Latest / onefjef / Documentaries, Dyslexia & We Just Die with Nathan Fitch

Transcript

Documentaries, Dyslexia & We Just Die with Nathan Fitch · onefjef

• 0:01
  Jef!
• 0:02
  I wanted to tell you that when we first met, I was not a podcast guy.
• 0:07
  I didn't listen to podcasts.
• 0:09
  Like, who has time for that?
• 0:10
  Right.
• 0:10
  Now after I started to listen to your podcast, I'm a podcast guy.
• 0:15
  I have three podcasts I listen to religiously, and yours
• 0:18
  is at the top of the list.
• 0:19
  Just wanted to let you know you changed my life.
• 0:22
  Love you, brother.
• 0:22
  This is episode 43 of onefjef 43 is a prime number with
• 0:27
  a weird split personality.
• 0:29
  Mathematically, it's one of the rare hegner numbers where complex
• 0:32
  equations behave perfectly.
• 0:34
  Esoterically four plus three equals seven, often tied to introspection
• 0:38
  and truth seeking, giving it a structured spirituality vibe.
• 0:42
  It also follows 42 in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
• 0:47
  So some people treat 43 as the question after the answer, a
• 0:51
  meaning that's less ancient wisdom and more modern myth making.
• 0:56
  Hello.
• 0:56
  Once again, my friends, Buenos Diaz, Buenos noche, depending on when.
• 1:02
  You may or may not be listening to this.
• 1:04
  Well, depending on when you may be listening to this, because if you're not
• 1:07
  listening to this, then you're not hearing it, so that wouldn't work out at all.
• 1:13
  Anyway, I hope you're all doing very well, thriving, as it were.
• 1:17
  I'm doing well.
• 1:18
  I've had a busy week.
• 1:19
  My sister and my nephew have been in town here in Mexico City and we've been doing
• 1:24
  lots of wonderful things, seeing the sites, and you can hear all about them in
• 1:27
  the next episode of CDMX dispatch, which to my Patreon subscribers will be coming
• 1:33
  out on Friday or Saturday of this week.
• 1:35
  But for if everybody else, it'll be coming out sometime next week.
• 1:39
  So, you know, I guess it depends on how patient you are, but if you aren't
• 1:42
  patient at all and you want to hear that right away, go to patreon.com/onefjef
• 1:47
  and sign up because it's been an interesting week, and so it'll be
• 1:52
  a good episode, as will this one be because my guest today is Nathan Fitch.
• 1:57
  Nathan Fitch is a Brooklyn based filmmaker and visual journalist whose
• 2:00
  work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Time, and NPR.
• 2:04
  He's best known for his feature Documentary Island Soldier, which follows
• 2:09
  Micronesian Soldiers serving in the US military and aired on PBS in 2018.
• 2:14
  His short film Drawing Life, a partly Animated Portrait of New
• 2:18
  Yorker, cartoonist George Booth.
• 2:20
  Was released by the magazine in 2022.
• 2:22
  Fitch is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective and
• 2:25
  teaches film at the New School.
• 2:27
  Nathan is a super interesting human being who I had the pleasure of meeting
• 2:31
  in the Brooklyn Filmmakers collective back when I lived in Brooklyn, New York.
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  He had this very interesting Instagram project for a while back
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  when Instagram was kind of an early thing before it became kind of a
• 2:42
  toxic wasteland that it is today.
• 2:44
  He had a really interesting project on there called Stranger Selfie Project.
• 2:48
  Nathan's a very talented photographer as well as documentarian, and he
• 2:52
  was doing these photos in which he would be reflected in a window.
• 2:55
  You'd see his face, but also a stranger in the background or
• 2:58
  foreground or whatever it was.
• 3:00
  Stranger selfie project.
• 3:02
  You can look it up.
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  I was honored.
• 3:03
  I remember to be included in one of his stranger selfie pictures,
• 3:07
  even though I wasn't necessarily a stranger to him at that point.
• 3:09
  The term stranger, I guess, was used loosely, and his film work
• 3:12
  has always been compelling to me.
• 3:14
  Mostly because of the subject matter and the way he approaches the subject matter.
• 3:17
  He dives right in particularly the project we talk about the most in this
• 3:20
  episode, which is this project he did in Micronesia called Island Soldier.
• 3:25
  Which if you get a chance, I'm not sure if it's available screaming somewhere.
• 3:28
  I think it might be.
• 3:29
  I'm not sure if you get a chance though, make sure you check it out.
• 3:32
  'cause it's really compelling and and unique in all the things.
• 3:35
  I will put a link to his website in the show notes where you can click and
• 3:39
  see as much of his work as you choose.
• 3:42
  And it was great to reconnect with Nathan.
• 3:43
  I had not talked to him for probably five or six or seven years I suppose.
• 3:47
  And when I was, uh, thinking about guests for the podcast, I thought,
• 3:50
  huh, Nathan would be an interesting person to have on this podcast.
• 3:53
  'cause he's had a very interesting life and a very interesting career.
• 3:56
  And I think that you will find it just as interesting as I do, whether
• 4:00
  you're a filmmaker or just a person who's interested in interesting
• 4:05
  people, which I think most of you are.
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  So as always, thank you for listening.
• 4:11
  Thank you for being here.
• 4:12
  Here is my conversation.
• 4:14
  With Nathan Fitch.
• 4:18
  Nathan, how have you been, Jef?
• 4:21
  I've been, well, kind of, I don't know.
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  I mean, the world's a mess, right?
• 4:26
  Things are going just fine.
• 4:27
  Things are going just fine.
• 4:29
  Yeah, I'm, we've entered a different reality.
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  I believe.
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  I'm in my office for my, my day job and half the building is like heated
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  and the other half is like freezing.
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  So luckily like I'm on the heated side, so it's like, oh, congrats.
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  Very cold New York.
• 4:43
  Yeah.
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  But like there's a nice warm draft and I, the people on the other
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  side had to like buy their own like space heater 'cause it's so cold.
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  So, oh, well you lucked out.
• 4:53
  Yeah.
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  And you're teaching at a school now, is that right?
• 4:56
  I am.
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  I just finished a semester teaching two CLA production classes at the new school.
• 5:02
  Oh, nice.
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  What kind of stuff do you teach at the school?
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  So I taught two new classes this semester, which I don't know how much.
• 5:09
  Formal teaching experience.
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  You have Jef.
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  I did it one time.
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  I taught one class, a film class during COVID, and it was not, I mean, adjunct,
• 5:16
  you don't get paid very much money, at least here in Columbus anyway.
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  And the experience was entirely without support.
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  I had no idea.
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  And they gave me no curriculum or anything.
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  They just kind of said, do what you need to do.
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  And I was like, okay.
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  It's a lot of work to make a new class.
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  So, so I, I taught two new classes.
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  One class was called Screen Foundations, which we kind of would do two weeks
• 5:37
  of like, here's how a camera works, here's what the ISO and the shutter
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  speed and the F stop all mean.
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  And then we do two weeks of editing.
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  So it'd be kind of like, there was one exercise where we went out to the park
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  and did like a two-camera interview with someone in Union Square, which
• 5:53
  is right by where, where we meet.
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  And then the next week I would teach 'em how to sync it up and how to
• 5:57
  cut from, you know, do multi-camera.
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  So that's one class.
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  And then the second class was on the visual aesthetics of
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  skateboarding, which was fun.
• 6:04
  Oh, that's cool.
• 6:06
  Yeah.
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  That's cool.
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  So it was kind of like.
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  How, how that half the class were skaters, but the other half weren't.
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  And so like, you didn't have to make like skate videos, but you had to like
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  think about like Fish Island and like different formats and kind of like
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  what that aesthetic even is and how it's been kind of adapted by cinema.
• 6:26
  Yeah.
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  And that's how you got started doing filmmaking, isn't it?
• 6:28
  Doing skateboarding videos.
• 6:30
  Exactly.
• 6:31
  So, right, right, right.
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  So it all kind of like teach what you know, I suppose, right?
• 6:35
  Yeah.
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  And we made sort of as a final product, everyone made a part,
• 6:39
  you know, like a skate video.
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  Did you ever skate Jef?
• 6:43
  A little bit.
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  Like when I was, uh, a teenager, that movie Back to the Future.
• 6:49
  It was a small little film people have heard of, uh, that came out.
• 6:52
  And that of course increased people's interest in skateboarding quite a bit.
• 6:55
  So I ended up actually getting the skateboard that he used in that movie.
• 7:00
  But I would never have considered myself a good skater.
• 7:03
  I was more of a BMX biking guy.
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  But even that, you know, never really was like all in.
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  Yeah.
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  I only ask because, you know, the format of these skate videos is like,
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  you know, you would have make a skate video for a team, so we kind of imagined
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  that our class was like a skate company or something, and we were producing
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  like a, a collective video, so each person would make a part, and then
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  I compiled them all into one piece.
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  It's interesting how much skateboarding videos have influenced filmmaking now.
• 7:32
  Like a lot of filmmakers have come from like, skateboarding, video backgrounds.
• 7:37
  No, absolutely.
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  I mean, so we had a lot of like skater guests, you know, come to the class,
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  uh, like Tony Hawk came Oh, no kidding.
• 7:46
  One of, yeah.
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  And, uh, like skateboarding, like filmmaking and like a lot of things
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  has had a lot of like ups and downs over the last whatever, 30 years.
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  Sure.
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  And, uh.
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  So there's a moment where, you know, early on at like 17, he was like buying
• 8:01
  houses and then like everything crashed and like he wasn't making this much
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  money from skateboarding, so he became a freelance editor, you know, to, huh.
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  Ends meet.
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  Makes me a little sad actually to know that Tony Hawks still couldn't support
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  himself from skating his whole life.
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  He's good now.
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  This was, this was probably like 30 years ago.
• 8:19
  Oh, good.
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  The blip.
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  Okay.
• 8:20
  All right.
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  He's good.
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  How did you get him in your class?
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  I, I did a piece, uh, I pitched the New Yorker where I used to work to do
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  a piece when skateboarding went to the Olympics in Tokyo for the first time.
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  So I met him filming that like in, I think January, 2020 before
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  everything like shut down and then just kinda kept in touch with him.
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  Oh wow.
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  That's cool.
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  He's like the only skateboarder that I can probably name.
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  So well done.
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  Yeah.
• 8:46
  Yeah.
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  So, uh, usually I start with how we met and how I met Nathan Fitch is from
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  the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, which not really gonna go deep into
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  it, but it's a collection of filmmakers in New York who would get together
• 9:00
  every week and screen our work.
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  And um, I think I joined in 2011 'cause I had just gotten outta Sundance and I
• 9:06
  thought, well I can actually get in now.
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  'cause at the time it was very difficult to get into.
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  I don't know if it is now, but there was a lot of applications from
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  what I understand back in the day.
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  But yeah, it was, it was a wonderful group.
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  Met a lot of people.
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  When did you join?
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  I think I joined right before you.
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  Okay.
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  So maybe 2010.
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  And I think it's interesting 'cause there's like new people here who come
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  and like, are immediately very like talkative and like share their opinions.
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  And I feel like I didn't talk for a couple years probably 'cause I was
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  intimidated by like, people like you.
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  Yeah.
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  Like me.
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  Are you kidding?
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  Like, that's ridiculous.
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  No, that's, it's funny because I felt the same exact way.
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  I think maybe, maybe everybody feels that way in a, in in a sense.
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  'cause there's a lot of talent in that group.
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  It's a little intimidating sometimes.
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  How's BFC going now?
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  It's interesting.
