The Press Box - 'Icarus’ Filmmaker Bryan Fogel on Why Russia Won’t Be at the Olympics | The Big Picture (Ep. 424)

Episode Date: February 9, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey sits down with filmmaker Bryan Fogel to discuss his Academy Award–nominated documentary, ‘Icarus.’ Fogel explains how his journey into the world of blood doping and cycling was transformed into a larger story about the state-run Russian Olympic doping program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

But prior to that, I had asked him a question, which was if he thought it was possible that a gold medal at the Olympics could be won without performance-enhancing drugs. And he takes his pause and he goes, I try to believe, I should believe, I want to believe, but I don't believe a gold medal can be won without performance-enhancing drugs. Then he takes this long pause and I'll never forget this. And he goes, I don't know. Maybe I'm a bad man. At that point, I wasn't quite sure what to make of that, but it certainly set up my next question, which was, will you help me dope? I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the world's most fascinating filmmakers. The Winter Olympics are here, but you know who isn't? Russia.

In December, the International Olympic Committee banned the country's athletes from competing in the games in Pyong Chang for state-sponsored doping. My guest today can claim some of the credit for that. Brian Fogel is the director of a movie called Icarus. It's a nominee for Best Documentary at next month's Oscar ceremony. Fogel is an amateur cyclist who set out on a personal journey into the world of blood doping that shockingly transformed into a story with world-changing consequences. And it happened because Fogel met a man named Gregory Rudchenkov, the former director of Russia's anti-doping laboratory.

Fogel and Rodchankov form a fascinating bond throughout the film that ultimately reveals how a nation conspired to cheat. I talked with Fogel about the difficulties of making his film, his unlikely friendship with Lance Armstrong, and whether or not he thinks the athletes competing in this month's Olympic Games are clean. Here's my conversation with Brian Fogel. I'm joined by Academy Award nominee, Brian Fogel, a creator, director of the fascinating documentary, Icarus. Brian, thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me.

That is the first time that somebody has introduced me as a nominee, so that made me really a smile and most exciting and humbling thing that's ever happened to me. So your film is quite complex and interesting, and I want to walk through the early stages of it. Before we do that, just tell me quickly, where were you when you found out about the nomination? I was in bed, and I knew that they were coming at basically 538, to be exact. The Academy put that on their website. So I turned on at about 534. and heard it in bed and then tried to go back to sleep.

And then my phone just started blowing up. No chance. Yeah. No chance. So, yeah, it was quite a surreal moment. We started at the end. Let's go to the beginning. When did you first start conceptualizing the idea of making a movie that was about doping, specifically oriented around the experiences that you wanted to have with it? It came from my, I'm a filmmaker first. but cycling has been a passion of mine, and I started when I was 13 years old, obsessed with Lance Armstrong as I think so many in the world were an R.

And when he confessed in 2013, it was beginning of 2013, I wasn't so surprised that he had doped because everybody of his generation had doped. What was more shocking to me was that 500 drug tests into it, the most tested athlete on planet Earth. across all sports, had never tested positive. And the only way that they get them is through the United States launching a criminal investigation and his teammates rat him out. And I'm going to myself, wait, what's wrong with this system that is in place apparently to catch athletes who are doping? Forget about cycling. I mean, I'm thinking global sports. And not what's wrong with Lance Armstrong.

But nobody was looking at what is actually wrong with this. this system that the only way they can get some guy is through a criminal investigation where all of his teammates who did the same thing as he did rats them out in exchange for their own immunity. So I started getting this idea of how to explore this subject. And I spent the next year doing research and talking to scientists, sending emails. And through this process, I started getting connected to all these guys who had actually tested Armstrong and were in charge of testing, you know, on a global level for sport. Let me ask you, was it difficult to connect with those people and to make your way into that world?

