EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Erin Lee Carr

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.

[1] I'm Dan Shepard.

[2] Sad news.

[3] Well, happy news, really.

[4] Minature mouse is on a little much -needed R &R vacation.

[5] Somewhere here in California, I don't even not quite know the location.

[6] Do you, Rob?

[7] It's near Palm Springs, but I think that might have changed.

[8] Okay, great.

[9] So somewhere in the Palm Springs area, Monica's hosting all of her pals from Atlanta, Georgia, and they're having a big blowout, which I'm so excited for her about.

[10] And, of course, I was in Michigan for some medical things for a friend.

[11] But I'm back.

[12] I'm so happy to be in the attic.

[13] Our guest today is Aaron Lee Carr.

[14] And she came to us circuitously, I think that's the word and how you say it.

[15] Through Lena Dunham, she suggested that we have her on.

[16] And what a great recommendation.

[17] And then as I learned about her, I realized I've seen all of her movies, just by coincidence.

[18] And I knew her dad.

[19] Right now on HBO, she has an incredible documentary about the female Olympic molesting scandal called At the Heart of Gold.

[20] that's currently on.

[21] You probably also saw her documentary that was incredible and it's now a TV show called Mommy Dead and Dearest about Moonschosen by proxy, which was super fascinating.

[22] And even more exciting, she gave us a link to her new documentary that's coming out called I Love You Now Die, the Commonwealth versus Michelle Carter, which is that very famous case everyone saw on the news about a gal who was texting a boy to kill himself.

[23] Rob, did you watch the link?

[24] I did.

[25] It was great.

[26] It's awesome.

[27] It's two parts, and it led to so many juicy debates.

[28] I cannot recommend it enough.

[29] Look for it on HBO coming soon.

[30] And then just on top of everything else, Aaron Lee Carr, what a fucking delight of a human being.

[31] So please enjoy Aaron Lee.

[32] Oh, before we go, there's still tickets available.

[33] They're going to go quick for Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago.

[34] If you're in Minneapolis, they're gone.

[35] And I'm sorry, and we're all very excited to come party in the Midwest.

[36] So go to our website, www.

[37] www .armchairexpertpod .com and follow a link and buy some tickets for Cleveland, Detroit, or Chicago at the end of June.

[38] All right.

[39] Love you.

[40] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and add free right now.

[41] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[42] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[43] Well, first of all, it's so fun to meet you.

[44] We both know Lena, Dunham.

[45] And she said, I really want you to interview my friend Aaron.

[46] She's wonderful.

[47] And I said, then let's do it.

[48] And then I knew that you did at the heart of gold, which I watched.

[49] And then I started reading about you.

[50] It was like, oh, my goodness, I know all about you because I read The Night of the Gun.

[51] Because your father, David Carr, was friends with Tom Arnd.

[52] Arnold back in Minnesota or Wisconsin or something.

[53] And so Tom was friends with him, recommended I read that book.

[54] I think it's my favorite drug memoir.

[55] Is that the genre it's called?

[56] That's one of them, yeah.

[57] Recovery genre, but like, you know, what the really bad stuff that happened.

[58] How do we account for our sort of book?

[59] Yes.

[60] And do you like those books in general?

[61] Absolutely.

[62] Yeah.

[63] Do you have favorites?

[64] I love Caroline Naps, drinking a love story.

[65] Ooh, I've never read that.

[66] It is just this incredibly weird, devastating story of a female journalist who was duly ambitious and addicted and, like, found herself between two relationships, like, a lot of infidelity, and then, like, you know, the toxicity of alcohol while being really ambitious as a journalist.

[67] And she's no longer with us.

[68] She died very early on in her life.

[69] But the book is...

[70] From the disease or other things?

[71] It was weirdly, like, very early cancer.

[72] Okay.

[73] But she also wrote a book about loving dogs.

[74] And, like, the dogs are this incredible primary relationship and, like, it taught her how to love.

[75] You guys are both.

[76] Can you make me look like Nora Jones?

[77] Like, I just, the dream boat.

[78] Don't we all want to look like Nora Jones?

[79] It's absurd.

[80] I know.

[81] Yeah.

[82] Be kind like her?

[83] I know.

[84] God damn it.

[85] It just sets the bar.

[86] I know.

[87] And let me just tell you, those photos do not actually do justice to what her presence is.

[88] Have you met her?

[89] No. I was like, oh, I think I'm head over heels in love with this person.

[90] just looking at her aura yeah it was very cap -fating um but anyways when i when i read that book i was pretty shocked with i'm used to hearing in a meeting things like that but there's there's a certain safety in that we've all done really despicable things we're ashamed of so for your father to have put that stuff out into public particularly the stuff concerning you and your sister what i i mean i just remember thinking, God, do I have that level of bravery?

[91] Could I own my mistakes to that degree?

[92] And what's your answer?

[93] I feel like I'm inching towards it on here.

[94] But boy, that's, I don't know, because I have two daughters.

[95] I define a lot of my self -esteem and my identity based on how good of a dad I am or I'm not on any given day.

[96] So yeah, that'd be a real hard one to cop too.

[97] Because in a nutshell for people who haven't read it, your dad was a cocaine addict.

[98] Yeah, a crack cocaine.

[99] He and your mother.

[100] and you guys arrived, you and your sister, your twin sister, and they were very active addicts.

[101] The thing I remember the most was, isn't there a story in there, but them going to a crack house, or maybe it was just your dad, and leaving you guys in the car in the middle of winter?

[102] So it's, yeah, it's the baby in the snowsuits.

[103] He basically, my mom was away, and he needed to get high.

[104] And he said he wasn't the sort of dad that would leave us at home alone.

[105] so he thought the best thing was to bring us with him in the car it's there's incredible moth where he like recounts this night it's a like a storytelling audio podcast and he goes into the crack house he's supposed to be there for five minutes it ends up being what could have been an hour to three hours and he goes back to the car and is like what if they're dead you know he checks if we're breathing in our associates oh it's his moment of reckoning because he knew that he said that god would not forgive that yeah how old how old were you guys i think it was eight months oh maybe it was very early on like don't bring us yeah don't bring us in the snowsuits leave us in the crib i don't when you're yeah look i've made decisions that in the in the cold harsh light of sobriety make zero logical sense but at the time they were like bulletproof okam's razor this is the simple as best approach to this problem that now defy all logic so man just just handling eight month old twins if you're dead sober and you had help would be too much you know you probably wouldn't even choose to involve them in an errand like go pick up the dry cleaning or something but you had to just man i can imagine going like nope no sweat i'm going to pull i will be in there a total of four minutes i'm going to grab the shit i'll come back home then everything's golden wow and the fact that he owned that now Now, you and I have in common that, so my dad also was an addict.

[106] Thank God he didn't have primary custody of us.

