The Rich Roll Podcast - How to Cultivate Your Authentic Voice With Sam Jones

Episode Date: January 19, 2015

This week's episode is a bit of a departure. But like Frost's road less travelled, it's a direction well worth pursuing. My podcast was borne from a love of the art of the long form conversation. Authentic expression is a predominant theme of virtually every episode. And I sheepishly admit to a slight obsession with talented people at the nadir of their creativity, expressing their specific life purpose with unapologetic conviction. Sam Jones is the embodiment and ethos of all these ideals and more. Lauded photographer, documentary filmmaker, award winning music video director, magazine publisher, television creator and podcast host. Oh yeah, he's also married with kids. As a photographer, Sam is the go to guy for top tier magazines such as Vanity Fair, Esquire, Rolling Stone, GQ and Time for creating timeless portraits of luminaries, A-list actors and musicians like Barak Obama, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Bob Dylan, Jack Nicholson and Dave Grohl. All of this is super cool of course. But quite frankly it's not what motivated me to want to sit down with Sam. What really captivated me about this talented artist is Sam's newest venture, a multi-media, multi-faceted project he created entitled offCamera. It's photography. It's a magazine. It's a television show. It's a podcast. It's journalism. It's entertainment. It's art – the art of exquisite portraiture achieved through images, words and conversation. Simply put, Sam performs up close and personal, uninterrupted long-form conversations with today's most prolific cultural icons – people like Matt Damon, Sarah Silverman, Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Laura Dern and more. Each conversation is filmed for initial broadcast on DirectTV's Audience Network and subsequently available on the offCamera website as well as on iTunes as an audio podcast. Accompanied by a formal portrait, the interviews are also reformatted in print to comprise a printed magazine. After listening to Sam's intimate dialog with Robert Downey Jr., I was left to ponder this question: where else could I possibly listen to (or watch) someone like this converse for a full hour on the particulars of life and art? Nowhere. You can't. Blame our soundbite obsessed world, but conversations like these are extremely rare if not altogether nonexistent in publicly available form. Complemented by his extraordinary attention to detail and quality, these are all reasons why Sam's work is such a gift to us all. I have been so moved by offCamera that I felt compelled to turn the mic around, point it at Sam and get to the bottom of his story. Thank you Sam for your willingness to engage me in a dynamic conversation that explores the intersection of art and commerce; the importance of authenticity in the expression of one's creativity; and what can be learned from working with the most prolific musicians, actors, filmmakers and artists in the world. In the words of Sam, “it has taken me a lifetime to develop my attention span, and I want to use it.” Me too Sam. Me too. I sincerely hope you enjoy the listen. Peace + Plants, Rich

Learning to say no has been really productive and has contributed to my success because that sort of opens me up to doing work that's right for me. That was Sam Jones, and this is episode 126 of the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Rich Roll, ultra endurance athlete, bestselling author, your friendly neighborhood wellness evangelist, lifestyle entrepreneur, husband and father of four. Thank you so much for tuning in and welcome to the show where each week I sit down with the best and the brightest,

the most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in health, wellness, fitness, sports, nutrition, the arts and creativity like this week, and entrepreneurship to help you guys discover, uncover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. Thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing to the show on iTunes. Thank you for spreading the word to your friends and on social media. Thank you for clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

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I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, so this week on the show, it's a little bit of a departure from the kind of content that maybe you're used to on the RRP. But I think it's a departure that you're going to really enjoy. And obviously, if you're a longtime listener of this show, you know that I'm a big fan of the art of the long-form conversation. I'm a big fan of authentic expression.

And I admit to being slightly obsessed with people who are fonts of creativity. Sam Jones is one of those guys. Sam Jones is the embodiment. He is the ethos of all of these ideals and more. Lauded photographer, documentary filmmaker, award-winning music video director, magazine publisher, television creator, and podcast host? This is a guy who leaves me wondering, is there anything that Sam Jones can't do? As a photographer, he's the guy. I mean, he is the go-to guy. He's photographed everybody. Barack Obama, George Clooney, Jack Nicholson, Bob Dylan. He shoots for all the big magazines, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, Time, on and on and on. In fact, you might have seen a recent Vanity Fair cover

story that he did with Bradley Cooper. It's really cool. If you page through the magazine, you'll see this extraordinary photograph of the actor with an elephant. It's really quite something. As a filmmaker, he directed a beautiful documentary about one of my favorite bands, Wilco, called I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. I highly suggest checking that movie out. It's really cool. And more recently, he directed a documentary for Showtime called Lost Songs, The Basement Tapes. And that takes a look at Bob Dylan's basement tapes and documents new recordings of those lyrics with people like Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford and other people. He's also an award-winning music video director. He's done

videos for the Foo Fighters and Mumford & Sons and Tom Petty and people like that. That's all great. It's all super cool. But quite honestly, that's not why he's on the podcast today. That's not what caught my attention about Sam. What really put him on my radar as someone I just felt compelled to sit down with and talk to is Sam's newest venture, and that's called Off Camera. So what is Off Camera? Well, it's incredible photography. It's journalism. It's a magazine. No, wait a minute. it's a TV show. No, hold on, it's a podcast. Well, it's all of these things and more. Basically, Off Camera is up close and personal, full, one-hour, uninterrupted, long-form conversations with today's most prolific cultural icons.

I'm talking about people like Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, and Dave Grohl. And the truth is you have to ask yourself this question. I mean where else can you listen via a podcast or watch on DirecTV if you have it, something like this? And the answer is nowhere. You can't because it doesn't exist anywhere else in our soundbite-obsessed world. Because it doesn't exist anywhere else in our soundbite-obsessed world. And as somebody who appreciates what it takes to put something on like this, I'm really in awe of what Sam has done. It's just awesome.

I absolutely love the work and the attention to detail and quality that he has put into his program. In the words of Sam, it has taken me a lifetime to develop my attention span and I want to use it. I agree with that, Sam. Me too. Me too. So this is a great conversation that spans the intersection of art and commerce. It's about what it's like to pursue a creative life, what it means to be an artist in the world. It's about authenticity, truth, being real and authentic in the expression of one's art and creativity. It's about the tension, the push and pull between working within a system and on one's own terms. And it's really about what it's like to work with and learn from some of the most prolific and well-recognized artists and musicians and actors and filmmakers on the planet. So let's drop in and see what Sam has to say.

I wanted to just say that I so appreciate what you're doing with Off Camera. You do a brilliant job. And I was reflecting on it as we were driving down here today and just thinking, I was reflecting on it as we were driving down here today and just thinking, where else could I possibly go to hear an hour-plus interview with these amazing guests that you get? I mean, it's such a treat. I don't know that that kind of exchange, that kind of interaction even exists anywhere else. So it's a gift to all of us. Thank you. Oh, well, you know, when we started doing this thing, I didn't know it was that different. And it was sort of after we got it onto DirecTV on the audience network that we noticed that it was different. You know, it's not so different from, say, you know, Fresh Air with Terry Gross when someone goes on the

radio and you get to really hear about their lives. But in terms of a television medium, I don't think there's room for that. Or people don't think there's room for it now. So, you know, the old interviewers like David Frost or Dick Cavett or even Tom Snyder to some extent. It's a bygone era. Yeah, it's a bygone era. The idea that you could just sit and have a conversation and have the normal ebbs and flows or the lulls of normal conversation without feeling like you have to constantly entertain or put on the dog and pony show.

That sort of disappeared a little bit. And luckily, we're given the venue through the audience network to kind of just give them the show we want to give them. Was it conceptualized from the beginning as a television show? I mean, did you have DirecTV lined up or were you just starting it and then trying to find a home for it after you'd already begun? Well, funny enough, it began, a friend of mine who's a director and I were out, we did a little weekend together away from the kids with our wives and we were talking about

podcasts. And I'm a big fan of NPR and of just radio shows in general. And I grew up listening to the radio to fall asleep at night. And so we were talking about them, and he said, do you have any interest in doing a podcast? And I said, I never really thought about it. I had a little radio show for a while, like 10 years ago, a music show that I did. show for a while, like 10 years ago, a music show that I did. But the more we talked about it, I started thinking, well, if I was going to do something like that, I might as well film it. Right.

And then once I film it... You're a visual guy. Right. It seems silly to not... Right. And then I might as well photograph the person. And so all of a sudden it became this experiment. Could you have someone in and have a conversation with them and sort of turn it into a podcast, a magazine, and a television show? So it was sort of an experiment and it started out online. And I think we did maybe seven shows online before DirecTV found it and made us an offer. You know, it's interesting because it's shot in black and white and there's no option

of color because we use these red monochrome cameras that are a 5K black and white monochrome camera. So it wasn't really an option to do it in color, which was great because I love- They couldn't come and say, well, we know you're an artist, but- Right, right. They were kind of stuck with it if they wanted the early episodes. We're in this attention deficit culture, you know, no video can be longer than 90 seconds. Nobody can stand to watch anything longer. And yet at the same time, you know, we are seeing the increase in popularity and the ascension of these longer format, you know, media opportunities. And you just look at the explosion of podcasting

recently. I think there's a real thirst and desire for like adult, like mature content. And so refreshing to hear, you know, just a real conversation. And so, you know, you've really hit like a soft spot with that. Well, I don't believe that people don't want long stuff. I think that we've been so inundated with the short stuff that on the surface, it seems like that's what everyone is looking at. But, you know, there are – people go to full-length movies all the time and they read novels. There was all of a sudden this explosion in this new format where in three minutes you could learn something that normally might take you a week to learn. It's amazing. The other day I was trying to adjust the derailleur on my bike.

