Freakonomics Radio XX
[0] Over the past few episodes of Freakonomics Radio, we dug into the economics of live theater, and we followed one show on its long journey toward Broadway.
[1] In that series, we learned that live theater has become very expensive to produce, so ticket prices have also risen, and at the same time, attendance is falling.
[2] So, if fewer people are watching plays and musicals, what are they watching?
[3] a lot of them are watching documentary films.
[4] This explosion of documentary on streaming, the conviction that this was a popular art form and its full popularity was just waiting to happen, is what matters most.
[5] R .J. Cutler is an Emmy Award -winning filmmaker who has produced and or directed...
[6] dozens of documentaries.
[7] You may not know his name, but there's a good chance you've seen his work.
[8] Martha, his film about Martha Stewart, has been a big hit on Netflix.
[9] He recently made a film about the young pop star Billie Eilish called The World's A Little Blurry, and a film about the old pop star Elton John called Never Too Late.
[10] His 2009 film, The September Issue, shadowed Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour and her colleague and sometimes antagonist Grace Coddington.
[11] Cutler has also made a number of political documentaries like The World According to Dick Cheney and A Perfect Candidate about the failed Senate race of Oliver North and his first film, The War Room, which was about Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign.
[12] That one was nominated for an Academy Award.
[13] Cutler's most recent project is a docu -series on Apple TV Plus called Fight for Glory about the 2024 World Series.
[14] You may also recognize Cutler's name if...
[15] You are a regular Freakonomics Radio listener.
[16] A few months ago, we did a live show in Los Angeles that was supposed to be recorded for this podcast, but the theater failed to record the show, which was a shame because we had two great guests that night.
[17] One was the Hollywood super agent and entrepreneur Ari Emanuel, and the other was RJ Cutler.
[18] As for Ari, him we had interviewed a couple years ago in a studio, episode number 544, so you can hear that if you'd like.
[19] But RJ had never been on this show before, so we asked him to sit down in a studio and try again.
[20] Oh, you mean we taped this?
[21] Yes, we did tape it, you wiseass.
[22] Today on Freakonomics Radio, the filmmaker becomes the subject, and it starts now.
[23] This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.
[24] Hello, Stephen.
[25] Hello, RJ.
[26] Robert James.
[27] What is RJ?
[28] Jason.
[29] Robert Jason.
[30] RJ are such good initials.
[31] They are.
[32] You know, my mother insisted on naming me RJ.
[33] Named me Robert Jason so that she could call me RJ.
[34] That was her plan.
[35] Wouldn't let me change it.
[36] She passed away recently.
[37] One of the stories I recounted at her funeral was that when I was in eighth grade, there was a ninth grade girl from the other high school in town who I had a crush on.
[38] called me Rob, I came home one day and said, I'm changing my name to Rob.
[39] And my mother would not hear of it.
[40] She didn't even want to discuss it.
[41] Robert Jason Cutler grew up in Great Neck, New York, on Long Island.
[42] He loved sports and journalism.
[43] He started his own underground magazine.
[44] And he also loved theater.
[45] At Harvard, he studied dramatic theory.
[46] And one important lesson stayed with him.
[47] I can't...
[48] Remember the number of times a teacher said to me something like, you're gathering people in a theater.
[49] You've asked them to come and spend three hours of their lives with you.
[50] You better have something to say and you better damn well know what it is.
[51] After college, Cutler got work on some major theatrical productions, including the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods, assisting the playwright and director James Lapine.
[52] Cutler also directed a workshop of Jonathan Larson's first musical, Superbia, years before Larson wrote Rent.
[53] Even though I was a theater kid who was very committed to my career in the theater and pursued it, you know, with some real success into my late 20s, I always had in the back of my mind that I would end up making documentaries and I would speak to people about it.
[54] And it was such an odd thing.
[55] It's not a well -worn path.
[56] Talk me through the recent half -century life cycle of documentary film, including your mentors and heroes and this evolution of documentary generally.
[57] The essence of the American documentary movement, which comes of age in the early 1960s.
[58] in the hands of people like D .A. Pennebaker and Ricky Leacock and Alan David Maisels and Robert Drew and others, is that the technology has advanced to the point where you can carry a camera on your shoulder, have sync sound, and film people through their lives.
[59] This is an enormous breakthrough, and it allows people to make what are extraordinary films, films about...
[60] politics such as Crisis and Primary, which tells stories of the Kennedys and others who were running for office.
[61] Films like Don't Look Back about Bob Dylan and Give Me Shelter about the Rolling Stones.
[62] Soon thereafter, films like Harlan County, USA by Barbara Koppel, which is a film that had an enormous personal impact on me when I first saw it.
[63] All of these films, they have many things in common, but the biggest one is that they are made by people who have a conviction that this art form is as viable as scripted.
[64] filmmaking and that it has a place in cinema the same way that scripted filmmaking does.
[65] Documentaries are no longer just about education.
[66] They are fully cinema, fully narrative, fully character driven.
[67] And as I like to say, just like a real film.
[68] The idea was if Cary Grant and Robert Redford could be movie stars, why, too, couldn't the coal miners from Harlan County be movie stars?
[69] Why couldn't Mick Jagger be a movie star?
[70] And they were right.
[71] At what point did you become a believer in that thesis?
[72] I became a believer in that thesis without even knowing that I was being a believer.
[73] I became a believer when I saw these films as a...
[74] teenager and as a college student, most of all as a 17 -year -old seeing Harlan County, USA, by the way, on a TV set, a PBS screening on a rainy evening that I can remember as if it were yesterday, and being so mesmerized not only by the narrative and the filmmaking, but by the voice of the director off screen.
