and immerse and really stay there. Don't come in and cherry pick something to, as I guess they felt some press had done, and run away and tell some salacious story. So we spent a couple months talking with them. They watched all our previous work. They told us more about the program and made us want to make this film more but then then the project of finding so once we were all ago we then had to find the folks we were gonna follow because we couldn't cast we were we didn't want to cast while we were while the event

when once the event got started it was gonna go very quickly so we couldn't cast on the flights we needed to find those people in advance as well. And that was a whole other project and probably one of the most challenging pieces of this particular film. It's finding the four characters. I wanted to ask you guys about that next. And I'm sure that you're getting that question a lot because the characters that you portray in the film, these young men are just like incredible. You couldn't write them in a scripted film. They're so dynamic and interesting and so feel so representational of a lot of the conversations

that we've been having. Did you guys just get lucky with these four or five young men or did you cast 25 people and then have to narrow down? How did it work? We did get lucky. I mean, we worked hard. We met a lot of kids in the casting process. We traveled across Texas and just had a lot of conversations with kids about their politics, about their ambitions. And actually, the boys we met who are in the film, really, it was clear that they were exceptional from the beginning. I mean, when Ben took down his Ronald Reagan doll on his bookshelf and told us about his, that he knew how to make friends and he knew how to make enemies, I thought, who at the age of 17 thinks about politics this way? And so it was really kind of instantaneous once we found them.

I think the process of finding them was just, I guess, a kind of diamond in the rough. I mean, there was a potential cast of a thousand. So and we found three of the four before the event started. I mean, to your question, there wasn't a long list of kids that we did follow who we dropped. Really, we bet the farm on the three we found. And then we found Rene on day two and he gives that extraordinary speech, which is how you meet him as well. That's how we met him.

And we had been waiting, looking for Rene and there he was in sort of unbelievable complexity, charisma, magically capturing his party's, you know's support for this role. So, of course, we didn't know how well they would do at Boys State. We knew that they were good characters, that they were going to run for governor. They all said that they were going to do that. But we didn't know that their paths would intersect and that they would have the journeys they did and that they would surprise us i think any one of them could have sort of held the movie themselves but i think the very fact that we found for them and it becomes this ensemble piece um also to your

point it's like their dynamic and all the various things they represent and how that conversation works from the beginning middle uh and to the end of the film and how that conversation works from the beginning, middle, and to the end of the film is actually, for me, the magic that they really, as a group, had chemistry and at some points really in face-off, particularly at the end. We did want kids who had different politics,

so that was a criteria. We wanted different backgrounds, too. I mean, the program, as you know, from having seen the film is predominantly white and conservative, draws heavily from rural districts, kind of like the U.S. Senate, you know, disproportionately not representative of the state of Texas, which is a very diverse state and why we were interested in Texas as a landscape for this film. But they were drawing kids from urban backgrounds and from different socioeconomic backgrounds. So we had an eye out for someone like Stephen who

just is not the typical boy state kid. So to that point, I was wondering, Stephen, there's a kind of authenticity that glimmers off him that I think people really respond to when they see the film. But with Rene and with Ben and with Robert, there's a sense to me that they are essentially following, they're sort of mimicking or aping the kind of political theater that they've seen historically. And maybe Stephen is doing the same. And since you guys make such beautiful verite work, how did you feel about the concept of kind of performance inside of a movie like this i mean it is going to be a weird statement but to some degree performance seems natural in the sense that it's politics right there's an off stage and there's an on stage um that's part of the way that politics works and um i think we did choose kids another criteria

for me in our short list was kids who didn't feel like they were giving us a parroted version of whatever news source or whatever their parents politics are it's a really interesting question we talked about this like where do you get your politics? I mean, right? Like, and, you know, to what degree, how extreme are your politics? How much of you are they? But we picked kids who we really felt were thinking for themselves on some level, even if that's to play the game the way Robert does, right? Because those were all his choices. We did not, he surprised us. They all surprised us, frankly. I didn't know Stephen could give a big speech like that.