[107] Thank God my dad did.

[108] And he got sober.

[109] He died 30 years sober.

[110] How many years was your dad sober?

[111] Probably around three or four years.

[112] Three or four years.

[113] Boy, man. And also there's a point in the book.

[114] I just remember it being a great kind of cautionary tale.

[115] He had some long -term sobriety life was going fantastic right that he hosted a a dinner party and people had left little bits of alcohol in different glasses and he decided to combine them all into one glasses he was cleaning up and then he got to the sink to pour it down the sink and this is with some pretty long -term sobriety 14 years how many 14 14 and just said bottoms up and drank the weird fucking mix of every kind of alcohol that would be served at a party and i just write that on like oh god yeah that's an eye option for me still.

[116] Like just cleaning up and being like, fuck it.

[117] It's crazy.

[118] And it's what can you do to cushion yourself between you and the fuckets?

[119] You know, he just wasn't doing that anymore.

[120] Right.

[121] Yeah.

[122] I compare it to the tragic success of vaccine.

[123] Part of what they suffer from is how effective they are.

[124] So people don't see people with polio.

[125] And then they think, I don't, who's going to get polio?

[126] I'd rather not have that chemical in my kid.

[127] And it's like, yeah, because it worked and you don't know what polio looks like so it's like the better you get it gets kind of harder to remember maybe that you need to do all those things right yes well and success like what what does it mean when we sort of come across a modicum of success that we begin to feel special or like you don't want to sit in the room with everyone who's mentally ill even though every room that we're in is probably filled with mental illness i mean i just think that for when i asked him you know about his relapses It really was like, I just, I started to believe I was special and that I had fixed it and that it was a crack problem.

[128] It wasn't an alcohol problem.

[129] If you look at him diagnostically, it definitely was an alcohol problem.

[130] But I think that what we need to examine is like relapse is a part of recovery.

[131] And there's this total weird thing that happens.

[132] Like, he relapse, you know, and you shake your head and it's, you know, and you're in the naughty chair for a while and you have to raise your hand.

[133] It's like, yeah, we're alcoholics.

[134] Yeah.

[135] We're going to drink again unless we don't.

[136] Yeah.

[137] It's the most kind of predictable thing probably that we'll do.

[138] The thing I don't like about this whole, you know, continuous sobriety is it discounts the fact that someone who may be relapsed 10 times over the course of 20 years, but ultimately was sober for 19 of 20 years, that's a huge win for an addict.

[139] Even if there was relapses in there and whatnot, it's still a huge win and a huge victory.

[140] And you can't only evaluate it by how much continuous sobriety there was, yeah?

[141] Absolutely.

[142] Okay, so you, I do wonder how many parallels we have, because your dad was charismatic.

[143] I met him before.

[144] He was interesting, charismatic, a good talker.

[145] My dad was a car salesman.

[146] He was the ultimate good talker.

[147] He was universally loved in AA.

[148] Like everybody in AA loved.

[149] People would come up to me like, I just, I can't imagine having your dad as a dad.

[150] And I got a little resentful about that personally.

[151] Is there any baggage that comes with having a dad who's, like known for having written this book and and he owned a lot of stuff but I bet he didn't own some stuff you would have liked to own or did that not happen?

[152] I mean, there was a small amount of narcissism that persisted in his personality where I was an audience member.

[153] I was one of somebody that, you know, I would be calling him and it would kind of, you know, he wanted to talk about meeting you or, you know, the story that he wrote.

[154] And it was just like being his child that was sort of secondary.

[155] I was somebody that could take in and understand and speak his language.

[156] But I was listening.

[157] Right.

[158] And so I think that there was resentment in that.

[159] But I also, if you ever, if you ever read or look at an interview with him, like he's so smart that I was genuinely learning every conversation we had.

[160] So the resentment would dissipate when I was like, oh, this is an education and craft or how to talk to people or how to get to the story and sort of like thinking about that.

[161] And now that he's not here, I'm so proud of being his.

[162] kid.

[163] I want to continue talking about him because I'm so proud of him.

[164] I'm so proud of the Night of the Gun his book.

[165] It's epic and devastating and traumatic and like there's almost nothing like it.

[166] It's 400 pages.

[167] It's really, really well written on top of everything else, like the most brutal honesty I've heard, mixed with just great writing.

[168] He had a way of tapping into universals that I think that not everybody can really do.

[169] Now, did you have any periods of estrangement from him or you always see because my story was I was resentful towards him I then got sober that kind of helped us but I still was carrying a lot of stuff everything I hate about myself is what I hated about him and then he got diagnosed with cancer and then we spent a lot of time together at the end and it was incredibly cathartic and healing and wonderful and I just wondered if you had any of that similar journey yeah I think that you're being able to like see the conflict and see the things in yourself that you didn't like about him, but also forgiving him, that's rare.

[170] I think that a lot of people aren't, like, they just let the resentment build and there's no forgiveness.

[171] I mean, I don't, my dad was my primary parent, and so I don't, even if I got angry at him, I didn't always have, like, a place to stand.

[172] Sure.

[173] Well, ultimately, he did do the work, right?

[174] He raised you.

[175] Right.

[176] Yeah.

[177] So that's relevant.

[178] When you're reading the book, can you, remove yourself when you're reading it I would feel like it'd be so hard as a character in that story it's so personal it's it's mainly about him though so it's um I you know they're they're developing it for FX Bob Odenkirk and I bet about him playing my dad and they're trying to do it and so I reread it after he died and it was kind of just like hearing his voice yeah his language in the way that he construct sentences is sort of like deadwood meets don quixote it's like very it's it's it's not a way that my brain works and like I literally just wrote a book and I was like it can be nothing like this this is so well you know well written um but I don't know like I don't yeah I guess I don't see myself as the baby in the snowsuit I see myself as somebody who's listening to my dad um I think it's so cool what parenting does to people like yeah like you with your daughters and like you you change little by little and all of a sudden, like, you are there for someone else.

[179] Well, and you start becoming aware.

[180] And now that I have kids, I can see in their eyes, I'm not a human being, which is fine.

[181] I can accept it.

[182] Yeah.

[183] But yeah, I just, I realize like, no, I'm not like other people for them.

[184] I'm supposed to be perfect.

[185] And I shouldn't have, I shouldn't be tired and I shouldn't have any of these things because I'm actually in a third category, which is I'm not a human.

[186] Yeah, dad.

[187] Dad.

[188] I want something from you.

[189] Get it for me now.

[190] Yes.

[191] And my expectation is you'll be perfect as I wanted, expected my dad to be.

[192] Okay.

[193] You grew up in Minnesota and you ultimately went to University of Wisconsin, Madison, and you studied communication.

[194] What kind of romantic fantasies did you have for your life?