And it was great to be able to go on YouTube and find this little three-minute video that was the shortcut for what screw is tension and what screw loosens it. And I was able to adjust my derailleur. And same with my wife. She loves going on YouTube and figuring out some craft with the kids, like rainbow looms, which the kids do, which are exploding. The videos are so much easier than the instructions. So I think there's this beautiful place for this short-form content. But the two are very different. And I do think it's kind of sad.

I grew up loving The Tonight Show and Letterman when Letterman was on late night. And now it does seem like some of those shows are all about coming up with bits that kind of go viral the next day. You know, so you've got Jimmy Fallon throwing a beach ball into Julia Roberts' face and filming it in slow motion, because they know that'll get a huge amount of traffic on the internet. Whereas, you know, it seems like some of these guys that used to have a little bit more of a free format to just talk if the conversation was interesting, maybe those opportunities aren't there as much anymore. Right. And I also think, I mean, when you look at the Tonight Show format, it's so condensed, it's so canned. And you know that when Celebrity X is coming on, it's because there's a

movie coming out and there's a canned joke and there's a setup and it's so, you can just see right through the whole thing that it becomes, you know, maybe I'm just, you know, grandpa, you know, rich or whatever, but it almost becomes unwatchable to me, you know, so that when I do find, you know, something that's real, that's authentic, it's like, ah, finally, like, where has this been? You know, why didn't this happen a long time ago? it's like, ah, finally, like, where has this been? You know, why didn't this happen a long time ago? Right. Well, I do think that, you know, we, we tell people that come on here that you're not here to plug anything but yourself. And it's not even really plugging yourself. It's more about, you know, most of those shows, they see the person coming on as an entertainer and a star or a celebrity. And we tend to look at the people that come on off camera as artists and craftsmen, and we want to know how they do their craft.

And we want to know how they got there and what things make them want to keep going to work every day and what they want to pass on and things like that. So, so, you know, sometimes we run into a little bit of a log jam with our publicist because we have to explain the format a little bit, you know, and it doesn't really matter when it airs or it doesn't really have to tie into anything because we're talking to this person as the end result. We're not talking about their movie using them as the conduit about the movie. So I think when people figure that out, it is sort of refreshing that they can just talk about things that no one else asks them. Right, and I feel like this sort of unstated thing when I listen and watch these interviews is they're happy to be there. They're like excited that they can just relax and talk about stuff that they actually care about

rather than, oh, you have 90 seconds to say this and get out or make sure you plug the movie and just talk about what interests them. I mean, there's like a sense of relief and relaxation that kind of permeates the whole thing. Right. Well, imagine if you were a really serious craftsman at something and you work really hard at it and every time you're on television, someone just wants you to be funny and tell, you know, a silly story about something that happened with another celebrity and then plug the movie for a second and you're gone, that's got to be kind of frustrating for someone who clearly works really hard at what they do. Yeah.

And in the case of someone like, we had Jackson Brown on recently, and musicians don't get that opportunity a lot as it is. I mean, when you think about a musician, most of their serious stuff is going to come out in print media. And if they're on a talk show, they're just going to perform their song, you know? So it's very fun to sort of have a long conversation with a musician for me, because it does seem like something that they don't get to do that often. Right. But I also think that there's something about you as the host. I mean, there's a level of trust there.

And I would imagine that, you know, you've worked with a lot of these people in the past. And so they know you personally. And so there's a level of kind of – it's like it's a safe zone, right? Like they feel comfortable with you opening up in a way that you just don't get elsewhere. Well, I think there's some of that. I think definitely at the beginning of the show, I certainly went through my phone book for the people that I felt comfortable asking to come on. And now we've sort of transitioned into phase two, which is we have people on occasionally that I've never met before. But I'll tell you, the way we do this show

is we also do a photo shoot. And so we usually do that before we sit down for the interview. And I'm very comfortable in that format and that environment. So that gives us a little bedrock of experience, even if it's only an hour. By the time we sit down in the chair, it's not like we've just met. Right. You know, we've already worked together. So that gives, you know, it sort of gives some sort of breaking the ice period. And also hopefully people watch the show before they come on. And so they get that, you know, I'm not trying to, I don't know, I'm not trying to get some juicy gossip out of them or something like that.

I really do want to know what it is that makes them love their jobs and what it is that they do that gets them to that performance or that piece of art or whatever it is they do. You know, what gets them there and what have they learned along the way? I'm so fascinated in that, you know. Well, let's talk about that with you, right? I mean, you do so many things. I mean, how do you even qualify as an artist? I mean, you're a photographer, you're a documentarian, you're a filmmaker, you direct music videos, commercials, documentaries, you direct a television, you do all of these things. I mean, I think that, you know, an artist that was proficient or successful in any one of those disciplines would be happy. And yet you're so multidisciplinary and you seem to be able to, you know, gravitate between these different worlds with a relative level of ease. And,

you know, an outside observer may think, oh, it's kind of the same thing. But these are, you know, very specific skill sets that don't necessarily always overlap. Right. Well, I noticed pretty early on in life that I was somebody that, you know, one thing did not sustain me. I would get into one thing for, you know, a month. And all of a sudden through that I would find something else. I remember when I was a kid, I was so into snakes and I thought I was going to be a herpetologist and I had four or five snakes. And I met a friend who loved snakes too, but I went to his house and he also made models. And Star Wars had just come out and all of a sudden I got really into making models because I could see how cool it would be to create special effects models that were in television shows or movies.

And then from there I got into skateboarding and from skateboarding I got into playing music in bands. And then I wanted to photograph my skateboard friends and I wanted to figure out how to record my band. And each one of these things, I go down the wormhole pretty deep and it's not enough for me to get a surface level of knowledge in something. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it all the way. And I think that, I don't know, I'm surprised more people aren't like me. I'm surprised more people don't, you know, when they discover something, want to go deeply into it. I don't understand how someone is one thing. I don't understand how if you're a photographer, you can wake up every day and just think about making pictures all day long every day.

Like at some point, it's got to come into your mind, you know, what would the music be? What's the soundtrack to that picture? And would that be interesting to explore? Or what would that picture look like if it moved? You know, so for me, I just, you know, from a very early age, I just liked doing a bunch of things and I never understood that you should just do one. Well, I think that what I hear when you say that is a healthy relationship with fear and being comfortable getting out of your comfort zone. Because I think a lot of people, they just – they settle into one thing and it's comfortable and it's frightening to step out of that. A lot of people, they just – they settle into one thing and it's comfortable and it's frightening to step out of that.

Like, hey, I'm good here. Why should I risk this by trying something else or letting the peanut gallery influence whatever decisions they're making? So it sounds like you like that. You like taking that risk for lack of a better word and stepping out and allowing yourself to try new things without worrying about the results of them as much? Well, luckily for me, I had kids a little bit later in life. I had my first child when I was 32. So I didn't feel like I was in a situation when I was younger where I had to make a bunch of money. And I also was able to work pretty steadily as a photographer. So when other interests came up, they felt like hobbies to me. And because I had this life as a freelance photographer,

I had the time to explore them. One of the things I did in around 2000 was I had a little cabin up in a community called Pine Mountain Club, which was – it's off – it's kind of like if you go up to the top of the Grapevine and then you go – Like Fraser Park. You go west, Fraser Park area. I would go trail riding and then I would race at the track on the weekends and then cook barbecue and hang out. It was a great thing. There was a gas station there. There was also the video rental store. The guy also had a little amateur radio thing going. He would basically play like his disc of rotating

CDs and he would call it the Pine Mountain Radio Station. And he took one of the unused frequencies up there. So I came to him one day and I said, can I do a radio show? And he was like, yeah, sure, why not? So I went to my home studio back in Santa Monica during the week and I put together a two-hour radio show that was like an hour and a half of playing songs that I liked, and then a half hour of a live band that I would bring into my studio. And so for, I don't know, for about six months, I guess, I had this little radio show up there. And it was a total hobby. It was just for fun. How long was that? It was like in 2000. And I called it Sweetheart of the Radio. And I would give him two CDs of prerecorded radio show, and he would play them on Saturday evenings at 5 o'clock.

Because that's kind of when everyone was in their house up there. And I loved it. And it was a total hobby. But like anything else, I dug in pretty deep to the point of where I remember being really unprepared for a shoot I was about to do. And I wanted to finish the radio show. And I remember this feeling of, what am I doing? I'm making a radio show for like 800 people in these cabins up in the woods that's being played out of a gas station. And I'm having the time of my life and I'm putting more time into it than my photography career. And that's sort of always been me. Like if I have an interest in it, I'll go deep in it. And that ended up sort of paying off in a weird way because I enjoyed it so much and it made me realize sort of how much I love music and how much I love music documentary and sort of crossing that line between talking about music and playing it.

So each one of these things sort of – they sort of end up weaving their way into my life one way or the other. Well, it's sort of following your creative muse, right? Like whatever way that speaks to you and that's sort of integral to what you do and however that manifests, whether it's a photograph or a film, right? Right. You have to be able to listen to that voice. Well, in college, I was on a skateboard team and I was also in a band. and I was also in a band. And it just seemed like everyone in that little world,

they were making their own flyers for their band shows. They were making their own self-released cassettes or 45s, and they had their own little skateboard zines. So I was in a community of people that just wanted to make stuff and be creative. And for instance, we would build a ramp in someone's backyard, and then six months later, we'd have a contest at the ramp. And, you know, it would end up in a little local zine, and a band would play in the backyard. Right. I grew up in that really creative time when kind of pre – of course pre-internet, but pre-social media where you reached out to people through your little communities. And that was a good, solid base of an education for me that if you make your own things, good things come and people come and the right people come. Right, right.