You know, I think they surprised themselves. There's a certain amount of sort of premeditation that went into all of their, what they did at Boys State. But then, as I mentioned earlier, this event goes so quickly and they are so tired they're sleeping two hours a night they're waking up 6 15 and going they're in meetings and like conversation and like competition all the way until 10 30 at night and then they're staying up at night and hanging out with friends you know so they are tired and

they're really just behaving instinctively at some point. So on some level, I think you have a little bit of both sort of the control and chaos of, you know, what, what I think of as their internal monologue as sort of the authentic self, right? Here's who I really am. And here's what I'm doing out there. So I think, I mean, like life, there's a lot of what's real and what's not real. And there's a lot of performance in any documentary, as much as that is absolutely the truth of what they were really doing. So that's my answer, non-answer. No, I mean, the interview, definitely the interview segments, I don't mean this pejoratively, I mean this in a complimentary way. They struck me a little bit like a reality television show, where in real time, you have like the confessional and Robert obviously has that extraordinary moment where he kind of reveals his

politics despite what he's presenting. And were there moments, there must've been moments when you guys were speaking with these young guys and were just like, I cannot believe this shit. I cannot believe they're saying this right now and giving, like, providing this kind of narrative for us in real time. Yes. I mean, sometimes it was a small surprise, like Stephen quoting Napoleon. And I just thought, well, what a discovery, like, who is this kid? And more unusually, though, it was like Robert's confession, which, as Amanda said, we didn't know he was not being forthright about his political views until he confessed it and why he chose that moment. I think, you know, I guess he wanted to get it off his chest. So they, through the week, as they got progressively kind of strung out and tired,

and I think emotional, they became more open and vulnerable in their confessions. And really, I think that they were so harried at the beginning and it was actually very hard to get the time to get them to sit down. But by the end, they were really caring so much from this week that their extraordinary interviews and I mean, proportional to the verite we shot there, it's a very small amount, but it became intensely valuable and actually we didn't really know how to use it in

the film and um you know we shot the film very quickly in six days but we cut the film over a year and it was really it was so much experimentation with how to bring that uh internal monologue into the film and where um I mean some of it's, but more of it's less obvious. And so that was part of just kind of drawing out the depth of the story and their true depth too. Watching the movie a second time, I was trying to wrap my mind around how you actually did this, because I think I didn't totally understand that this was, or at least I kind of glossed over the fact that this was just a week-long event the first time I saw it. And then the second time you realize the compression of time for filmmakers,

let alone the kids must be so difficult. So how did you, I mean, how many people were working on this film? How many crews did you have? Yeah. This was a real feat and it's not our first movie. I'm glad it wasn't because it really drew on a lot of

skills um different kinds of skills too i think that both of us have been on fiction film sets and there was some of those trappings like um we had a 30 person crew 28 person crew. And there were major set pieces that required all six of our shooters. We brought in some excellent, excellent, excellent cinematographers from New York, all of whom have shot a lot of verite and our poets in their own right and so we had an incredible group working with us and an incredible cast and a sort of idea of the framework of the week so that we could plan for some of it but then real life gets going and things spin out of control and know, stuff you don't anticipate happening happens and extemporaneous speaking happens. And, you know, we have to follow four things at the same time. So really it was Jesse and I running all over UT campus, uh, trying to make sense of, you know,

two major events happening at the same time. I'm not sure. Um, I'm, I'm sure there's stuff we missed, but I think we got most of what we wanted. And then you just go home and you work with what you actually captured. And, um, fortunately we were there for the emotional moments, which is really the piece you cannot miss. Did you have to create a network of conversation with the guys so that they would let you know when something was happening if there was some sort of scandal breaking yeah i was just thinking about that which is true to to verite um across the board and all of the films we've made your subjects don't generally tell you when something momentous they may not know or they may know and