[195] Is your current position unexpected or is this where you were aiming?

[196] I really wanted to be a film critic.

[197] I was obsessed with watching.

[198] I was obsessed with watching movies and thinking about them.

[199] And I remember I had like all these entertainment weeklies, like papering my walls.

[200] I was obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[201] Oh, like like just every episode, 10 times knew the dialogue, went to the conventions, had the stake, you know, really just like sexy stuff.

[202] Wait, wait, you went to the conventions.

[203] Oh, good for you.

[204] Did you ever meet like a boy there or a girl girl that you were like?

[205] No, no one was interesting.

[206] Oh, wow.

[207] Yeah, I imagine like I have a. fantasy that that's where like people would fall in love like you find like wait you like you like buffy too like I imagine that would just be a real shortcut yeah yeah yeah it was great David Boreannas was my first celebrity crush I mean I have like pictures of him with his shirt off and my love like just like you guys are six months apart by the way just to cue you in August 87 April 88.

[208] Do you know Gillian Flynn, who she is?

[209] You guys have a similar thing because her father taught film at college and then she was kind of obsessed with that stuff too and then it became her.

[210] She asked for a copy of Mommy Dendaris, my film about Munchausen while she was, I think, like, writing on.

[211] Oh, sharp objects.

[212] Sharp objects, yeah.

[213] Oh, is that flattering as all hell?

[214] Deeply.

[215] Yeah.

[216] A babe, as smart and cool as that, looking at my work in the process of creative discovery.

[217] I mean, it really doesn't get better.

[218] That's awesome.

[219] But it's just like, I wanted to be a film critic, and my dad was like, hey, there's six of those jobs.

[220] Right, right, right, right.

[221] You have to be a really good writer, and they're men.

[222] Uh -huh.

[223] And he wasn't ever discouraging me in a sexist, weird way.

[224] He thought I could do whatever.

[225] He's wanting to know what the playing field was.

[226] Yeah.

[227] I think it really helps to have realists around us figuring that kind of stuff out.

[228] Because, like, you know, getting very deep into getting my PhD in Buffy studies, we would, I I don't know if I'd be sitting here, you know what I mean?

[229] You know, like, oh, you'd be sitting in another attic, probably.

[230] Yeah, my own, like my hair falling out.

[231] A basement of some sort.

[232] You know where it gets crazy complicated, or at least I'm forecasting into the future that it's going to get crazy complicated.

[233] I want my daughters to dress however the fuck they want, and I want them to party if they want a party, and I want them to do whatever they want to do.

[234] I also feel inclined to tell them, read Missoula, Crack Hauer's book on Rae.

[235] You'll be hard pressed to find a sober girl in that situation or a sober guy.

[236] So just know like the rate at the heart of gold.

[237] Oh, those young girls were sober.

[238] There was not any of element of that's my film about sex abuse and USA gymnastics.

[239] I mean, that's a trusted position.

[240] There are predators everywhere.

[241] That's true.

[242] That's true.

[243] Tagline for my life.

[244] It is.

[245] And I feel an obligation to let them know what the reality of the world is, which is.

[246] So I watched, I'm going to jump ahead for one second, but I want to really dig into a heart of goal because I loved it so much.

[247] I'm a, you know, survivor of molestation.

[248] It gave me nightmares last night, so bad, had nightmares all night long.

[249] I'm sorry.

[250] It's okay.

[251] And I talk about it all the time.

[252] And I like to think that I've processed a ton of it.

[253] I woke up this morning, I'm like, no. In preparation to talking to you, not only did I watch Hardigo, but I also decided to listen to This American Life.

[254] Have you heard that episode about the kid who realized?

[255] realizes he is attracted only to children and he doesn't really know what to do.

[256] Tart and feathered.

[257] Tard and feathered.

[258] Right.

[259] I've listened to that three times.

[260] It's incredible.

[261] And it's really relevant for me to keep in the discussion when I see something like Heart of Gold because I want to kill the guy.

[262] I want to kill the guy.

[263] I want to kill the guy in public.

[264] I want to be the dad who wanted to kick his ass in the courtroom.

[265] That's my nature.

[266] And then I also have a little voice in my head saying no one went to the store and picked out you know what I want my sexual preference to be children nobody would pick that also I don't have to talk myself out of molesting kids what a fucking horrendous way to go through life I just look at your documentary I'm like everyone is a victim of this whole thing but but people put themselves in positions of powers where they have access to children that is a choice yes our sexual preference and proclivity is obviously not a choice but the intense research and the ability of Larry Nassar to make sure that his life was designed to have access to children all the time, that's what makes him totally unforgivable.

[267] I mean, one of the most prolific pedophiles of our time.

[268] Yes, it's completely unforgivable.

[269] I completely agree.

[270] And then in that tar and feathered, they give a statistic that is maybe one to three percent of males are pedophiles that's between one in three million people that that's terrifying and again i feel obligated to let my kids know just so you know there's a few million of them potentially it's all very tricky and dicey let's rewind so you wanted to review movies so when you went to the university of wisconsin it was that what you were actively in pursuit of really specialized in drinking beer.

[271] Oh, you did.

[272] And another common element.

[273] Yes.

[274] Now, I had this really honest relationship with my mom.

[275] And I said to her at a certain point, I'm going to drink.

[276] I want to be honest with you.

[277] I realize dad's an alcoholic and so are all my uncles, but it's an experiment.

[278] I have to try.

[279] I can't leave planet Earth and not find out if I am or I'm not.

[280] And she's like, I'm really scared for you, but I understand that you need to do it.

[281] What was your process of going, I'm going to try this despite knowing what I know about my dad.

[282] The moment I drank alcohol, it felt like magic.

[283] I just couldn't.

[284] I drank to a blackout at every instance without any awareness of what came before me. I don't know.

[285] I just like, it was like to have access to like turn your brain off, like and to have alcohol was so worth it.

[286] Yeah.

[287] And I didn't care if I had blackouts or like some people, other people didn't drink like I did.

[288] If I got to experience that warmth that would start.

[289] start to coat your body and it just like and the first time I did cocaine I talk about in the book like it felt like my DNA had been completed and I was like oh wait it literally has like that I was born with my parents like you know doing drugs in the delivery room like you know like there's a part of my DNA that where drugs and alcohol it just is at such a close contact so it would make total sense but but did you when you first started experimenting with it did you have any sense that oh I got to be careful knowing what my dad, or did you, did you never have that kind of fear of it?

[290] I mean, I don't want to come across as a real dummy, but I mean, I just like, I think like when you're 17, like, do you distance yourself from like who your parents are?

[291] And you're like, that's them problem.

[292] I'm my own person.

[293] I mean, where my mother was deeply addicted to pills.

[294] And so I never took any pills.