And the right people come. Right, right. I mean, it's sort of the Orange County version of the Washington, D.C. episode of Sonic Highways. Did you see that yet? Yeah. You know, that whole minor threat scene was very emblematic of that kind of thing. And I think Seattle had that scene and Athens, Georgia and Minneapolis for sure had it with the replacements and Husker Du and stuff like that. But, yeah, I think these little scenes cropped up all over the place.

And in my little town, which was Fullerton, the Fender Guitar Factory was there. And there were a lot of pawn shops that had really good guitars because there was a lot of guitars in Fullerton. And there were a lot of empty pools. And so there were skateboarders and people starting bands. And so that's how our little scene started. You know, my high school, the adolescents, Agent Orange and Social Distortion all had kids that went to my high school. And so there was a healthy little punk rock scene and skateboard scene, you know. Yeah, it's interesting when you look back and you think, you know, how much, you know, those sort of random things that, you know, really just by happenstance you happen to be surrounded by end up informing the fabric of your life. Like when I was listening to your conversation with Stacy Peralta and he's talking about, you know, when the urethane wheels came out and just, you know, sort of the water,

you know, the water shortage, and suddenly there's all these pools without water and like these random things that end up becoming so, you know, sort of the touchstones of what your life as an adult ends up becoming. Because I think, you know, the lazy question for you is, well, how has music informed your, you know, your creativity and your art? But it's like they're inseparable. It's the same thing, right? Like skateboarding, that music scene, what you grew up in, what you do now is really kind of an extension of those passions that you had as a kid. Yeah. I think in a way it's like when you get inspired about something, whether it's a record that you buy or you see someone on a skateboard do a trick or there's someone down the street that can draw really great and made his own comic book or whatever, you want to belong to that kind of group or be in the conversation with those people and so I remember the first band I was ever in you know I think we played one show and we were already designing album artwork

on a cassette and just giving them to our friends because I wanted so bad to to be in that community of creative people and sharing what we were making. And, and I think that that is not that different than what I'm doing now. And by the way, it still feels like an experiment. It still feels like a hobby to me. You know, there's certainly work that I take very seriously in clients that I have in my directing world, in the photography. But then there's all these sort of things that I get myself into as more of an experiment that end up becoming serious. But for me, I find that I'm happiest when I'm making something that pleases me. And it doesn't matter if there's a monetary thing on the other end of it.

You know, we make a joke about how it's more exciting to sell a physical issue of Off Camera magazine and to see that we sold one to someone who lives in Singapore than it is to land a really big job with, say, HBO. Because Off Camera is our little baby. And someone in Singapore found it and decided to like give us the money and have us ship them this magazine.

And that feels like that same excitement that I had as a kid. As a kid, yeah, just being authentic to your creative voice. And kind of going back into your Fullerton origin story, I feel like Cousin Mo is like patient zero. Cousin Mo. It all goes back to him. You did your research. I try. Yeah, Cousin Mo, big influence in my life.

And two things happened. Number one, my mother and her sisters all lived within a mile of each other with us growing up. And so Cousin Mo was five years older than me and really cool, five or six years older. And so whenever we visited that house, I always just wanted to go in Cousin Mo's room and check out his posters on his walls or listen to his records or, you know, just have attention from this guy who, you know, who, because he was my cousin, he sort of had to tolerate me hanging around. So, and as it turns out, Mo was just into some cool stuff, you know, he discovered punk rock really early and, and, uh, or it seemed early to me cause he was older. punk rock really early and, and, uh, or it seemed early to me cause he was older and, um, you know,

he, he was always the first guy to give you a cool record. Like even before punk rock, like he gave me a Credence Clearwater revival record when I was really young. And so I could always sort of look to him and see what he was into. And then this amazing thing happened when I was in eighth grade or seventh grade, I think. They bought the house next door to us. So all of a sudden, Cousin Mo lived next door. And I could see into his bedroom from my bedroom window. So then he couldn't get away from me. He's got the black light going. He had crates of records.

And he was a great reader. He introduced me to Charles Bukowski and John Fonte and just sort of was a few years ahead of the coolest high school buddies of mine. Right. And so, yeah, he really sort of set me on my way in that sense. What's he doing now? You know, he is a sound man and he does sound for commercials mostly. And yeah, he's still a cool dude, but now he's got kids. He's got a kid who's graduating high school and – yeah. That's a trip.

Well, I think there's this idea for people that are listening who maybe aren't familiar with Southern California that, oh, well, you were in LA and so it was just a sidestep for you to suddenly be in Hollywood and do what you do. But irrespective of that very specific subculture that you were immersed in in Fullerton, in certain respects, it's a million miles away from Hollywood. It's like its own thing, right? So I would imagine you could make the argument that you could have been in St. Louis doing that, like in terms of its relationship to kind of the entertainment world, I suppose. That's true. I think that it's geographically not that far away. But, you know, in terms of when I think about all of the friends that I had there, how few of them ended up in a big city, most of them stayed in Fullerton. So I think that's the case all over the country. Like you can be in a suburb 30 miles outside of Chicago and never take in all of what Chicago has to offer or never sort of have any desire to go live in a big city. For me, it was just,

I think, it started with going up to see bands because I was so into music and Cousin Mo was helpful there too. He had a driver's license. Yeah. And so having the record business in LA really helped. And then also being a skateboarder, once some of the friends that I had started to

get driver's licenses and things, you fanned out all the time in search of skate spots. And so your circle got wider on the search for the perfect empty pool or the ramp or whatever. And so for me, but it wasn't a straight shot to LA. I spent a year in Spokane, Washington. I went to Gonzaga University briefly. And I spent about a year in Utah with a friend of mine who was in a band and he was finishing school there. So I kind of bounced around a little bit, but ended up in LA when I was, I guess, around 21 or 22. Right. So did you go to photography school or? I went, I ended up at Cal State Fullerton after my experiment in Gonzaga failed because

it was like snow and cold five months of the year and you couldn't skateboard. So I came back and finished school at Cal State Fullerton and lived at home and did that, which was great because it was a great school for journalism and communications. And I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but eventually found myself at the Cal State Fullerton newspaper. And it was a daily newspaper. It was like a 16-page paper that was published every day. And that was my first taste really of what it would be like to be a professional photographer and a professional journalist.

And I wrote for the paper and took pictures. And that led to getting a job out of college at the Associated Press, being a photojournalist as well. So I did go to school for photography, but I would say the emphasis at that time was more on photojournalist as well. So I did go to school for photography, but I would say the emphasis at that time was more on photojournalism rather than art photography. And you had the opportunity to shoot some pretty cool bands there, right?

Like the Replacements, all these cool, kind of like groovy acts were passing through Fullerton. Yeah, it was great. I mean, Firehose would play at lunch, or X, or The Alarm played there. And so, you know, and that was a part of it. But I think just more than anything else, going to that school and working for that newspaper and really having it as a full-time job, I mean, it took a lot of work to put that newspaper out every day. It gave me the sense of

what a fairly interesting career could look like as a photographer. And so, you know, how do you bridge the gap between, you know, young photographer at AP and now, you know, Vanity Fair covers? Is it just a progression of refining and getting better and slowly, slowly moving up? Or did you have like a big like break that you could point to and say, you know, that really turned the corner in my career? Well, it's funny. I never do things the right way. I never take the correct path. If I had said when I was 22 years old, my desire is to shoot Vanity Fair covers, I would have taken a totally different path because the way to do that would be to go become an assistant

for a big photographer and learn how that's done and kind of go through the ranks that way. But because I've always been this sort of experimental person who follows whatever I'm into in the moment, person who follows whatever I'm into in the moment, it never sort of occurred to me to have that long of a life plan, like to look that far in advance. So I did photojournalism until I realized it was what I didn't want to do. And an opportunity opened up around then to be a still photographer on a movie set. And at the time I thought, well, God, that's great. I love films. I love filmmaking and I love the idea of cinematography. So I'll go

hang out on a film set and learn about all of that and see what I want to do next. And I was able to go on a film called Bob Roberts and become the still photographer. And it was a Tim Robbins movie. And he ended up having a lot of his friends do cameos in the film. And so I sort of hustled my way into a lot of portraits that they didn't really need for the film by saying, you know, at some point this week, I'm going to need to pull you aside and do a portrait of you. So I photographed like John Cusack and Susan Sarandon and Peter Gallagher and Gore Vidal. Trying to think of who else was on that film.

James Spader. John Malkovich wasn't on the film. But there were a lot of folks that I was able to make pictures of. So I found out pretty quickly I did not like the still photographer gig, though, because there's a lot of standing around, waiting around, and there's also a lot of being in the way, which I hate. I think it's the same reason I didn't love photojournalism. I don't like being in a situation where I'm not wanted. Not even my ego, but my confidence can't handle that. I need to sort of be invited into a room and know that people want me to be taking their picture. And I found out both of photojournalism, there were some

uncomfortable moments where I had to photograph a funeral once for Hank Gathers, who was a basketball player at Loyola Marymount who collapsed and died on the court. And I hated the experience of having to photograph a grieving mother at a funeral. I felt like a dirty person that day, you know? And I also didn't ever like the experience of being on a film set where I was seen as in the way by the gaffers or the grips or whatever, you know, trying to do my job while another job was being done. But what I did find out was that I was able to make a bunch of portraits quickly of these actors and I enjoyed doing it. And I found out I really enjoyed sort of environmental and cinematic portraiture. So I was able to build up a portfolio from that and

go off and start showing my work. So rather than having to take the route of being an assistant for a photographer, I was sort of able to build a portfolio in an unconventional way. And there was enough work in there to convince a few in an unconventional way. And there was enough work in there to convince a few photo editors to hire me. Interesting. Do you think that by sort of not taking that path of being an assistant that it allowed you to really figure out what your style is rather than be influenced by somebody else's style that you're working underneath? I think so. I think that, first off, it forced me to be a small business owner really early on in life. I had to figure out,

you know, it wasn't until I got my first assignment that I realized, oh, I need to be able to invoice this person and, you know, that I have to sort of have an infrastructure built around this picture that I was about to take. And that was really helpful. And it was also really helpful knowing that because, you know, often my clients were out of state and they weren't coming to the shoot. I was sort of like the only one responsible for making sure that a picture was going to come out and it was going to work for them. one responsible for making sure that a picture was going to come out and it was going to work for them. So I sort of learned early on that there was the picture that they expected. And then there was this sort of open opportunity to try and experiment with something else. So my sort of working process became, okay, what does the magazine expect? And let me make sure I make that picture.