not their first concern is not you, the documentary filmmaker. It's like my lived life, right? And so you really have to depend on just being there. I mean, I think that's a large part of it. I mean, establishing the relationship of trust is really important. And, you know, with The Overnighters, we had a year and a half to build a relationship with Jay to sort of get to that point in the story where his life spins apart, and he's willing to keep us there for it. With this, we had, you know, this compressed schedule, but I think an openness on their part, and with the DPs that we work with, we paired them with a character, with a subject, and they also were, even though we had cast them, that relationship was important too, and they, I mean, they partly

knew just to be there all the time. But, and that's like 14, 16 hours a day shooting. I remember Martina Radwan, who's one of the great DPs on the film, just was bleeding on her shoulder. And we were all ailing. And I think like Wolfgang Hell doing like yoga poses, trying to kind of, you know, untork his spine. But it was like the intense, I mean, I think they all live for that too. And that's what's beautiful is that we all live for that kind of filmmaking. And, and that was the priority to capture those moments. And I'm thinking of like when Ben on the second day decides to, you know,

kind of throw in the towel that on his, in his race for governor, spoiler, and then he's going to pivot to party chair and and he has this late night conversation with his counselor which is a very critical it's a small scene but a critical scene and it's just like you know you have to it's sometimes very hard to keep pushing and to keep waiting it's waiting so much waiting right you're filming but it's waiting filming and waiting for that moment that is a turning point in this story i know we forget about that there's so much waiting oh there's so many hours of these meetings that did not make it into this film i mean you know we had you know that's the genius of editing is you get the highlights but there's a lot of low lights um and most of it is just you have you cannot space out because you don't know when the good piece is coming and that's really a challenge particularly when a lot of these meetings are repetitive or

you know they're all wearing white shirts and they're in you know classrooms each time so it's not like you're visually refreshed it's's really, you have to stay on point for a week straight for, yeah, 20 hours a day. And sometimes it's like, you know, after a momentous event, you know, the temptation is to pull back. You know, you've gotten your character in this intense experience.

They've won or they've lost. But you, and I'm thinking of, you know, I think the most emotional scene in the film, but that's just kind of, maybe it seems obvious, but, but I know, you know, I think it's a natural human instinct that you've been there for something very moving and then you need to kind of give your subject space and how much space, how do you negotiate that decision? And when do you stay close and when do you back off? And, and that's,

there's no no it's kind of um instinct i guess and and a little bit of just pushy documentary filmmaker-ness of like refusing to leave you know until they literally cast you out i mean the other thing that is us sharing information with each other so there's you know, separate from ending filming, we then need to collect as many times a day to kind of information share on what's happening with so and so and so and so and so and so, so that you get a big picture sense of what's going on with the whole of the week, not just where's Ben and what's he doing. So that that keeping holding the small moments and the big moments in your head at the same time,

I don't think I've had to do that on the shoot quite to the same degree as this one. You mentioned Jesse, the concept of gaining trust with the subjects of the film. Was this easier or more difficult? And were there moments where someone said, just please leave me alone or I don't want to talk right now?

I think you, well, fundamentally, with documentary subjects, they have to be open. That's not to say there isn't some kind of zone of privacy or near negotiations always in documentaries about, you know, can I come into this space? Can I film this? negotiations always in documentaries about you know can i can i come into this space can i film this and um but i think so these guys all really kind of were open um and and i think they are comfortable in front of they are themselves and they have that kind of inner confidence that you

really need and i think the viewers sense the camera senses a sort of like naturalness even even if they're self-conscious, it's a sort of self-conscious naturalness. So they were kind of fundamentally on board for the project and that was really important. I mean, you know, the intimacy and the confessional moments were, I think, earned. And I think that's also a little hard,

sort of like casting, a little hard to account for. And just, I think, you know, even for characters who didn't share our politics, like, for instance, Ben, you know, I just think it goes back to probably that first conversation and that, you know, which was very open-ended and just kind of the foundation of our friendship, I think. And a recognition that even if we were different politically, we had a lot in common. And I think this is very much true in my lesson, our lesson in making the film about Pastor Jay and the Overnighters is like, as much as we were different, there was a conservative Lutheran Christian pastor and, you know, whose politics are right of center.

