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Episode 62—Penny Lane is Her Real Name
122 Plays8 years ago
Documentary filmmaker Penny Lane joins me to talk about her films "Our Nixon," "Nuts!", and "The Voyagers." We explore how she decided to start leveling up her ambition and the craft of making doc films. Please share the episode with a pal and leave a kind review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Host's Excitement
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello CNF-ers. Hope you're having a CNF and good week. It's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. The show where I speak with the world's best artists about creating works of nonfiction and how you can apply the tips and tricks from essayists, memoirists, journalists, radio producers, podcasters, and documentary filmmakers to improve your own work. That's a riff-worthy intro, no? My producer's nodding his head.
00:00:32
Speaker
Speaking of face-melting room...
00:00:36
Speaker
I saw Metallica last week for the seventh time cut me open and I believe Metallica for whom the belt hole blew my mind. What a show. And being in Oregon, well, I saw them in Seattle, but being in Oregon and only a few miles away from the path of totality, I'll be camping in nearby Albany for the solar eclipse. So it's a big, big week over here.
00:01:03
Speaker
But you didn't download this episode because you wanted to hear about my silly little life. You want to know about this week's purveyor of creative non
Guest Introduction: Penny Lane
00:01:12
Speaker
-fiction. Her name is Penny Lane. And yes, that's her real name. I mean, her website says PennyLaneIsMyRealName.com. She's at Lenny Payne on Twitter, though she's not that active. Maybe you can help her with that. Knock on her door.
00:01:29
Speaker
Penny is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes Nuts, Our Nixon, and the short film, Voyagers, which Maria Popova at brainpickings.org featured by saying, The Voyagers is a beautiful short film by video artist and filmmaker Penny Lane, made of remixed public domain footage, a living testament to the creative capacity of remix culture.
00:01:57
Speaker
using the story of the legendary interstellar journey and the golden record to tell a bigger, beautiful story about love and the gift of chance. Lane takes the golden record, quote, a Valentine dedicated to the tiny chance that in some distant time and place we might make contact, end quote, and translates it into a Valentine to our own, quote, fellow traveler.
00:02:24
Speaker
all the while paying profound homage to Sagan, as in Carl Sagan's spirit and legacy. And Popova also says, like, how sublime it is to lose oneself in the poetry of Lane's closing words. And you should just go check out the movie. It's about 16 minutes long and hear it because it is beautiful.
00:02:46
Speaker
It doesn't get any better than that, an endorsement from Popova. In this episode, you're going to hear what it means to level up and turn the volume up on Ambition and maybe how to cultivate a sense of patience around your own work.
Exploring Penny Lane's Background and Career Journey
00:03:00
Speaker
Be sure to check out Penny's work at her website and purchase her movies on Vimeo. Nuts won't disappoint.
00:03:07
Speaker
Take the show, share it with a friend, and please leave a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening, my friends. Without further ado, here is Penny Lane for episode 62 of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
00:03:29
Speaker
A lot of times when I've spoken with writers and everything, I've always had some sort of connection to reading and writing, even at a very young age, and then they grew up to be working writers. Did you have a similar affinity for motion picture growing up, or did you have some other artistic thing you liked and then graduated towards filmmaking?
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, what's funny about that is that I've never, I'm really not a cinephile. I never have been. I didn't grow up that way. I wasn't obsessed with movies. From a pretty young age, I was really into art, like visual art, drawing and stuff like that. And then also I was really into writing. So those were the things that I was really into growing up, writing and like visual art.
00:04:16
Speaker
Movie making came much later and through a series of terms that are almost impossible for me to put together at this point in my life. But the main thing was that in undergraduate school, I got pretty interested in this field of media studies.
00:04:36
Speaker
And I kind of like developed my own major and the major was sort of media studies. So it was this interdisciplinary kind of study set of studies having to do with film, anthropology and, you know, sociology and stuff like that. And at school at Vassar, I got involved in a nonprofit called Children's Media Project, which was, you know, this local nonprofit that taught filmmaking to kids. And I ended up working there.
00:05:06
Speaker
Through working there and like kind of helping little kids make movies, you know before I'd ever made movies myself I got into it. So it was all sort of like backwards And do you remember a specific moment? When you were when you were developing as as a creator where it just kind of clicked that I was like, oh this is something I want to explore a little bit deeper and
00:05:32
Speaker
I don't. I don't really. It was so weird and gradual. My life story is not a story of someone who set out with a particular goal and then achieved it. I have always been broadly curious about a lot of different things.
00:05:54
Speaker
especially, you know, in my younger days, I had a lot of different visions of what my life could be. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to be a social worker. You know, at some point I thought I'd get a PhD in film studies. I mean, I really had a lot of ideas about different paths my life could take. The thing that's great about doing documentary film is that you can kind of do any of the, you kind of do whatever you want. You know what I mean? Like it's a really broad,
00:06:23
Speaker
set of sort of things that go into making a documentary. And, you know, what a lot of people don't realize is that there's lots of different kinds of documentary filmmakers, you know, and you can like sort of approach it in so many different ways that, you know, and then also in terms of content, you become an expert sort of on like a certain subject matter for a certain period of time, and you can just move on and become interested in completely different subjects matter.