[295] Like, I was able to not do that.

[296] But when it came to alcohol, I wasn't able to make that sort of educated decision.

[297] It's also everywhere at college.

[298] You have to be a special 17 -year -old to say, I'm avoiding this.

[299] Oh, I got sober for a senior year, and I went to all those parties and tried to hit on girls sober and all that stuff.

[300] And it was fucking brutal.

[301] It's not going to work.

[302] Girlhood and boyhood and alcohol mix as a matter of course.

[303] And so it's sort of despite having generational proclivities, like you're going to gravitate towards it.

[304] But also there's like there is a genetic.

[305] component to this.

[306] Yes.

[307] And I think that it takes someone like, yeah, like, I think it's so rare to be able to like look at that and be like, nope, not going to be me and I'll stay away from it.

[308] But I also think like your sobriety made you who you are today.

[309] And like, that's a good thing.

[310] Oh, yeah.

[311] And I think that in order to get sober, you need to have alcoholism.

[312] So like, where does that?

[313] Oh, yeah.

[314] I'm ultimately very grateful for the whole experience at this point.

[315] I don't, I don't wish I had not gone down that road.

[316] There are a few incidents.

[317] I wish didn't occur.

[318] But in general, I'm glad I did everything I didn't end up.

[319] Here, do you feel that way?

[320] Yeah, I think sobriety is a superpower.

[321] The most prolific people I know are honestly sober because when at night, they're thinking, they're present, they're working, they're connecting the dots and not saying anything against non -sober people.

[322] But like, people turn off after 7 p .m. It's like, okay, you know, boop -bo -doop.

[323] And, you know, I think that even if people try brief.

[324] periods of sobriety like everybody makes fun of like dry january but like you know see what happens when we put when you put down substances even if you don't have problems i think you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish yeah brine brown has a good point about that it's like yes it does um it it lops off uh certain anxieties and things but it also lops off the the counter to that as well joy and presence and all these things please join our cult Yeah.

[325] Come on.

[326] It's like, I'm just like a PSA.

[327] Okay.

[328] So while you were at school, I guess when you went to Vice, because when you got out of college, you went to Vice on an internship.

[329] And at that time, were you still imagining that you were going to be a journalist of the written variety?

[330] No, I mean, I went there looking to be in their video department.

[331] I saw that, you know, what they were doing with videos and journalism and telling stories was one of the new ways of doing.

[332] it.

[333] I wanted to be a part of that.

[334] Right.

[335] And you were a fan of vice, I'm sure.

[336] Yeah, it's very exciting and scary and wonderful.

[337] Especially in 2009.

[338] I mean, you know, I started working there in 2010.

[339] I mean, they were on the up later.

[340] There was, you know, there was just this sort of cool factor they were able to tap into without any of the sort of, you know, now it's sort of a little bit seen as more douchey.

[341] But, you know, I think it just.

[342] One of the founders really went sideways, right?

[343] Is it one of the guys a white nationalist now?

[344] So Gavin McGinnis, who they cut ties with pretty early on because he was espousing pretty anti -Semitic beliefs.

[345] And yes, he is a white national.

[346] And often gets left out of the story.

[347] The proud boys or something?

[348] Is that the name of his group?

[349] The proud boys or something?

[350] You would know.

[351] I don't know.

[352] Yeah.

[353] He's a spokesperson.

[354] You would know if you're a white national.

[355] I mean, you're the white man in the room.

[356] That's true.

[357] That's true.

[358] That's true.

[359] Just making like inferences.

[360] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[361] I've seen almost all of your work just by accident.

[362] I love documentaries.

[363] I saw a click print gun, the inside story of the 3D printed gun movement.

[364] You did that while you were at Vice still, right?

[365] Right.

[366] Some guy figured out how to print a plastic gun with a 3D printer, and he felt like everyone should do that.

[367] Now, were you at that point just being assigned things, or were you able to kind of pick what you were going to do a documentary about?

[368] I've always had a fair amount of agency and been able to pick what I wanted to do.

[369] And I think that one of the skill sets I bring is convincing people to let me do what I want to do without any sort of oversight.

[370] Right.

[371] So you're a good saleswoman.

[372] It's a good skill.

[373] So you're quoted as saying you're interested in the weirdos on the internet.

[374] You know, I love thinking about virality and story and what is the thing that you are going to click on.

[375] Like I want to make things that are interesting, that are psychological thrillers.

[376] but are not hard to watch.

[377] A lot of people have been telling me at the heart of gold is really hard to watch.

[378] But now my sort of my spectrum of what's hard to watch is so skewed because I've been making things for so long that are about disturbing things.

[379] But I just think that, you know, Reddit and Twitter and these platforms, they guide you in what is viral.

[380] And so documentaries, we're having this incredible age where people want information and documentaries and podcasts and TV shows where it's just, it's so informational, It's also fun.

[381] And so a lot of my films are psychological renderings of complicated people because I grew up with a complicated person.

[382] We are not equal to our best or worst action.

[383] And so what does that mean as it intersects with crime?

[384] And so that's like always been a driving influence.

[385] And my dad, who was my mentor and, you know, celebrated New York Times journalists.

[386] He said, get a beat.

[387] Get really good at it.

[388] And then people will contact you to do that.

[389] And so you look at my films, Thought Crimes, which is about the Cannibal Cop, Mommy Dendaris, which is about Gypsy Rose, Michelle Carter that's coming out in a couple months on HBO, about Michelle Carter, the woman who texted her boyfriend to kill himself.

[390] Oh, yes.

[391] It creates outrage.

[392] And so I want to show all the elements of the story.

[393] One of my proclivities that my wife points out, and it disturbs her a bit, is I'm obsessed with Pablo Escobar, Putin.

[394] I'm obsessed with people whose will is undeniable.

[395] Like, forget, just take aside the morals of it.

[396] This guy, Pablo Escobar, growing up in a fucking favela in Medellin, becoming the eighth richest man in the world, I'm just intoxicated by that.

[397] Like that someone could decide, I don't give a fuck, and I'm going to capture power and wealth and all these things through hell or high water.

[398] I don't know why I'm so.

[399] drawn to that you love a rise and fall but we all love the rise because it's who we see ourselves as being like how can we take notes what is something that set that little boy apart from the others and like how can we apply that to our lives right without making the mistakes of the falling because like he does not go well for him ultimately no uh but but you can't just putin hopefully please i don't welcome you told tvd i mean you just look at pictures of putin and it's just spellbinding.

[400] I mean, we're very similar.

[401] It's like, how do people assemble power?

[402] Yes.

[403] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[404] What's up, guys?

[405] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good, and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

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[420] And you can't just say, like in Pablo Escobar's case, you can't just say it's brutality, like that he had a, you know, unbridled brutality that allowed him to rise to power, because many people are brutal and in sociopathic and all this.