And we don't agree on a lot we had so much um I think in common so much more in common um and I think it's true for these guys too that um you know they sort of believed in the project too and um so I don't um you know there's always then the process of sharing the work with your subjects because you film and it's intense and you have this relationship. Then you go away and they think, especially when you're not, we didn't have distribution when we were making the film. So you're really an abstraction. And they think, well, this film will never get finished. I mean, who would be interested anyway?

But then a year later, you sort of pop back up and you're like, oh, we have a rough cut. We'd like to share it with you. And then everybody gets nervous. We said, no, there there's a movie there'll be a movie here it is um and we sent it to ben um we showed it to steve and ben in particular had a lot of feedback he sent us very like netflix level yeah better than executives yeah we we worked with i mean they were amazing brilliant part of it was just him him recognizing that in his mind he was the you know he played a particular role in this one like he he thought he was going to see the ben feinstein highlight reel um you know that's what

he said and and it was real you know and then we showed him a mirror and i think that you know there's been a lot of really interesting um processing that's happened I mean this was when did we show him the rough cut like almost a year ago um so he's grown up a lot obviously since since he was 17 and the world has changed a lot since he was 17 and now he also has this film to reflect on. And it's been a really interesting journey post film being finished for him. Were there ever any moments? I have so many, I have so many Ben inspired questions.

Were there any moments where even though you're Verite documentarians, you wanted to just take them aside and be like, Hey man, this is really bad faith what you're doing. And like a lot of the problems that we're experiencing in the world are because really intelligent people like you are using the system in very devious ways. I think that's a recognition

that he had to come to on his own and he has in a really remarkable way now. I mean, that's been incredible to watch, not just his, but all of their political evolution. And particularly since the film has come out, and they've engaged in this very intensive conversation and reflection. I was more thinking of a moment with Ben where, you know, at the end of Boys State, they all, the exceptional kids there compete to see who will be sent to Boys Nation. That's where Bill Clinton was sent

and met JFK. You get to go to Washington and meet the president.. Um, that's where Bill Clinton was sent and met JFK. You get to go to Washington and meet the president. I mean, it's like two kids go out of a thousand and all of our kids were in competition for this. Um, it's typically, you know, whoever is elected governor and who's runs the party. And so Ben, um, of course was what gave an incredible first round interview. But, um, but then his, I think his second interview, he really, he was really defensive about the choices he'd made in that final climactic electoral confrontation.

And we watched him do something really uncharacteristic, which was sort of like, I think, kind of overcompensate to, I think he was feeling inner conflict about some of those decisions and it manifests in this really kind of train wreck of an interview for boys nation. And we all sort of watched his chances, which were, he was a lock man. I mean, we had a privileged point of view because we were listening to the counselors, like after they give their interviews kind of, you know, and they were like that Ben, he's in,

he's in after the first round. And then the second round, we just watched Ben, like just really the counselor asked him amazing question about America. And then he just went on this big defensive monologue about what had happened. It was just, and we just watched, you know, close up on the counselor's face. Who's like, I didn't even, this is, what are we doing here? And then he didn't get it. So it's just one of those things, right? That's one of those ones, but we're not going to interfere. I mean, this is a person who's living their life.