00:06:51
Speaker
Right. You know what I mean? So like it's kind of like a great, you know, and depending on, you know, more interested in writing right now or more interested in shooting or more interested in music or whatever, all the different elements of filmmaking, you can kind of
00:07:06
Speaker
emphasize in terms of like selecting your next project so it's it's kind of like just not one job and so it's it's it doesn't it's like a yet another example of me not having to choose a career you know so as an undergraduate I couldn't shoot I could not decide what to major in so I had to invent my own major and petition the school to allow me to do it and it was like a eclectic amalgamation of all these different things I was interested in
00:07:33
Speaker
And I sort of feel like I've just continued doing that with my career now. I made up my own major. And did you have an influential mentor along the way that would say, oh, you're onto something here. Keep going. It's a little hard now, but keep pushing through. Yeah, I think probably one of the most, and there's probably earlier people, but what comes to mind when you ask that question is
00:08:02
Speaker
when I was making my first feature length documentary, which was called Our Nixon that came out in 2013.
Mentorship and Ambition in Filmmaking
00:08:12
Speaker
And, you know, it didn't take that long in the grand scheme of things to make it. It took about two years, but it was also like a big transition for me because I had been making short experimental work for not quite like, I don't know, seven or eight years at that point. And,
00:08:31
Speaker
You know, it was kind of like on a certain scale. I was making short experimental films that might play in like experimental film.
00:08:38
Speaker
uh, experimental film festivals, you know, I just wasn't, it was just kind of like, I don't know how to put this. It was like small potatoes, you know? Like I loved what I was doing, but my expectations in terms of reach, in terms of financing, in terms of everything, um, were very small, just like really modest. And when I was working on our Nixon, you know, it started with the same kind of set of ideas. It was sort of like,
00:09:05
Speaker
Well, I'm making this weird art film and I'll make it by myself. And then I'll show it at some experimental film festivals or something. And really what changed the whole course of the project and then probably the course of my life was connecting pretty early on when I was making that film with a guy named Dan Kogan. And he became the executive producer of that film and also of my next film, Nuts.
00:09:33
Speaker
But more importantly, he became a really important mentor to me. He's not even that much older than me, but he's a person in the world of documentary film who kind of knows everything and knows all the business stuff and just sort of knows that field. And he really, I don't think he even realizes how influential he was on me because he sort of guided me into the world of independent film.
00:09:59
Speaker
which I just didn't think I belonged in and I never tried to be in before. And I don't even know if your listeners would really understand the difference between what I've been doing before. And like when I say the difference between making sort of small art films, it was basically within a fine arts tradition, like an avant garde film, kind of tiny, tiny, tiny,
00:10:21
Speaker
like world of makers and viewers and then independent film, which, you know, ostensibly can be a huge audience, you know? And so the difference between making a film that might play in a few experimental film festivals and making a film that might be on HBO is it is it just a very big change? It's a big change in in terms of production. It's a big change in terms of process. It's a big change in terms of like just everything.
00:10:48
Speaker
So Dan came along and Dan kind of like slowly nudged me closer and closer to like this latter thing, this whole new way of making films and thinking about films and having just bigger ambitions. Yeah, that's, I think that this pays to unpack this a little bit because a big reason why, you know, I had a mutual friend of ours, Jeff Krewlik on a while ago, who, you know, brought your name up. Yeah.
00:11:16
Speaker
And thus, I reached out to you. I've spoken to a lot of primarily writers on the show, which is great. That's an area of narrative nonfiction. And I've been desperately wanting to get more people like yourself on who are doing the same thing just with a different medium.
00:11:35
Speaker
And I want to learn too. I'm primarily almost exclusively just a writer and I want to learn more through me learning and other people listening who might be wanting to experiment with a documentary film. They might learn something as well. So if you feel like you're getting granular or
00:11:56
Speaker
or you feel like it's maybe boring, it definitely is not. So what were some of the early steps as you were starting to slowly knock down those early dominoes as you are starting to learn a little more about documentary film and the business of it and how you can start making a career out of it, making a go of it? Yeah. I mean, I think, again, the main thing was just really having bigger ambitions.
00:12:24
Speaker
It just never really occurred to me. I was making moving image work and there's a kind of like little comfortable world that I was a part of. And I just frankly was never that good at it anyway. Basically I was what people call video art. I was making video art. I got an MFA, a fine arts degree. I did not go to film school. I went to art school.
00:12:46
Speaker
And so, you know, this world of video art can be quite big. I mean, you could be Bill Viola and be like a very, very famous video artist. But, you know, the world that I lived in was obviously not that. It was just sort of like.
00:13:01
Speaker
I don't know how to put it without sounding like I'm being disparaging. It's just a very small world, you know, and you can sort of build up your credibility and your name within that small world. And that's great. And it's like really awesome and valid. I don't think I was a very good video artist. So I don't think I was ever going to like be great in that field. I just, I think all along, I really just wanted to make movies.
00:13:28
Speaker
And I didn't know that. I think I wouldn't, I think this is why it's so hard for me to put these pieces together in a way that makes sense as a narrative because I think it might be true that when I was younger, I just simply didn't have the self-confidence to think I could make a movie. I mean, it just seemed like way out of my reach. But I did think I could make a weird experimental short film that like 10 people would like.
00:13:53
Speaker
Did you see what I mean? It wasn't really about my artistic identity so much. It was about what I thought I could do, what I could accomplish. Was there a fear there? A fear element of taking that ambitious step to doing something that went down well is more visible? It wasn't fear. It was simply never considering it. I think I would have been afraid if the question had ever been asked, but it just wasn't.
00:14:22
Speaker
It just didn't occur to me. I mean, I don't know how else to put it like I'm constantly figuring I'm almost 40 years old now and I'm still like thinking about how I set the bar very I can't like I set the bar very low for myself constantly.
