The Press Box - Morgan Neville’s Mister Rogers Documentary Reminds Us to Be a Good Neighbor | The Big Picture (Ep. 481)

Episode Date: June 13, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey chats with the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville about his new film, ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor,’ about one of the world’s foremost champions of kindness and decency, Mister Rogers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's not even that Mr. Rogers is a hero in Pittsburgh. He's a god in Pittsburgh. For instance, the first cab I got into, they said, what are you doing here? And I said, I'm going to work on a documentary about Mr. Rogers. And he turned around and he pointed at me and he said, don't screw this up. Wow. I'm Sean Fennacy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most interesting filmmakers in the world.

Morgan Neville makes movies about intimacy. his Oscar-winning documentary 20 feet from stardom is about the close distance between pop music fame and background anonymity. In Best of Enemies, it's the wide chasm between two men sitting across from each other. In his new movie, Won't You Be My Neighbor? Neville shows just how near we could get to a man on our TV screen.

That man is Fred Rogers, better known to children around the world as Mr. Rogers. Neville's movie is neither hagiography nor history lesson. It's more of a presentation of philosophy. Rogers, a Republican pastor, was one of the world's foremost champions. of kindness and decency. He treated children like peers

and made a public television show that spanned decades. Won't You Be My Neighbor is one of the year's best and most open-minded movies. I talked with Morgan Neville about why Mr. Rogers' message resonates today

and why he makes documentaries. Here's Morgan Neville. So delighted to be joined by one of the nicest guys in the world, Morgan Neville, talking about one of the nicest guys in the history of time. Mr. Rogers, Morgan, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

You made a film about Mr. Rogers. I just said to you, I have not spoken to a single person who's seen this movie that hasn't felt differently about how they want to treat the world and see the world. It's been a common reaction.

Yeah, why is that? And why did you make the movie? Well, I made the movie because of that reaction. A lot of people were saying things to me about Mr. Rogers. I knew a couple people that knew them, and there are all these little clues

that have been going on for years that were making me feel like, hmm, maybe there's a re-evaluation of Mr. Rogers out there. You know, like everything people told me about him surprise me. And one night, I somehow ended up on a YouTube deep dive of Mr. Rogers' speeches. It was like one of these epiphanal moments where I was like, I want more of that voice. You know, I don't hear that voice anywhere in our culture right now. And it wasn't that I wanted

to go back and kind of revisit the nostalgia of Mr. Rogers. It was like, I need Mr. Rogers in 2018. who's the grown-up in our society? So part of it was me just wanting to spend time with that message, which, you know, I've thought a lot about what it is, and there were many things to what he was saying, but when I kind of digested everything down, it was an idea of radical kindness. That's how I'd describe it.

And if there's anything we need more of right now, it's some kindness. Yeah. Did you grow up with Mr. Rogers? Were you a vast consumer of his show? I was born in 1967. and he went on in 1968. So I was like Gen 1, Mr. Rogers fanatic. I loved it as a kid.

And a lot of my memories of it are really more like images and feelings than specific memories because if I was watching it when I was probably one and two and three, like I don't even remember that. Like my relationship with him predates my memory. Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean, it totally imprinted on me too in that way. But there's something interesting about flashing images that you know are inside you even if they've escaped you somehow. And it's the same thing with the feeling and the theme of the movie that you're trying to tell to be reminded that this is actually a way that you can treat people, that you can treat the world. There's weirdly, it does feel radical. Part of what he was doing with his show is explaining to kids. And if the show was basically meant for two to six-year-olds,

two to six-year-olds don't even know that they're people. They don't have any sense of identity or tribe or anything. And so I feel like he's explaining to them, this is what it means to be a moral person in the world and how we should treat other people and how we should think about ourselves. And I feel like maybe all of us could use a good dose of being reminded what it's like to be a good neighbor. Yeah. It's a beautiful idea. How do you make a movie like this? It's a subject who is no longer alive.

Where do you start? Pittsburgh. That's where you start. Beautiful, lovely town. I've come to really love Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh was, I mean, he grew up, Fred Rogers grew up in La Trobe, which is down the road from Pittsburgh. But the show was based out of Pittsburgh. He stayed there. And I didn't realize until I really went to Pittsburgh and started spending time there that it's not even that Mr. Rogers is a hero in Pittsburgh. He's a god in Pittsburgh.