[421] So there's other stuff going on that I find to be really fascinating.

[422] Well, it's a cult of personality.

[423] Yeah.

[424] Demi -God status.

[425] Like, you know, how do you set yourself apart?

[426] And like, some of that is through charm.

[427] Well, yeah.

[428] And also, again, both Pablo and Pablo is 5 -8, and he was pudgy, and he was a pothead.

[429] It's not the American president archetype.

[430] Putin, too.

[431] He's got a weird face, but it draws you in.

[432] I have an office that I go to where there's a picture up of Putin on the wall.

[433] Shirtless on horseback?

[434] Which one is it?

[435] It's a headshot.

[436] Oh, it's a head shot.

[437] But basically, it looks like he's watching you.

[438] At all times.

[439] At all times.

[440] And so it's like keep working.

[441] Right, right.

[442] Oh, that's great.

[443] It's not my office, to be clear.

[444] I have pictures, I have Sam B up in my, because I think it's good to have pictures of powerful women surrounding you.

[445] Just like Great Danes, you know.

[446] That's a powerful woman dog.

[447] And so I am not at all drawing a parallel between women and dogs.

[448] Like, it's just, that's what was in front of me. Sure, sure, sure.

[449] But yeah.

[450] We're staring at a picture of a Great Dane for the listeners.

[451] But also they have power, these people.

[452] They have power, but they also have control.

[453] They have ultimate control.

[454] There you go.

[455] That's what you're always seeking.

[456] And so when you see that in people, it's attractive or interesting at the very least.

[457] Great observation.

[458] You're dead right.

[459] Like presumably, yeah, Pablo Escobar had complete control of his surroundings.

[460] He had fucking exotic animals.

[461] He had off -road vehicles.

[462] He had, you know, like he had this compound and he had airplanes.

[463] He could fly anywhere.

[464] Yeah.

[465] It seemed as if he was even more powerful than a dictator in many ways.

[466] Okay, so you were at Vice for three years.

[467] And you did a lot of great stuff.

[468] You produced spaced out, which was a look at space and the people who were obsessed with it.

[469] And I think there's how many installments of that were there?

[470] No idea.

[471] Okay.

[472] I want to say there was like 12 or something.

[473] I'll look it up.

[474] It feels like a different life ago.

[475] I don't know.

[476] And then you did click print gun in 2013.

[477] So six years.

[478] So you would have been 25 when you did that.

[479] So fucking impressive.

[480] And that got a ton of views and press and whatnot.

[481] You have 12 million people watch that.

[482] And does that becomes a pretty watershed moment for you career -wise?

[483] Yeah.

[484] I mean, I was making no money advice.

[485] And suddenly I had this hit on my hands.

[486] And it was my voiceover.

[487] I insisted on having my own voice in it.

[488] And I was like, all right, how can I leverage this and get some money?

[489] Yeah, monetize this bastard.

[490] So I went to a company that poached me and it's the verge.

[491] And they were, you know, ready to pay me like an adult woman.

[492] And I was like, let's do this.

[493] And due to my alcoholism and probably pressure to run.

[494] the show my way because I'm a director and you know just within four months I was cut I was fired and they were just like absolutely not we are not interested because you had a lot of opinions like too many opinions I mean I broke a camera on on a shoot you know it was a technology company that was making great beautiful stylish videos about iPhones you know and they fired me and I just didn't know what to do because I wanted to be a part of media but I didn't go back to vice because I had just like I had left in this fiery sort of fuck you and I was like I'm making money bitches they're like yeah good luck with that and a guy literally said to me you were gonna fail and I'm gonna laugh at you and I just I kind of like took that in those moments in time where people really attack you and I was vulnerable but he was right I was fired within four months and so I didn't really know what to do next were you having at all any fits of megalomania didn't After making something so successful and then leaving and going to the next place, was your ego hard to bridle at that moment?

[495] I don't think it was ego.

[496] I was still somebody that was eager to learn from others.

[497] I was really well mentored.

[498] I do think it was alcoholism.

[499] I just could not control drinking at night.

[500] And so it's really hard to be productive member of the team if your brain isn't working at night.

[501] And so then that would factor into the next day when I would be hung over.

[502] And so I actually really like respect and credit the company for like letting me go pretty quickly.

[503] At the time, I was so embarrassed.

[504] Like, I don't know if there of you guys have ever been fired.

[505] But, like, it feels like, yeah.

[506] Oh, yeah.

[507] Even if you don't want the job, it's just the actual, like, we don't need you.

[508] We break up with you.

[509] I mean, it's complete rejection.

[510] And it intersects with your financial security, which activates your safety.

[511] Like, am I going to be okay?

[512] I'm going to be okay.

[513] And so I write about this in the book, all that you leave behind, which is about my dad, and about figuring stories out and things like that.

[514] And I was fired and I was so humiliated and so embarrassed.

[515] And I was like, I'm not going to work again.

[516] And the next day, my dad had a habit of sending me incredible emails.

[517] And he said, we will prove them wrong.

[518] That's sweet.

[519] And he just said, you're going to be okay.

[520] And then two months later, I was in a room with Sheila Nevins, who's the head of HBO docs at the time, you know, pitching features.

[521] So really quick, though, how did your dad respond?

[522] Your dad must have smelled that you were struggling with alcohol.

[523] And what was his approach to that?

[524] I think he could only offer advice if I asked for it.

[525] Right.

[526] And he, you know, he could be a role model regarding sobriety, but, you know, I think he believed in the secret society response.

[527] Like, you can just provide access to meetings, you know, if the person asks.

[528] So he really, like he, he stopped inviting me to media events.

[529] Uh -huh.

[530] Like, he's like, no, thank you.

[531] Uh -huh.

[532] You know, because I, like, went to a gawker party with him and got slam -fisted.

[533] And he was like, this is not an excuse for you to get drunk and embarrass me. Right.

[534] Like, what are you doing?

[535] Yeah.

[536] You know, so I think.

[537] So he had some boundaries.

[538] He had good boundaries.

[539] He said, I don't welcome your drunkenness in my life.

[540] But for the most part, it really took for me finally, like, having my own.

[541] moment of reckoning and calling him and saying, I need to stop drinking.

[542] And then he did, you know, 12 -step name.

[543] Right.

[544] So similarly, my dad had this very healthy kind of non -codependent way of watching me go through it all.

[545] And he just, I think, was like, oh, yeah, he's on a path.

[546] And I know where it ends.

[547] And when it ends, he'll call me and I'll be there.

[548] And he's seemingly was so peaceful about that.

[549] And I aspire to that if my children ever struggle with it.

[550] Because that's really, if you're an addict, do you know, like, he's not going to say some magic words to you that are going to make you want sobriety, right?