[75] Barbara Koppel in the middle of what was essentially a war zone, these battles between the local coal miners and the thugs who worked for the mining company who were threatening to kill them.
[76] And there she was in the middle of all of it.
[77] This was the film that made me think this is what I want to do.
[78] In 1992.
[79] Cutler had an idea for a documentary that would track that year's presidential campaign, including the rise of the young Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton.
[80] When I started with The War Room, you could count the number of career documentary filmmakers on two hands.
[81] Two of those filmmakers were the husband and wife team of D .A. Pennebaker and Chris Hedges.
[82] They liked Cutler's idea, and they took on the project as directors.
[83] Only the Clinton campaign gave them access.
[84] So the film focused on James Carville, the campaign's lead strategist, and George Stephanopoulos, its communications director.
[85] Even today, there are many memorable moments in the war room.
[86] This is the origin of It's the Economy, Stupid.
[87] One of my favorite moments is an emotional speech given by Carville to a room full of campaign workers when it's looking like their candidate will win.
[88] There's a simple doctrine outside of a person's love.
[89] The most sacred thing that they can give is their labor.
[90] Labor is a very precious thing that you have.
[91] The harder you work, the luckier you are.
[92] I was 33 years old before I ever went to Washington, New York.
[93] I was 42 before I ever won my first campaign.
[94] And I'm happy for all of y 'all.
[95] You've been part of something special in my life.
[96] Now, now, forget the job done.
[97] Thank you.
[98] The War Room premiered in 1993, and by documentary standards, it was a huge hit, grossing nearly a million dollars.
[99] Back then, most people who saw new movies still watched them in theaters.
[100] The biggest rental company was Blockbuster.
[101] A few years later, Netflix would emerge as a competitor.
[102] As the producer of The War Room, I would run into Ted Sarandos at film festivals, the head of Netflix, when Netflix was a red envelope company that was sending out DVDs.
[103] And every time I'd see him, he would tell me that The War Room was one of the most popular films that he was sending out.
[104] His membership loved documentaries, and The War Room was one of their favorite films.
[105] So when Netflix started to do original programming...
[106] With House of Cards, it was obvious to me that documentaries were going to soon follow.
[107] And what do you know?
[108] They soon followed.
[109] And now we have evidence.
[110] They have the data.
[111] They know how many people watch them.
[112] They know who watches them.
[113] They don't like to share the data, but they have it.
[114] They don't like to share it with the public.
[115] They share with some of us.
[116] And the numbers are good.
[117] On that point, let me ask you this.
[118] The story you just told me about Ted Sarandos and The War Room being so popular among the early subscribers of Netflix would suggest to me, but please tell me if I'm wrong, that lying out there sort of dormant or underserved this whole time, the last several decades, was a large audience for documentary films, but that the system, the filmmaking system, Hollywood and the theater system and so on.
[119] didn't pay as much attention to documentaries as to the standard fiction films.
[120] Do you think that was the case, that there was dormant demand out there that nobody ever knew?
[121] And that's why we're seeing so much demand now is simply there is a distribution technology that allows that demand to be satisfying?
[122] Well, every town with an art house was showing documentaries.
[123] October Films and Fineline Films, part of New Line, and Miramax, which became the Weinstein Company, and others were distributing documentaries.
[124] The War Room ran for months and months in the art houses.
[125] George Stephanopoulos was a matinee idol as a result.
[126] But the art house audience is smaller than the multiplex audience, and it always was and it always will be.
[127] Now the art house comes to you through the streaming services.
[128] So if you are someone who loves a documentary, those people now have a healthy menu of films to see.
[129] I've seen you describe yourself as a theater director who makes documentary films.
[130] I mean, it's now coming clear to me that that is...
[131] technically and literally true.
[132] But what does that mean?
[133] How does it manifest itself, do you think?
[134] I mean, this is the foundation of my training.
[135] Structurally, I think of narrative as Aristotle taught me to.
[136] I want the audience to have a rollicking good time at the theater.
[137] I want them to laugh and cry and stomp their feet.
[138] I'm thinking cinematically as well, but I'm also thinking in terms of character and obstacle and overcoming obstacle and the things we learn when we overcome obstacle.
[139] One of the things you look for when you're making a film is an inherent structure.
[140] There's nothing better than Election Day.
[141] There's nothing better than graduation.
[142] And if you're making a film about Billie Eilish, there's nothing better than the Grammys.
[143] But we didn't know that she was going to win however many Grammy Awards she won that night, and they were an armful.
[144] This was the 2020 Grammy Awards when Eilish won Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Best New Artist.
[145] She was 18 years old.
[146] Cutler had been embedded with Eilish and her family.
[147] Her older brother, Phineas, who's also her collaborator and producer.
[148] and their parents, Maggie and Patrick, who homeschooled the kids.
[149] I made this film at a time when I was probably a little out of love with documentary filmmaking.
[150] A little bit had lost the spark, and this film rekindled that spark in a huge way.
[151] How did you meet the Eilish family?
[152] I was invited to meet with them.
[153] They had seen the September issue.
[154] They had seen the War Room, I think.
[155] They were familiar with my work, and I was one of the people that they met with, and we instantly connected.
[156] So there were others they were interested in also?
[157] I don't really know the full details.
[158] When someone invites you to a party, you don't ask them who else is invited and you don't ask them why.
[159] In that case, I was thrilled to meet them and I was thrilled to work with them because it was very clear to me that there was a purely verite film to be made, a film that would tell the story of the coming period of their life.
[160] Billie, I think, was 16 at the time.
[161] She and Phineas were in the middle of writing When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We