How does that manifest? How do you know that? Well, for instance, the first cab I got into in Pittsburgh. they said, what are you doing here? And I said, I'm going to work on a documentary about Mr. Rogers. And he turned around and he pointed at me and he said, don't screw this up. Wow. That's pressure. That was the first clue.

There were many clues. And virtually everybody I met in Pittsburgh had a personal story about him, too. Another guy I met randomly said, I was in high school and we were hitchhiking one day and a car pulled over. We looked inside and Mr. Rogers was. there. And he leaned over and said, I'll drive you anywhere you want to go as long as you promise never to hitchhike again. So that's a really interesting thing. I mean, I'm curious about when you have a subject who seems so angelic, like how do you build attention around a movie like that? If we thought a lot about it, and there are a couple of things. I mean, really, the first thing

was we said, we're not going to make a biography. This is not a biography in a traditional sense. It's a film about ideas. And that was my pitch from the beginning is that if you think think about what he was trying to do with his ideas, then there's a lot of dramatic tension because it's him against a world that doesn't necessarily care about kindness and in an industry who treats most of the things he finds precious as worthless. He came of age at the exact moment television did. So, you know, the story he told was that his senior of college, it's 1948, he goes home on spring break. His parents have this new television, one of the first anywhere in their living room. He watches it. And he said, at the end of that week, I have to

change my life's course, and I'm going to go into television. And they said, why? And he said, because I hate it. Wow. But he saw this tremendous potential in television. And kind of the, and he continued to have this optimism. Like television is a meeting place for all of us. It's a place to educate and a place to edify and console and minister and it can do all these different things. Yet when you look around the landscape, essentially kids TV is there to sell toys and sugar. Right. And even in the 50s, you show us that that's what it was like. It's noisy and it's distractible and it's kind of all over the place and he's looking for a different meter.

Yeah. And he created one. it's so different, not only different like ahead of its time, but unlike anything else anybody's ever really done. Like the amount of space on the show is phenomenal, the kind of intimacy he created with people to watch the show. I mean, it was interesting because he never said, hey kids, it was always, how are you doing today?

You know, it was like, and he always addressed the camera directly. So if you were a kid, you're like, oh, he's talking to me. You know, I know him. And when Fred would run into kids in the real world, he always acted as though they had a relationship because to the child they did. You know, he also got at one point more letters than anybody in America and he responded to every letter because again to the child writing, they knew each other. Yeah. He has this fascinating, godly but not egotistical pursuit. And how do you balance like what's real and what's not real about it because he's a human being?

Yeah, and I think that was the key thing is like it would be so easy to sanctify somebody like Fred Rogers and to be very hegiographic about it. But in fact, it was Joanne Rogers, Mrs. Rogers, who's in the film, Hawaii Ador. She's very charming. She's great. And actually not at all like Fred, too. You know, if Fred was very kind of prim and teetoteling, vegetarian, she's the opposite. Yeah, she's off the cuff. Yeah, she's fun.

And you could see how they worked together. together as a couple. But she said to me early on, you know, don't make Fred into a saint. And I think that's people always thought of him as two-dimensional. They didn't understand the depth because he did a show that was simple and deep, but people often mistake simple for superficial. He felt like people didn't understand that he was a dimensional person. And to sanctify him is also to treat him as a two-dimensional person, that somehow he wasn't human and didn't struggle. And what you realized,

and what I came to realize in making the film early on was that he was a tortured artist, really underneath it. You know, the letters he wrote, the memos he wrote, the doubt he had about... What do you think was nodding him,

the same like imposter syndrome that every artist has the same frustrations with their ability to succeed? What was gnawing at him? I mean, I think he said it over and over. I mean, whatever he was trying to address in children

and whatever fears they had and whatever needs they had, he was really trying to address in himself. I mean, when he talked to children, he was trying to talk to his own childhood self in many ways, so for plain kind of armchair psychologist. You can't help but do it even as you're watching the movie

because you're just like, how can someone be so decent? Even if you consider yourself a decent person, he kind of overwhelms the idea of decency. It comes back to this idea of love. as I've tried to kind of break down the philosophy of Fred Rogers, I feel like he talked about love a lot and is love being, you know, being capable of being loved and allowing yourself to feel that you're lovable. He talked about that a lot. Because I think he felt, if he felt that love was the thing you aspire to on the one hand, that the thing that's the opposite of love is fear. Because fear confessed or, and manifest as hatred and anger and resentment. And those things really stem from fear.