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  I mean, I thought it was gonna expire during the pandemic, like every Yeah.
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  I thought it was gonna expire well before that, to be honest.
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  But nothing personal against it.
• 10:02
  Yeah.
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  But it felt like it was a little bit uns shaky ground for a while
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  when I was leaving New York anyway.
• 10:07
  Yeah.
• 10:08
  I mean, people, when I, people tell people about it, the fact that we get
• 10:11
  together like once a week and that people actually show up once a week.
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  Yeah.
• 10:16
  I mean, it's kind of incredible.
• 10:17
  Um, it really is.
• 10:18
  Yeah.
• 10:19
  And uh, if I think about it, if I joined right before you in 2010, I mean like
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  15 years that I've been doing this.
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  Yeah.
• 10:27
  Like kind of off and on crazy.
• 10:30
  But, uh, yeah.
• 10:31
  So it was dying.
• 10:31
  There was, there was a, a little while where after the pandemic it
• 10:35
  felt like no one was gonna come back.
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  And there was myself and another member, Vina Rao were kind of like, yeah.
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  Love Vina.
• 10:41
  We would come every week and like there were some times it would be like
• 10:46
  one other person or two other people.
• 10:48
  Oh, you guys kept it going.
• 10:50
  That's good.
• 10:51
  Kind of like, yeah.
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  It just become like, you know, a part of my creative practice in a way of keeping
• 10:57
  myself like accountable, you know?
• 10:59
  Sure.
• 10:59
  And it's like, because the projects I am working on, I never have like enough
• 11:05
  funding to pay myself to work on them.
• 11:07
  Right.
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  You know?
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  Right.
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  My own films.
• 11:09
  Right.
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  It's just like nice to have the like community and like the brain trust and
• 11:14
  just honestly showing up and seeing like the cool things that people other people
• 11:17
  are doing and then getting inspired.
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  So Yeah.
• 11:20
  And honestly it was like great to me because it was, I think eight years
• 11:24
  I was in it, I guess seven or eight and just, you know, seeing people, you
• 11:29
  know, develop and get older and get, have kids and all these kind of things.
• 11:32
  It was just a community that I really kind of miss.
• 11:34
  You know, it's interesting, it's like everything, you know, life
• 11:36
  changes and like doing something, like having a kid changes like.
• 11:40
  Your life in meaningful ways and like, you know, moving changes your life.
• 11:44
  But it's interesting 'cause like the FFC in the way, it's like stayed the same
• 11:48
  and format, but it's, you know, it's like the DNA of it changes every time
• 11:52
  there's a new group of people who come in because yeah, they bring whatever
• 11:56
  their vibe is and then the whole group kind of ships a little bit, you know?
• 12:00
  Right, right.
• 12:00
  I mean that's, yeah, it seems like that's what's happened a lot.
• 12:02
  Like more young people have come in with more like a, you know, you
• 12:05
  know, piss and vinegar as they say and have kind of re reinvigorated it.
• 12:09
  I saw there's a newsletter or something, or a video series or something that
• 12:14
  they were doing that was really good.
• 12:15
  So, so good to see it.
• 12:16
  Yeah.
• 12:17
  Yeah.
• 12:17
  I've been sort of like flogging the, the social media and the Instagram for years.
• 12:21
  And finally we have, we have a new member named TN who's really been
• 12:25
  doing it legitimately, so it's not just me like scrolling and
• 12:29
  trying to look things with him out.
• 12:30
  Right.
• 12:30
  It's train or whatever.
• 12:31
  Right.
• 12:32
  It was always pretty disorganized from what I recall.
• 12:37
  It was always lots of, in, lots of all the best intentions, but then it was
• 12:40
  always like, but who's gonna do that?
• 12:42
  So, yep.
• 12:43
  So yeah, let's talk about some of your movies.
• 12:45
  Island Soldiers, the one that I first remember, uh, seeing of yours.
• 12:49
  And, um, it was a really interesting project.
• 12:52
  Do you wanna talk about that a little bit?
• 12:54
  It's interesting 'cause it came out a while ago, but Right, right.
• 12:56
  Continues to have a life because it's sort of, there's not been much made about it.
• 13:01
  So yeah.
• 13:02
  Kind of the backstory for that project was after I went to art
• 13:07
  school in, in LA for like drawing and painting and illustration.
• 13:12
  And I'd studied abroad in Sweden for a semester just to like, you
• 13:16
  know, get out of the US and see what another country was like, which was
• 13:19
  like a really interesting experience.
• 13:21
  And I really liked Sweden, of course.
• 13:22
  Yeah.
• 13:23
  The work was kind of more radical, I would say, than the work that was being made.
• 13:27
  So that was exciting.
• 13:28
  What, what do you mean by that?
• 13:29
  I mean, the art school that I, I went to in LA was like, it's like
• 13:32
  well respected, but like, which the kind of work what art school?
• 13:35
  What art school was it?
• 13:36
  Uh, called Otis.
• 13:37
  Okay.
• 13:38
  If you find into lax, you'll fly over at, um, yeah.
• 13:42
  David Hockney is like a okay artist who came out of it, but like, at least
• 13:46
  the program I was in was kind of like, you'd be like, you know, a homework
• 13:50
  assignment would be to like set up a still life and like render an apple and
• 13:53
  make it look like an apple, you know?
• 13:55
  And then I got to Europe and like everyone in the art school there like knew how to
• 13:59
  render and draw really well and they, they were just like past, they were like, you
• 14:04
  know, the Renaissance painters did that right now we're not gonna keep trying to
• 14:08
  do this thing that's been done forever.
• 14:10
  We're gonna try to use different styles and like interpret reality and.
• 14:14
  It was just like a more loose and open approach to visuals.
• 14:18
  Do you think that, like in the United States, I think a lot of people
• 14:21
  just go to art school because they have some inclination for the arts.
• 14:26
  They maybe don't know what else to do, they don't entirely understand
• 14:29
  what they wanna do, but whereas in like Europe or Sweden, maybe there's
• 14:31
  more of an intentionality to it.
• 14:33
  No, no, absolutely.
• 14:34
  I mean, the reason I went to art school was 'cause I'm really
• 14:35
  dyslexic and so I didn't get it.
• 14:37
  I only got into like a couple schools 'cause my, oh, I see.
• 14:39
  Grades, my grades were bad.
• 14:40
  My, you know, whatever, SATs or whatever were like abysmal.
• 14:44
  And so like, the only schools that accepted me were like schools.
• 14:48
  I had like a drawing portfolio.
• 14:50
  So for me it was like, I didn't have too much of a choice.
• 14:52
  But, but I think you're totally right.
• 14:54
  And like the school I was at in Sweden was like completely free.
• 14:57
  And the government would actually even, oh, pay the students, you know,
• 15:01
  a little, like, don't think it was, don't even, oh, don't even get me start.
• 15:05
  Don't, don't even.
• 15:06
  But the flip side was, it was pretty competitive.
• 15:09
  So there were people who, you know, must, I think the median age and the,
• 15:12
  the class I was in was probably like.
• 15:14
  26, 27, and I was, you know, 18 or 19.
• 15:18
  Oh wow.
• 15:18
  I might have been 20, but it's like people had applied six times, you
• 15:22
  know, to get in and, you know, because design is a huge export for Sweden,
• 15:27
  it's just taken more seriously, like within the hierarchy of society.
• 15:30
  I feel like if you're in the United States and you're an artist, then
• 15:34
  if you're like a lawyer or a doctor, somebody's gonna like, make more money.
• 15:38
  There's a certain like way people look at you.
• 15:40
  Absolutely, absolutely.
• 15:41
  And in Sweden it's not actually like that, you know, if you're an artist.
• 15:45
  More respect more.
• 15:46
  Yeah.
• 15:46
  And even in Ireland now, they're giving, they're paying their artists like a,
• 15:49
  a, I don't know how many of 'em I read, but a, a good chunk of artists, they're
• 15:53
  giving them just like the government's giving them a living wage because they
• 15:56
  know that there's not a lot of money in art, which again, makes me feel
• 15:59
  like I need to get out of this country.
• 16:01
  But that's another story.
• 16:03
  So I, I graduated with this degree in illustration or whatever and like.
• 16:09
  But I really at the time didn't really want to get a job.
• 16:11
  I wanted to travel and see the world.
• 16:14
  You know, I had this idea that like before I got, you know, locked down.
• 16:18
  So I ended up doing, like, I spent a while kind of like trying to figure
• 16:22
  out how to get outta the US and I ended up doing the US Peace Corps program
• 16:26
  Where they, kidding, kidding, right.
• 16:28
  Somewhere for two years.
• 16:29
  That landed me in Micronesia.
• 16:31
  And then there was this big push for historic preservation for Peace Corps
• 16:35
  people who wanted to like help, you know, document the culture of the islands
• 16:40
  because there's so much, there's been so many like waves of colonial power that
• 16:43
  have like come through and decimated indi indigenous oral histories and like ways,
• 16:50
  yeah, ways that culture were passed on.
• 16:52
  So I was part of this group of volunteers and so I was tasked to
• 16:55
  kind of like document events through photography and video for two years.
• 17:00
  That was kinda my day job.
• 17:02
  Oh, that's awesome.
• 17:03
  So I hadn't studied film.
• 17:04
  I, I had made skate videos in high school, you know, editing between two VCRs.
• 17:08
  But like film wasn't really like, or video even wasn't really on my radar
• 17:12
  beyond documenting skateboarding.
• 17:15
  And then I kind of had to do it and it was like very, the stuff
• 17:17
  I was doing was very basic.
• 17:19
  Sure it'd show up.
• 17:20
  Maybe I would get assigned to GE document, like a Liberation Day
• 17:23
  celebration where the people of the island celebrate being quote unquote
• 17:28
  liberated by the United States from Chi Japan because it was during World War ii
• 17:32
  there was this like tough period where the local people were kind of forced
• 17:36
  into labor and had pretty hard lives.
• 17:39
  So they were pretty like stoked when the US like rolled up and had a, had
• 17:43
  a bunch of like canned food and stuff.
• 17:45
  Right, right, right.
• 17:46
  I don't know much about Micronesia at all, to be honest, aside from I
• 17:50
  think what I learned from your film.
• 17:52
  Can you give a short, a short rundown of like the history of Micronesia?
• 17:55
  'cause I don't think a lot of people probably have any idea.
• 17:58
  Absolutely.
• 17:59
  And I mean, this is a bit of a tangent, but you know, I'm working on some
• 18:02
  new projects that are also related to, to Micronesia in that region.
• 18:06
  And there was like a bloat in Ohio because there was like, around the
• 18:11
  time some of the racist stuff about the Haitians was being said, oh yeah,
• 18:15
  they're eating their pet, eating the pets.
• 18:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 18:18
  Some of that was translated to mi to Micronesians who were living in Ohio.
• 18:22
  And I, I found like recordings of these like community board meetings
• 18:25
  where people were talking about all these strange islanders who have
• 18:28
  like shown up in our community.
• 18:29
  And then there's other people that were like, look guys, you
• 18:32
  gotta kinda know the history.
• 18:33
  Like they're here for a good reason.
• 18:35
  Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:35
  But the Micronesians weren't eating your pets?
• 18:38
  No, no.
• 18:39
  Okay, good, good.
• 18:39
  So history of Micronesia.
• 18:41
  Micronesia is like a huge swath of the Western Pacific.
• 18:45
  So you kind of like, kind of between Hawaii and New Zealand and like Indonesia,
• 18:51
  chameleons of square miles of ocean.
• 18:54
  Like only small landmass.