Because I think a lot of people think of it as a shadowy collection of doctors and scientists who are working either for or against these means. Well, I think here's the interesting thing. Like, if I wanted to, let's say, get in touch of Brad Pitt, it'd probably be a very difficult thing to do. But scientists, real easy. You basically find their website. They're all part of a university. They're all part of some sort of, you know, program. And so finding these guys was actually very easy in a way of getting their information.

And what I found is almost every single guy that I would email and just approaching it from a, hey, I'm a documentary filmmaker. I'm interested in this subject. And I would get a 100% response. You know, all these guys were kind of happy to talk. They weren't difficult to actually, you know, fun. I spent about the next year researching and then finally picked up a camera with a little bit of money in April of 2014. And, you know, there's a conceptual approach to the movie. Obviously, you decide that you're going to make a decision as an amateur cyclist to use some of these drugs.

By this time, had you learned a ton of information about them because you'd been talking to these scientists? Yeah, I'd learned a ton of information about kind of what people were taking, whether or not it was. is actually harmful to health, whether or not it was dangerous. And it was interesting because everybody on the outside that I would talk to of, hey, I have this idea. I'm going to dope myself. I'm going to see what it does. I'm going to try to race clean and then go back and race doped. And at the same time, I'm going to try to evade the entire anti-doping system. The vast majority of responses was, aren't you scared about your health? Aren't you scared you're going to get cancer, aren't you scared about the side effects? But what all these scientists and doctors were

telling me was that that was really nothing to be concerned about. I mean, the concerns for me was flying off a bike going 70 miles an hour. And as I spoke to doctor after doctor, scientists after scientists, none of them were really telling me that I should be that concerned about health risks. And I found that kind of interesting, too, because the way that's that it had been presented to me or presented in the zeitgeist of society versus the medical science behind it

seemed to be really at odds. And once you started doing it, was it evident to you what the shape and structure of your film was going to be? Because obviously some things happen down the line that changed it significantly, I presume.

But when you first started using and then racing, did you have a clear sense of where you were going to land in the movie? I mean, as I started on it where I hoped to land, and I had planned it out basically over what I thought was going to be two years from start to completing the film, and that I would race clean, then go back and that I would show that I could get through the testing clean, and that the anti-doping

system was essentially full of fallacies, millions of loopholes, and if a guy like me could beat the system in, you know, in 2016, what does that mean for global sport? And that's where I kind of saw the trajectory going and where the film went to. I could have never imagined. When does Gregory Ritchankov come into your life? Well, I made contact with him before we started shooting. So I had started emailing him during the Sochi Olympics, which was February 2014. And then we meet in person for the first time in July of 2014. He's in Oregon lecturing at a sports symposium. And he had no idea at the time that I wanted to have him help me dope. I had told him that I was a documentary filmmaker interested in discussing, you know,

the anti-doping system and whether or not you could evade it and whether or not what Lance Armstrong had done was still possible. And he said, I'm happy to talk. you about that, come meet me up at this symposium in Oregon. And he was there from Moscow just for like four days. So I go up to Oregon. I spend two days with him and we just bond. And at the end of two days, I say, hey, would you help me dope and evade the testing system in place? And he goes, yes. And I go with your catch? And I go, and I go, really? But prior to that, I had asked him a question, which was if he thought it was possible that a gold medal at the Olympics could be won without performance enhancing drugs. And he takes his pause and he goes, I try to believe, I should believe, I want to believe.

And he goes, but I don't believe a gold medal can be won without performance enhancing drugs. And he takes this long pause and I'll never forget this. And he goes, I don't know, maybe I'm a bad man. And at that point, I wasn't quite sure what to make a bat, but it certainly set up my next question, which was, will you help me dope? There's a progression there. Yeah. And he agreed.

And we then lost touch for about six months. and the Skype call in the film was in December 2014, right as I was now going to start my protocol. And that's the first time that we had Skype together. And that also corresponded with the release of this German television documentary, which launched an investigation into him and the Russian lab, alleging that he was involved in the doping of Russia's track and field team. And it was making allegations across all of Russian sport. Let's go back to that first meeting that you had with him.