[551] Yeah, I mean, he, I had gotten really drunk at a friend's engagement party and hit on both the groom to be and the bride to be, you know, like, if you're going to see pictures of me, you're going to be like, wow, that's nice stuff.

[552] And I got disinvited from the wedding, because it was an engagement party.

[553] Oh, boy.

[554] And I got the most brutal email in my inbox.

[555] when I asked where my invite was.

[556] And I called my dad and I was like, so I'm having a problem.

[557] I am, you know, fired and I'm losing friends quickly.

[558] So what's the deal here?

[559] Do I give up alcohol for a week?

[560] And he's like, yeah, a month for your life.

[561] Let's like, let's hurry this up.

[562] So I said, I'm going to give it up for a week.

[563] He said, you know, you're going to do it for a month.

[564] And we're going to see if your life gets better.

[565] Oh.

[566] And drop me off at a couple of meetings and introduced me to some women.

[567] and just start this and see how it goes.

[568] Yeah, and you liked it.

[569] That's incredible.

[570] Okay, so shortly thereafter you get fired, you do end up with a home at HBO.

[571] Is that the most thrilling moment professionally?

[572] So I'm a freelancer, like a really deeply proud freelancer, and Sheila Nevins agreed to give me a small development deal when I was 25, which would end up becoming thought crimes.

[573] But it wasn't like when the development deal and the moment, movie was greenlit.

[574] It was like, now I had to do the thing.

[575] I had to make the thing.

[576] And so while there was a huge amount of excitement, and I've talked to people, like, oh, you're pinching HBO.

[577] Like, it creates this jealousy and intensity with other people.

[578] Sure.

[579] But I had to perform.

[580] I had to do it.

[581] Couldn't wrestle in the laurels of it.

[582] So I spent, I made my first feature thought crimes in six months.

[583] And because I just, I had to, I had to the cannibal cop, which is this guy, that was convicted of conspiring to kidnap, rape, torture, and eat young women.

[584] He was being held at a federal penitentiary.

[585] I would go visit him trying to get a camera in.

[586] And then a judge overturned the conviction.

[587] And he was set free.

[588] And he was just like, you know, he, all of these networks were vying for his exclusive.

[589] He was like, you know, the prettiest girl at the ball.

[590] Sure.

[591] And I was like, don't forget about me. Yeah.

[592] And he was like, oh, God.

[593] And so I had this development deal.

[594] and I knew I needed to get an interview with him and that I had to forbid him from speaking with any other networks and they were probably going to offer him money so I was like okay how do I do this so I call him and I say I need to interview you at your mom's house and he says you know what I'm not able to do that I really want to consider my options you know he turns me down so I call my dad and he's like go over there now go just show up so I show up there with the camera And I say, you know, I'm really sorry to do this, but we need to sit down for an interview now.

[595] Yeah.

[596] And so we get it and that ends up being what turns into the feature.

[597] Okay, really quick.

[598] Yeah.

[599] What's your anxiety level walking up the porch?

[600] Are you actually, like, because it could go either way.

[601] Yeah, I mean, it'd be scary to do this to any person, like walk up and say, demand something, let alone a scary person.

[602] Well, and he was a cop for a long time.

[603] And so he's presumably there's weapons in the house.

[604] Yeah.

[605] Well, it's like I think how I was raised was to move towards fear.

[606] And I had a note card at my desk and do something that makes you nervous every day.

[607] Uh -huh.

[608] And so this was a prime example, but this is what separates, you know, the boys from the men.

[609] Yeah.

[610] And so going up there, like, I was drenched in sweat, but I knew it was going to get me to where I needed to go in order to make the movie.

[611] And so I just sort of like, it just did it and got the interview.

[612] And then you have to get someone signed what's called an exclusivity agreement.

[613] And so he did this really weird thing where he said, I will do it if you watch a movie with me. Ooh.

[614] Oh, wow.

[615] Monica's making a face right now.

[616] Horrified.

[617] Big red fly.

[618] So, like, I was like, hmm, what?

[619] So he wanted to watch an HBO documentary film.

[620] Okay.

[621] And on, you know, sitting.

[622] And I just like, I'm as.

[623] honest as possible in these moments because I did watch a movie with him because I was like okay like he's not going to touch me it's going to be fine I don't know why I'm talking about this there's a really weird thing when you're trying to be a journalist and get a story and that seems like a normal line but talking to you guys about it it's not you felt like it was a normal ask when he asked no I knew that I needed like he was going to sign the ex It was not a pay -for -play.

[624] Like, I wasn't obviously offering anymore.

[625] You know, but I was like, okay, like, he, there's a genuine, like, he wants to watch an HBO film.

[626] I'm making an HBO film.

[627] We're going to talk about it.

[628] But as I left that small place in Queens, and he listens to everything I do.

[629] So, like, he'll be very mad.

[630] Like, Gil, you know you did this.

[631] Like, don't lie about it.

[632] Don't fucking, Gil, Gil.

[633] He thought we were going to be together.

[634] Oh, okay.

[635] Oh, wow.

[636] Yeah.

[637] Now, let me ask you that.

[638] It's so fascinating.

[639] It's hard to imagine talking about this knowing the person might listen.

[640] So I recognize the stakes here.

[641] But let me ask you something.

[642] While you were making the documentary, you must have been cognizant on some level that he did think that.

[643] Right.

[644] And that is obviously great leverage to have.

[645] And then is there any kind of ethical dilemma?

[646] Because there'd be none for me, but I wonder if there would be for you.

[647] You know, we reached a point of it where it was really uncomfortable.

[648] where...

[649] Mid -coitus.

[650] Oh, God.

[651] If anyone sees a picture of me and him, they're like, please, Doc, don't make me think about that.

[652] You know, he basically saw my camera guy leave the room and went over and started rubbing my shoulders.

[653] And I said, Gil, you're not allowed to do that.

[654] And he said, don't worry, I touch my dog like that.

[655] And so I immediately left, I called my dad, and I said, this is what happened.

[656] He said, okay, I'm going to get you on the phone with a couple of journalists, and we're going to talk about like source relationships and how to manage it at this unique pressure point because he's like I'm six foot I've never been intimidated by a source like I don't know how to really guide you in this moment because I want you to be successful but I want you to have boundaries yeah and so he put me on a phoneer with someone from the times and then actually Andrew Jareki who was making a oh the jinks the jinks yes and it had to talk about a blurry relationship yeah oh wow and so Andrew just gave me Great advice.

[657] He did.

[658] Yeah.

[659] Because when I hear this story, my mind goes to counter espionage.

[660] Like, people that were in the CIA during the Cold War, male and female, like, they fucked people.

[661] There was like a greater objective on the table.

[662] The Americans.

[663] The Americans.

[664] Yeah.