And if you look at so much of what he did, it was about helping kids not fear things. Are you afraid of going down the bathtub? Are you afraid of death? Are you afraid of bullies? Are you afraid of whatever you're afraid of? I'm not going to pretend these bad things don't happen. I'm going to help you understand it so you won't fear them.

So helping us understand him is an interesting task for you because, you know, you've made a lot of films about Johnny Cash and Muddy Waters and artists who have, you know, vast archival footage to pull from, but probably nothing like Fred Rogers, right, who has hundreds of thousands of hours of television? Thousands, maybe not hundreds of thousands of hours, thousands of hours. Hundreds of episodes. Yeah, I mean, he did almost a thousand episodes. And that's just to begin with, you know, he did other shows. He had a show, a regional show for a decade beforehand, umpteen speeches, letters. How do you do, how do you make a movie out of that? Do you have to watch every show?

Who's helping you? A team of great people. Kate, my amazing assistant editor who watched virtually every episode. Wow. But my editors and all of us, we're just digesting is a huge part of it. And then looking for nuggets because, you know, an archive doc is almost like a Verit doc. in a way that you're trying to find the story and the material. Like you have ideas going in and you have ideas that you want to make into scenes,

but the footage can make its own scene. Like if you find something, like, well, that's got to be in there. Yeah. That's amazing. You do stop and just show us an extended cut from the show at times, and it's just really powerful and shows you who the person is. Yeah, I mean, I've done a lot of music films, and one of my all-time favorite people is this legendary Memphis music producer

named Jim Dickinson, who produced everybody from Big Star to the Replacements, and he played with the Stones. The amazing guy. And I remember asking him once, how do you produce music? You know, what's the secret? And you said, well, the secret is you turn up the good and you turn down the bad.

So I think about editing that way. Like, don't forget to turn up the good and turn down the bad, that, you go on with a lot of preconceived notions. But at the end of the day, go with the good stuff. Like, even if it doesn't fit, Remember that, you know, particularly in archival films, if it's good, if you find yourself talking about it to friends, you know, if you're showing people this clip on your laptop, then it should be in your film. You know, remember that. So kind of whatever moves you, remember that that's the most important thing.

It seems like it'd be easy to get people to talk about Fred Rogers, but were there anybody, was there anybody who you struggled to, you know, compel to do this? Because there's a lot, there are a lot of voices and a lot of unexpected voices, too. Everybody I talked to was very game, essentially. The only interview I didn't get, I have to say, which I tried hard, was Lady Aberlin, who was the female cast member on the show. Betty Aberlin is the actress. And she hasn't done an interview in a long time. And I talked to her for hours on the phone. And she'd go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

And at the end of the day, I just couldn't get her to do an interview. Interesting. And for any particular, you just wanted to stay private? She seemed self-conscious and hadn't done one. Yeah, I mean, those are the battles you fight all the time. Yeah, it's interesting because you do such a great job in the movie of showing kind of the extended Mr. Rogers universe to use a modern phrase, like all the other figures in the stories of their lives that appeared on the show, too. Were they excited to talk to you about that?

They were, but I mean, the thing I tried to avoid was, you know, a lot of times in documentaries, You end up doing fan and interviews or, you know, there are all these famous people who liked this person. So you can interview them and it gives your film more profile. And I've done some of those interviews over the years in different projects, but I tend to not like them because they're superficial. I mean, I like the subject and they like the subject, but their insight isn't going to be the same as the person who is there. And I felt like this was a rare chance where they gave us access and freedom to do whatever we wanted to tell the story from the inside out. And if you have that kind of access, then you use it. You know, the more we kind of stay inside of Fred's head and then the concentric circles close to Fred, the better the film felt.

Was there anything about him that shocked you as you were interviewing people and learning about him? there was nothing I heard about him that I felt like, God, that's out of character. But there were a lot of things that surprised me about him. You know, all the languages he spoke, that he, I mentioned he was a vegetarian, you know, virtually his entire adult life. Because he said he didn't want to eat anything that had a mother.