You know, as a filmmaker at the time, did you think to yourself, like, I really have a character on my hands here? I have like a charismatic, fascinating person to put on camera. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I think what, you know, you see a. Icarus is to know Gregory, is to love Gregory. And despite his flaws and despite what he was involved in professionally under the Ministry of Russia, it doesn't take away from the fact that he's this lovable human being and also a genius and a poet and all these other things that you get to see and understand about his character.

in the film. But in those two days with him, I mean, I was immediately struck by this character. And at the time, I knew that he was going to be a big part of the film and that I had now my scientist and my WADA lab director, world anti-doping agency lab director that was going to help me dope. And to me, that was going to be riveting enough that somebody who was running Russia's drug testing lab, who had just done all the testing for the Sochi Olympics, was going to help and advise me how to dope and also help and advise me how to evade the testing system that he essentially was in charge of. So that, to me, was riveting, and the fact that someone like him would do that was riveting. Did he ever show you misgivings about participating in

some of that stuff with you? The funny thing about Gregory, and I think it's just his openness and his honesty is through the process, we would be filming stuff with him. And he would constantly, all the time, go, okay, okay, that's not for camera. And the comment would be like, you know, something like, and then I went to Minister Mutko, and he told me to, and we're like, what? And they're like, okay, but that's not for camera. And so there were these clues throughout the way and all these kind of things. But he would then like tell us, tell me something outlandish and then go, okay, but that's not for the camera.

And then I would call Dan Kogan, my producing partner with Impact Partners, and I would go, you're just never going to believe what just happened or what Gregory just said. And at the time, we were dealing with kind of this moral and ethical conundrum of how when we put the film together, we were going to also protect Gregory because I really cared about Gregory. And so I had made a plan at that time that when the film was done, I'd go to Moscow and make sure that we weren't going to do anything to harm his career. And as events transpired, that took care of itself. When did the story start to change for you in terms of how you structurally wanted to tell it? Was there a catalyzing moment? The catalyzing moment certainly was him fleeing Russia into essentially my protection in November 2014. As the Waddle Lab, his laboratory is shut down, he's forced to resign.

and Putin is on state television saying that not only denying that any of this has happened, but saying that individuals will be held accountable and punishment will be absolute. That was essentially his death sentence. And Gregory also got information from other friends of his at the FSB, the KGB, that they were planning his suicide. And so when he fleed to Los Angeles and he arrived, Within a few days, to me, I knew that essentially the two years of filmmaking that I had done before was really not going to be the movie that I was going to end up making. And in that process began the next essentially two-year journey of not only how the film was going to change, but how the narrative arc was going to change. and creatively how we were now going to put together essentially a very different film.

Was there ever a time when it felt like the scope of the story was getting so big that you couldn't keep your arms around it? There were a lot of times that I felt the gravity of the story, and I would go to bed and not sleep and be worried that there was somebody out my window. you know, those kind of thoughts constantly going through my head because we were essentially sitting on this information for seven months before bringing it public. And that was a tremendous burden. And, you know, Gregory and I spoke about it on an everyday basis, and it was very stressful, but I don't think any of us ever thought about walking away from the film or walking away from helping Gregory.

Did Gregory understand specifically as far as you could tell what he was signing up for, what he was participating in? Absolutely. You know, I think as you see in Icarus, he's a very strong character. He's a strong-minded character. But the other thing you see about him is that every word out of his mouth, even if it's totally outlandish, is true. I mean, he has been proven by multiple investigators to, you know,

that all of his evidence has been corroborated and proven beyond any reasonable doubt. And he had a goal, and his goal was to become a whistleblower. He had had it, and he wanted to tell his story. And his passion to bring that truth forward and tell that story allowed myself and my team to believe in him, to protect him, and work how to do it. and every decision along that way from the interviews to compiling the evidence to putting together the dossier that we would bring to the New York Times, that we would bring to WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the investigation of Richard McLaren, all of this Gregory was essentially

a part of. And as you even see in the film, he took extraordinary risks, even against the advice of his original attorney at that time and against, you know, the advice of, hey, you know, this could turn out bad for you. And he continued to want to be on that path. And nothing was ever from coming from us as the film team. It was, it was Gregory leading the journey as to him wanting to be a whistleblower and us following him and helping to guide the way and helping the crisis management so he could do it. Did any of you guys, well, if you could have done anything differently, would you have done it differently at any time during the making the film? Well, I probably would have spent far less money on the first two years of making the film.