00:14:39
Speaker
and I just need to learn that. It's like I'm almost 40 and I'm still doing it. I'll work on something, I'll make something, I'll think of an idea for something, and then my expectations for what that thing will do in the world will always be far exceeded in reality. It's nice, it's certainly nicer than having really ambitious goals and then not meeting them, but at a certain point I kind of wonder if I'm not
00:15:06
Speaker
even achieving what I could be achieving if I was just saying my goal's a little higher. And how did you, what would you say is the first thing that you made after having met Dan to start leveling up? Well, it was our Nixon. Okay, that was our Nixon, okay. Yeah, it was really like, you know, beginning that project, thinking of it in one way, which was I was going to make it myself with no money, you know,
00:15:36
Speaker
you know, and show it to a few people. And and and it would have this kind of small reach. And Dan thought Dan saw it, saw like a very early version of it, like it was barely a movie at that point. But he saw some footage. And we talked a lot. And he said, you know, you know, this is like potentially could have a lot of legs, like you could this could be a really big film. And I kind of didn't really believe him, you know, and I just kind of
00:16:02
Speaker
did things he said, which was things like, you know, apply for this certain lab or, you know, try to get relationships with these certain funders, et cetera, et cetera. And I would do it because he'd say to, and then it kept working. And I was like, I guess he's right. I guess I, I think I just, uh, actually make work that's more commercially viable than I thought or something. Um,
00:16:25
Speaker
So anyway, but yeah, it was really our Nixon. It was like the film didn't change in terms of my artistic goals for the film, but my idea is about the reach, the potential audience and reach for the film changed a lot. What was that like for you to experience, to have that experience and see how it was received, to see something like that from beginning to end and be like, yeah, something that can be more visible, more commercial, but still be artistically satisfying as well?
00:16:56
Speaker
It was great. I mean, I don't know what else to say about it. And it was also very gradual, you know? So it wasn't like one day I woke up and that was the case, you know? It was very much more like this kind of gradual slow realization. And then one day I was, you know, premiering my film at South by Southwest. So there you go.
00:17:16
Speaker
and it's it's you know you say our our Nixon was your maybe your first late what you would consider ambitious but uh what but voyagers that was like a beautiful story I would call that I throw that in terms of an ambition and and just pure beauty and and storytelling and you guys how long is it 15 minutes or so or 12 minutes I yeah
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's like 16, I think, yeah. Yeah, right around there. And it's gorgeous and it's so incredibly moving. And I would put that right up there with anything that's longer and ambitious in storytelling. How did you come to that? Well, let me put it this way. I don't think that I've ever been unambitious in terms of creative ideas.
00:18:05
Speaker
I have been not as ambitious as I should be in terms of what I do with my work. What kinds of expectations I have with getting it out in the world and stuff like that. Does that make sense? Or even getting it funded. I've never really paid myself appropriately and all that kind of stuff. But I definitely don't think my problem is that I lack ambition in terms of my artistic process or whatever.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so you were alluding to it earlier as well when you had met Dan and having these conversations about trying to make the work more visible. What were those dialogues like and what were some of those actionable steps that you had to take to start leveling up a little more? Incrementally, what were you doing to make that next level?
00:19:01
Speaker
Don't I don't know. I mean, I think it's it's so it's so granular that I'm afraid that we'll we'll be in the weeds but it's like the difference between like Applying to a certain kind of film festival over another one, you know, so like in the world of filmmaking there's this whole kind of game you have to play about where you world premiere your film and that's like a
00:19:26
Speaker
Give you know who you give your world premiere to is like something has something to do with it Doesn't have something to do with it. It's seen as a sign of like where you stand in the in the world in terms of your stature See that to me that's pretty interesting that that there is this kind of jockeying for yeah, yeah, yeah, so so it's more like you know having to
00:19:51
Speaker
you know, think just have more ambition. I don't know how else to put it, like at every level. How much will this film cost to make? Well, you can decide that it costs, you know, X amount and that means you don't pay yourself and you beg, borrow and steal. And you kind of like, you know, just kind of like cut corners and, you know, your expectations for what the film will make are very low. So you wouldn't want to spend very much.
00:20:15
Speaker
or you can say no fuck that like i my time is really important and i'm going to you know i'm going to pay myself for my dime and i'm going to make sure everyone that works in this film gets paid appropriately because i want to get their best work
00:20:31
Speaker
You know, and I'm going to budget this amount for a sound mix because, you know, I think it should have a top caliber sound mix as opposed to like, oh, the one where like you asked your friend who's still in grad school to like give it a shot. See what I mean? Like that's it's that kind of stuff. It's like every stage of the process. There's there's ways you can be ambitious or not be ambitious.
00:20:54
Speaker
Is it one of those deals where once you started asking that of others and asking that of yourself that you're like, shit, I wish I had done this five years ago.
00:21:06
Speaker
Um, yeah, I always feel like that. I mean, I still think that I didn't apply to good enough colleges. You know what I mean? So yeah, I, I, I inevitably look back and think, oh yeah, like when I negotiated that business deal, the fact that the person who I was negotiating with instantly said yes to my, my offer was a mistake. You know, like obviously I didn't ask for enough.
00:21:30
Speaker
So, yeah, so I'm still learning. Yeah. I don't think it'll ever end. So in those in your earlier years as you're developing as a filmmaker and maybe not asking for the paying yourself or asking for the dollar you deserve, what kind of things are you doing on the side to help subsidize the art you are making?
00:21:55
Speaker
Oh, and it's really not even on the side. I have a career as a college professor. I mean, I'm a tenured college professor. I didn't know that. Yeah. So that's a whole other thing. So like I've never really had to rely. I've never had to rely on filmmaking.