[665] The Russians fucked a lot if you believe that show.

[666] But that's where my mind goes is, you know, there's only a handful of jobs where this would be, you know, kind of relevant.

[667] Relevant, yeah.

[668] Can you share what he told you the advice?

[669] It was basically don't answer his phone calls after nine, you know, have people around you when you guys are filming and be up front with him about what the film is going to be like.

[670] Right.

[671] And ultimately, the film, I think, is incredibly true to the story and representative of, you know, Gil as a complicated figure that I don't think he should be in jail, but I do think he has boundary problems.

[672] I mean, he was, you know, he was talking about beheading his wife and, like, having somebody fuck the corpse.

[673] I mean, this was not, like, you know, normal stuff.

[674] I always bring this kind of stuff up.

[675] Yeah, that's good.

[676] And so he just was like, you know, you need to figure out where the boundaries are and have, like, his parole, have, like, have the numbers in your phone if you need to use them.

[677] Right.

[678] And so, you know, Gil ended up hating the movie.

[679] Oh, he did.

[680] Hated it with a fiery passion.

[681] Felt betrayed?

[682] Yeah, and, like, really sort of, like, would text me very disturbing things.

[683] And I was like, dude, you just got out of jail.

[684] Like, let's be careful about the texting.

[685] Like, you know, and FYI, I was fair to you.

[686] And, like, name me one incorrect thing that was in that film.

[687] Yeah.

[688] So I think that it was a really weird foray into making features about complicated people.

[689] And, like, you'll notice I've never made a film about a man since.

[690] Oh, interesting.

[691] Like, I only deal with women because, like, I find women to be really rational and, like, can deal with the complicated nature of their selves in a way that I think, you know, Dax's not included.

[692] Like, men have this weird block.

[693] You can include me. Like, it's harder.

[694] It is.

[695] It is.

[696] Yeah.

[697] It is.

[698] Now, do you think that on any level, you need to employ what, say, actors do?

[699] Like, if an actor were to play a serial killer, they, they, they, they.

[700] can't approach it like I'm playing a monster or it'll be one dimensional.

[701] So they have to find a way to love, empathize, sympathize, care about the character they're playing because every person does care about themselves, right?

[702] So it's this weird mental gymnastics, I guess.

[703] And when you're making a movie, is there any part of you that has to force yourself to be extra compassionate, maybe in a way that you wouldn't be as just an observer of the story?

[704] That's a great question.

[705] Yeah, I think that Every film and every subject guides me and how I behave, like, during the process.

[706] Like, you know, interacting with sex abuse survivors in such an intense way, it was really giving the power over to them and saying, like, what do you want to talk about?

[707] You know, how can we, how can we talk about this in a way that you're not retrigured or re -victimized?

[708] So sensitivity, lots of eye contact, keeping the crew really small.

[709] you know there is just very targeted decisions and so in working with like mommy dead and dearest like i wanted there to be playfulness with that because we're talking about someone who had their mom murdered but there's also this element of fantasy with gypsy rose and like i wanted the movie to have laugh lines and you know you just meet the sort of cast of characters who are real life people and like gypsy's grandpa came up to me and kissed me on the mouth and i was just like boop And then they, you know, like, they talked about, like, D .D.'s ashes being flushed down the toilet.

[710] And I was like, don't laugh.

[711] Don't laugh.

[712] Like, we're just, like, sitting in this room.

[713] So I think that every film has been almost like a split personality.

[714] Like, I'm a different person when I start it and when I end it.

[715] Yeah.

[716] And what are the lessons that I can bring to the next films in terms of radical empathy?

[717] Like, you know, playfulness.

[718] Yeah.

[719] The documentaries I tend to like a lot are the ones that are open enough to allow.

[720] that to come in where it's like wow i'm laughing at the murderer now i'm horrified by the murderer i thought the jinx was brilliant in that way that i said to we all watch it together monica and christin and i was like you know he definitely killed all those people there's no question there and i would certainly have him as a house guest next week i don't know why i love him i want to protect him he reminds me a kermit the frog like and i would i would lock his door as he stayed in our house like there's this for me that's like a big win that i would like recognize the person's a monster yet have these complicated feelings about the person as if they were a parent or a sibling or something yeah i mean you're responding to tonal switches i think that there is this weird thing that happens if you're watching a financial crimes doc it's all investigated you know or you're watching crime and it's like it's all sadness in this like sort of low rung and i think that the directors that you and i both really like it's like yeah playing with that capturing the freedman's Andrew Rakey's feature is a master class in push -pull.

[721] Did he, didn't he?

[722] And so I think that it was, for me, you never know what Andrew Jorecki thought.

[723] And so you, for years, think about how he felt about that family.

[724] Everyone at every Q &A is like, you know, how do you feel about Gypsy Rose?

[725] I'm like, you just had a whole movie to hear what I thought.

[726] And like, I'm not answering you because I don't have to answer because I just put it all.

[727] in the movie.

[728] So it's like playing with the audience in a good way, but also like there's just like this total linear way of storytelling, A to Z. And I think that we can be creatives that like don't think that way.

[729] Right.

[730] Are there things about your life that have helped you approach it without the singular goal of judging?

[731] And is that a useful skill for a documentarian?

[732] Yeah, I think that when critics review my work, they really see the human in it.

[733] It's basically, Basically, I'm on a run now if it's seen as non -judgmental filmmaking.

[734] That's great.

[735] People can exist in their imperfections in a way that it doesn't feel like I'm making fun of them.

[736] Yeah.

[737] And so I think that there is a genuine, real tie -in from secret society.

[738] Because, like, you know, that is what it's about.

[739] But it's really, I think, and not to give him too much credit, but like really being in such close contact with my father, who was a master.

[740] in journalism, in interviewing, but also like investigating in searching out identity and like knowing that your past does not predict your present.

[741] I think that growing up the way that I did really like led me to this moment.

[742] I'm super impressed with your willingness to give so much credit to your dad because especially when I was in my 20s and certainly even at 31, are you 31 now?

[743] I want to be like, no, no, I did this.

[744] It's very impressive that you can acknowledge.

[745] what a role he played.

[746] Do you think so, Monica?

[747] Yeah, I do.

[748] Less so than me. Well, maybe it's a male -female thing again.

[749] I don't know.

[750] Yeah, it is.

[751] It is.

[752] You do want to take credit for your accomplishments, and it's good to be able to see the whole picture, but everything.

[753] I mean, I'm a director, and I get credit for everything.

[754] And people, like, Terry Gross, like, sort of questioned me on nepotism.

[755] And, like, what are your feelings about, you know, you in relation to him?

[756] Did you get here because of him?

[757] Right.

[758] And I think that, like, now that he, he's not here.

[759] I don't have to be embarrassed about it.