• 18:55
  So either, you know, volcanic islands that were kind of like higher and
• 19:00
  have kind of been sinking down.
• 19:01
  Or like a tolls, which are in sandy Lowline islands.
• 19:06
  So, you know, they've been colonized, they've had
• 19:10
  colonial waves for a long time.
• 19:12
  Like Rhodesia has been kind of broken up into different countries.
• 19:15
  So there's the Federation of Micronesia where I was Palau and the Marshall
• 19:19
  Islands, which is where I'm working now.
• 19:21
  Different islands were discovered by different people, but it was like Spanish,
• 19:26
  then the Germans, then Japanese, and then the US came after World War II and
• 19:32
  all three countries became independent.
• 19:34
  But they're connected to the US with this thing called a compact free
• 19:37
  association, where essentially the US benefits a lot from having military
• 19:42
  control of this huge and strategically important part of the Pacific for
• 19:46
  military bases for denial rights.
• 19:49
  So other countries can, can't come.
• 19:52
  And in exchange the US gives the islands some financial resources
• 19:57
  because their economies are very small and people from those islands can work
• 20:02
  and live legally in the US without a green card and also serve in the
• 20:06
  US military without being a citizen.
• 20:09
  So while I was doing the Peace Corps, I was doing, you know, a
• 20:11
  bunch of different projects in addition to this documentary role.
• 20:16
  And one of the projects was, I was looking, working with a group of young
• 20:18
  artists painting murals, mostly young men.
• 20:22
  Just because like within the culture, like it's like young men
• 20:26
  and women aren't really, I mean, I'm not young anymore, but Right.
• 20:29
  You're not supposed to like hang out with young women if you're
• 20:30
  not trying to get married.
• 20:32
  Right.
• 20:33
  So, so I got to be friends with all these young guys and then they were just like
• 20:35
  leaving like a recruiter from the US military would come and at the time I
• 20:39
  think they would pay them like $18,000 a year to like go fight in Iraq and AF
• 20:45
  Afghanistan or wherever we needed them.
• 20:48
  And they did it for the money.
• 20:49
  'cause the money, it's good money for them.
• 20:52
  I mean, I think at the time the, the governor of the island
• 20:57
  that I was living on, which is called Ry, made $20,000 a year.
• 21:00
  So it'd be 18 years old and come out of, you know, high school and make
• 21:05
  as $2,000 less than, you know, this high paid the governor official.
• 21:10
  Yeah.
• 21:11
  It's crazy.
• 21:11
  Yeah.
• 21:12
  And you're also, you know, within their culture, you're not, it's like
• 21:15
  anything you do is not just for yourself.
• 21:17
  Like if you go out fishing, you're gonna feed your extended family.
• 21:20
  If you get a good catch, you're gonna feed your neighbors.
• 21:23
  And so these, these young people, mostly young people going off to serve in the
• 21:26
  military, it's like they're sending home money to like support a lot of people.
• 21:30
  So it's not like they're putting that money away for themselves.
• 21:32
  It's more of like a community oriented society.
• 21:34
  Community which what we're, what we lost in America is what they have there.
• 21:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:39
  So, so I was like, this is kind of wild that these young people, you know, I
• 21:44
  come from a military family, like my dad.
• 21:46
  Went to school on the GI Bill.
• 21:48
  Both my grandfathers fought in World War ii.
• 21:51
  Wow.
• 21:51
  And so I sort of had this idea that like, military service might be,
• 21:55
  I don't know, I, I kind of grew up with a romantic view of it.
• 21:57
  I was like, is it some kind of like coming of age thing?
• 22:00
  Like I don't really wanna hurt anyone.
• 22:01
  But with your, was your dad in Vietnam?
• 22:03
  He got sent to Europe.
• 22:04
  He kinda lucked out.
• 22:05
  Oh, okay.
• 22:05
  Um, yeah, so he didn't see too much.
• 22:09
  But yeah, I think the Peace Corps was kind of my version of that.
• 22:11
  My much safer right.
• 22:15
  Version.
• 22:16
  And then I like show up in this place and I'm supposed to be
• 22:18
  helping this like pretty low income, you know, community, like build
• 22:22
  infrastructure and with education.
• 22:24
  And they're going have to fight these wars that like people like me,
• 22:27
  like Americans with some level of privilege, don't wanna like, of course.
• 22:31
  Yeah.
• 22:32
  Fight.
• 22:32
  And then I felt kind of guilty.
• 22:33
  I was like, these people, they're not even citizens.
• 22:36
  They're not, this isn't even their country.
• 22:38
  Like, and why?
• 22:40
  You know what I mean?
• 22:41
  It's complicated because, you know, they're getting paid though.
• 22:43
  But it is complicated.
• 22:45
  But I don't, you wonder if they realize what the, there's
• 22:48
  New York in the background.
• 22:50
  You wonder if, um, you wonder if they necessarily, as young kids
• 22:55
  realize the, you know, what this involves actually that they could die.
• 23:00
  There's a fine line.
• 23:02
  Yeah.
• 23:03
  No, and I think you're right, and I think there's a lot.
• 23:05
  I think one thing I had to like separate when I was making the song Island
• 23:08
  Soldier was my own like politics.
• 23:11
  I think as a documentary filmmaker, you have to like, you have to have
• 23:14
  a perspective and like something you're trying to say, you know?
• 23:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:17
  You can't just like walk out, you can, you can just walk out and point
• 23:20
  a camera and try to capture life, like unfolding, but it would take a million
• 23:24
  years to edit and like it might not.
• 23:26
  Right?
• 23:27
  So you're always manipulating things.
• 23:29
  But yeah, for this community, I felt like it's.
• 23:32
  People who don't get their voices like amplified through film very often and
• 23:37
  you know, they were really proud of their service and kind of like this feeling.
• 23:41
  I think there was a sense that like the US has supported their islands and this was
• 23:44
  almost like a little bit of a pay payback.
• 23:46
  Definitely for the older generation.
• 23:47
  This feeling that the US is like, help them out sort of in their time of, of
• 23:52
  challenges during World War ii and now they're kind of like repaying the favor.
• 23:56
  Sure.
• 23:57
  So what, what exactly was for people who haven't seen it, what
• 24:00
  was your island soldier about?
• 24:01
  It's a feature link documentary that kind of intertwines different
• 24:05
  family stories of military service.
• 24:08
  So it kind of opens with a funeral of a spoiler alert opens with a funeral
• 24:14
  of a soldier who's being killed.
• 24:15
  Well, it's the beginning so it's not like you're spoiling the end of the film.
• 24:17
  Yeah, it's in the trailer if you rule.
• 24:19
  Right, right, right.
• 24:19
  Uh, and then it kind of looks at like why these people serve and like,
• 24:24
  you know, the challenge of trying to get benefits, part of what the.
• 24:27
  The inequity of it is like after serving, like some of the people
• 24:30
  I had interviewed done like six deployments to war zones, you know?
• 24:34
  Wow.
• 24:34
  So you come back with a certain level of trauma, and then if you want to go home,
• 24:39
  which a lot of these service member, that was kind of the dream, right?
• 24:42
  Go away work, make some money, and then Right.
• 24:45
  Go home and like, enjoy your islands.
• 24:47
  But if you come back with like amputated limbs or uhhuh, severe
• 24:51
  PTSD to a place with like, you know, without infrastructure, without
• 24:55
  like a hospital with real Right?
• 24:57
  Right.
• 24:58
  Facilities life is, is really challenging.
• 25:00
  So that was kind of the, the question the film was looking into is, you know,
• 25:04
  if we're gonna send our recruiters to these far-flung islands and recruit,
• 25:10
  part of the, the story that think that, that got me interested in the
• 25:13
  beginning was that they serve at much higher rates per capita mm-hmm.
• 25:16
  Than US citizens.
• 25:17
  And part of that has to do with like a small community
• 25:19
  versus like a huge country.
• 25:21
  Um Right.
• 25:22
  But.
• 25:23
  Right.
• 25:24
  I mean, it also raises questions of like the military in general.
• 25:27
  'cause I feel like a lot of soldiers coming back to the United States who are
• 25:29
  United States citizens who are getting treated terribly and not getting the care
• 25:32
  that they deserve, which is crazy to me.
• 25:34
  Um, yep.
• 25:35
  Let alone micronesians who don't even have really a stake in American security doing
• 25:41
  it and, and coming back to Micronesia and not being able to get the medic
• 25:46
  medical care they deserved Good time.
• 25:48
  How did your, did your perspective on the military change as
• 25:51
  you made the documentary?
• 25:52
  I mean, it was interesting.
• 25:55
  You know, I spent about a month in Afghanistan filming with, with, uh,
• 26:01
  the soldiers who I, I been filming with in Colorado and Fort Carson.
• 26:06
  And so at that point in the war, I kind of thought I was gonna be
• 26:10
  on a small, you know, a small base on the side of a mountain Sure.
• 26:14
  With like firefights or something like that.
• 26:16
  And like the war had just, I think by the time I got over there, it was like 2000.
• 26:21
  12 or 2013.
• 26:22
  So it was a while ago, but I was just, at least where I was at, I was just
• 26:25
  stuck inside a huge military base.
• 26:27
  And like every two or three days we would go out on patrol for 18 hours
• 26:33
  and it was like really long laborious.
• 26:35
  But all that to say was like a lot of boredom punctuated with
• 26:39
  like some very scary moments.
• 26:42
  Like what kind of scary moments?
• 26:43
  Um, the thing that was like scariest for me, 'cause like, I think the kind of unit
• 26:47
  that I was with were like six or seven months into their deployment, I wanna say.
• 26:51
  Yeah.
• 26:51
  I could be wrong about that.
• 26:53
  But they'd been there for a while and most of the guys had been like blown up.
• 26:55
  They'd been in vehicles that had been hit by IDs.
• 26:58
  Wow.
• 26:58
  And so, like, you know, we'd got on patrol and they gave me like a headset
• 27:03
  so I was like stuck in the back of my camera, sort of like trying to,
• 27:08
  to shoot anything I could, you know?
• 27:09
  Right.
• 27:09
  It was really challenging 'cause I'm stuck in the back of a, I
• 27:12
  rode around in a, a truck called a buffalo a lot, which is just huge.
• 27:16
  You can imagine.
• 27:17
  Yeah.
• 27:17
  Yeah.
• 27:17
  Yeah.
• 27:18
  I mean, were you scared?
• 27:19
  Yeah, I mean I worked really hard to get there, so I was a kind of exci,
• 27:23
  it was kind of a mixture, right?
• 27:24
  Of fear and like excitement and just being like, oh, I'm finally
• 27:27
  doing this thing that I've wanted, you know, I've been trying to do.
• 27:29
  'cause I feel like, I felt like for the filmmaking, like I spent enough
• 27:34
  time in the islands that I had that sort of, you know, the islands are
• 27:37
  incredibly beautiful and lush and green and I felt like I needed to have the
• 27:42
  other, the place these people are going and that visual juxtaposition of like
• 27:45
  the desert and like the dark place.
• 27:47
  Yeah.
• 27:47
  Yeah.
• 27:48
  So I was like, you know, kind of excited.
• 27:51
  I was like, but also scared.
• 27:53
  But the thing that like was really scary is like when I was listening
• 27:55
  to these conversations, 'cause a lot of the time, you know, the guys, like
• 27:59
  most of the soldiers that I was from the unit that I spent the most time
• 28:02
  with were not very political, you know?
• 28:03
  Sure.
• 28:04
  Like, talked a lot about sports, they talked a lot about what it, it was
• 28:09
  a lot of boredom and a lot of just sort of like shooting the shit, like
• 28:13
  trying to get through your 18 hour.