00:22:12
Speaker
as my primary income generating thing. I've actually made a lot of money in filmmaking over the last few years, but it was never anything where I was relying on that. It was never like, well, if this film doesn't sell, I don't know how I'm going to pay my mortgage. It's never been like that. Okay. Great.
Creative Decisions: 'Voyagers' and 'Nuts'
00:22:32
Speaker
And with respect to voyagers, how did you come to that story and wanting to tell that story, that Valentine, if you will?
00:22:44
Speaker
Well that was really, I mean that film was completely just a gift for my fiancé at that time. So it was a wedding gift for him and so it's addressed to him and it was really made for him. It was made for one person.
00:23:04
Speaker
I wouldn't put myself down in this one. I really did have an audience of one in mind. That was the whole point. It took a little time after it was done before I was like, actually, I think this is a really good film and I should maybe put it out there and see if anyone else likes it. It was actually honest to God made to play at my wedding and that was it. That was the exhibition plan.
00:23:29
Speaker
So the inspiration was for your soon-to-be husband. So what struck you about the idea of these two satellites going out there? Carl Sagan's relationship with his wife there.
00:23:52
Speaker
You know, where did you come to that in your career and then how did you begin to formulate that into something that was a story? Yeah, I mean I had heard the story of Carl Sagan, you know, falling in love with any dream when they were working on the Golden Record together. I'd heard that story and I thought it was amazing. Like just a great story, you know, there's no like sort of point to it.
00:24:18
Speaker
In itself it's like well they met doing this inspiring thing that's cool. I heard that that was pretty interesting and neat and i'm a big Carl Sagan fan so you know it was interesting to me but then you know.
00:24:32
Speaker
But then when I thought about making a film as a gift for my then-fiancé, I thought, well, making a film about love would be a natural subject to pick. And so then I was like, well, I got this great love story that I really like. What about that is interesting to me? Or why am I drawn to that story? Or what is something that I could say, what would I add that's personal to that?
00:24:59
Speaker
And I just came up with this idea of taking risks, you know, and the idea of kind of, you know, hope and risk taking and the role that those things play in love and relationships and also the role that those things play in science and exploration.
00:25:16
Speaker
And, um, and that was the original concept. And then from there, it was just sort of like, you know, a little bit of a spiral, right? So it's like, Oh, what about this subject? This feels related to, you know, um, and then there was a writing process that, that went alongside the archival, you know, research and editing process. And I went back and forth between writing and editing, writing and editing. It probably took about six months to make the film.
00:25:42
Speaker
What was your reaction when Maria Popova wrote a little post about it on brain picking? She's every bit as influential, if not more influential, than New York Times or any other place like that. So what did that mean when you found that out? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that was so cool, because I actually am just a huge fan of that website.
00:26:09
Speaker
And I had no idea that that she had watched it or was interested in any of that. So it was great. It was a nice surprise. Actually, I didn't even know that it had happened. I just noticed one day that like three hundred thousand people had watched the film or something, you know, and I was like, oh, like something happened. Something happened. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah, to get an endorsement from her, she's just got such a great eye and ear for anything. So it's like anything that she curates is super valuable and worth watching. So talk about validation for the work you do and if she's able to endorse something like that just on her own volition. Yeah, it was really, really nice. I think it made a difference in the long term kind of popularity of the film.
00:27:04
Speaker
How did you come across John R. Brinkley, Dr. John R. Brinkley's work? And when did you start to see the kernel of this narrative for what ended up becoming nuts? I came across a book called charlatan in the public library where I lived. It was just a book on the librarians picks shelf
00:27:33
Speaker
And it's about Brinkley and I read that book and it was very interesting. I mean, you could read, I mean, it's an excellent book. It's a very well written, incredibly entertaining, wonderful book. But I also would say you could just read John Brinkley's Wikipedia page and find it interesting, right? I mean, like the actual just facts of his life are pretty amazing.
00:27:59
Speaker
So, yeah, so I came across that and I thought this is a story made for the movies. I mean, it's like so it's such a dramatic, you know, sort of rise and fall. It's such a kind of classic American 20th century tragedy, you know. So on that scale, I thought this would make a great film. I should, you know, think about whether that could be something I'd want to make.
00:28:25
Speaker
But it took a long time, maybe two years to really put together in reality what kind of a film would be. It took a long time because, you know, it's just, well, yeah, just how to tell the story took a long time to figure out.
00:28:43
Speaker
How did you land on, in general, but especially with Nuts, how do you land on using animation for the story as a way of propelling the narrative forward? Well, in that case, I was working on that film concurrently with R. Nixon. I had started Nuts in 2008.
00:29:07
Speaker
but I really didn't know what I was doing with it. I mean, I was committed to this idea of this movie about this subject, but I really didn't know much more than that other than I was trying out a lot of different ideas in my head. R. Nixon got off the ground a little faster and I made that film and then finished it.
00:29:25
Speaker
And our Nixon, as you know, is all archival. So the whole movie is made up of pre-existing material media. So, frankly, the Brinkley film, Nuts, I started it the same way. I thought it would be an all archival film. And I did tons and tons of archival research, and I put a lot of time and effort into that. And I traveled around the country, and I found all this great archival material, all these old newspaper clippings, and his promotional films, and some stuff from his radio station, all this stuff.
00:29:54
Speaker
But it didn't. What I knew I wanted to do from the very beginning, the very beginning, was I wanted to do something with the form of the movie that would mirror the content being about a con man. Like I wanted the movie to be a con.