Wow. That is also very modern. Yeah. Just things he would do. I mean, we have some of them in the film, like the one, four, three. idea about he'd swim a mile every single day and then weigh himself and he weighed 143 pounds every day of his adult life because for him 143 stood for I love you one letter four letters three letters so it's interesting you bring that up I have one friend who saw the film who

also was very moved by it but he was just like there is a slightly creepy aspect to like the precision and compulsion of his life and his methods and like how do you really how do you cope with something like that. I think because we almost see somebody who seems so pure and we're like, what's underneath there? Well, I mean, we talk about that in the film too. It is compulsion and I don't know if it's creepy compulsion, but it's definitely an obsessiveness. And again, for somebody who was as accomplished as Fred Rogers and who was as kind as Fred Rogers, you don't have a TV show for 35 years and, you know, lead a nation of kind of of children without some sense of compulsion and ego and just drive.

So I think a lot of that comes back from his own kind of insecurity and wanting to have control. I think that control was something that made him feel comfortable. Yeah. I also feel like the film has a chance to be used as kind of a political tool and people will position it in a way. And I'm sure I suspect some of your feelings about even wanting to. do it or born of the nature of the discourse, but also that Fred Rogers is kind of an unlikely

figure to be positioned in these times, right? Like a Republican preacher, basically, or reverent. Yeah. You know, I didn't make the film to say, see, you know, Fred Rogers was a, you know, a liberal pastor, but our relationship with him predates our sense of political identity. And those basic principles he's talking about are the things that I feel are not being nurtured. in our culture. So it's not an idea I've come back to on many of my films. It's one of the things that I think about a lot is one of common ground. I made a film called Best of Enemies. I was just going to ask you about that. About Gorbado and Wayma Buckley, which to me is kind of a mere documentary to this documentary. Literally, you noted my note. My next question was literally the flip side of this

is a film you made a few years ago. You know, looking for places where we can agree, you know, even if we disagree politically, we agree about how we should speak to each other or how we even allow ourselves to communicate. Basically, a neighborhood is a society and being a neighbor is being a citizen. And what Fred was doing is advocating for a healthy society. These are the basic rules. And I feel like we take those things for granted and we're living at a time now where I think we've taken. taken those things so for granted that they made their fraying and they could even break. You know, that there's nobody out there advocating for civility.

Nobody, you know, that's essentially what Fred was doing. And I feel like we live in very uncivil times. Absolutely. And so to remind ourselves that a neighborhood or a society is a fragile thing, it cannot be taken for granted. And I know that sounds kind of, you know, soft and wishful, you know, and I think that's exactly what Fred dealt with this whole time. But I've always kind of believed, can we remind ourselves of how much you have to fight to keep a society healthy and civil? That it's not something we should just bet on. And in fact, we have a culture now that has so much, so much writing on,

the insavility of it. You know, there's so many people that profit or get votes or get eyeballs or make money by playing to our lesser human instincts. No, it's true. I mean, that kind of tension, it's something you've been working here every day. We figure out when there's an unfortunate moment, unfortunately, it means more people are paying attention. So there's a difficulty in kind of communicating about that. So we're incentivized to be, to play to those things. That's exactly right. And it's like, So how do you make kindness attractive? It's something Fred talks about in the film.

You know, is it a story about puppies at the end of the evening news? Yeah, yeah. Well, that feels phony, right? It feels phony, and it's not the point of kindness, you know? And in a way, I was just talking to somebody this morning. And I was like, if you want a real superhero, like you could do a lot worse than Fred Rogers. For sure. Somebody who's fighting for really the thing that we should all be fighting for.

You know, and it's, is that corny? You know, to me, it's urgent. You know, it's not corny. Yeah, it's interesting because this movie obviously has this message that we're talking about. And it's kind of unvarnished in that way. Not every movie has that, but this movie, there is something straightforward looking into the camera saying, be good, be fair to people, be honest. What's it like for you now?

I mean, you've had a really kind of amazing five or six years in your career. You've been making movies for a long time. But is it really important for you for, like, a lot of people to see your films and to see a movie like this? Um, yes. I mean, I do the work because, um, I mean, because you make films in the expectation that it's a statement you want to make. And it's not just trying to create a platform, um, to tell a story. I feel like at this point, I'm picking films that are as much about me as they are about the subject. And not that I'm, that Mr. Rogers.

But I felt like what he was talking about was something I really want to talk about. And so in that way, I feel like the more people see the film, the more good works I will have put back in the world. You know, it's like that message of like I'm trying to do all I can to try and make the world a better place to. And I know that it just always sounds so corny. But there's something that's happened with this film and it's only happened to me. on 20 feet from stardom where the film, I mean, people, I guess, say this sometimes, but like it takes on a life of its own. Like in a weird way, it's starting to feel like it's not my film anymore.