• 28:14
  Driving around or, right.
• 28:16
  But when the soldiers, like when I, I could hear their fear in their voices,
• 28:20
  like, like what would happen is we'd have to, we'd be sent to go down a
• 28:23
  road where they'd been like, blown up before, you know, or like they
• 28:26
  knew that there was like the chance that something bad might happen.
• 28:30
  Uh, and I could like, hear them talking about, and I could
• 28:33
  hear the nerves in their voice.
• 28:35
  Yeah.
• 28:35
  You know, I was like, this probably isn't good.
• 28:38
  There's a couple times where they did things that I, they
• 28:40
  probably shouldn't have.
• 28:41
  They put me up in a turret, you know, with like the machine gun.
• 28:43
  Oh, wow.
• 28:44
  Wow.
• 28:45
  I can't imagine.
• 28:46
  Yeah.
• 28:46
  Yeah.
• 28:47
  They're like, you know, they kind of adopted me, you know, it was
• 28:51
  became, I liked most of the people, you know, it's, it, it that most
• 28:54
  of the people were like, sure.
• 28:55
  Decent people that joined the military is like the best option.
• 29:00
  And Right.
• 29:00
  You, some of 'em had really harsh family stories.
• 29:03
  And How long were you there?
• 29:05
  I was about a month.
• 29:06
  Yeah.
• 29:06
  So not too long.
• 29:07
  Well, that's an amazing experience though.
• 29:09
  I mean, Jesus, um, not a lot of people can.
• 29:12
  Say that they spent a month in Afghanistan during that magical war.
• 29:16
  Yeah, it's, but it's interesting.
• 29:17
  I mean, the last two summers I've been back in the islands filming
• 29:21
  in the Marshall Islands for some new projects I'm working on.
• 29:25
  People have different views on climate change.
• 29:27
  Like my parents are both geologists, you know, so they study like
• 29:30
  their, they've devoted their lives to like looking at the earth.
• 29:33
  And I remember talking to my mom about climate change like a long time
• 29:37
  ago, and she's like, it's natural.
• 29:39
  The climate just like goes up and down.
• 29:41
  It's just kind of how things work.
• 29:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:44
  And I was like kind of surprised that was her stance.
• 29:46
  But, and then talking to them now about it, they travel like a fair
• 29:51
  amount and they were just like in Antarctica and like in their mind,
• 29:54
  there's no question that things are really rapidly changing, you know?
• 29:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:59
  Especially the melting.
• 30:02
  So it's really interesting to be in these islands in the Pacific because they're.
• 30:07
  The Marshall Islands at the highest is like seven to 10 feet above sea level.
• 30:11
  Right, right, right.
• 30:12
  So like one of the islands that I, I was filming on this last summer, like I was
• 30:16
  there the summer before and in the year, that's the year since they've, one of the
• 30:21
  beaches has become a sea wall, like Right.
• 30:24
  Shipped these rocks from like Dubai to kind of protect their island because
• 30:28
  they're, it was pretty dramatic.
• 30:29
  There was this graveyard that was near the ocean and the grave,
• 30:32
  the headstones were just washing.
• 30:34
  There'd been a huge, you know, king tide and the Yeah.
• 30:37
  Graveyard was just getting swallowed by the sea, so, oh.
• 30:40
  I mean, you know, maybe it won't be there in a hundred years.
• 30:42
  Good lord.
• 30:43
  I think the estimate is like, it may not be livable in like 2050, so.
• 30:48
  Wow.
• 30:49
  Wow.
• 30:49
  Yeah.
• 30:49
  Fun times.
• 30:51
  But your Island Soldier film did quite well.
• 30:52
  I played a bunch of festivals.
• 30:54
  The premier, the World Premier was full frame and then it
• 30:56
  was like Hot Docs in Canada.
• 30:58
  Yeah.
• 30:58
  It's interesting when you make something that continues to
• 31:01
  have a life like well after.
• 31:03
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:04
  Like the community college in Palau emailed me like two weeks ago and
• 31:08
  they're like, can we get a copy of this for a class for teaching?
• 31:11
  And like, you know, and there's those things that are kind of
• 31:14
  obscure to the specific to the region, but then there's Yeah.
• 31:17
  University requests and different things that come up.
• 31:19
  So it's, it's kinda interesting to see like the long life
• 31:22
  that like these projects.
• 31:23
  When did you make it?
• 31:24
  When did you make it?
• 31:25
  I think it premiered in festivals in like 2017, and then it was on PBS in 2018.
• 31:32
  So long time ago.
• 31:33
  Right.
• 31:33
  And on the business side of things, have, has it been, have
• 31:36
  you made money on this film?
• 31:38
  Uh, I mean it was funded by PBS.
• 31:42
  It was, there was like, oh, okay.
• 31:44
  It was funded through grants and, uh.
• 31:48
  Did impact the distribution because as part of that PBS funding, they, you
• 31:54
  know, had TV broadcast rights and Right.
• 31:59
  They had streaming rights for a while.
• 32:00
  Had you started the film when you reached out to PBS?
• 32:03
  Like how did that grant process work exactly?
• 32:07
  I'm trying to remember The first Money Inn, like it's gotta be
• 32:09
  expensive to fly to Micronesia a lot.
• 32:12
  I think I got $10,000 from, like, at the time it was called
• 32:16
  the Guam Humanities Council.
• 32:18
  That was like the First Money Inn.
• 32:19
  And so that funded like my first production shoot back there to like
• 32:25
  get a little bit of footage to, to show other grant possibilities.
• 32:29
  Yeah.
• 32:30
  Yeah, yeah.
• 32:30
  Yeah.
• 32:30
  I think for me, like targeting smaller funders is like
• 32:36
  critical, you know, like Right.
• 32:37
  Trying to find things that are like specific, if you're from
• 32:39
  Ohio and you wanna make a film, like instead of applying for like
• 32:43
  Tribeca and Sundance, like do.
• 32:45
  For sure if you have time and bandwidth, but like the Ohio, you
• 32:48
  know, arts council or, you know.
• 32:50
  Yeah.
• 32:51
  Yeah.
• 32:51
  Although a lot of these grants have dried up now that the current
• 32:54
  administration is an office, but that's beside the point, I suppose.
• 32:58
  Yeah.
• 32:58
  Yeah.
• 32:59
  Or, or it is the point.
• 33:00
  I don't know.
• 33:00
  Yeah.
• 33:01
  Yeah.
• 33:01
  So PPS came on board and they put in money for r and d, like
• 33:04
  research and developed them.
• 33:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:06
  And then they funded production or post-production and I didn't know that.
• 33:09
  That's awesome.
• 33:10
  Did they, was a decent amount of money they gave you.
• 33:12
  I mean, it was decent.
• 33:13
  It's interesting to, like, I feel like budgets for documentaries could go in
• 33:17
  such different directions, you know?
• 33:19
  Yeah.
• 33:19
  It's like, yeah.
• 33:20
  When Quibi was, there was a moment where Quibi, you know, had so much money and at
• 33:26
  the time my office mate was like making so much money doing like a, a very short
• 33:30
  documentary and then, you know, working at the New Yorker for a few years.
• 33:34
  Right, right.
• 33:35
  Or coming asked and just seeing kind of.
• 33:37
  It's just like the wild West, how all this works, you know?
• 33:40
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:40
  It's hard, as I can tell.
• 33:41
  Yeah.
• 33:41
  And it seems like, I mean, I often say this, but like, it feels like there's
• 33:44
  so much, you know, when I was coming into doing filmmaking and stuff, there
• 33:49
  obviously wasn't nearly as much content.
• 33:51
  I mean, remember when Netflix was sending out DVDs and so forth?
• 33:54
  Yep.
• 33:54
  And like now it just seems like there's just a flood of constant content, so
• 33:59
  it's very, it's very difficult to like get seen, number one, and to actually
• 34:05
  get traction before your project just kind of floats down the river.
• 34:08
  You know what I mean?
• 34:10
  No, a hundred percent.
• 34:11
  I mean, where do you think it's all going?
• 34:13
  Mature?
• 34:14
  Uh, you mean like how, where the media industry is going?
• 34:18
  Yeah.
• 34:18
  Or if the filmmaking in general.
• 34:20
  Um, yeah.
• 34:20
  I don't know.
• 34:21
  I really, I do think that movie theaters are gonna become very
• 34:25
  scarce in the next 50 years.
• 34:27
  I think that's kind of inevitable and that's unfortunate.
• 34:30
  I think there'll still be like indie theaters, but.
• 34:32
  I think that it's really moving towards a place of, you look at the acquisition
• 34:36
  thing with, uh, Netflix and all that.
• 34:38
  It's all just trying to make it more, you watch it at home and then you
• 34:42
  can look at your phone all the time when you're watching it, so you're
• 34:44
  not actually focused on the film.
• 34:46
  Um, and I don't know, I mean, I was talking to Alex about his after Tribeca.
• 34:51
  I was talking to Alex, who's another BFC person.
• 34:53
  I talked to him on this pod about, I don't know, three, four months
• 34:56
  ago about his Tribeca film, which is a great film, but he was like,
• 35:00
  yeah, distribution and all that.
• 35:02
  It's basically like almost impossible without any stars, even if you get
• 35:05
  into big festivals at this point.
• 35:07
  Yeah, it's really unfortunate.
• 35:09
  I remember being in BFC and filmmakers had gotten their films into like, you know,
• 35:13
  theaters and so forth, and were still looking for editing work, which just kind
• 35:17
  of made me say to myself like, you really have to love the work itself, right.
• 35:22
  To wanna do it as opposed to looking for any kind of a financial, but you
• 35:26
  know, looking instead of you're doing it for the money, it's probably not.
• 35:30
  Probably not the thing to do.
• 35:31
  It's probably you have to do it 'cause you love it and then
• 35:33
  if the money comes, hooray.
• 35:34
  Right.
• 35:36
  I mean I, I think there, there could be an argument that's you
• 35:39
  probably in life should mostly do.
• 35:42
  Right, right, right.
• 35:42
  That's, that's definitely the thing.
• 35:44
  But, but yeah, it's interesting, you know, we started out this conversation
• 35:47
  talking about teaching and like these different, you know, the skateboard
• 35:51
  class and kind of the ups and downs of skateboarding as an industry.
• 35:55
  And I do think, like there's people in BFC who a few years ago were selling
• 36:02
  their films for a lot of money.
• 36:04
  Like I guess I feel like I, things are bleak right now.
• 36:07
  For sure.
• 36:08
  Will they improve for the next couple years?
• 36:12
  I mean, who knows?
• 36:14
  I don't have the ball.
• 36:15
  It doesn't, it doesn't seem good like in the moment, but like.
• 36:17
  I don't think I could teach if I didn't think it's possible to like
• 36:21
  make it, and I don't even know what make, I think make whatever.
• 36:24
  What does that even mean?
• 36:25
  Right.
• 36:26
  Like, what does it even mean?
• 36:27
  Like I kind of feel like being in New York and surviving and being
• 36:30
  able to like do something, you know, in my models partly teaching and
• 36:36
  then working on my own projects.
• 36:38
  And I'm, I think for me that model, like pretty, has been pretty good, you know?
• 36:43
  Right.
• 36:43
  Like I, I like working on other people's projects of freelancing and I find
• 36:48
  the model of like, being around young people who are excited about film kind
• 36:51
  of inspiring and it keeps me kind of like, and like I feel like I'm, I learn
• 36:55
  every time I teach a class, you know?