That's reasonable. Yeah, that makes sense. But you do need that first 20 minutes of the film to really, to situate us, you know, to make us understand why you're doing this in the first place. I mean, it's amazing one of these days to think of the thousands of hours of footage that we shot. that none of it ever made it into the film because it just became completely irrelevant to the ultimate story, even including I probably shot 40 interviews that one of these days would make some really fascinating interviews with people like Victor Conti and and Tim Layden, who's one of the headwriters of Sports Illustrated and a myriad of athletes on and on and on. and those interviews became superfluous to what the narrative arc of the film would ultimately be. But that would probably be what I would go back and change because I spent a lot of time shooting a lot of stuff that we didn't use. When did you feel like the film was really starting to take shapefully, like you were going to have something you could show to people?

I thought I had a film that I was going to show people, and then I realized that I didn't have a film and started over. but we raced and raced and raced for Sundance last year. And at that time, we got the call in November and you have seven weeks to finish your film. And we premiered at Sundance basically a year ago about right now. And even then, the film was not finished. And Netflix that came in and acquired the film, but also truly became a partner with us at Sundance. And they, you know, said, hey, we want to acquire the film. And I was so honored.

But one of our very first conversations was the film's not finished. And here's why. And they allowed for another four and a half months of work on the film. Because not only was the news still unfolding, we had shot so much stuff that we didn't, we just couldn't get done in time for Sundance. And also, I was able to. as a filmmaker to sit and then watch that film and realize that there were so many vestiges of the original story still in the film that were no longer necessary to the narrative and where the film needed to go and being able to see the film in front of an audience.

Also allowed that process for me to kill a lot more babies to add a lot more meat into where the story needed to go. Yeah, the editing must have been incredibly difficult with all the footage that you had and all the information you have to explain to people. You know, what do you, what do producers do to help you figure out the way to shape a movie like this? If anybody, if anybody who hasn't made a film, your editor is your best friend and is also a good editor is truly your co-conspirator.

in the creative process of putting together the film. And I was blessed with some extraordinary talent. At one time, we actually had seven editors working on the project, if you can believe it, because we had so much footage. And we had two archival editors. I had three assistant editors. And then I had two editors working in tandem, essentially to help craft the narrative journey. and my lead editor, John Bertain, really just pulled a miracle in helping not only manage the editorial team because we were pulling thousands and thousands of archival clips and finding stuff from the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, all this stuff in Russian.

I had two Russian translators helping on a full-time basis, just translating. and that process was extensive and went on for, you know, for over a year, that journey of it. And but John Bertaine, you know, really helped shape the narrative arc of the film and the edit. This seems incredibly expensive to do what you're describing, maybe more so than some traditional documentary work. Like, it was over a time where you felt like it's getting too big, there's too much to do here. here to conquer? It's funny because we had these, you know, we always had these boards. And as the story got so big, there were 50 different paths I could have taken because I was

finding essentially conspiracies everywhere. I was finding the World Anti-Doping Agency doesn't work. The IOC has got corruption and all the stuff within the Olympic organization. The various bodies of the state. sporting federations themselves, the athletes. I mean, there were so many different stories that we had then grasped onto in the journey of making the film. And ultimately, you know, we as a team said, hey, look, the story is Gregory and the story is Russia, and the story is this conspiracy and this scandal, and we can't get into all this other stuff. But for a long time, you know, we had this