And then let me see if I can try something a little different. And that's how I, that's how I built up my style, I think, was by taking the opportunities and the, and the parameters of, of the shoot, you know, and sometimes it was, hey, you know, it's, you're only going to have an hour with this person, but sometimes it was, you know, you can have all day or you can pick the location or whatever. So I learned, you know, I think I'm an assignment based creative in the sense that I want to make my style fit the subject. I'm not the person like, I don't know, a photographer like, say, Annie Leibovitz or maybe Dan Winters, who has a very specific visual style and is going to fit their subject into that style. And they're immediately going to look like they're in a Dan Winters photograph. No matter what. What's that? Yeah, no matter what. No matter what. Right, right. And for me, I wanted the style to reflect the person

and reflect who the person was and their personality and what it was about them that seemed to really identify them or really define them. And so it took a longer time for my style to emerge because it was sort of at the will of whoever I was shooting. Right, it was malleable depending upon what you were doing. I mean, if you had to articulate what your style is, I mean, how do you answer that question? It's a hard question. I think the term I came up with a long time ago

that seems to fill in as good as anything else is cinematic portraiture in the sense that I try to make a picture that draws elements of a larger scene happening. So if the person I am shooting is, say, Steve Martin, and he's essentially this icon of comedy, I'm going to try to create a cinematic landscape to take that portrait in that allows the picture to reflect who he is inside, but also maybe tells a bigger story about what his life experience is. what his life experience is. And I use that example because it was one of the times I feel like I best pulled that off. And I photographed him on a street with about 1,800 banana peels, and he's strolling through the banana peels without a care in the world.

And to me, that was what he's done his whole career is he's somehow working in the broadest sense. He still managed to avoid the cliches of comedy. Yeah, I like that. So for me, it's always the challenge of how do you come up with a picture that sort of – it gets the essence of the person, but it also does a little more. It has a little extra information in there. What is your creative process for kind of conceptualizing these shoots? the person, but it also does a little more. It has a little extra information in there. What is your creative process for kind of conceptualizing these shoots? I mean,

is it just, it comes to you or do you have like a method that you rely on to kind of, okay, I'm shooting this person. What are the aspects of this person's personality that I want to capture? Like, is there a design to how you kind of walk into these kind of opportunities? Well, it's different depending on the medium. If I'm directing a commercial or a music video, it's a little bit different than if I'm taking a picture or if I'm preparing for an off-camera show. But there are some things that are the same throughout. is you kind of have to either know or define your narrative because you're always telling a story, whether it's in a single frame or whether it's in a two-hour documentary. So the first thing for me is to know what story I'm telling. And with photographs, it's often, you know, I read about the person and I start sketching ideas and hopefully I can make up a story that I can tell that is true with that person. If it's a music video, I'll sort of really try to,

you know, get what I want to say about the song, whether it's trying to be very literal or trying to be very opposite, but I still have to know the story I want to tell. And then, you know, very opposite, but I still have to know the story I want to tell. And then, you know, with doing off camera, it's really is, you know, there, you could talk to anyone for a hundred hours and not get even close to their whole deal. So the idea is to try to pick the, the things that you want to really look into and, and develop a little narrative. You know, I'm sure you deal with the same thing doing a podcast. What's interesting to you? And what's universal.

Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that, yeah, I mean, in the context of what you do, there's generally, I mean, what I do, it's me and Tyler sitting over there. So I can do whatever I want, which is probably similar to what you do with off camera. But with most of your work, there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, right? There's ad agency people. There's art directors. There's publicists.

There's all kinds of things that are influencing these creative decisions. And I'm interested in how you kind of navigate that. Does it constrain you? I would imagine that you've found a way to make all of that work, like this intersection of creativity and commerce, which is really kind of like, you know, that's the theme of, of, you know, I'm trying to break your heart, the documentary, which I want to talk about, and that in a kind of a meta sense, it's really what your career is about as well. out as well. Right. Well, I sort of always think in terms of not having a client. I think as an artist, you want the client to be yourself or the thing you're working on. And I think I do my best work when I am so excited about the project I am doing that, and it becomes

so clear what that end result should look like, that it's clear to everyone I'm working with. So when I say having no clients, in a sense on off camera, I don't have a client. We give the show to DirecTV, but we license it to them. They are not here during the shoots. They don't have any creative control over the edit. It's sort of like we live or die based on the decisions we make here, and it's great because things get done quickly, and I can live with anything I do. quickly and, and I can live with anything I do. You know, it's much harder to live with something where you made a compromise for somebody and then it doesn't turn out right than it is to

live with your own decision. You know, I'm, I'm okay with my own failures. Um, and so I always try to have a mindset of no client, even when I have a client. And I think that they're happy for that, too, because if they have a director or a photographer that's completely engaged in an idea and they get out of the way, then that idea can be more pure, I guess. Right, right. But they don't always get out of the way, do they? No, no. But, you know, the goal is to find people that are hiring you because they love what you do anyway. And you do this long enough and you can sort of sniff out the situations where it's just not the right fit. And sometimes you sort of have to be able to say that. You have to be able to say, hey, I think you want somebody else on this. And I know that sometimes when, you know, after an initial conversation, I'll get a bunch of layouts and a bunch of scrap materials that, you know, are, you know, sort of... They're just moving in a different direction.

Or these things are supposed to dictate the mood of the shoot or the mood of the commercial or whatever. And if it looks nothing like what I do, then I realize it's going to be an uphill battle where they really want something else than what I can do. Because I think that I can't be good at what I do unless I'm allowed to do what I do. You know what I mean? I do unless I'm allowed to do what I do. You know what I mean? Like, well, you're, but you're also at a level now where you probably have a very finely tuned radar about that and you can make those kinds of choices. But like, you know, when you were coming up and sort of like, oh, well, this job came up, like I probably should take this even if it doesn't feel right. I mean, you must've had bumps along the road kind of getting to this place where you have that kind

of clarity. Yeah. I mean, you definitely have to find your way and you don't always get to make those distinctions. And I'm very lucky that sometimes I can say no to a job, but I think learning to say no has been really productive and it's contributed to my success because that sort of opens me up to doing work that's right for me. I was listening to an interview with Louis C.K., and he was talking about even to this day, if he gets booked into a show where it's the wrong audience and not his audience, then he just becomes a bad comedian because he's in a room with people that just don't get him. becomes a bad comedian because he's in a room with people that just don't get him.

Right. And the gist of his conversation was a big part of his success is being in the right room with, with an audience that, that sort of understands his humor and, and not everyone is going to get what you do ever. So you have to be able to find the right people to work with and the right audience for your stuff so that, so that, you know, you feel like you're communicating you know so i'm very lucky that that some of the magazines that i get to work for are also magazines that that like what i do enough to sort of say yeah try it try what you want to do and and'm very lucky with Vanity Fair that they pretty much let me do any crazy idea I have. I've earned that because I've worked for them for 20 years, and they also understand that that's how they get the best work. And then I get a really heavy-handed sort of communication from that job of exactly what they want.

I get sort of divorced from the process anyway because I know 90 percent of the time is going to be spent trying to make that person happy. And there's not enough room for me to sort of do what I would have done on my own. And they have an idea already in their mind of what the picture looks like, and you're never going to be able to match that. Right. So I sort of disconnect a little bit, and I can do a very professional job at that, but I don't think I'm at my best in those situations. Right, right, right. And all this time that you've spent, I mean, you were talking about communication, like communication with the client or with the talent. I mean, looking at the volume of your work, I mean, you know, looking at your, the volume of your, your work, I mean, you've photographed everybody. There's like, you know, it's, it's amazing,

you know, the, the, the people that you've had the opportunity to spend time with and, and, and to, you know, capture on film. And I'm just wondering, you know, what have you, you know, what have you taken away from that experience of spending so much time with a diversity of, you diversity of incredibly talented people? Are there like themes that emerge that have informed kind of how you perceive your life or approach your career? to differentiate between the whole, you know, having a no client type of mindset or something is that I'm photographing people. I'm not, I'm not setting up a still life of apples and acorns and shooting that. I'm, I'm photographing a person who has their own idea of who they are and, and what's best and, and who they,'s best and what's important to them.

And so it is very important that I make a picture that's true to that. And what I've learned over the years in photographing people is that I may have a great idea and it's just not right for the person that is in front of the camera. idea and it's just not right for the person that is in front of the camera. And I have to be willing to totally change gears midstream if that idea is just not connecting with the person the way I thought it would. Because we all have perceptions of who someone's going to be before we meet them, whether it's a job interview or a distant cousin or whatever, right? And you meet somebody and as a photographer, you get this opportunity to be pleasantly surprised by someone you thought was maybe going to be a bit uncomfortable or shy or whatever.