• 36:57
  Sure, sure.
• 36:57
  Even when it's like something in theory, I know, I'm like, and the
• 37:00
  students make really interest.
• 37:02
  There's like some interesting work that gets made and so that, that makes me
• 37:04
  think differently about my own process.
• 37:07
  Yeah.
• 37:07
  Um, of course I would be like, I, I'd love to be, have people throw
• 37:12
  money at me to like make what I.
• 37:15
  That would be the dream, obviously.
• 37:16
  Of course, of course.
• 37:17
  I think it's, I'll say to someone else about this or I've had a couple of
• 37:19
  conversations about like, people don't really talk about like their side hustle.
• 37:23
  Like if you look at BFC and you think about how everyone's like making
• 37:26
  things at, yeah, making ends work.
• 37:27
  There's all sorts of models, you know, and there's some people, and it's like
• 37:31
  commercials or whatever the side hustle.
• 37:35
  But for like art house, what, you know, narrative or documentary
• 37:40
  or these things that have pretty niche audiences right now, it's
• 37:43
  hard to kind of like just do that.
• 37:45
  It's hard to even get a noticed, I think even in, in the landscape we're in now
• 37:49
  because I mean, I'll look around sometimes somebody will mention a film to me and
• 37:53
  like it was a big, relatively big art house film and I hadn't even heard of it
• 37:57
  because like partially because I'm not paying as much attention, but partially
• 38:00
  because there's just so much content all the time and it's hard to even
• 38:04
  notice some of the the smaller projects.
• 38:07
  But I don't know.
• 38:09
  I don't know.
• 38:09
  I mean, I had to leave New York because I couldn't.
• 38:11
  Sustain myself, you know?
• 38:12
  'cause I'm an editor mostly, and even now I'm looking for work and there's
• 38:16
  just not a lot of editing work out there.
• 38:18
  Like, it's mostly looking for like somebody to make TikTok videos or
• 38:21
  Instagram reels, and I'll do it if I have to, but it's not what I really want to do.
• 38:28
  And even working, like in Hollister, which is the job I moved here for, I was
• 38:31
  making videos to sell jeans to children, and it paid well, really good benefits.
• 38:36
  But was I creatively satisfied?
• 38:38
  No, it was kind of gross to be honest.
• 38:40
  But, but you gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.
• 38:42
  I suppose that, yeah, the, the goal is to find a way to, to make money on your own
• 38:46
  terms, which is the real puzzle, right?
• 38:48
  Yeah.
• 38:49
  I mean, I think life is about compromise, right?
• 38:51
  Like sure.
• 38:52
  Like my life in New York is predicated on having a, like an affordable compartment,
• 38:58
  you know, in great point, right?
• 38:59
  Like, I think I pay a third, or we pay a third of like the rent for like a
• 39:03
  place in our neighborhood, you know?
• 39:05
  And like not spending that kind of money, right?
• 39:08
  Right.
• 39:09
  I think every time there's so much rejection in this
• 39:12
  space that we're in, you know?
• 39:13
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:13
  But like, it's like any, along with a couple other, along with my office mate,
• 39:18
  Adam Golfer and Donya and a couple other people, I just got like the SCA grant
• 39:22
  for a project, and it's, it's not that much money, but it's just like a little
• 39:26
  bump of like affirmation, but something you're doing is worthwhile or, sure.
• 39:33
  I don't know.
• 39:33
  I mean, yeah, from my perspective, Nathan, you've been a very successful filmmaker.
• 39:38
  Like you made like the George Booth thing, which I loved.
• 39:41
  Yeah.
• 39:41
  Thank you so much.
• 39:42
  Uh, uh, like there's a bunch of projects that you've made that I've really liked.
• 39:44
  So like, it's hard to, you know, I always say that's hard to see the,
• 39:48
  you know, the label when you're inside the jar, but you know, from an outside
• 39:51
  perspective, like you've made it work.
• 39:54
  Always been impressed.
• 39:55
  Tell me about the new thing that you got the grant for.
• 39:58
  Um, yeah.
• 39:59
  No, and I would, I would reciprocate.
• 40:00
  I like, I'm, I'm a big fan of your work kind.
• 40:01
  I love Yeah, your, some of.
• 40:04
  The narrative stuff and like the web series, you were doing it right.
• 40:07
  Haven't made anything for since, since the adults thing.
• 40:10
  Yeah, because that was, yeah, that was a hard one.
• 40:12
  And it's very, you know, the thing with filmmaking is, uh, especially narrative.
• 40:16
  'cause I'm not really a documentary person, but you know, it's
• 40:19
  so like, it's like one of the hardest artistic things to do.
• 40:23
  'cause you need so many people and so much money.
• 40:25
  You know, I wish I could just be a painter or something, you know what I mean?
• 40:27
  Who knows?
• 40:28
  Maybe I'll make something again someday.
• 40:30
  For sure.
• 40:31
  And I think, you know, with documentary, uh, you kind of can, these, the
• 40:37
  documentary I'm working on right now, it's like mostly me with a camera, you know?
• 40:41
  Right.
• 40:42
  And part of that's like, you know, my trip to the Marshall Islands last summer
• 40:47
  was probably like $5,000, just travel and hotels and food for me, you know, and
• 40:52
  like, and that's not paying myself at all.
• 40:54
  So it's like if I bring someone else, then it's 5,000 plus whatever brand day rate.
• 41:01
  But yeah, working on a bunch of different projects, you know, which is, I don't
• 41:04
  know how you feel about this creatively, but I think during the pandemic I felt so
• 41:11
  much anxiety and so I kind of channeled that into just being like, I need to
• 41:14
  be doing a million things and have a bunch of little ideas percolating.
• 41:18
  And like, I, I think the, the kind of problem with that is
• 41:21
  like, you never finish anything.
• 41:22
  'cause you're kind of like, right, right, right.
• 41:26
  But, but at least we're using the time, you know, to at least, uh,
• 41:29
  think about creative projects.
• 41:30
  I don't think I did a lot of that.
• 41:32
  I was trying to learn more piano and stuff like that.
• 41:34
  Good for you, man.
• 41:35
  That's probably like more healthy.
• 41:37
  I mean, I don't know.
• 41:38
  I mean, I did play a lot of video games too, so
• 41:44
  I'm going to Finland next week.
• 41:45
  My partner is from Scandinavia and so I'm, I've been shooting like.
• 41:51
  Mostly like I'm 16 millimeter, we go every summer and I'm kind of shooting
• 41:55
  like a more experimental film about kind of like, it's a little hard to explain,
• 41:59
  but it doesn't really get dark there in the summer 'cause it's so far north.
• 42:02
  Right.
• 42:02
  Um, and I've just been kind of shooting this thing about how that impacts dreams.
• 42:08
  I don't know, just, I feel like a lot of what I've done has been like kind
• 42:11
  of social justice ish or something.
• 42:14
  And I just feel like choosing projects or trying to do projects where I learn
• 42:19
  something new or try to do something new is like kind of probably good for me.
• 42:23
  Yeah.
• 42:23
  Yeah.
• 42:23
  And like, I haven't thought a lot on film and like Yeah.
• 42:26
  It's a little embarrassing.
• 42:27
  Like I had a, the school gives me, I get like a research assistant
• 42:31
  to like help me with my projects.
• 42:33
  Oh.
• 42:33
  That I had the, yeah, I had the student like looking through the
• 42:36
  stuff I shot last summer and it's like, I don't know, I don't shoot.
• 42:39
  Right.
• 42:39
  I don't shoot on a Bolex that much and my light meter wasn't working correctly.
• 42:42
  Right.
• 42:43
  So, you know, it's like film, like it's just something beautiful.
• 42:46
  Have you saw much on film?
• 42:47
  Yeah, when I was in film school, I took a class and got to actually shoot on film
• 42:51
  on a Bolex and actually edited it on a flatbed, which yeah, good Lord Almighty.
• 42:56
  When you do that once you're like, thank goodness we don't have to do this anymore.
• 42:59
  Because that really, uh, just even organizationally, it's very,
• 43:03
  very, it's, it was a lot for me.
• 43:06
  You know, you've got all these hooks and you gotta know, label every single
• 43:09
  piece of film, and you just can't think about editing the same way at all.
• 43:12
  But, uh, but yeah, it was fun.
• 43:14
  You know, I did all the bleach, the film and drew on it and all that
• 43:17
  experimental kind of stuff that you do when you're in film school.
• 43:19
  It was fun.
• 43:20
  It was fun.
• 43:21
  Yeah.
• 43:21
  But also expensive, so Yeah.
• 43:23
  Also expensive.
• 43:24
  And, uh, yeah.
• 43:26
  So the project that kind of was an offshoot of Island
• 43:29
  Soldier, what's that about?
• 43:30
  Um, so the most recent short that I came out that I finished
• 43:34
  came out like a little bit back.
• 43:36
  It's called a exile, but it was kind of a pandemic.
• 43:39
  During the pandemic I was stressed out and kind of trying to keep busy.
• 43:42
  Yeah.
• 43:43
  And so there was this Micronesian woman who was.
• 43:46
  Doing a podcast and she had like, she was just interviewing all these islanders
• 43:50
  about like what that experience is like to be a Pacific Islander living
• 43:53
  in the us And then she had someone on who had seen Island Soldier and was
• 43:57
  interested in filmmaking and photography.
• 44:00
  And so she like reached out to me on Facebook afterwards and she's like,
• 44:03
  Hey, I'd love to promote your film and also you should listen to this podcast
• 44:06
  'cause we talked about you and your work.
• 44:08
  And I was like, you know, okay.
• 44:10
  That's fun.
• 44:10
  Yeah.
• 44:11
  As a filmmaker to like think that anything you of course, because you, you know
• 44:13
  this Jef, it's like you make the thing and then you kind of like, if you're
• 44:17
  lucky, you get to see it in the theaters and you get to have people remote.
• 44:20
  But a lot of it's just like you put it out on the internet and like maybe you get
• 44:25
  a bunch of like nasty reply comments on YouTube or if it gets a Vam, Vimeo staff.
• 44:31
  I dunno, that feels like a slightly more positive space for me, at least.
• 44:36
  Vimeo.
• 44:36
  Yeah.
• 44:37
  So anyway, so I listened to this thing and the guy who, you know, was interested
• 44:41
  in filmmaking and watched Island Soldier and talked a bit about that.
• 44:44
  Was working in, uh, a meat packing industry and the Micronesian community,
• 44:49
  especially the people from the Marshall Islands where they make up 3% of Arkansas.
• 44:54
  Um, but they were 50% of the fatalities in the first couple months of the pandemic
• 44:59
  because they have all these preexisting conditions because of nuclear testing.
• 45:03
  Right.
• 45:03
  And they're all, you know, multi-generational households and mm-hmm.
• 45:08
  If I'm being honest, like after Island Soldier, I kind of was
• 45:11
  like, I don't know if I need to make more projects in the Pacific.
• 45:15
  You know?
• 45:15
  Yeah.
• 45:15
  It's like, it's a long flight, a long way.
• 45:17
  Yeah.
• 45:18
  It's expensive.
• 45:19
  And also like, if we're just being honest, does the world like want me
• 45:24
  like a white guy from New York to be like telling the stories of Right.
• 45:28
  Pacific Islanders and Micronesia, like that narrative
• 45:30
  has changed a little bit too.
• 45:31
  Yeah.
• 45:32
  Yeah.
• 45:32
  With like, granted I have like a long history, you know, with the
• 45:35
  islands, but it just felt like from like a funding perspective, like
• 45:38
  I wasn't super fundable, you know?