The whole point is learn by doing. And the idea often at Boyd State for people who go, particularly people who have won many things in their young, you know, student career is to lose. And what do you learn from loss? That's exactly the point of, uh, for a lot of kids who go through that program. Um, and I, you know, Ben won a lot too. He made great friends. He's, I mean, there's plenty to be proud of, but I do think the internalization of some of the dirty tricks and the win it all costs kind of um politicking i think he's really been very reflective on uh since do you do you

guys worry about the kind of inverse effect that well the film seems like a sunlight is the best disinfectant kind of strategy where you show the the machinations of some of these things and how they're internalized at a really young age by these very aspirational young men. But do you think that the film could be a more radicalizing tool to kind of inspire people to pursue those things because they see that it can be successful? I think nothing compares to what they can see kind of on the real level nationally. I mean, and that was one of the motivating questions for us was like, are young people internalizing these modes of discourse, these tools, strategies, I mean, the deb extent see that internalized and reflected back. I mean, Ben himself acknowledges that he took a page from the Trump playbook, right? Which was dispiriting.

Um, and, but now I think inspiring to see his moral education continue. And as we've talked about sort of looking back and seeing the corrosive cost of those tactics, I think the film would be dishonest if it didn't actually, I mean, I don't know. I don't, I, I, yeah. So I think, um, you know, the film, you know, in its own sort of teenage version, a kind of exaggerated form of those, I mean, but actually nothing could compare to, you know, I think what we see every day and the sort of head scratchingscratching um incomprehensible you know debasement of politics um that we we do see so i i don't i think it's kind of more valuable to see somebody like robert kind of go on that journey within the film itself and then ben now in the post-film

conversation i mean that's about to see those tricks engaged those sort of questions wrestled with and I also saw it as a little bit of an act of desperation I mean the truth of the matter is for me one of the deepest takeaways is watching Stephen not just navigate this primarily white, primarily conservative space, but to also really summon all these people to be their best selves and to be this thing that I don't think they knew going in,

they wanted maybe even, and that we all want, this sort of idea of serve others, not yourselves, which is what he says in the film. I don't think that's a right or left issue i think that people really want that kind of a leader and so to me watching what happens at the end with ben is is true to what happened at that event and it's also true to what happens in politics but but I loved having in equal measure, and if not more so, because we end the film with Steven,

this reminder that there's this guy and it's powerful. It's probably in the end more powerful. So that's my takeaway, but everybody's different. And our film offers both. So pick your poison. With the score and the staging and the kind of the arcs that you guys build,

it feels like the film is almost commenting on real time on like political rallies and campaign messaging. And it kind of, you know, was that, was that a strategy that you guys knew you wanted to employ before you started making the movie? Or did that just reveal itself as you were shooting the kids?

That's like a later, later seasoning. I mean, we knew we like, we loved the marching band stuff. Any of that kind of like, I mean, that was instant.

yeah. I mean, also, I mean, there, there is a, an incredible degree of stagecraft and modern electoral politics. I think that they're,

they're not given all of those tools but there there is an energy and a um and i think that we there was an intentionality to how we wanted to capture and deliver that and how we photographed the film you know the the lensing that the freedom we had to move everywhere and on on stage and be close to candidates as they were speaking you actually don't have in typically in modern, um, like presidential politics, you're stuck on the, on a riser in the back of the room and you have to film on a tripod and we could kind of, it's almost more like a, uh, you know, a narrative cinematic tool that we could, um,

which was important to us too, that we could really put you immersively, sometimes subjectively into that space and be right over the character's shoulder. Um, and,. And that was very exciting. And I think all of the DPs kind of, we clearly we sort of define what the vision was and we made sure that they all kind of work towards one common language visually. And also to introduce a tool like the Movi, which is a stabilized camera that just, you know, in certain moments, it's not overutilized.

I think that we could just kind of give a little bit of a sweep or like the camera trails Stephen as he's walking. It's a kind of poetic moment. And as he's facing, comparing a face, Eddie. And so I don't, to me, those are, you know, those are kind of elevate the cinematic language of the film and take us into a different space. I mean, we're still very grounded in the language of cinema verite storytelling, but I don't, you know, we're not orthodox in our modes. And I think, you know, the Overnighters and our previous verite work was very lean and mean. I mean, it doesn't mean that we didn't look for beauty and poetry and, you know, cinema. But we just didn't have the tools and the crew to achieve everything.