And you find that you could be surprised and this whole new side of someone could come out. And if you're too rigid about what your idea is, you may miss an opportunity to make a picture that really reflects who that person is. or taking pictures or whatever, is knowing that I am working with another person and having to make not only compromises, but sort of subtle shifts in the plan for the day in order to best capture what it is about that person that reflects who they are, you know? Right. I mean, how often is the picture that just nails it, how often does that one come from, you know, a spontaneous sort of, you know, idea that you just had in the moment

or just being present as opposed to kind of following your plot line of how you thought you were going to lay it out that day? Well, it's such a living, moving thing. You know, you can look at a picture or you can look at a session of pictures that you shot 10 years ago and see something totally different that you missed the first time. But for me, I always try to have some ideas in my back pocket in case the person kind of shows up and is a blank slate and just says, hey, just direct me and do what you want to do. I want to make sure I have some good ideas. But so many of my favorite pictures and so many of my favorite scenes and things that I filmed sort of came about accidentally.

It's almost like if you take the time and do all your research and build the environment for something to happen, then something will happen and it may be unexpected and the accident may be better than the thing you had planned. And sometimes it's just a matter of turning around and turning your back on what you thought was your set. And there's a whole other picture there that you never would have imagined. So the process there is to just put up,

you know, do all the work and come up with a plan, but leave enough time and room and knowledge open that you could be totally surprised and try to be open to that possibility. Right, right. This perfect melding of preparation and flexibility. I mean, I think you were talking about that when you were chatting with Robert Downey Jr. Like he was talking about how he can go, you know, deep into the prep, but also you have to be ready to just be completely like spontaneous and present and like be willing to put the script aside. Right. It's almost like, it's almost like you have to do all the work, even if it's kind of like a magic trick. Even if you know you're not going to use it, if you don't do all that work and you don't sort of plan something out, then

you didn't create something to deviate from in the first place. You can't deviate from nothing. You know what I mean? The hardest thing for me is a blank piece of paper or a blank studio. And the idea that, oh, we'll just plan on spontaneity. You can't plan on spontaneity. You have to make a plan. And then if spontaneity occurs, great. But it's funny. I really admire the photographers and filmmakers that can do something with kind of that blank canvas. Richard Avedon and Irving Penn were masters at taking a person and very little else and making a really compelling image. And one of the challenges for me on off-camera is that very thing, is can we make an interesting image and an interesting conversation with a very clean canvas?

And I found it's been really helpful for my work. With each off-camera interview we do, we do a photo shoot that becomes a magazine cover. And also there's a few other pictures inside that magazine. And for that, I specifically don't plan anything and I don't know what I'm going to do right up to the moment when we start shooting. And sometimes it's great and sometimes I find myself wishing I had made a bit of a plan, but I think it's a great exercise for anyone who's visual to remember that I'm photographing a living person. And that's the subject, the architecture of their face and the movement of their body and the way they hold their hands or the way they decided to dress that day, you know? And so I guess what I'm saying is that

like, you know, anything you become comfortable at, maybe it's good to try the other side of things. With the magazine, you're also, you've established these artistic constraints. It's going to be black and white. You're not going to go out with a thousand banana peels in the street. You're going to probably do it in the studio. It's going to be very simple. It's going to be a portrait. And so how do you maximize creativity and capture this person within the confines of these kind of rules that you've established,

which what I would imagine kind of pushes you a little bit more. Exactly. In those constraints. And that's the thing is that sometimes we just need reminding that we don't need all that stuff. I need that for sure. Sometimes I think I can rely a little bit too much on the idea side of things. Like, I've always been very lucky. I am able to sit down at my computer at a piece of paper and throw a bunch of ideas against the wall. And some of them are going to be good enough to execute. You know, I'm not someone who doesn't, you know, I'm not someone who wants for an idea. But what I'm not as good at is trusting that with just a camera in my hand and a person in front of me and no previous thought or planning, I can come up with an

interesting image. And so for me, it's like that thing where, okay, if my regular job is to have these big ideas and more thematic narrative photo stories, then my hobby will then be to do the opposite. I see off cameras sort of the opposite of what I'm known for in the editorial magazine world. Right now. We'll see. Yeah, sure. You know what I mean, right? I mean, after conducting all these interviews and just the photo shoots that you've done with these people,

are there – what is your takeaway about kind of the way they live their lives? Like how is that – I guess what I'm getting at is like have you learned like, oh, you know what I noticed? Like, and all these people, they all have this way, this is how they approach their art or there's a consistent theme in the way that they kind of try to work on their creativity or how they live their lives. I mean, has any of that informed kind of how you go, yeah, I should, maybe I should take that. I'm seeing this lesson kind of emerge from these experiences and I'm going to try to put that into my life. Maybe it hasn't, but I'm curious about it.

No, definitely. It definitely does. And with each, since I am so multidisciplined and excited about doing so many different things, one of the side benefits of off-camera has been that I can bring in people that have had huge success in these areas I'm interested in and pick up little things about them that maybe didn't occur to me or maybe is a confirmation of what I suspected. And when I think of some of the things that have come out of off-camera, one of the things that's amazing to me is how many of the very successful people that I've had conversations with knew what they wanted to do at such an early age. And that's a little bit frustrating because I was just the opposite and I wanted to do so many things. You take guys like Judd Apatow and Matt Damon and Tony Hawk and Amy Mann and they discovered – Laura Dern. Laura Dern.

They discovered when they were so young that this is all they wanted to do and it made their life path so clear. This is all they wanted to do. And it made their life path so clear. Even Matt Damon said he felt sorry for his friends that were graduating from college and didn't know what they wanted to do because he was so clear that he was on his path already. But you also get things like when I spoke with Stacey Peralta, one of the things I always say about being directors or photographers is that we live on islands. We don't get the chance to go and hang out in these other people's environments and see how they do it. We sort of all have to make up our own processes, especially for me because I didn't assist a bunch of photographers. I'm always fascinated with how other people set up their shoots or how they deal with having clients on set or how they deal with publicists or how they work their video village set up so that they can handle bouncing back and forth between the producer and the talent. And, you know, so doing off-camera, I get a little peek into the process.

It was very nice when I interviewed Stacy Peralta to find out how he sets up his sort of, his organizational outline for editing his films. Because I did my first long-form documentary very differently. And by talking to Stacy, I actually, for this recent one I just did, the Bob Dylan basement tapes thing. Right, which is, that's premiering in a couple days. That's premiering in a few days, yeah.

But I actually was able to take some of the things I learned from that interview and incorporate them into my edit approach, which is great. So, you know, and Judy Greer, we had her on here and she said that a light bulb went off for her one day. She talked to a friend and she realized that she shouldn't be doing her passion and her dream. She should be doing what she was good at. You know, and maybe her dream was to be a professional ballet dancer, but it was killing her because she wasn't enjoying it. She loved the idea of being a ballet dancer, but she was never going to be one. But she was great at being on stage and feeling comfortable and improv-ing.

And her life got a lot easier when she realized she should do what comes naturally to her. So that's something that I also took a lot away from. It comes naturally to her. So that's something that I also took a lot away from. That's really interesting because you always usually just align like, oh, well, your dream is what you're probably naturally good at and where your passion lies. But those things are not always the same. No, they're great and you can do anything you want. I think it's much more valuable for a child to have a message that they could do something with. And it really takes knowing somebody to be able to say, hey, you're really good at this, and maybe you didn't consider it.

But I have this friend who's a production designer, and he works with me on all my jobs. And he, in my opinion, could write stand-up comedy or write television comedy because he always has great timing and the best line, and it comes so naturally to him. And I'm always encouraging him to – like best line, and it comes so naturally to him. And I'm always encouraging him to, like, hey, you should actually try this. You could probably in five years just own a writer's room on Saturday Night Live or something. And you struggle so mightily at your other job, and you're great at it and you love it, but you're just naturally this guy that has the best

line at the best time in the room, you know? So I think about that all the time. Like, what do we ignore in ourselves? Like, because maybe it comes too easy for us. You know what I mean? Like, what do we take for granted? Because it just seems like something we didn't work at. It can't be that because it just, yeah, right, right right. Like it's just – well, that can't be the thing because that's just me. And I question – I do question that with directing and photography because I don't think of myself as a particularly sophisticated visual person. I think of myself that has just enough talent or ability in a whole bunch of related fields that it all works as a photographer. In other words, I'm okay at coming up with a cartoon. I can sit down and sketch out a little drawing that makes me see a picture. And I'm pretty good at getting my idea across to somebody

and talking them into giving me money to try it. And I'm pretty good at making someone feel comfortable in the room. And so they open up and try something they normally wouldn't have tried. And all these things come together and they make a photograph. But I don't consider myself this visual talent that has the ability to just make a great picture out of nothing. Well, I think other people would disagree with that probably. But I think that what I think distinguishes you maybe on some level is the fact that you execute. Like you're not just talking about ideas.

Like you're doing things. There probably are other photographers out there who think about doing a documentary or maybe it would be cool to have a magazine, but you're actually following through on all of these things. And I think that's important because, and I talk about this a lot, but, you know, ideas are on some level, ideas are cheap, right? They're nothing until you actually put them into motion and, and, you know, create reality out of them. Right. You seem to be, you have a great facility for that. reality out of them.

Right. You seem to be – you have a great facility for that. Well, I think the more you go on, the more you realize – in the beginning of your process, you realize which ideas can be successful. And that's something that – that was earned over a lot of failed ideas. Right now in our office, we are kind of going through my film archive and trying to deal with the whole digital nightmare of, you know, cataloging all the work. And so I'm having to look at a lot of old work. And it's amazing how many ideas that I tried that I now look at it, and I see them as failures, or I see them as, you know, sort of amateur attempts that later I sort of refine.