• 45:41
  Right, right, right.
• 45:41
  Even though you're telling a story that.
• 45:43
  Kind of needed to be told in a way, but still.
• 45:46
  Yeah.
• 45:46
  So it wasn't like I was looking to do the next thing, but you know, that woman who
• 45:51
  I was, who ran a podcast was really great.
• 45:54
  Her name was Angela Edward, and she was a social worker.
• 45:57
  And like we just started talking and then, so we ended up getting some money from
• 46:04
  the folks who'd funded Island Soldier.
• 46:06
  And we, they funded a short that we had kind of pitched to go to Arkansas
• 46:10
  and film about this kind of diaspora community of Marshallese, um, and
• 46:15
  kind of about that nuclear history.
• 46:18
  So that short came out in, I think it was 2023 and like played, it premiered at the
• 46:26
  Hot Springs Film Festival in Arkansas.
• 46:29
  And then it had had a pretty, played at a bunch of festivals.
• 46:33
  All right.
• 46:33
  And it was sort of an interesting distribution thing.
• 46:36
  Because like short films, it's interesting, like short films in one hand,
• 46:40
  there's like no money for them, you know?
• 46:43
  Yeah.
• 46:43
  I mean, what was the distribution for your Sundance film?
• 46:46
  Were you guys able to like sell it?
• 46:47
  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 46:49
  Never made any money off of anything that I've made.
• 46:53
  Yeah.
• 46:54
  Yeah.
• 46:54
  It's hard.
• 46:55
  Yeah.
• 46:55
  No, I mean, not that I expected to, but I mean, but had some interesting experience.
• 47:00
  I mean, film festivals and stuff, you know, that was always fun.
• 47:02
  So, I mean, you've made money as an editor, as a working record.
• 47:05
  Yeah.
• 47:06
  Yeah.
• 47:06
  I mean, that was how I was supporting myself.
• 47:07
  Exactly.
• 47:07
  I mean, I've thought four and a half years I've been editing politics, so, yeah.
• 47:11
  Yeah, yeah.
• 47:12
  So I go back to like that question, like, I would say success is like doing a job
• 47:18
  that's something that you like and is like related to like what you wanna do.
• 47:23
  You know, like Sure.
• 47:24
  I feel like being a working editor is like being a working filmmaker, you know?
• 47:27
  In my mind, that's making a living.
• 47:29
  And like, of course we live in a capitalist society
• 47:32
  where you have to, yeah.
• 47:34
  To some degree be part of that machine, you know?
• 47:35
  Yeah.
• 47:37
  Anyway, it was kinda, it was sort of interesting.
• 47:39
  The budget for that short was 25,000, which, you know, like it's a decent
• 47:43
  amount for a short, yeah, just decent.
• 47:45
  And then the thing that was like kind of nice in terms of distribution was
• 47:49
  at the first festival it won an award.
• 47:52
  And so even though it was already funded by PBS, there was like a cash
• 47:57
  award on top of that for it to be broadcast on a different PBS station.
• 48:02
  So it was kind of astonishing.
• 48:03
  I was like, I can't believe there's like, yeah, yeah.
• 48:07
  Little bit of money for this.
• 48:08
  Crazy Well done.
• 48:09
  Yeah, well done.
• 48:10
  Yeah.
• 48:11
  Yeah.
• 48:11
  I mean I, that doesn't really happen.
• 48:13
  And there's been projects, you know, like the booth stock that I
• 48:16
  ended up, you know, the New Yorker bought for, that's so little.
• 48:21
  That project was a lot of work, you know, but that was an amazing project.
• 48:24
  Do you wanna talk about that real quick?
• 48:25
  Well, one thing that's funny is I was actually at the car New Yorker cartoonist
• 48:29
  holiday party earlier this week and Brooklyn, and it's just like such a fun.
• 48:34
  World to kind of get to drop into, I'm sure.
• 48:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:37
  You know, yeah.
• 48:38
  I, I worked at the New Yorker slash Conde Nast.
• 48:41
  I think I was technically working for Conde Nast, but they had me kind of
• 48:44
  embedded with the New Yorker as like a, it's a really unfortunate name.
• 48:48
  I've, but I was a predator for a while.
• 48:52
  Wow.
• 48:52
  Wow.
• 48:54
  What, what does that mean being the predator at New, the New Yorker magazine?
• 48:57
  Pro producer, editor, ah, predator.
• 49:00
  I get it.
• 49:00
  That's quite a eder edited er.
• 49:05
  I, I guess you can't do that other way around, you know?
• 49:08
  Yeah.
• 49:08
  Such a bad name.
• 49:10
  But yeah, so my beat when I was at the New Yorker was like the cartoonist.
• 49:13
  So I would do like a weekly series called the Cartoon Lounge, which were
• 49:17
  always like really quick, you know?
• 49:19
  And like, um, I would do them with Bob Mankoff, who was like mm-hmm.
• 49:23
  The head, yeah, head cartoon guy, uh, editor.
• 49:27
  These were just short videos.
• 49:28
  Like short videos.
• 49:30
  Yeah.
• 49:30
  And they were kind of like.
• 49:31
  There weren't documentaries.
• 49:32
  They were like a personality driven, like YouTube show, you know?
• 49:37
  Right.
• 49:37
  Social stuff.
• 49:38
  Um, yeah.
• 49:38
  Yeah.
• 49:39
  And, uh, but I met George, this cartoonist, who did I meet him, I
• 49:43
  met him at David Reddick's apartment.
• 49:45
  They had a going away party for Bob Minkoff, this cartoon editor.
• 49:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:49
  As I was leaving the New York rack, got invited to this thing,
• 49:51
  which was like the New Yorker magazine that really cares about the
• 49:55
  written word and about journalism.
• 49:57
  Yeah, yeah.
• 49:58
  It's legit.
• 49:59
  But like, video was still something.
• 50:01
  It's still something kind of new.
• 50:02
  I mean, there was just the big Netflix movie that came out about the magazine.
• 50:06
  Yeah.
• 50:06
  I haven't watched that yet.
• 50:07
  Looking forward to it.
• 50:08
  Yeah.
• 50:08
  Yeah.
• 50:08
  I haven't watched it either.
• 50:09
  My family has a long history with the New Yorker.
• 50:11
  Them, I, I remember my, my, my parents subscribed to it for years and years, and
• 50:14
  when I was a kid I couldn't, I hated it.
• 50:16
  The only thing I liked about it was the cartoons.
• 50:18
  'cause it's mostly words, right?
• 50:19
  It's not a great magazine for, you know, a young person.
• 50:22
  You're looking through it.
• 50:23
  It's just words, words, words, words, words.
• 50:24
  But.
• 50:25
  As I got older, I began to appreciate it a lot more.
• 50:28
  Well, that was a funny thing.
• 50:29
  When I got the job, I'd never read The New Yorker.
• 50:31
  'cause I'm like, oh wow.
• 50:33
  I'm just life, you know, I don't Oh, right, right, right.
• 50:35
  I, I didn't like really read very much for a lot of my life.
• 50:38
  You know, I would listen to books on Cape and an audio, but like, the New Yorker
• 50:42
  was like not, there wasn't an audio option for that, you know, back then.
• 50:45
  Right, right.
• 50:46
  So before I, the day before I had my hijab interview at the New Yorker, I,
• 50:50
  I like went to Birds and Noble and I was like, what is this magazine about?
• 50:54
  I was, I similar to you, like my parents always had it and I would like flip
• 50:57
  through it and like look at the cartoons and like, uh, you know, photography
• 51:01
  or whatever, but like Right, right.
• 51:02
  Had never really read it.
• 51:03
  And they were kind of grilling me in my job interview.
• 51:05
  They're like, which writers do you like?
• 51:06
  And I was like, I can't believe I got the job, actually.
• 51:09
  Um, yeah, no, well done.
• 51:11
  But yeah, I was at this party at David Renick's apartment, um,
• 51:14
  which is very nice, by the way.
• 51:15
  I'm sure I was gonna ask Yeah.
• 51:16
  Like by beautiful apartment and it was all, yeah.
• 51:19
  All the big cartoonists.
• 51:21
  And then this guy kind of walked through this old.
• 51:25
  Older gentleman and just like the reverence of everyone when they, everyone
• 51:29
  just like turned and like, it was clear that he was like this very loved person.
• 51:33
  And I was like, who's that guy?
• 51:34
  And he kind of just like landed by me and he was like pretty old.
• 51:37
  So he kind of was like holding my shoulder to kind of hold himself steady, you know?
• 51:42
  Uh, he had a cane, but he was mm-hmm.
• 51:44
  And then he started telling me these stories about being in World
• 51:46
  War II and being in the Marines.
• 51:48
  And my grandfather had been in the Marines at the same time, and I, it just, he just
• 51:51
  felt like a different, like part of this generation of people that aren't gonna
• 51:55
  be around too much longer, you know?
• 51:56
  Yeah.
• 51:57
  Like, yeah.
• 51:57
  Yeah.
• 51:58
  He was like civil in a way that I feel like people aren't civil anymore.
• 52:04
  Yeah.
• 52:05
  Yeah.
• 52:05
  And so, yeah, I was just like, this guy seems really interesting.
• 52:08
  And, and then I like looked him up and his name was George Booth and he is
• 52:12
  like this very legendary cartoonist and so I pitched it to the New Yorker.
• 52:18
  Obviously when I. Met with my boss and she was like, no, I don't, I don't
• 52:22
  think we, I don't think that's for us.
• 52:24
  I was like, what?
• 52:25
  Yeah, that seems okay.
• 52:27
  Iconic New Yorker cartoons.
• 52:28
  Right?
• 52:29
  Why would you not want, well, anyway, yeah.
• 52:32
  But in a way that was good because I could just kind of do
• 52:34
  it on my own and do it my way.
• 52:36
  I, uh, I had a friend, Emily Collins, who has a animation studio, and I
• 52:42
  was interested in the idea of like, having the film be partly animated.
• 52:44
  And so for me that was like Right.
• 52:46
  An exciting part about that documentary.
• 52:48
  Yeah.
• 52:48
  Yeah.
• 52:48
  Was like the idea of integrating animation.
• 52:50
  Yeah, yeah.
• 52:51
  Yeah.
• 52:51
  It was a really beautiful project.
• 52:53
  It really, uh, it was very touching.
• 52:54
  It was like, you could tell that you had become close with this
• 52:57
  guy, uh, with George, uh, over the course of the shooting, and it was
• 53:00
  really kind of touching to see.
• 53:02
  Yeah.
• 53:03
  I really, I really enjoyed it.
• 53:04
  And I like the merch that you gave with the Kickstarter campaign.
• 53:06
  I still have my tote bag.
• 53:08
  Do you?
• 53:08
  I do, of course.
• 53:09
  I go, I use it at the grocery store.
• 53:11
  I put bananas in it and whatever else I purchase.
• 53:13
  But often bananas are a thing that I buy, so that's often what goes in that bag.
• 53:19
  And I think of you every time.
• 53:20
  Yeah, I appreciate that.
• 53:21
  That's awesome.
• 53:22
  I just got an email or a message from someone who'd never got
• 53:24
  their Kickstarter reward and I'm like, buddy, it's like too late.
• 53:28
  It's, yeah, it's now been like, yeah, you had your chance.
• 53:31
  Yeah, we did a Kickstarter for adults that it did quite well.
• 53:35
  It was like a staff picket though, Kickstarter or
• 53:37
  whatever they call it there.