And in this film, we had more resources and not so much time, but certainly the resources to try to elevate the film and to give those moments sweep. We knew also this film was going to have scenes with, you know, 1,000 extras in the background type of thing. I mean, that's the landscape in and of itself that certainly no documentary we've ever worked on had that many, you know, people making sounds, you know, shouting, whatever it is. That's a very big moment cinematically that we knew we could work with.

And so that widescreen, one many kind of conversation we could do visually. But musically, I think it is important those big stage moments to feel them. And because that's what it felt like in the room and to get whatever audio we could with verite but also music i just it's something i i personally like from my movies there's some some movies that work without them but i just tend to edit with them did you guys look at primary or the war room or any of those films before you started or were you did you not want to do you want to avoid those tropes oh no i mean the war room is foundational to me i think to us in our careers um it's around the time that i i left politics and went into documentary film and that film in particular was a motivation and recognizing what um how powerful

the verite form could be and bringing us inside this kind of sweeping historical story but but grounding at least two you know very um human stories of carville and stefanopoulos i love that film and poop dreams came out the same year in 94 as well so and a primary we talked about um uh just you know that there's a wonderful moment that al mazel shoots when um jfk comes into that room room in Wisconsin, and it's electrifying, and that kind of energy is important. Actually, recently, I was looking at the Robert Drew film Crisis, which is notable because they're shooting on both sides of the conflict. They got George Wallace, and they got, I think, D.A. Pennebaker shooting Wallace, and they got, they're shooting, maybe it's, I don't know, Al Maisel's shooting with RFK and JFK.

And it's so unusual in a documentary to be shooting on both sides, and particularly in a political film, you know, and it's the trope of the campaign film that you're only embedded with one side of the rate. I mean, that's where the access is but we had we were able to shoot on both sides which not to compare ourselves to crisis but but i think that opportunity is really um special and um and what was exciting about about getting access to voice state i just wanted to ask one more question about kind of the the tactics deployed because it raises like a nature or nurture question and at one point renee's character has to endure some some a smear campaign basically and i'm i was wondering if you guys felt that the the actions that were taken in the film by these young guys was you know an understanding of the political landscape and history or just a kind of ingenuity at play and, and like how these,

how these decisions come about for people when they're engaged in politics? Oh, I mean, this goes back to the performance question. I mean, I mean, I love, I wish Renee was here to answer that question for you.

My guess would be that this didn't surprise him. In a way, though, racism was a real thing. It was, all of this was a play. And then that became a real, you know, they're all dressed in white shirts. And they're all like, they're just a nationalist or a Federalist. They try and democratize the whole thing as much as possible. Where are you from? Whatever,

all that stuff. But I think that this, this kind of piece, and then also Steven's sort of history, right? Like someone bringing up his real Instagram, real life, then you're really,

the game becomes real in a way that's kind of interesting and you have to navigate. I mean, so are they, I mean, I don't, I wish he was here to answer it. Cause like he's pretty great about this stuff. I'm not, I'm, I'm thinking of, of they're all complex young men. I'm thinking of, of Ben in particular. And we, you know, we, we thought a lot about, and we talked a lot in this conversation about his decisions and tactics and which he

boasted of in the beginning and, you know, displays at the end of the film. And, you know, who he is, where he comes from, how he was raised. You know, there's a certain understanding that eludes us. Perhaps if we were to follow them or return to their lives in seven years, like Michael Apted, you know, sort of more would emerge in our understanding of their psychology and, you know, how they were formed and how they rationalize certain decisions and then, you know, how, what their capacity for change is right um you know how wired into ben are this sort of the tactical side of his nature right

and and what does that have to do with his life story i mean these are but i think you know we can't answer some of those questions but we we did talk a lot i mean one of the challenges of a four an ensemble film is every one each character is each character only gets maybe 20 minutes of screen time, right? And yet, I mean, you can do a lot within that frame, but we knew them, we know them and their complexity, and we didn't want to flatten them, you know? And it was really one of the reasons I think the edit took so long too is like. I guess I don't really, I don't think there is an answer to the nature and nurture question.