Yeah. The first time I saw it, I felt a genuine energy in the screening from people who wanted to talk about it right away and communicate about how they felt about it, which is, that's unique. It's great. And, you know, normally if somebody loves your film, they'll say, oh, I'm going to tell my friends about it. what I've been hearing from people now is I want to take my friend to go see this. Yeah, that's a good feeling.

I mean, that's really unusual. For a documentary, that's, you know, bizarre. So you mentioned 20 Feud from Stardom, you won an Oscar for that film. I wanted to know what changes for a documentary and after you win that Oscar. The biggest change was that instead of spending 50% of my time raising money,

I spend 6% of my time raising money. Yeah. And as an independent filmmaker, this has been doing this for 25 years, that's huge. And people ask, God, you've been so prolific. How are you doing all these things? And it's because I don't have to raise money. Yeah.

I can make a lot more films if I'm not spending on my time trying to raise money. Did that done on you instantly? Did you know that when 20 feet from start on was happening? Well, for instance, Best of Enemies. I've been working on that film for years before 20 feet from startup. And nobody was very excited about pain for, a film about two old dead white guys talking on TV 50 years ago. I love that movie.

I love it too. I'm so proud of it. But after 20 feet, suddenly there were people willing to pay for it. We got it made. And then afterwards, everybody's like, why? Why didn't you ask me? And everybody was armchair quarterbacking that. And that's kind of been the experience, you know, that I've been able to tell the

stories I want to tell and have the freedom to do it. And, you know, a lot of people come to me and say, well, you want to do scripted and you went to all this other stuff. And I'd love scripted and, you know, maybe. But I feel like being in the position I'm in now is a gift as a nonfiction storyteller. And I don't ever want to take that for granted. I love documentary work. You know, I had started as a journalist. And my first documentary, I started 25 years ago next month.

Wow. So I'm almost on my. Quarter century of making documentaries. My silver anniversary, maybe it's at 40. I don't know. Anyway. Your wooden anniversary. Sure.

Sure. But two weeks after I started my first documentary, I called my parents and I said, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. Like, I knew it instantly. It was like, this is everything I like in one job. And, you know, when I started documentaries were like the spinach of filmmaking. You know, nobody cared about them. Nobody wanted to pay for them.

They weren't sexy. And now we're in this amazing golden era of documentary and non-fiction storytelling that just keeps getting more interesting. It is boom time. I wanted to ask you about that. Do you think this will last? I know there are a lot of reasons why it's happened over the last 10 to 15 years. Yeah. And you're involved basically, you have your foot in both pools.

You work on shows that are on Netflix. and you've also made a lot of great theatrical releases. Do you feel like this has got a 20-year lifespan in front of it? Or what happens if it doesn't? It's definitely cyclical because even in my career I've seen things rise and fall. I mean, just a quick history of documentary when I think about it. You know, there was kind of the end of the VHS market was happening pre-D-take-off. Then there was a moment in the early 2000s where Michael Moore and Spellbound and a few films did really well theatrically.

And suddenly there was a lot of equity money to make documentaries. And then a bunch of those films didn't make money. So the equity money went away. And then the DVD market came in strong and you could finance films based on kind of projected sales of DVDs. And then that disappeared. And then finally the streaming market came in and kept changing it. So I've weathered the storm. I've felt many waves come and go.

So I have no, you know, no illusions that it's going to last in this kind of golden era right now. I mean, I think the filmmaking will continue to be good. And I feel like the technology has made it a lot easier for all kinds of people to tell stories. But what I think has happened that I don't think is going to unhappen is that people have now, you know, what I heard for a long time was I love documentaries. I don't know where to see them. And now, if you can go to iTunes or go to Netflix and see documentaries next to comedies or dramas, a lot of people pick documentaries. So just the accessibility of documentaries, I think, has changed the profile of the films. And a lot of people, even a lot of people I know who work in scripted who say, well, what I personally watch is documentaries.