• 53:38
  And we raised a lot of money, but one of our, we were planning to do another
• 53:41
  season, so one of our rewards was like, you can send us a picture and we'll put
• 53:44
  it in one of the next season's episodes.
• 53:47
  But we didn't end up doing the next season.
• 53:50
  And um, boy, this one woman was very, uh, not happy about the fact, 'cause she
• 53:55
  had sent me the photo and everything.
• 53:57
  I think I still have it somewhere.
• 53:59
  And she kept getting like, I was like, I don't know what to tell you.
• 54:01
  We just don't have the money or the time to do another season,
• 54:03
  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 54:04
  But I mean, but then you look at Kickstarter and like a lot, that's,
• 54:08
  a lot of people never get anything.
• 54:10
  I mean they just, yeah.
• 54:11
  So.
• 54:12
  Filmmaking aside, Nathan, how's life?
• 54:14
  Life is good.
• 54:15
  Yeah.
• 54:16
  You know, life is, you know, being a parent's like a thing.
• 54:19
  Yeah.
• 54:20
  How old's your daughter now?
• 54:21
  My daughter turns seven, you know, maybe a week ago.
• 54:26
  Wow.
• 54:26
  And, uh, yeah, I'm kinda working on a project with her.
• 54:30
  That's fun.
• 54:30
  So I've kinda mentioned it a couple times that I'm like, pretty dyslexic and
• 54:36
  dyslexia is like genetic and so she has like a 40% chance of having dyslexia.
• 54:42
  Sure.
• 54:42
  And so for the, the bigger film, I'm like interested in half the people
• 54:45
  incarcerated are illiterate and like some high percentage of them are dyslexic.
• 54:50
  And so that's kind of for the bigger film I'm trying to explore like
• 54:54
  how literacy and, you know, how that's kind of tied into like bigger
• 54:58
  societal questions of Right, right.
• 55:01
  Class and privilege and race and all that stuff.
• 55:03
  Well that interestingly, uh, South Korea where I lived for a couple
• 55:06
  years, like that's one of the most literate countries in the entire world.
• 55:10
  Like 99% of the population can read because it's a very simple alphabet, which
• 55:15
  I always thought was surprising to me.
• 55:17
  I mean, there's still poverty and so forth there, but most everybody can read.
• 55:21
  So that's something that's so interesting.
• 55:25
  I mean, I could read Korean, you can learn to read Korean in like a couple days.
• 55:28
  Like it's really not, it's a very simple language to learn the
• 55:31
  characters, but it's the language.
• 55:33
  That's the hard part.
• 55:34
  But I could read Korean when I left pretty easily.
• 55:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 55:37
  I can still kind of read Korean anyway.
• 55:39
  That's cool.
• 55:40
  Yeah.
• 55:42
  Yeah.
• 55:42
  Do you speak any other languages?
• 55:44
  I'm trying to learn Spanish now because, uh, I, I took French unfortunately
• 55:47
  in, um, in high school and college and French is kind of useless.
• 55:51
  I wish I'd learned Spanish then, but I'm trying to learn Spanish
• 55:54
  now because thinking about, trying to, you know, spend some time.
• 55:58
  Maybe a year or so traveling, going to Mexico and Guatemala and so forth.
• 56:01
  So we'll see.
• 56:02
  But it's very hard to acquire a language when you're in your, like as you get
• 56:06
  older, it becomes much harder to acquire, uh, another language because your brain
• 56:10
  doesn't work quite as well as it used to.
• 56:13
  But, um, oh, but you know, yeah, a little bit.
• 56:15
  Don't tell me about it.
• 56:16
  I'm terrible with languages.
• 56:17
  And there, there are studies about that, that dyslexia makes
• 56:20
  learning new languages harder.
• 56:21
  I'm sure.
• 56:22
  But like, I know for myself, like I speak, you know, this
• 56:24
  Micronesian dialect for being there in the Peace Corps for two years.
• 56:28
  Um, but I know that I would have to be immersed in, there's no way I could like
• 56:32
  do dual lingo and like learn a language.
• 56:35
  Yeah.
• 56:35
  But I mean, it is, I would imagine a more friendly world to dyslexic
• 56:39
  than it used to be because of all of like, they're doing all the news
• 56:42
  is now being put out as like audio.
• 56:44
  Another thing that's kind of interesting is there's like, like a lot of people
• 56:48
  who are like a lot of power and money who are dyslexic, and I'm like,
• 56:53
  maybe there's a way to fund this.
• 56:55
  I was listening to an interview with Gavin Newsom.
• 56:57
  Yeah.
• 56:58
  Last week.
• 56:58
  Yeah.
• 56:59
  You talking about being dyslexic and I was talking, I was listening
• 57:01
  to a podcast like yesterday about the CEO of, uh, the software company
• 57:06
  who's helping ice deport people.
• 57:09
  Oh yeah, I heard that.
• 57:10
  The Daily, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:11
  Did you hear that?
• 57:12
  The guy was like, I'm really dyslexic.
• 57:13
  And I was like, you know, there's some people like Keanu Reeves and Yeah, it's
• 57:18
  a couple other high profile film people.
• 57:20
  Yeah.
• 57:20
  And I can't really think of a big doc that's really talked about
• 57:23
  dyslexia in a real profound way.
• 57:26
  I can't think of any big dyslexia documentaries.
• 57:29
  Yeah.
• 57:29
  Yeah.
• 57:29
  So maybe you've got something there kind of famously dyslexic.
• 57:33
  Yeah.
• 57:33
  I think a lot of, I think a lot of visual people maybe.
• 57:36
  Yeah, maybe so.
• 57:37
  Yeah.
• 57:37
  Yeah.
• 57:38
  So there's that project and then I'm, I'm finishing up kind of a hybrid narrative
• 57:42
  film that I shot last summer in Arkansas.
• 57:46
  Got rejected from Sundance.
• 57:48
  It's in South by, but cut's not quite where it needs to be.
• 57:51
  Hopefully that's.
• 57:52
  Done sooner than later.
• 57:54
  Sundance is in, is gonna be in a different city now, and then Robert Redford's dead.
• 57:58
  So it's not nearly as exciting as it used to be.
• 58:01
  Yeah, that's what I think you, you, you got to see the real deal.
• 58:06
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:07
  It was, it was, I still can't quite believe that that even happened
• 58:09
  because, you know, looking back, it's like nobody gets into Sundance.
• 58:14
  I mean, not very many people anyway.
• 58:15
  Yeah, yeah.
• 58:16
  You get to meet Robert Redford and everything, so.
• 58:19
  Well, it was exciting.
• 58:20
  Not anymore.
• 58:20
  Yeah.
• 58:21
  No, no.
• 58:21
  'cause he's dead.
• 58:22
  Yeah.
• 58:22
  Maybe they have his like, like a weekend.
• 58:24
  That Bernie's kind of thing going on there now.
• 58:27
  Um, yeah, that'd be funny.
• 58:29
  Where did you meet your partner, by the way?
• 58:31
  We met on a rooftop in Brooklyn at a party.
• 58:34
  Oh, wow.
• 58:35
  It's strange that you lived in, in Sweden and then ended up, you're not,
• 58:38
  are you married or No, we are married.
• 58:40
  Oh, you are married.
• 58:41
  So it's your, your wife.
• 58:42
  My wife.
• 58:43
  It's interesting that you ended up marrying a woman from
• 58:45
  Finland after living in Sweden.
• 58:47
  I wonder if there's a sort of a weird connection there.
• 58:49
  She thinks of herself as Swedish and she's from Oh, all there you part of Finland?
• 58:53
  That's Swedish speaking.
• 58:55
  So, uh, yeah.
• 58:57
  Oh, interesting.
• 58:58
  Yeah, I've always wanted to go to that area.
• 59:00
  I've only been to Iceland, which is, what do they call that area of, in Europe?
• 59:05
  Scandinavia.
• 59:06
  Scandinavia.
• 59:06
  There it is.
• 59:07
  Did you go to the uh, blues Lagoon?
• 59:09
  Yeah, went to the Blue Lagoon.
• 59:10
  Had a, yeah, it's, I mean, if you've been to Iceland, it's beautiful.
• 59:13
  Yeah.
• 59:13
  It's like out of, it's like just this weird fairytale country.
• 59:17
  Yeah.
• 59:17
  Really ate puffin when I was there.
• 59:20
  Um, wasn't very good.
• 59:21
  But, you know, uh, the woman I was dating at the time was there with
• 59:24
  me and she wanted to try the puffin meat and went to the penis museum,
• 59:28
  which I've talked about quite a bit.
• 59:29
  I dunno if you got to go to the penis museum, the, the Phallic
• 59:32
  Museum, it's quite a thing to see.
• 59:34
  There's the whale penis in there.
• 59:36
  Good Lord.
• 59:38
  Large.
• 59:38
  Large penis.
• 59:40
  The whale, yeah.
• 59:41
  Spur.
• 59:42
  Well, I mean, do you know about midsummer?
• 59:44
  Is sort of a Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 59:46
  Yeah.
• 59:46
  I mean, I mean, you mean, you mean the festival?
• 59:48
  Mean, it's in the, the film too.
• 59:50
  Right.
• 59:50
  But they dance around this like huge phallic penis and like, it's like
• 59:55
  a penis in like two circles, right.
• 59:57
  Going into the earth.
• 59:59
  Oh, that's, I didn't know that was real.
• 1:00:01
  Yeah, if you Google in summary, huh?
• 1:00:04
  I mean it's not, that's not what it is.
• 1:00:06
  It's like a tree, but that's like, uh righty.
• 1:00:09
  Really good pastries up up there.
• 1:00:12
  That's what I recall.
• 1:00:12
  Yeah.
• 1:00:13
  The Danish thing, all that very flaky pastries.
• 1:00:15
  I don't know why I brought that up.
• 1:00:16
  I just thought of it.
• 1:00:17
  'cause good Lord, I've never had pastries like that in my life, but anyway.
• 1:00:21
  Okay.
• 1:00:22
  Yeah.
• 1:00:22
  Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  Nathan, kind of a tangent here, but the last question that I usually
• 1:00:27
  ask everybody on the podcast here, it was just fairly unconnected
• 1:00:31
  with anything we've talked about.
• 1:00:32
  But what do you think happens when we, when we die?
• 1:00:36
  That's an ing question.
• 1:00:38
  I was on a plane, maybe like I was scouting that short film,
• 1:00:42
  so maybe six months ago, and the plane had to do an emergency.
• 1:00:45
  Landing in Ohio, actually.
• 1:00:47
  Oh, in Columbus.
• 1:00:49
  Where?
• 1:00:49
  Where was it Columbus?
• 1:00:51
  Yeah, I was flying New York.
• 1:00:51
  Oh, when was this new, what year was this?
• 1:00:53
  This was like last April.
• 1:00:55
  Oh, you should have given me a call.
• 1:00:56
  I could have.
• 1:00:57
  I should have.
• 1:00:58
  Yeah.
• 1:00:58
  Yeah.
• 1:00:59
  Well, next time it was interesting, like we were going from New York to Arkansas.
• 1:01:04
  It's flying.
• 1:01:04
  I've done a lot.
• 1:01:05
  This one felt kind of sketchy from the beginning, Uhhuh, but yeah,
• 1:01:08
  like an hour and a half into it, they were like, the pilot got in the
• 1:01:12
  loudspeaker and they were like, the left engine is not functioning properly.
• 1:01:15
  We're gonna have to do an emergency landing in Ohio.
• 1:01:17
  We be there 10 minutes.
• 1:01:19
  Yeah.
• 1:01:21
  And I'd brought like a, a former student who's from that part,
• 1:01:25
  that part of Arkansas, to kind of help me on the project.