like, you know, conspiratorial, like chalkboard, essentially whiteboard that was leading to, you know, everything and everyone. And, you know, and through a process of elimination, you just kept going, wait, maybe we can't tell that. We can't tell that. We can't tell that. We got to stick to this story because we're making a two-hour movie, not a 10-hour miniseries. You could have been documenting this story in perpetuity as an ongoing documentary given the way that the news works. How did you decide to say, we're done? That actually was a lot of it had to do with where the story went with Gregory,

meaning I brought him into U.S. protection in July of 2016. As you see in the film, I give him a hug goodbye at the airport. And at that point, we lost access to Gregory. Gregory was gone and is still gone. So everything from that point forward was essentially just continuing to follow the chain of events that Gregory had put into motion and that the story and the conspiracy had put into motion. But the actual filming was primarily done at that point. And we all knew that.

And so from that point until the next six months, I knew that there was the Olympic decision and there was the findings of the McLaren investigation in December of 2016, which found that basically over a thousand athletes across Russian athletes across all sports had been involved in this conspiracy and that it went back essentially as far as sport history had been. being documented in Olympic history. And that we knew was the very last thing we were going to essentially shoot and we were waiting for that because that to me was at least the end of the story that we were telling, which was Gregory was involved in this conspiracy, brought this story forward. And while there's been a series of events that continue to transpire, the narrative arc of that story, to me it felt complete. Hey guys, we're going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor.

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Did you sense as soon as people started to see it that some dominoes were going to fall? That was our hope. As you see in the film, which it's being revised, says that at the very last car, of the film, it says that Russia will be going to the 2018 Winter Olympics and that they'll be hosting the FIFA World Cup. In December, two months ago, Russia has been banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics, even though there are some neutral athletes that are going to be allowed to compete. And at the time the film was released, we felt that the Olympics, the IOC, were going to continue to try to shove this under the carpet. And it was through— So you were surprised in December.

Well, it was through Gregory's legal team, Jim Walden and Avony Patel pushed. And the release of Icarus and the media and the press and the sports writers and everything that came around the film. And the persistence of his legal team ultimately essentially forced the Olympics to do something. because I think the film put a spotlight on this, that even the New York Times and all the other stories and the Rio Olympics and everything else hadn't been able to accomplish to that point, which was seeing Gregory, understanding Gregory on camera, understanding this wasn't some madman, madman telling a story,

but that this story was true, and that in the film you come to know Gregory, you love Gregory, but you also realize that this person is telling the truth and that the evidence is there. And I think the film, in its evidence, and in knowing Gregory became undeniable in a sense that the Olympics had to do something. And through the work of his lawyer, which has been ongoing,

there has finally been some justice. What's it been like to observe a lot of things? the parallels that are drawn between the story that you're telling and the complications around Russian interference in American politics. Do you see a correlation between those two things? I see a direct correlation. I see a very, very close correlation. And we made a decision creatively as a film team that even though the Russian investigation, we could have added that into the film. We could have added the election meddling into the film, these kind of links. Ultimately, that was going into a world of conjecture rather than a world of evidence.

And so we wanted to stick to our story and hopefully allow the audience to have that takeaway, which is if Russia was willing to go to these lengths to win a election. Olympic medals to essentially cheat world sport and conspire on a level as never, ever seen before in history. I mean, when you look at this scandal, this makes what Lance Armstrong did look like a needle in a haystack, truly. And so when you understand that the scope of that and the lengths to which Russia went, I think it has to leave you with the question of, well, what else are they willing to meddle in? And when you see that sports is essentially war without the weapons, and it's essentially how countries, especially in the Olympics, are extending themselves through geopolitics and showing, you know, how strong they are on the world stage. You know, I hope that the takeaway from Icarus isn't just in sports is the takeaway of, okay, we as a country or as a world need to do something to prevent our elections from being hacked. to prevent the interference in a democratic process to stop these kind of things from happening.