But it is important that you execute something through to the end because you won't know. Anyone could say, oh, gosh, I have this great idea for a script and I just can't get it made and I'm not a writer, but the idea is great. Well, maybe the idea isn't great, but you wouldn't know until you really took it all the way. And what are the steps of that? I mean, maybe you have to go take a screenwriting class.

Maybe you have to partner up with someone who does know how to write. Maybe you have to take it all the way through an outline until you get there to find out. That's no fun. That's no fun, right? But the rewards are really amazing if you do take something through. And I learned that on the Wilco experience because that was something that I took upon. I made this documentary in 2002 called I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, and it was a film about Wilco. And it became a film about art versus commerce,

like you mentioned earlier. But I was under the false impression that I would start making that and someone would jump in and pay for it. And, and, you know, I was also under the false impression that you can shoot 10 minutes of a documentary, present your idea, and find a distributor. And I learned very early in that process that I was going to have to have finished film before I could even have those conversations, whether this could be distributed or whatever. So that was a great lesson in, you know, no one can see your idea the way you see it in your head, right? And so you have to sometimes finish your idea to let other people see what it looked like. Right.

And in the context of the Wilco documentary, which is just a beautiful, you know, portrait of this extraordinary band. I mean, it's really an art piece. And, you know, I love the movie. And one of the things I loved about it is that you weren't trying to make it something that it wasn't. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know what your expectations were going into, where that journey would take you. And certainly as a documentarian, you want like some drama and some things to happen. And certainly there were elements of that with the label and kind of the band members, et cetera. But it wasn't – the movie didn't – it was really just a character piece of immersing yourself in these people's music and their life and it wasn't trying to force like a plot-driven narrative on top of it. It really – you allowed it to breathe and for you to just feel like you're in the room with these people

and this is kind of a slice of what it would be like to hang out with these guys. Is that fair or is that – Well, what's fair is that the idea going in certainly changed based upon what ended up happening during the time I filmed. I mean, what did you imagine it was going to be? The original impetus for the film was to follow a song from inception to completion. an acoustic guitar, writing a song to that song either being one of a number on an album that brought them a larger audience and was played live or not. So it was more of a lyrical, nonlinear idea was to take a working band that were my contemporaries and try to follow the creative process and what ended up happening was the creative process ran straight smack up against

the the commerce process and you know this was a crazy time in music where um you know Napster had happened a few years earlier and the music business was feeling that for the first time. And some decisions were being made at labels about some bands that were underperforming in the old model. Wilco was a band that would sell between 100 and 150,000 copies of a record. And so as it turned out unbeknownst to me, this record had some expectations attached to it. And yet Wilco was so used to doing things on their own that they were given enough freedom

to be able to make a record on their own, in their own studio without a label person there and then turn it in. And what happened was they turned it in and it was rejected. And the person that was at the label that championed them was gone from the label. And a new guy had come in that just didn't get them. And he unceremoniously just dropped them and, you know, cared so little for them that he gave them back their masters.

That's the amazing thing. Yeah, and so it became this interesting thing where you've got these fairly, at the time, young musicians who were dealing with the fact that they were on Warner reprise, and they were being rejected, and they had to deal with that right around the time when you could actually stream a record. Right. And they went with a pretty radical approach. They believed in what they were doing, and they decided to reject the comments that they should write a single or go back in the studio and make a more polished record. And they dealt with their fate in a very real way. And so the film became, what does an artist do when they believe in their work, but the entity, in this case, the record company doesn't? And how does that resolve? And I learned something from that as a documentary filmmaker,

which is you sort of have to wear different hats during the process. If I was wearing my storytelling hat while I was filming that, I wouldn't have probably captured all the things necessary to tell the story that it eventually became. So when you're a cinematographer, as I am, I'm the kind of director that directs with the camera. Because let's be honest, on a documentary, you're not directing, you're capturing and you're documenting. And so on that film, it was very important to make sure I was capturing what was going on. And I wasn't just trying to fit my narrative into their lives. And that was something I had to learn on the fly. And then you get back in the edit room and you look at what you have and you sort of have to write a script in reverse based on your footage and see where the holes are and go out and film those things.

and go out and film those things. But I think there's a valuable lesson in letting a story present itself to you and not trying to be so controlling that you feel like you have to take it in one way. But be aware enough of what's going on that you can shoot the elements you need. I think that if I hadn't understood what was going on, I wouldn't have gone around to some of the people

that ended up being big players in the film in terms of some of the record company people and lawyers that we talked to. You also can't bury your head in the sand. You have to sort of be aware of what's going on, but be open-minded. And when I spoke to Laura Dern for Off Camera, she talked about judgment. She said the best directors for her have been the ones that don't judge her character

because whether she's playing an evil person or a good person or any nuanced version in between, you can't have judgment of your character. And it took me a long time to understand that what she was saying was that when you are gathering information to tell a story, you do not want to sit in judgment of the information you're gathering. You want to be aware of it, but you don't want to reject it out of hand

because it isn't the story you want to tell or because you don't believe in it. You know, so... You capture it all and then you make those decisions later. And then you make those decisions with an awareness of the story as it unfolds, you know. Right, right. Because it still, I mean, it still has to work like a three-act structure.

It still has to play narratively for an audience. Well, I mean, we're very used to the three-act structure and it is obviously a medium that works very well. And, you know, there's been hundreds of years of books and plays and movies and television shows that all sort of work in that structure. movies, and television shows that all sort of work in that structure. So, yeah, I mean, the Wilco thing fell kind of easily into that three-act structure. Band makes record, band gets rejected, band figures it out. And it worked very well. But it also sort of taught me that there's a lot of room within a three-act structure. You know, a three-act structure is sort of a loose description of something.

I mean, in a studio system, you can get very specific where you'll have someone doing notes and saying, yeah, if X doesn't happen by page 60, then this script isn't working. But yeah, I think that it's almost like Western music versus Eastern music. We're very used to the model that was created based around the 1-4-5 major chord scale, and we hear a pop song, we're hearing the benefit of that being drilled into us

from an early, early age. Whereas if you grew up somewhere in the East, in India or something, you have a very different idea of what's tonally and melodically pleasing to your ears. So I don't know. I mean, I saw this film recently, Boyhood. I don't know if you saw that.

Incredible. And I don't feel like it follows a three-act structure at all. Yeah. And I think that it's so refreshingly great storytelling because it's sort of surprising and doesn't follow that structure. I mean, it progresses narratively, but yeah, it's not like, oh, this is the inciting incident and this is where it all falls apart. I heard an interview with Richard Linklater and he said, you know, in real life, bad stuff doesn't happen to everybody. Our life isn't filled with great moments of tragedy like they're on film.

And he said some of the most tense moments in the film for the audience are like when the boy is driving off to college because as a movie-going audience, we're so expectant on, well, he's now reaching down to grab some music to play for his girlfriend, and you're like, oh, this is where the car accident happens, right? to play for his girlfriend, and you're like, oh, this is where the cry accident happens, right? And Richard Linklater said he was almost fighting that in the editing of his film because there's no way to not have those audience perceptions. So it makes you wonder, like, is a three-act structure the only valid way to tell a story,

or are we just so used to it? It's so hard hard wired into our expectations interesting yeah i mean the other thing the other thing that about the wilco doc that was so interesting you know watching it recently is it works so well as a time capsule of the music business like it's the music business is undergoing this traumatic transition, and you're seeing the evidence of that as this story plays out. And just the idea that a band would put songs on their website, or they would go to a show and people would know the words to their song before the album came out was like a revelation. Right. It was very new back then.

Yeah. They were trying to wrap their heads around that, which was really interesting. Yeah. So are you – so you have this – let's talk about the documentary that's about to air on Showtime, Basement Tapes. So explain what this is. I mean these are – there's a discovery of these Bob Dylan tapes, right? Well, there's a discovery of lyrics. discovery of lyrics. In 1967, Bob Dylan lived in Woodstock, New York, and he spent a year with the band, which was Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko and Levon Helm, although Levon Helm wasn't there for much of it, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. And they would meet in the middle of the day at this house called Big Pink, and they would go in the basement, and they would record a bunch of songs.

And some were Johnny Cash covers, and some were obscure old folk songs. not ever for inclusion on a new Dylan record, but just as a way to make income as a publisher, as a way to write his songs and then other bands could hear demos and choose to record them because that had been a very fruitful way for Dylan to make money back then. So he had a really prolific year.

He had a motorcycle accident in 66 and it gave him an excuse to get off of the road and sort of raise a family and live kind of that quiet life away from being, quote, Bob Dylan, the folk icon or rock Judas. And instead he was just sort of living out this quiet life. And it just so happened he was incredibly prolific and wrote over 150 songs in that year.

Wow. None of which officially came out ever until 1975. It's like a song every other day. Right. And what ended up happening was the songs that he was writing were turned into publishing demos that got sent out to some of the bands of the day, like Manfred Mann and Peter, Paul and Mary and the Birds.

And they got a crack at these songs and some of them turned them into big hits like Manford Mann made Quinn the Eskimo, which was a basement song. Well, because of these demos being sent around, they leaked out and they became the first bootleg record ever. And these became the first bootleg record ever. And these things started the bootleg record industry. That's amazing. So that's sort of the history of what was happening back then. And then last year, a box of lyrics was discovered in the Dylan archives.