00:30:14
Speaker
the way that Brinkley conned people. I wanted to do that with the movie. And I had that idea from the beginning. And I could tell, well, I mean, after I tried it, the archival material wasn't going to allow me to do that. Nobody in 2010 or whatever was going to look at the archival material and believe John Brinkley. Do you know what I mean? Like it just he he doesn't his his seductiveness doesn't really translate to a contemporary audience. And so
00:30:43
Speaker
the idea of doing reenactments started to come out, and I was like, okay, well, what kind of reenactments do I wanna make? And really, animation came about through a process of elimination, because I was like, oh, hell no, I'm not gonna learn how to direct actors on sets. I just have no interest in that at all. But I kind of came, I thought, well, I can handle animation. I can handle that level of fiction filmmaking.
00:31:12
Speaker
And were you when you get towards towards the end with the with the court scenes and everything, are you pulling off of court transcripts of the time? Yeah, I would say like literally every scene in the movie is is being, you know, derived from some kind of real thing.
00:31:34
Speaker
So whether that's, you know, something that was written in his biography or something that I found in a newspaper article or the transcripts from the trial, you know, like so everything has something, you know, and then there's varying levels of like, you know, kind of fictionalization, let's say, but, you know, from like literally just like this is the words that are in the transcript to like rewriting.
00:32:03
Speaker
What did you find most fascinating about spending all that time with, quote unquote, Dr. Brinkley? I think the most fascinating thing about spending a lot of time with him was probably the question of what he himself believed about what he was doing. Because it's not clear. On the one hand, it seems perfectly obvious that he knew he was
00:32:33
Speaker
He was scamming people, but he knew it was fake. On the other hand, it seems to me that he probably believed that it worked. You know, he had people standing in front of him with tears in their eyes saying like,
00:32:48
Speaker
Doc, you cured me, you know? So I feel like, you know, so there's something about the kind of what did he believe and then in it, just like one, one step removed from that, like what did his wife believe? Yeah, that I found very interesting and I have no answers to. I mean, I think the only, the only, and I really don't know. So because I don't know, I have to go with, well, he believed it and he didn't, you know?
00:33:17
Speaker
the way we all have things that we kind of like believe that are contradictory, you know, if we look closely. But yeah, I just didn't think, I really don't know.
00:33:27
Speaker
When you're watching the archival footage, he's not super showy, and he dresses nicely, but he's not flamboyant, he's not PT Barnum in that sense, you know, twirling, doing a dance and asking for the sale. He plays the part of the wholesome
00:33:50
Speaker
of a very wholesome guy and very trustworthy. It's like, when you really think about what he was doing, it's like, I think one of the men you were interviewing, he's like, I can't diagnose him as a psychopath, but this guy didn't have a feeling bone in his body. And it's like, whoa, it just, yeah, it does. The film raises a lot of interesting questions that we just can't know the answer to, just because we can't be in his head right now. Yeah.
00:34:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's all psychological and it's all about the kind of nature of belief and why we believe the things we believe and all that kind of stuff, you know? Yeah. And after making movies like Our Next and Nuts, what are your goals now going forward for this sort of narrative storytelling of this nature?
00:34:43
Speaker
Ask that question in a different way. I'm not sure I know what you mean. I guess these seem to have unlocked a different kind of storytelling for you. Something that's a bit longer in reaching a deeper or broader audience. So I wonder maybe what has that unlocked for you and what are you excited about telling in the future in this vein?
00:35:09
Speaker
Well, I do think that, you know, between working on our Nixon and working on nuts, like, you know, I kind of started to understand like a bit more about the kinds of stories that I'm interested in. And it's not even really the kind like.
00:35:23
Speaker
Yeah, it is the kinds of stories. It's the kinds of stories that allow me to think about storytelling. And I guess every story you could do that, but there are certain kinds of stories that kind of push you to think about the form in a way that's like really overt.
00:35:41
Speaker
In other words, with R. Nixon, you've got a bunch of home movies. I mean, what is that? What story is that? And it really kind of evolved to become about the difference between the story that Nixon's aides were telling themselves in the present tense and the story that history tells about the Nixon presidency in the past tense. So that was that movie. And then with Nuts, of course,
00:36:07
Speaker
It was everything having to do with the way that you tell the story of Brinkley, either he's a hero or a villain. And I just really liked that. And you kind of run into the same exact thing with just add water, that short you did for CNN, where you had the scientist doing something that made a lot of people happy. But then he ends up being a white supremacist.
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah. So it's like you're you the strength from nuts and that one is that you you build up someone as a likable character and then totally just chop you at the knees be like now this guy's kind of a dick. Yeah, exactly. I mean, again, it's like, you know, there's this idea that people have about documentary films where they don't even I think they don't even realize they have this idea. I mean, I think I have this idea. But to tell you,
00:37:08
Speaker
where you see a documentary film and you get the idea that the story that you've seen in this movie is just sitting out there in the world and all the filmmaker did was go and pick it up and was lucky enough to find it and then here they are handing it to you. And it's just not like that. Just a million and one choices being made
00:37:33
Speaker
about every single aspect of every single nugget of corner of second of everything, that changed what the story is. Does that make sense? So I feel like the last few films, like I've been very preoccupied with kind of like trying to push the audience to think about that a little bit more, to make it really clear that there is a point of view in the film. And if you shift the point of view of the film within the film,
00:37:59
Speaker
then I feel like it's pretty obvious. Yeah, because if you start the movie at a different place, whether it's like, oh, this is the story of a charlatan, it totally recolors the whole
Documentary Perspectives and Director's Role
00:38:14
Speaker
thing. You see the beginning, which seems so innocent and American dreamish, but you realize that it's kind of sinister.