And that certainly was my intent as a filmmaker to help draw that parallel. We're on the eve of the Winter Games. I'm curious if you think that this is a solvable problem, the thing that you're exploring in the film. What do you mean by that thing? Removing, doping from Olympic competition entirely? I will say this. I really believe in clean sports. And my heart goes out to all the clean athletes in the world that are going into these Olympics and world competitions abiding by the rules of fair play and abiding by that handshake of what you believe in, I think, as an athlete, of clean competition, of, you know, as level of a playing field as best as possible. but I also don't believe that this problem can be solved because what we are discovering on an every single day basis, which is just because an athlete says they're clean doesn't mean they're clean. And we are seeing this repeat itself over and over and over and over again throughout the history of sport.

And when we look at the evolution of medical science, what we're seeing is that if it's not testosterone and HGH, well, the next thing is genetic doping. The next thing is if you have enough money right now, you can see to it that your child is 6 foot 2, has blonde hair, blue eyes, and will never develop prostate cancer, Alzheimer's, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, this is what the forefront of medical technology and human advancement is, and it's happening right now. So I think the world is going to have to come to some sort of, I don't know what it is, reconciliation of what we want for the future of sport, because our own human technological advancements, just like Apple coming out with a new iPhone every year, is also a reality for human evolution. And that kind of throws a whole snafu into the global anti-doping system. You mentioned Lance Armstrong a couple of times that you really looked up to him. And obviously he has been involved in this world for quite some time. He's been an advocate for your movie.

And I suspect you've come to know him a little bit. Yes. What has that been like? Is there anything awkward about that given that he has been a participant? Well, you know, first of all, I don't condone anything that Lance did. especially in regards to how he went after people that were trying to voice their opinions about him. But on the other hand, I was very glad to see that essentially the day after Christmas he sent out this tweet saying how much he was taken back by the film and how shocked he was by it. and and to me that was an honor that that you know love or hate Lance that he had such a strong

opinion and positive opinion for the film and I've also been glad that he's been willing to come out and lend his voice to the film because if there is going to be change you need the lances of the world to be coming forward and talking about this in a meaningful manner, rather than hiding behind, you know, whatever you want to call it. So I've been, you know, I've been very appreciative of Lance's support. And, you know, and ultimately, you know, when you look at his generation, they stripped him of seven tour titles, but they didn't give those titles to anyone else. And the reason why is there is no one else to give them to nobody, not a single one who raced in those seven Tour de France's could claim that title because they were all doing it.

All of them. And so love or hate lands, you know, this guy was a part of a system where everybody was doing or trying to. to do the same thing to win. And ultimately, he beat all the other cheaters that were also cheating. So it's very complicated. It's very complicated. Brian, I end every show by asking filmmakers,

what's the last great film you've seen? What is the last great film that you have seen? The Shape of Water. Oh, yeah. What did you like about it? Blown away. I cried at the end of that movie. And it wasn't so much, it was a combination of just, for me, the beauty and the filmmaking of that film.

I was just so taken by the cinematography, the set design, and the construction of that film, how if I was directing that film or if I had read that script, I would probably go, this is preposterous, a man fish, and a woman fall in love. They carry on this romance, but the way that Guillermo de Toro brought that film to life, and I just saw this like a week ago, so it's fresh in my mind, was extraordinary. And so that's the most recent film I saw that I was really taken by. Brian, I also think Icarus is extraordinary. Congratulations. And thanks for coming on today. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Thanks again for listening to today's show. we're ramping up the Big Picture this month, airing new episodes every Monday and Friday throughout Oscar season. Future guests include Alex Ross Perry, stop motion animation genius, and Wallace and Gromac creator Nick Park, and Oscar-nominated documentarian Yancy Ford. Watch Ford's

powerful film Strong Island on Netflix before you listen to that one, and check out K Austin Collins writing on it over at the ringer.com. And let me know who you'd like to see on the show in future episodes. You can find me on Twitter at Sean Fennacy. Thanks again. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Proper Cloth.

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