I guess that's really my short answer. I don't think there ever really is in any question, frankly. Like it's for me a little bit of a combination always. And probably were they to go through the program now at 20, they would, they would, it would be a totally different, not totally different, maybe totally the same. I don't know the answer to that. I do think it would be a little different certainly for Ben,

but whether or not Renee experienced the same experience, probably that's my guess. I have two, two more quick questions for you guys before we wrap up one, ultimately, do you think boys state does more good than bad for young people and their foot in the 21st century. And that's a pretty, it's an uneasy kind of straddle, but it's also the straddle of America in this moment. And like, we're kind of lurching and struggling into a better future and they're not there and we're not there yet. So I think the program has a lot of work to do.

I think that may include the integration of boys and girls ultimately, and to become, as Stephen calls it, people state. And I think maybe we should get there as a country for young people. I think as an idea, as a program to engage these really important questions of sort of democratic participation, I mean, I think it's a great opportunity. I think it does, you know, you bring a big enough group together and there are sort of hazards, I think. You know, we did see the administrators step in at one point, only once actually, and it was when- Around the Renee step. When the racism surfaced. And it was actually striking to see they just, they brought them all together and they said, 1 000 of the voices of guys um this is not acceptable you know and and so you know they're

really true to letting these guys kind of do their own thing and and and they were willing to step in so i i um i i do i think it's an incredible program i. I think we'd like to sort of see how Girl State is both similar and different. I think that, you know, you know, yeah. Again, I go back to Stephen. He wouldn't have found that voice that he finds giving that speech were it not for this program. You can ask him. that's just a fact so to that degree um i think it's super valuable i think you know in a moment where 17 year olds are really increasingly more politicized certainly than we were our generation um they're leading

political movements sort of beyond the simulation world into the real world um it's a fair question you know if you can kind of throw yourself onto the barricades in a protest on your street, do you need boy state or girl state? And I think you do. I mean, I think you need, I think activism is there and young people are engaging with it. I think the political, I mean, Obama had a wonderful statement about this a few weeks ago, but the sort of, you need activism and you need politics, you know, and you need, ultimately there's a process that we work through to achieve what we want. And that's a political process and the mechanisms and the levers of that process, you need to understand

how to wield them, how to use them, how to grab them. And that you have to learn, and you can learn it in a textbook to a degree, but I think this program is a gateway to actually taking hold of the leavers in real life, whether it's the party process or elected office. Last thing, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? Have you guys been watching anything good lately? Anything good? That moment, that crisis moment. What have I seen? It a i'm why this is a stumper it's like

asking me my favorite color what have we seen that we liked um well i'm all i yeah this is i'm like not answering the question i mean i go through interesting cycles of documentary engagement when i'm making and releasing a film. And, you know, there'll be like a binge and I'll watch everything and then I won't. And so I'm not I haven't really engaged with this year's documentaries. I have. I mean, I loved Time. So, yeah, that's a great film. I need to watch that. That's amazing. So there was the last film I saw that I actually liked. So there you go. It's amazing. So there. That was the last film I saw that I actually liked. So there you go.

It's amazing. Yeah. Jesse? Maybe watching more fiction than documentary, more scripted. And actually introducing my daughter to... Alien! We just watched that. Introducing my teenage daughter to the defining films of my youth.

So we were on a Ridley Scott binge and she's so, we watched Alien and she loved that. Blade Runner, she's still processing. Whether Deckard is a replicant or not. But so I love kind of now I'm in a position to give my daughter a little bit of a movie education and I can show her all kinds of weird stuff. Your daughter and I have that in common about whether Decker is a replicant or not. Jesse and Amanda, thank you so much. I think your film is absolutely brilliant. So I appreciate you taking some time to talk. Sean, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Yeah, great to connect. Really appreciate it. Okay, take care. Okay, guys, Good luck. Bye. Thank you.