00:38:22
Speaker
If you save that for the end, then it's all of a sudden it, it totally kind of catches you off guard. And then the, the epilogue of that and the repercussions of the man's decisions are all the more, are all the more powerful. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad to hear you say that because that's definitely like the idea. The idea of the movie was always to kind of like to, to maximize the chance and I couldn't guarantee it, but to maximize the chance that someone would watch the film.
00:38:50
Speaker
and kind of like have a certain idea about what the truth was and then realize within the same film that they were wrong.
00:38:58
Speaker
That's all. I mean, it sounds very simple. And I think that there are lots of works of fiction that do that, but I don't think it's done very much in non-fiction, or at least not in documentary film. I shouldn't say not non-fiction. Creative non-fiction in terms of writing has like, just what, a couple thousand years of headway? Documentary film in some ways is like a very primitive art form.
00:39:26
Speaker
So I find most of my artistic inspiration comes from writers and not from other films.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's something you said earlier about all the little choices that you have to make in terms of structure and editing and all that. I was wondering if maybe you could give a few examples of some of those debates that you are having maybe with you and some other producers or just yourself about moving things around, like those decisions that could totally affect the tonality of a film. As someone who's
00:40:02
Speaker
a novice in terms of getting into the esoteric of documentary filmmaking, I'd love to hear how you process those decisions about where to put things and how to make the cohesive whole that you're aiming for. No, it's just so hard. In retrospect, it always looks so simple at the end.
00:40:30
Speaker
you just have to muddle through. And like right now I'm in the early stages of like a bunch of projects. And so, so now, you know, in the early stages, it's just like being lost in the wilderness and just like trying all these different things and seeing what you think works. And then, you know, as hopefully as you get closer to like understanding what you're actually making, you know, being a director, your only job is to understand the big picture goals of the film.
00:40:57
Speaker
And then, you know, you have to be able to communicate to all the other people that work in your film, all these people, which for me, you know, small time documentary filmmaker might be like a dozen people working on the film in total. But, you know, for obviously for for, you know, Steven Spielberg, that's like thousands of people working on the film. Right. And so like your only job is to know how to answer everyone else's questions.
00:41:22
Speaker
Well, do you want this scene to be, you know, you talk to the colorist and they ask you if you want it to be more warm or more cool. You have to have an answer that has something to do with the big picture goal.
00:41:34
Speaker
Because the colorist doesn't know. The colorist is looking at the color. The colorist has no idea what the color should be because they don't know the point of the movie. So when someone says, we're setting up this scene, do you want that painting on the wall behind the table or do you want me to take it down?
00:41:57
Speaker
like you have to have a yes or no answer for that and the person who is like dressing your set doesn't know the point of your movie so they have no idea the painting should be on the wall or not you know what i mean yeah so i feel like it's not really the best answer but i am trying to always remind myself that
00:42:13
Speaker
Sometimes it feels like as the director, I'm like the only person who doesn't know what their job is because it's not very defined. But my job is to know what the movie is, period. That's my job. This is really enlightening to know because that's a detail that matters whether the picture needs to be hanging up in the background or not. It's very enlightening to hear the little
00:42:41
Speaker
the little decisions that add up to something big. And what about the process of from beginning to end of the filmmaking process appeals to your sensibility the most? Which do you prefer and what do you like best about it? I like editing. That's all I like. I just like editing. I don't like creating images at all. Earlier I said something about how
00:43:11
Speaker
You know, most people don't realize who like the fact that being a documentary filmmaker, like that could look like a lot of different things. The the idea people have about it typically is like, oh, a person with a camera and that person with a camera is out in the world and they're watching things unfold. You know, I never do that. And I don't like it. Like the extent that I have done it, I'm like, oh, I hate this.
00:43:37
Speaker
It's just awful. I do not like it at all. I like editing. I like finding things and I like editing. And I like archival stuff because, you know, the thing about working with pre-existing material that you didn't make yourself. So it's like every image has an author already attached to it. And then you are like the second author and you're doing this weird, fun,
00:44:03
Speaker
brain breaking dance of like negotiating the original author's intentions of the material versus what you're doing. And I really like that. I enjoy that process a lot. It's a wrestling match that I find infinitely interesting. Lots of people really don't like it at all. So that's just one thing I really enjoy. I like editing, editing, editing, editing, not making images. I'm very happy editing. Yeah.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah, and that's true also with the writing part like Like I I don't think I could ever write a fiction script that just like came out of my head I don't even know what that would be like. I just can't imagine enjoying that at all Yeah, but you know the idea of like, you know like with nuts, you know, I adapted big chunks of that book and
00:44:51
Speaker
Now, that's that I can do. I can like, you know, I can take something that's already been written and then kind of like, you know, edit it to make it something else. I can do that. That that makes sense to me. I like that. So it's not just in terms of images, it's also in terms of writing the words and all that kind of stuff.
Challenges with Archival Footage
00:45:10
Speaker
So this is a total like novacy newbie type type question, but it's something I
00:45:18
Speaker
curious about and maybe someone else would be too. How do you go about obtaining archival footage and what might cost money versus what might be public and then how do you
00:45:35
Speaker
put that on the screen like do you play it on a TV and then film it or on the TV you know what I mean like those things that I have no idea and I'd love to hear how you how you process that kind of stuff and obtain it and process it
00:45:50
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the first part is, you know, big surprise. It depends. You know, I mean, like you might find it on YouTube and download it, or you might, you know, contact an archive and ask them what they have. So it is a really big range in terms of what, how you go about finding archival material with our Nixon. You know, almost everything in that film came from the Nixon library.