• 1:01:27
  Like we were both pretty nervous, but I was kind of like trying
• 1:01:30
  to channel my nervousness into kind of soothing him, you know?
• 1:01:33
  I was like, right, right, right.
• 1:01:34
  That's helpful.
• 1:01:34
  You know?
• 1:01:35
  And so we flew for like another 10 or 15 minutes and then the guy, the pilot
• 1:01:39
  goes back on and he's like, actually, it's unsafe for us to fly this.
• 1:01:44
  Speed.
• 1:01:45
  We're gonna have to slow down.
• 1:01:46
  We'll be it in Ohio in 20 minutes.
• 1:01:49
  Okay.
• 1:01:49
  And that was like super sketchy.
• 1:01:51
  I'd be like, just don't tell me, just give it to yourself.
• 1:01:53
  Totally.
• 1:01:54
  And then we had like an air pocket and like Yeah.
• 1:01:56
  It got really bumpy and everyone was like, this is it.
• 1:01:58
  We're done.
• 1:01:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:59
  And so like I did have that thought and like, I texted and my wife and I was
• 1:02:03
  like, you know, if I never see you again, you know, it's been real, been good.
• 1:02:10
  I'd like to think there's something beyond this, but I don't know, I kind
• 1:02:14
  of feel like, I feel like this kind of spin around the earth, there's many spins
• 1:02:18
  or whatever, or however long we get is kind of, it is my, my take right now.
• 1:02:23
  Could I, I'd like to, like, I do think there's, I guess in a general way,
• 1:02:29
  I'm like spiritual, but I just don't, I don't see something beyond this for
• 1:02:36
  myself where I don't, yeah, I don't.
• 1:02:38
  All right.
• 1:02:39
  That's a good question though.
• 1:02:40
  Yeah.
• 1:02:41
  I mean, everybody, the answers are always very interesting.
• 1:02:43
  I've asked everybody and like, it's always this, the number of answers I should
• 1:02:46
  make one podcast with just these answers because it'd be an interesting one.
• 1:02:49
  But although you might be the first one who actually just
• 1:02:52
  said, I think we just die.
• 1:02:54
  It's so congrats on that one.
• 1:02:56
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:57
  Flee.
• 1:02:57
  But like, hey, it's, it's, you're being, it's honest, you know, and
• 1:03:00
  it's probably, maybe it's true based on the evidence that I have at hand.
• 1:03:03
  It is.
• 1:03:04
  That's what we have.
• 1:03:05
  But again, there's a lot of things that we don't understand about the universe
• 1:03:08
  that I feel like we're learning new things about consciousness and all these things.
• 1:03:11
  And I've also taken a lot of psychedelic drugs, so who knows?
• 1:03:14
  You know, there's, who knows what could possibly happen.
• 1:03:18
  Is there anything that you want to promote before we wrap it up?
• 1:03:23
  Um, most of my stuff is just on my website that you wanted to put.
• 1:03:27
  Okay.
• 1:03:27
  We'll put that, I'll reach out.
• 1:03:29
  We'll, I'll put all that in the show notes.
• 1:03:30
  We can have, keep, keep an eye out.
• 1:03:33
  Uh, I think this new film called Ywe.
• 1:03:36
  Hello, goodbye.
• 1:03:37
  Another one of these Pacific Island films is gonna hopefully be on the
• 1:03:41
  festival circuit before too long.
• 1:03:44
  And, uh, you know, it's interesting, I was talking to my wife last night about
• 1:03:50
  ai 'cause like, there's this like furious chat going on and like our kids, you know,
• 1:03:54
  there's a WhatsApp thing and some of the parents are really like, freaked out about
• 1:03:58
  school using ai, you know, of course.
• 1:04:00
  But like, I do think I'm becoming like less productive and less, like my brain
• 1:04:05
  is not working as well as it used to and like never work that well, but like, yep.
• 1:04:10
  Just like, kind of like attention suck of like social media and like
• 1:04:15
  this world we're living on living in.
• 1:04:17
  And so like a, something I would just advocate on for myself and
• 1:04:21
  maybe for others is just like.
• 1:04:23
  Try not to be under phone or like on a screen.
• 1:04:26
  And just for me, I want to stop listening.
• 1:04:28
  And it's ironic in a way be, it's completely ironic, but I'm gonna try
• 1:04:31
  and not listen to podcasts in January because like, I feel like that I do
• 1:04:36
  love podcasts, so I do, but I feel like it's often just like distracting myself
• 1:04:40
  from thinking, you know what I mean?
• 1:04:42
  Um, I do agree with that.
• 1:04:43
  I do agree kind of filling my head with content a lot of the time.
• 1:04:46
  And like I feel like if I just listen to music more often or something and
• 1:04:50
  something so I can actually have time to think and, 'cause I feel like this
• 1:04:53
  world is trying very hard to keep us from really sitting and thinking with
• 1:04:57
  ourselves instead of constantly being stimulated by something or another.
• 1:05:02
  And I think the scrolling, the endless scroll is really screwing up
• 1:05:05
  everybody's brains, especially with everything going on in the world.
• 1:05:09
  I think there's like good reasons to be outraged and angry and I think, you know,
• 1:05:14
  the algorithm just gives me the reasons.
• 1:05:18
  To constantly be in a state of despair.
• 1:05:20
  Yeah, but what good does your despair, do you It doesn't help.
• 1:05:24
  Right?
• 1:05:24
  It does No good.
• 1:05:25
  Doesn't, it doesn't.
• 1:05:25
  And so I've really tried hard to, again, it probably comes a lot from
• 1:05:30
  me working in politics for four years, so seeing how the mm-hmm.
• 1:05:33
  The corruption and the grift and all that.
• 1:05:35
  But like, I, I really, I have so many friends who are just so constantly kind
• 1:05:39
  of angry and, and frustrated and all this about, and I'm just like, none
• 1:05:43
  of these emotions do you any good.
• 1:05:46
  In fact, it's them winning, I feel like.
• 1:05:48
  Right.
• 1:05:48
  Because you're not, you're not gonna change anything with your
• 1:05:50
  anger, outrage, anxiety, whatever.
• 1:05:52
  You're just going to be feeling worse yourself, you know, go
• 1:05:56
  volunteer in your community.
• 1:05:57
  That's, I think, the best thing anybody can do at this point.
• 1:05:59
  If they really are outraged, then go help out in ways you can.
• 1:06:03
  No, a hundred percent.
• 1:06:03
  I think that's, that's totally right.
• 1:06:04
  And like, I was thinking about it and like, maybe this is a kind of a way to
• 1:06:07
  kind of close the circle circle, but, you know, like, look at you, you're
• 1:06:11
  like, you're scripting the podcast.
• 1:06:14
  I listen to a lot of podcasts, but like Right, right, right.
• 1:06:16
  If I think back around about Island Soldier and like the Peace Corps, like I
• 1:06:20
  went there and basically I, I could check my email like once or twice a week and
• 1:06:26
  my, I'd get like a letter, you know, I had a girlfriend at the time in New York
• 1:06:30
  and my parents would send me a letter, but I had so much time, you know, to
• 1:06:35
  like, yeah, like read, sit on the book.
• 1:06:37
  Think I was like so bored outta my, my mind.
• 1:06:40
  But it was like, I think it's good.
• 1:06:41
  I think like, I think that boredom like leads you to like interesting places.
• 1:06:46
  Absolutely.
• 1:06:47
  And I do wonder for a society when we're, we never have to be bored.
• 1:06:50
  We could always, I could just watch skate videos on Instagram, like for 24
• 1:06:55
  hours a day and be completely happy.
• 1:06:57
  You know what I Right.
• 1:06:57
  And never see a, never see the same video twice.
• 1:07:00
  I mean, it's, it's insane.
• 1:07:01
  And never have a productive thought.
• 1:07:02
  I mean, that's like easy and fun and like, you know what I mean?
• 1:07:06
  But that exists for all of us.
• 1:07:08
  We just live in a world where that could be fed to you like so easily and
• 1:07:11
  someone's profiting off of your time.
• 1:07:14
  So, yeah.
• 1:07:14
  But yeah, learning to really sit with yourself and be comfortable
• 1:07:18
  with yourself and your own, I mean, you know, mindfulness and so forth
• 1:07:21
  is a big thing in my, my life, but I think that's in incredibly important.
• 1:07:26
  And if more people did it, I think we'd be in a better world right now.
• 1:07:30
  But money is the, it's the God of the world, so it's very difficult
• 1:07:36
  to monetize that kind of thing.
• 1:07:37
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:38
  Yeah.
• 1:07:39
  But I'd just say a big thanks to you, Jef.
• 1:07:40
  I mean, most importantly, I mean, it was just great to get to catch up with you.
• 1:07:45
  But yeah, I've always been a fan of your work and, uh, I'm flattered to.
• 1:07:48
  Be on your podcast.
• 1:07:50
  Of course, of course.
• 1:07:50
  Thank you for, thank you for coming on.
• 1:07:52
  Thanks for making the time.
• 1:07:53
  Really appreciate it.
• 1:07:54
  Good luck with the projects.
• 1:07:57
  I'm excited to see 'em.
• 1:07:58
  Hope your daughter's doing well.
• 1:07:59
  Hope your wife is doing well.
• 1:08:00
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:01
  Same to you.
• 1:08:01
  And come to New York.
• 1:08:02
  Let's, uh, let's hang out.
• 1:08:04
  If I ever get a job, I shall try.
• 1:08:07
  Cool.
• 1:08:07
  All right, cool.
• 1:08:08
  Yeah, thanks so much.
• 1:08:12
  And that was Nathan Fitch, documentarian photographer all around great guy.
• 1:08:19
  Thank you again, Nathan, for taking the time to do this.
• 1:08:22
  I really do appreciate it.
• 1:08:23
  If you would like to see some of the work that we talked about in this episode and
• 1:08:28
  some that we didn't talk about, you can go to Nathan's website at nathan-fitch.com
• 1:08:33
  That's F-I-T-C-H.
• 1:08:35
  You can also and should follow Nathan on Instagram @nathanfitch.
• 1:08:39
  That's @nathanfitch.
• 1:08:41
  One word and you should follow the podcast on Instagram @onefjefpod.
• 1:08:45
  You can also email the podcast at onefjefpod@gmail.com,
• 1:08:49
  and you can always call the podcast and leave me a voicemail
• 1:08:53
  at 1 6 6 9 2 4 1 5 8 8 2.
• 1:08:56
  That's 1 6 6 9 2 4 1 5 8 8 2.
• 1:09:04
  Ooh, that was not a good one.
• 1:09:06
  But you know, they can all be winners.
• 1:09:09
  And once again, there will be another episode about my adventures here in La
• 1:09:14
  de Mexico coming out for the Patreon subscribers later this week, and for
• 1:09:18
  the general public sometime next week.
• 1:09:20
  So if you wanna hear that early, once again, patreon.com/onefjef.
• 1:09:24
  And I'll leave you with a quote that I stumbled upon as I was going through
• 1:09:27
  my phone recently by Joseph Campbell.
• 1:09:30
  We're in a free fall into future.
• 1:09:33
  We don't know where we're going.
• 1:09:36
  Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel,
• 1:09:39
  anxiety comes along and all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise
• 1:09:45
  is to turn your fall into a voluntary act.
• 1:09:48
  It's a very interesting shift of perspective, and that's all it is.
• 1:09:53
  Joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.
• 1:09:59
  Take care of yourselves, my friends.
• 1:10:01
  Very good, Jeffrey.