What I want to watch on a Friday night is a documentary. So a lot of the films that you've made, maybe all of them you tell me, seem to be about people and, movements that you're passionate about, right? And not just their ideas, but, like, genuinely that you're probably a fan of or intrigued by. Yeah, I mean, I've been really fortunate to, you know, in films about Johnny Cash or Keith Richards and Icky pop, like, people who are heroes of mine, which is amazing. Who's your white whale? David Bowie. Oh, yeah.

That would be good. That'd be good. Why don't you do it? You only have to spend 6% of your time now raising the money, you know? Well, it's not to the money. it's the permissions. The rights. Yeah, true.

Bowie's been a white whale for a lot of people to do something big. There are a few white whales out there in the documentary world and the music world. How do you feel about doing a story that is sort of bigger

than a standalone, you know, on the more serious level, but that is completely owned by you, that is your thing? Because, you know, you've obviously worked on ugly delicious, which is wonderful and abstract in these series is on Netflix,

but is there a six-part, Morgan Neville, definitive story of X? No. I mean, there could be, but I don't have one in my pocket. I keep these shows I've been doing, like abstract and ugly delicious. They're anthology shows to some extent, you know, that each episode is a standalone. You don't have to watch the next episode.

You don't have to watch them in order. And for whatever reason, I kind of love those. They're a tougher sell. It's a tougher to kind of have an audience. And I really enjoy great doc miniseries like Wild Wild Country or whatever. and, you know, it's great. It's great to have that kind of space. I don't know if it's because I grew up as a kid in movie theaters,

but there's something I still, in my mind, for whatever reason, think of the purest form of what I do being the perfect 93-minute film that you sit in a theater and watch with other people. And, like, if I can keep doing that, I'm going to be really happy. We had a lot of conversation about that with Wild Wild Country. Like, is it a film? and what does that mean if it isn't? I don't know.

I mean, I will say with a lot of these nonfiction series happening and a lot of great things are happening, but when I see the kind of miniseries-style single story, they're often a little padded for my taste. Certainly. Tell me a little bit really quickly about the next film that you have coming about Orson Wells. Orson Wells.

They'll love me when I'm dead, is what it's called. And what's the focus of that? It's about his last movie. It's really actually about the last 15 years of his life. So the setup for it is Orson left Hollywood. He went to Europe, made films for 20 years. And in 1970, this is the dawning era of the New Hollywood. So, you know, Easy Writers just hit. And the company that produced at BBS brings Orson back to Hollywood to write a script. And Orson is like the conquering king who was the godfather to New Hollywood. And he never finished

is another feature film in the last 15 years. But stays in Hollywood. Doesn't go back to Europe. Stays in Hollywood. And in the middle of it, he attempts to make a film called the other side of the wind. He shoots it for six years. And it's a film about a film director at the end of his life that can't finish a movie. So rich.

It's so rich. And even his movie is a movie within a movie, a documentary wrapped around a feature film. So all of that footage sat in a vault in Paris for 42 years. And we liberated it about a year and a half ago. And I'm doing it with Frank Marshall, who was famous producer. Yeah, famous producer, but who was also a very young production manager, line producer on Orson's film, on this film, the other side of the wind that Orson was making. So he and Peter Bogdanovich and a number of other people are finishing the feature. And then I took the six years of dailies and a whole lot of other stuff and I'm making a film.

to tell the story of Orson really at the end of his life. Can't wait. I'm an orsonologist. I'm very excited. Oh, my God. It'll be fun. If you're a film geek, then it's like an, you know, amusement park. Morgan, I end every episode by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they've seen?

What is the last great thing that you have seen? The last great thing I've seen. It's a documentary. It's coming out in Netflix later this year. It was a Sundance. And it's a very common thing. complicated story about a film that was made. It's actually kind of related to the horse in film. It's a film that was made by a very young girl and a bunch of her friends in Asia,

in the 80s. And somebody ran away with the footage and they were never able to finish it. And here 30 years later, she found the footage and was able to tell her story and the story of what happened with the film by using that film. What a perfect companion project. Morgan, thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture, and thank you to Morgan Neville for joining us. Please check out more podcasts featuring me this week on The Ringer,

including The Rwatchables, a special 25th anniversary edition of Jurassic Park, times two Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. And then later this week, we'll have another episode of The Big Picture, featuring The Incredibles 2 director Brad Bird, which is very exciting. And for more on The Incredibles in the Pixar universe, check out The Ringer.com, where we're ranking all the movies, and Chesaerano is ranking all the characters,

and we're all writing about Incredibles too, so check it out.