And someone in his office brought them to Bob and said, what are these? And he said, oh, man, I wrote those during my Woodstock time, during the basement tapes. But we never got to them. We never brought them down to the basement. So I haven't seen them since the day I wrote them. So it was a bunch of words without any chords, any melody, or anything. It was just lyrics, just prose. And they were given to T-Bone Burnett and he was tasked with putting a band together and they got to co-write with a 26-year-old Bob Dylan. So he put together Elvis Costello,

Marcus Mumford from Mumford & Sons, Jim James from My Morning Jacket, Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes, and Rhiannon Giddens from a band called the Carolina Chocolate Drops. And they got first crack at these lyrics for two weeks at Capitol Records, and they set these lyrics to melody, and they made a record of all these songs. And so I was brought in to make a film about this, and I was asked if I wanted to do it. My first response was, well, can I tell the history of the basement tapes too? Because I'm a big fan of the basement tapes, the 67 tapes. And so that became sort of the thing is, can I make a modern cinema verite film about these five artists in capital grappling with these historically really relevant artifacts that had never been seen before? And then also weave in the creative sort of explosion that happened in 67 in this house and tell how those you know those two stories are

connected wow that's the film so that's what it is so so you actually have i mean i saw some of the trailer footage like you're in the studio you're documenting them like workshopping these songs or recording them and then you go back and you tell the history behind it right and the and the fascinating thing in the in the modern story becomes how different each artist approached the lyrics. Did they do it individually and come together or did they just all get in a room together and hash it out? from T-Bone Burnett because some came in with, like Rhiannon Giddens and Marcus Mumford came in with nothing prepared, essentially, whereas Elvis came in really prepared

and Jim James came in prepared and Taylor as well. But they all sort of approached it in a different way. And some saw it as more collaborative and some saw it as more, you know, the idea of really preparing for it. And so it made for an interesting story of how they all were going to work together and how, you know, how each artist two weeks of creative bliss in a lot of ways because there was so much material there. And I think if you've been in bands and you're a songwriter, the lyrics are always the hardest thing. You could come up with an interesting melody and sing nonsense words to it.

A great example is Paul McCartney's story about yesterday. It started out as a melody in his head that was scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs. And that's what he had. And then at some point, you got to sit down and you got to put on your thinking cap and write these lyrics that are going to be the song. So in this case, there was so much material, and it was Bob Dylan's words. So these artists were freed up to sort of write songs to them. So there was a whole bunch of material.

And – but it was very interesting to see the struggles and the different work ethic – not even ethic, but different thing that exists and add yourself to it? How do you be creative in a collaborative process? Right, because these guys are all sort of captains of their own ship. That's right. And so then they're going to get together who's going to be the lead singer of this song when they're all capable of putting their own imprimatur upon it. Right, right. And it's a project that could have gone on for six months. Or years. Or years. Or exploded.

Yeah, and it was probably good that it was only, there was a minimum amount of time where their schedules all worked together because it made people have to kind of work very fast, which I think was the spirit of the original basement tapes. There wasn't a lot of thought. One of the things that comes out of the film that becomes very thematically sort of becomes the theme for the movie really is that in 1967 when Bob was in the basement with the band recording these things, they really never thought anyone was ever going to hear them. They were recordings made as demos for their own use. So there was no thought of, oh, we got to go back and fix this, or maybe we shouldn't say that line.

That sounds a little bit like it doesn't fit or whatever it was. that sounds a little bit like it doesn't fit or whatever it was. So there's this outpouring of creativity and the thing in Capital that was sort of related to that was there wasn't enough time really to pour over yourself. And I think also, you know, if you're working on your song and you know Elvis Costello's song is coming up next, you probably don't want to sit there and make him do 30 takes playing bass on your song. You're probably going to be okay with a few takes. Right. The level of mutual respect is probably upping everybody's game and making them behave better than maybe they would.

Right. Yeah. And you're right. You said the thing about that, well, they're all the captains of their own ships, but it was also an opportunity for them to find out how they would write when they're writing for people that they don't normally play with. And I think some of the folks in that really took advantage of that and really used it as a chance to go out of their comfort zone. Marcus Mumford is a good example of that where he may have to write one way in Mumford and Sons for the sound they have. He was able to take advantage of the musicians in this room and write in a very different way.

And it brought out a side of him where I think people are going to walk away from this film saying, wow, I thought he was one kind of musician, and now I see him as somebody else in a very positive way. Interesting. Is the record done? The record's done and out. Oh, it's out now? It's out. It's called Lost on the River. And the band called themselves the New Basement Tapes, which is an odd name for a band, but it sort of fits the project. Well, it has to come with some sort of traveling Wilbur-y kind of name, right? Yeah, exactly. And the film is called Lost Songs. The Basement Tapes Continued.

And the beautiful thing now about making a documentary on television is that it sort of lives for a long time. You know, with Showtime Anytime or HBO Go or Netflix or whatever. It's great because I think as consumers, we don't feel any pressure to have to watch it on the night. We know we can find it. And it allows documentaries especially to have a longer life than they normally would. And I think documentaries especially have benefited from this Netflix, iTunes model where you can have a word of mouth situation and it can percolate slowly. I remember when the Wilco film came out, we were in theaters.

But then after we were in theaters, you had to buy the DVD if you wanted to see it. And that's a little bit harder. Someone could say they liked a film, but you weren't going to go spend 25 bucks on it maybe. But now you can go rent it for $2 and see what the film is all about. And I think we're in a golden age for documentaries on television. Yeah, there's no question about it. I mean Netflix really is the go-to place. I mean, people are discovering a million ways to find things and watch them. I think behind the scenes, a lot of the larger companies, the distributors and the channels,

I think they're really trying to figure out how it's all going to shake down in the end. Is it going to be the broadband companies or is it going to be the satellite companies? Or is it going to be – are the traditional networks going to go away? But for viewers, it's fantastic. It's amazing. It's an amazing time. I mean Tyler and I were talking about this on the drive down.

I was saying it's kind of amazing that like Nielsen ratings even like anyone would even care – like why does anyone care what time you watch a program anymore? Like, why is that relevant? It's a relic of a system that is, you know, of yesteryear. You know, when it just shouldn't matter anymore the way everything is heading. And, you know, how long it took HBO

to just allow people to do HBO Go without being a subscriber. Like in 2015, they're going to let you do that whether you subscribe on television or not. And for the viewer, yeah, it just opens everything wide open. You know, it's amazing to see. And it's kind of like, it's analogous to that moment in the Wilco movie. We're in this transition right now, you know, where the television industry and the movie industry is trying to figure out, you know, how they're going to make their next move. And, you know, it's similar to what the music industry obviously went through some years ago and,

you know, kind of being unsure about what the next step is. Well, to me, it's amazing. I mean, there's the only difference between the music industry and the movie industry is bandwidth, you know, and now that that issue's, you could see – if you're a movie studio, you could see the paranoia that could grip you looking at what happened in the music industry over the last 20 years. Because if it's just as easy to get a movie for free as it is to get a song for free, what happens? I mean, maybe it only costs $50,000 to make a record, but it costs a lot of money to make a movie. I'm amazed that when you think about how lucky we are, just from my childhood forward, from things like Happy Days to Seinfeld to Nova Nova, to whatever it is that all I'm required to do is watch some silly advertisements. And I get this programming for free, right?

So it is – you got to wonder like how is it going to work if everyone is taping their shows and DVRing them and not watching the ads. How does that all work? And it's a golden age, but it's also, you wonder. Well, it has to be a sustainable business. That's right. And the creators need to be compensated for their work. Certainly, there has to be some way of figuring it out. I mean, I think Netflix is, with the subscription model, that seems to work.

They seem to be able to properly and fairly compensate the people that work on their projects and deliver the content at a fair price for the consumer. Well, the HBO model proved that subscribers – it proved it a long time ago that it works. But we're not going to subscribe. We were talking about this too, like, okay, I'm going to subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime and who – And before you know it, you're paying $200 a month. Well, that's the big question. That's not going to work either. Because people say they want a la carte television. Here in Los Angeles, we have the situation where this year we couldn't see the Dodgers.

And DirecTV wasn't adding the Dodgers to their slate because it would cost too much money for them. And, and not everyone who's a direct TV customer wants to watch the Dodgers. So it brings up the a la carte conversation, but what you're talking about is God, the a la carte thing might end up costing as much or more than the most expensive satellite package. Right. So I don't know, I don't know how it works, but you know, that's why I say, I think right now it's like, it's sort of the Wild West. And it's interesting to see, you know, how it'll shake down for, you know, being able to get everything we want to see and how we have to do that. But content's always king, you know, and it's a great time for content creators like yourself. It's exciting.

Yeah. I think that there is this shift taking place towards – I mean I remember when I first watched something straight through. I forget the show it was. Maybe it was the first season of Friday Night Lights where I wanted to catch up. And I think I watched them all over. Oh, like a binge watching. One weekend, right. And you think, man, it took them a year to make that. And I took it all in in one weekend.

I took it all in in one weekend. So I do think that there's this need that people seem to have once they find a great show and then they end it to find another one that fills that need or whatever. Much like any voracious reader just always wants to find the next great book and how we can read so much faster than an author can write. If your favorite author is, I don't know, Thomas Pinchon, he only comes out with a book every decade or something. So it's an interesting thing. And I think that it's great to be able to make things and contribute to that giant world of stuff that's out there. And like we talked about at the beginning of this, I hope off camera is something that people see that's a little bit different than what's out there. And like we talked about at the beginning of this, I hope off camera is something that people see that's a little bit different than what's out there. And, and there's, you know, it has its own little, its own little place. Yeah. And it's evergreen. You know what

I mean? It's not, it doesn't, it doesn't matter whether somebody watches it in the spring or next spring, you know, it's, it's the same and it will always be there. Well, that is another interesting thing. I think that, you know, when we're doing off camera, we try to really think about the – what qualities about it make it timeless. And if we're not plugging a movie and if we're not talking specifically only about one project, then hopefully it has a longer life where people can tune in to something we made two years ago. And it still is very relevant because the person that I'm talking to is sharing something that has been true to them for 20 years. So it doesn't feel old. And I like that idea. I like, you know, podcasts have been a great educator of that for me.