00:46:18
Speaker
So that was an example of an easy archival research process. I mean, there was lots and lots of work that went into it, but the vast majority of the material came from one place, so that really made it easier. With John Brinkley, with NUTS, there was no Brinkley archive.
00:46:34
Speaker
So you know i had to go all over the country and like travel all different places and try to find stuff and that was a whole other level in terms of like how it ends up in the movie again it depends if it's something.
00:46:49
Speaker
where an archive has a film print, you would ask them to digitize it for you. I mean, I'm editing digitally. So whatever is in the movie is a digital file. So it's just a question of how that digital file comes to be. It might be that it's transferred from a film. It might be that it's filmed off a TV. It might be that I downloaded it from YouTube.
00:47:11
Speaker
Okay. So that that's, that's good to know that, uh, it's just, I always, I always wondered how that is. Like even with, um, say like newspaper clips, a lot of times you might take a scan scan of it and then you're able to like import it into your software. Exactly. And then, okay. What kind of software do you use for, for your editing? Um, up until recently, I always used final cut pro, but I've recently switched to Adobe premiere.
00:47:38
Speaker
If someone was just getting into filmmaking or the idea of it, what are three to five documentaries that you would recommend someone check out?
00:47:55
Speaker
Oh, I mean, it really depends what they're doing. I mean, like, you know, like I said before, there's a there are a lot of different kinds of films. So I don't know. Yeah, there's yeah, there's your Ken Burns style. There's yeah. Yeah, there's any number. There's like like David Galb doing Gerald Dooms of Sushi or, you know, yeah. I mean, I guess that is too broad a question. But let's rephrase it this way. What are three to five of your favorite that maybe you revisit a lot?
00:48:24
Speaker
Yeah, well, one really important film to me was Exit Through the Gift Shop, which I believe that came out in 2010. And so this is a documentary that was made by the street artist Banksy. And it's about another street artist named Mr. Brainwash. And my interest in this film has almost nothing to do with the content. Like, I don't care about street art, doesn't matter to me.
00:48:53
Speaker
But the form of this film is just, is unbelievable. It's funny.
00:48:58
Speaker
It's super intellectual, it's a movie about big ideas that's very, very entertaining, and it has a kind of twist to the structure that you basically don't know what's real and what's not. So that movie was really important to me. Similarly, the Werner Herzog film, he's made a lot of films that are great and classic and important. The one of his films that influenced me the most was called Grizzly Man,
00:49:26
Speaker
And that's a good example of what I was saying earlier of like, so in that film, he's making a film about a filmmaker. You know, again, that, that, that the fun of like telling stories about stories or telling stories about storytellers and, you know, using this material that was filmed by his subject in a way that the subject didn't intend, all that kind of stuff, all is in this movie. It's also tragic and funny and it's, it's an incredible film. So.
00:49:53
Speaker
Let's see, so Grizzly Man. Oh yeah, and then I would say there's an essay film by the filmmaker Agnes Varda called The Gleaners and I, which is very much a kind of personal memoir about life that is also a kind of reflection on the process of filmmaking and editing and what it's like to live a life where you're kind of seeking images all the time. It's a really, really beautiful film.
00:50:22
Speaker
So when you're in the throes of production, what does your first 60 to 90 minutes of your day look like in terms of?
00:50:31
Speaker
I'm laughing because like I just there's so like no answer that my life is not there's no routine at all I'm like fighting really hard all the time to try to impose some order onto my life But there isn't any so I can't answer that I mean certainly during the school year when I'm being a professor I
00:50:55
Speaker
I I go to my I go to class and I teach and stuff and so that provides some like structure Mm-hmm, but if it's not that like during right like right now it's summer break So I'm just working on films and it's just totally random. I mean you just you know This morning I was writing Last week I was in a sound mix. So it's just it's there's no order what I
00:51:19
Speaker
continues to excite you about the storytelling you're doing and about documentary film? I think it's not getting any easier. It's just not getting any easier. I keep thinking, well, I've made this many films now, and in the next one, I'll just know what I'm doing. I'll just know what I'm doing the whole time. It just never happens. I mean, yeah, you learn stuff.
00:51:44
Speaker
more efficient at certain parts of it. Maybe you're able to tell a little faster when you've had an idea that won't work.
00:51:54
Speaker
for one reason or another, maybe that gets faster. And certainly all the business stuff, it's not easy to raise money for independent films, period, but certainly having an idea of how the industry works helps. Your contact list gets longer and things like that. But so far, I can't say that it's gotten any easier to actually make the movie. So that keeps me interested.
00:52:25
Speaker
What are you working on now, and then maybe where can people stay abreast of your work and ensure that they're constantly finding out what's going on with what you're working on?
Conclusion and Penny Lane's Online Presence
00:52:36
Speaker
Yeah, well, my website is pennylaneismyrealname.com. Which is great. Thank you. It's pennylaneismyrealname.com. And if they want, they can sign up for my newsletter. I send it out quarterly. It's very short. It's cute. It's not like a lot of email.
00:52:54
Speaker
And they can see all the different things I've worked on there. I'm also on Twitter, but I never tweet, so who cares? I don't understand Twitter. I'll never get it. It's just not for me. I don't want...