I find with a podcast that they never feel old. I never feel like I have to find the latest one. I think it's more common in a podcast to look through the list of who's on and pick one that you're interested in. Yeah, you don't have to start at episode one unless it's serial. But other than that – Right, exactly. But I think that in the case of someone like Marc Maron or Terry Gross with Fresh Air, you can find a conversation from 10 years ago and you can get sucked in immediately. I like that.

I like that off-camera can hopefully be that for people, that they can discover one five years from now and have it be completely fresh to them. Right, right, right. So where are you taking this magazine publishing, podcasting, television show, directing, producing, documentary making, photographing empire of yours? I mean what have you not done yet that excites you? Like what's the dream project or, you know, what are you working on now that you're excited about? Well, I got to tell you, I am the father of three girls. And I feel so amazingly lucky that I'm able to have a studio in Santa Monica that is across the street from my kids' school. And I get to see them all the time. And one of the things I think about all the time, and it's a total conundrum for me, is how much of our industry takes place outside of

Los Angeles. And I don't know how to, at this point in my life, take on a project that takes me to Romania for six months to shoot or takes me to Vancouver. So I have to say, as much as I'm excited about so many different ideas, one of the things that is most important to me is being regularly and boringly in my kids' lives every day. And that is sort of a big part of the decision of whatever I take on. And so I was able to do this documentary over the last year. And it was great because most of it was here in town and the things we did shoot out of town, And the things we did shoot out of town, I was able to do with my family and bring them. And so right now, I think I am really happy with where things are. I feel like any idea that I have, I can sort of dive into it.

And I have a little studio space here to be able to do that. little studio space here to be able to do that. But I also really want to not forget that I'm fine, my family's fine, we don't need to come up with the next idea that makes millions of dollars. And I want to be in their lives on a daily basis. How old are your girls? I have seven, eight, and 16. And so, you know, I know this is a little goofy to talk about, but I think that that childhood time is short. And I look at some of these people that I admire that are so successful

and they're doing amazing work. And on one hand, I look at them and I go, oh my god, like how amazing is Nightcrawler? Or how incredible of a project is, you know, like say Masters of Sex, right? Incredible television making, incredible movie making. But you'd be lying to yourself if you said that you can do all this and be able to have a life outside of it. This wasn't for anybody else in your life. So for me, I think now at the age I am and where I am in my life,

balance is really important for me and finding ways to be creative in the things I want to do while also balancing that with a life that feels full in the other ways. Right, right, right. I mean we're about the same age. We're basically the same age. And balance is a tricky thing for me and I have two daughters that are 7 and 10. And I think a lot – especially living in Los Angeles, I think a lot about what's influencing them on a daily basis. Like how my wife and I are consciously influencing them but all the passive influences that they're exposed to throughout the day. and I are consciously influencing them, but all the passive influences that they're exposed to throughout the day. And as somebody who, you know, lives in breeze at this intersection of art and

commerce and somebody who's kind of, you know, your job is, you know, kind of at the epicenter of pop culture, how does that inform how you parent young girls? I mean, you must think about like, you know, what am I exposing them to? Who are their role models and can I find better role models and how can I create more positive influence in their life? Yeah, it's a big question always. my experience, I find that being a father to girls has opened me up to so much of a broader understanding of what it's like to grow up as a woman and the pressures of that and and wanting to find positive role models and wanting to find, to find positive role models and wanting to find, you know, wanting to be as informed as I can about that. Because, you know, you realize at a certain point that your experience in life is only

based on, you know, until you have kids, it's really only based on you trying to go out and make a living and have a place to live and, you know, sort of be able to get through life feeling like your sort of basic needs are met. And so I grew up as a boy who turned into a man, and learning about what my daughters face and what they will face, I think about it all the time. And I think that proximity is huge. Just, you know, even the idea of, you know, say someone has a big house, and the kid's wing is sort of off upstairs and away from the parent's wing, and there's a lot

of physical separation in the house, I don't think that's good. I think that your kids can be sort of right under your roof and you can still lose touch with what's going on in their lives. And so for me, I really think I want to be in my kids' lives, like I said, in a very boring way where I'm just around and I know what's going on because I'm there, right? Exactly. So, because I don't have, I certainly don't have all the answers. I'm every day realizing how few answers I have for my kids. You know what I mean? Like how every single thing they have to go through, I have to sort of have an answer for it for the first time. You know, we don't get to have a practice fatherhood period.

We have to sort of like learn from our mistakes and our kids have to sort of deal with our mistakes. Unfortunately. You know, unfortunately, like there's no way to be a professional parent. Tyler's laughing over there. Yeah, it's too late for Tyler. I know. He's fully formed at this point. Cool.

Well, we got to wrap it up. But I want to kind of end it on with one last question, which is, you know, any kind of wisdom or advice you could impart to, you know, a young creative person out there who's trying to figure out how to put the pieces together, you know, whether they're a photographer or whatever they are, like just some things that you've learned as a result of your experiences that might be helpful for somebody who's interested in pursuing the arts. I mean, that's, if you're honest about it, that's a hard one because so much of my career is based on luck. And obviously, I've taken the luck and tried to do as much as I can with it. But I think that it's really hard to do what we do and be lucky enough to make a living at it. And it's much harder now. It seems like there's so many

more people that want to be photographers or want to be directors now, whereas the playing field was a lot less cluttered when I was coming up. And so, you know, the first thing I think you have to be willing to do as a young creative person is say, okay, I'm going to do this whether or not I'm successful at it. Like, if that's how you feel, then you're going to be fine. You know, I think we had Matt Damon on off camera and I said, you know, what do you tell someone that's young that's coming up? And he says, you try to talk them out of it. And you try really hard to talk them out of doing it because if you can talk someone out of doing it because if you can talk someone

out of doing it in a single conversation, they don't really want it bad enough to be successful in it anyway. So I think if you're honest, the first thing you say is, yeah, don't do it. It's impossible and don't do it. And the ones who come back in five years and say, I didn't take your advice, those people have a shot at it. But know? But for me, I followed what I loved and I tried to make everything a hobby and I tried to, you know, emulate people who I thought were doing cool stuff. Um, because then it never really felt like work, you know, it always felt fun. I think that's the key to a creative life. If it feels fun to you, you're probably doing the right thing. If it feels like pressure, and you're wondering if you're going to be liked, or if you're going to be good enough, or a success is going to be fraught with anxiety. Right.

You're just blowing in the wind. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think that at a certain point, you've got to say to yourself, I'm doing this because I love it and I don't really care if anyone likes it or not. I made it and I'm looking at it and I like it and I feel fulfilled. It's an interesting time though. I mean that's harder and harder to do where everything lives and breathes on the Instagram like and the Facebook. It's like we're constantly keeping tallies of all these kinds of crazy things that in reality really don't mean anything but influence us.

Yeah. I mean I don't think you can buy into that too much because it's almost like you're you don't have a gestation period you know if you make something as a kid and you put it on instagram and you get fewer likes than you think you should have for that you may mistakenly say oh that's because this piece of art or whatever it is you made isn't connecting with anybody but there's so many crazy factors and you know i think you have to keep the message really simple and i think it comes back to did you love making it did it satisfy you creatively would you be making it if no one liked it? And if the answer is yes to those things, then it doesn't, all those questions go away and you're having your own experience with it that no one can take from you.

That's beautifully put. I think that's a good, I think that's a good place to end it. Great. Well, thanks for having me on this. Thanks so much, Sam. I really appreciate it. It was great. Yeah, no, it's great.

Thanks for having me on this. Thanks so much, Sam. I really appreciate it. It was great. Yeah, no, it was great. If you're digging on Sam, the best way to find out more about him is to go to offcamera.com and go to samjonespictures.com, right? That's right. And you're on Twitter. There's an off-camera Twitter.

There's an off-camera Twitter. There's an off-camera Facebook. There's an off-camera Twitter. There's an off-camera Facebook. I'm not personally on Facebook because I just, I guess, never wanted to be sucked into the time vortex. You're on Twitter, though. I am on Twitter. And, yeah, so there's many ways to find me.

Right. What's your Twitter? Sam Jones. At Sam Jones. Wow. How'd you snag that? You must have been on early. No, you know, I wasn't. But someone who is a fan of what I do works at Twitter,

and I guess the person who had that account wasn't using it. So I guess they moved the levers a little bit. That's super cool. That puts you in the VIP room of Twitter alone. That's cool. Well, I don't know about that. I like it. All right, man. Thanks so much. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Okay, that's it. We did it. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Sam is a super busy guy, so it was a treat to spend some time with him, and I hope you got a lot out of it. For all your plant power provisions, go to richroll.com. We got new t-shirts.

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if you're enjoying the show. We got over 900 now. I want to hit a thousand. Come on, you guys. It only takes like a minute. If you want to access the back catalog of the podcast, as you know, if you go on iTunes, it's only the most recent 50 episodes.

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What do you guys want me to talk about? What questions do you want me to answer? So send those. Production, audio engineering, music, and sound design for today's show is done by Tyler Pyatt. Additional production and editorial support by Chris Swan. And thank you very much to Sean Patterson for all the amazing graphic art thanks you guys see you next week peace plants Thank you.