00:53:05
Speaker
any more things in my life that just like demand my attention. I have too many already. What is your Twitter handle just in case people knock on your door? Yeah, it's Lenny Payne L-E-N-N-Y-P-A-N-E. So, but yeah, so Twitter and all that kind of stuff. I'm working on a lot of films that are in kind of early in development. So I can't really talk about them yet. But I can say that one of them I just finished and it's a short
00:53:31
Speaker
I'm kind of in the vein of just that water and i believe it will be released you know sometime this fall but i'm not i'm not sure yet so i will have a short film coming soon.
00:53:41
Speaker
And I'm in the early stages of developing a couple of feature feature length documentaries that are, you know, will take God knows how long. I mean, nuts took seven years, you know, our Nixon took two. And it turns out, I think two is as quick as it goes, really. But hopefully, seven is not the length of the next couple.
00:54:03
Speaker
Yeah, and I was going to let you go, but I need to follow up on one thing here. With the seven years that it took you to finish and produce nuts, and I have known writers that take that long, ten years, to work through a book.
00:54:20
Speaker
How do you grind through the ugly middles and work through all that mud and choices that you have to make and get through, as Jessica Abel, who is a cartoonist and has worked closely with Ira Glass on book projects, like they get into the dark forest is what they call it. And you can't see the end, you can't see the beginning, you don't know where you are, but you're actually in a place of growth if you can get through it. So how do you get through the dark forest?
00:54:50
Speaker
I really don't know. I mean, I wish I had an answer for that. I think one thing is you lie to yourself and you just have no idea that you're doing it. Like I constantly think that the thing I'm working on is much closer to being done than it really is.
00:55:08
Speaker
Like, I really don't think that if I ever think, like, whatever I think is going on right now with these films is way wrong. I know that, you know? But I'm just, I'm so sure. I mean, this film's gonna be so easy. It's just gonna be, it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be easy. And it's not gonna take that long. And I tell myself that about everything I work on all the time, and it's always a lie. And I just, I don't know, I don't know that that's like a skill you can learn. I feel like that's that kind of like ability to deceive myself might just be,
00:55:37
Speaker
a trait that I have. So there's that and then also I really believe that it just has to be like that there's a problem you're trying to solve and the problem has to be interesting to you. Like that's all I mean I can't imagine how I could stick with something that wasn't that at the end of the day like the problem that I'm trying to solve isn't interesting to me personally.
00:56:02
Speaker
You know, or if lay on day one of not someone said like this movie is going to take you seven years. Oh, yeah, I never would have done it. Right. But the end of the day, that film, I had this idea about a movie that would kind of, you know, function in a certain way. Like, is it possible that I could make this movie and kind of set it up so that my audience is likely, if not guaranteed, to believe, you know,
00:56:32
Speaker
A, B, and C are true. And then in the same movie, without angering them, making them hate me, reveal that I was lying and that A, B, and C are not true. I thought, that would be so interesting. Is that possible? I don't know if that's possible. That really might not work. But I thought, well, that's exciting. I really want to know if I can make that work.
00:56:55
Speaker
So I kind of was willing to stick with the project so I could find out whether I could make that work. That was the goal. That sense of challenging yourself really propelled you through. Yes. And so as a formal consideration, keep in mind, same thing. With R. Nixon, the formal question was, can I tell this story without a narrator, without only using archival material,
00:57:23
Speaker
only using pre-existing material and only using like, well, that's it, just only using pre-existing material. Can I do it? Can I tell an entertaining and kind of engripping story without shooting anything and without doing interviews, basically? And then what could be learned that might be new about the story that we already know so much about by doing it? And I didn't know the answer to that either. I really didn't. I was like, it may not be possible
00:57:52
Speaker
to make that movie that way. It might not work. But I wanted to find out. So for me, it's usually a formal question that kind of keeps me interested. That's awesome. Seth Godin says that too, with taking creative leaps, or whether it's being an entrepreneur, a writer, a filmmaker, as the fundamental statement is, this might not work.
00:58:21
Speaker
And then again, but when it does, when you're fully invested and enrolled in that process and you're able to pull it off, well, you know, that courage is going to pay off. And if it doesn't, it's just, you can at least know you tried and then move on to something else. Yeah. And you know, it sounds fun when I put it that way, but you know, it's not fun. It's really hard. It's actually really hard and like mostly not fun. I mean, you know, like no one said,
00:58:49
Speaker
that making art was fun. Like, I mean, part of it's fun, but I don't necessarily think that the proportion of it that's fun is any higher than any other job, you know? Like it's mostly just work, you know, it's work and you're like trying things out. And it's scary and it doesn't work a lot of the time, you know, probably most of the things that I try don't work, but maybe one of the reasons I like editing
00:59:14
Speaker
so much is that I try it at home alone in my editing program and nobody even knows that I wasted a whole day trying something that didn't work. Just toiling away in the cave. Yeah, and then looking at it and being like, why would I have ever thought that would do? That would work. That was a stupid idea.
00:59:31
Speaker
Exactly. Well, Penny, this was so much fun to get a little insight into the way you work and get to talk to you about your wonderful work. So I can't wait to see what you've got coming next. And when the next feature you have coming out, we'll have to have you back on the show. And we can sort of break that down and unpack it. Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much. It was really fun. Cool. Well, thanks so much. And we'll be in touch. OK, bye-bye. Bye, Penny.
00:59:57
Speaker
You didn't think I'd let you get out of here without asking for a review on iTunes, did you? Come on now. You're the best. Also, you know, I've got a newsletter over at BrendanOmero.com. I send that out once a month, usually on the first of the month, with my reading list and the latest comings and goings from the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. You should definitely check it out.
01:00:20
Speaker
And just keep encouraging each other, and I'll see you right back here next time for the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Thanks.