[760] Like, you know, yes, he got me in the room, but it's up to me to see how long I can stay in the room.

[761] But then people are like, yeah, but you got in the room.

[762] That's the whole barrier to entry issue.

[763] Well, but here's the thing that people actually don't like to talk about with nepotism.

[764] It's a multi -layered situation.

[765] So let's say one of my two daughters ends up pursuing acting.

[766] Certainly they'll have an advantage in that they'll probably be able to meet with an agent earlier than someone who they don't recognize their last name.

[767] That's for sure.

[768] And that's unfair.

[769] But my daughter at six has already been to 25 sets.

[770] She's actually seen how the camera department works.

[771] She's seen how the script supervisor, what that person does.

[772] Like she's actually getting this master class education for free.

[773] So that's nepotism.

[774] But at the same time, that's not a cheat.

[775] That's earned.

[776] She'll have an education.

[777] This same way I had an education on how to do press events for General Motors new vehicle launches.

[778] No one wants that nepotism, but I got a firsthand master class in how to throw a fucking car show.

[779] So it's easy to discount the whole thing, but there's actually a ton of education that that's the real gift of nepotism.

[780] It's not actually the foot in the door.

[781] Because to your point, sure, it'll get you invited to one of the parties, but you know, you have famous parents and, you know, then like, it's like, how do you sort of package that and do something with it.

[782] I think that like work ethic is really what we need to teach people.

[783] Your kids are seeing how hard you guys both work.

[784] And also like when you work, are you being kind to people?

[785] Yes.

[786] My wife for certain and me most of the time.

[787] Can you back that up?

[788] Yeah.

[789] Yeah, I'd say so.

[790] That's right.

[791] Actually, I'd say both of you most of the time.

[792] She's not perfect either.

[793] Yeah, that's perfect.

[794] That's true.

[795] More nicer, more often.

[796] Okay.

[797] So Gypsy Rose.

[798] What a fucking documentary.

[799] We like counted down the day so that came out.

[800] We watched that together.

[801] Devoured it.

[802] Yeah.

[803] And then talked about it for six hours after or something.

[804] Yeah.

[805] So complicated.

[806] I have her driver's license up in my fridge, D .D. You do.

[807] You do?

[808] My boyfriend has said, please stop doing that.

[809] As much as I loved it, I actually don't remember what happened.

[810] What was the outcome?

[811] I've totally forgotten.

[812] So Gypsy Rose copped to a second degree murder in exchange for 10 years on a state prison charge which means she needs to do 75 % of it Nicholas Goadijon he never even opened my letter requesting an interview he forever was trying to get a trial he finally got one and he was sentenced to life in prison and what people don't understand and I don't know if it's telegraphed enough in the film he's mentally ill Like he can barely form sentences.

[813] You look at his police interrogation tapes.

[814] And like, you know, he - It's like Brian Dassey or Brendan.

[815] Brendan, yes, I was just about to say that from making a murder.

[816] It's like, you know, there's so much weird, like, sex talk between him and the detective.

[817] And he's lured into this sort of false sense of like, oh, he's just telling a story about his girlfriend.

[818] And, like, you know, he was protecting her.

[819] And, like, I just don't think he had any awareness that he was, like, convicting himself through his confession.

[820] Like, you know, don't talk to cops.

[821] Don't talk to cops without a lawyer.

[822] I'm sorry.

[823] Like, you know, I enjoy law enforcement.

[824] I'm glad that they are there.

[825] But, like, don't ever talk to a cop without a lawyer.

[826] They just don't know.

[827] They don't have that knowledge.

[828] Let's be a part of spreading.

[829] I can't help you with that officer.

[830] That's my nature as well to have that exact same takeaway.

[831] I don't know if you ever saw the confessions that front line.

[832] That was the most heartbreaking one I've ever seen.

[833] The sailors, right?

[834] Yes, they convinced nine of these guys to confess to something.

[835] never did.

[836] They just kept throwing people in prison.

[837] I mean, it's horrific.

[838] Most of them mentally disabled in some capacity.

[839] But again, at the same time, I forced myself to go, fuck, there's a lot of murderers out there.

[840] There's a lot of people that need to get taken off the street.

[841] It's a hard judicial system.

[842] It's completely bludded with too many cases.

[843] Everyone's backs against the wall.

[844] It's an imperfect system, blah, blah, blah.

[845] Also, they need to get murderers to confess for our safety.

[846] And we've tasked them with that job.

[847] think like so many issues in this country and in life, both sides suck.

[848] I'm sympathetic to both sides.

[849] I'm sympathetic to the many people who are not mentally fit to have that interrogation experience.

[850] You have to be so alpha to fucking go through 12 hours with two grown men yelling in your face and not break.

[851] Like almost no person can do that.

[852] So it's a, it's a system designed to create false confessions.

[853] Yeah, they have specific tactics in order to get that.

[854] I met with a police officer, a former police officer was, you know, he was known as the eight ball who like got people to confess.

[855] And like, you know, he, he was honored throughout his entire police career in New York for always getting people to confess.

[856] And what I believed in what was later reported is they were false confessions.

[857] He put them in positions of like pressure points and, you know, would get them to say things because they wanted to leave.

[858] It's kind of like the Central Park Five and like, you know, I think that there is a universal that we think that innocent people do not confess.

[859] Right.

[860] And that is just not true.

[861] Yeah.

[862] Statistically, it's proven.

[863] It happens all the time.

[864] Yeah, it's heartbreaking.

[865] Okay.

[866] So currently, and it came out, what, I guess, a week or two ago, at the heart of gold inside the USA Gymnastics scandal.

[867] It's recently released, right?

[868] Yeah.

[869] Yeah.

[870] So if people aren't hip to what this is about, there was for how many years, 18 years or something?

[871] 20.

[872] for 20 years there was a trainer slash doctor who worked both at Michigan State University with the gymnastics program he worked with dancers around Michigan he was the U .S. gymnastics team trainer minimally 156 people spoke at the sentencing hearing that's who spoke that's who spoke is there a number on how many victims hundreds and hundreds and hundreds hundreds and hundreds and hundreds so this guy first of all very charismatic very likable very personable these women young girls women were in this situation where their coaches are i mean borderline psychotic they're as tough as they can be there's no sympathy for pain there's no nothing it's soldier on and then they would go for treatments with this guy who was super kind would cheat a bit would let them use their phones or would let them do all these little tactics to be the good cop in this scenario.

[873] And he would give these, quote, treatments and all the treatments involved him putting his fingers in their vaginas.

[874] Quote pelvic something, right?

[875] Pelvic adjustments or something?

[876] Right.

[877] And I mean, I don't even know where to begin.

[878] Where do you think is best to begin with this?

[879] So basically the film really talks about grooming behaviors.

[880] And I think that, you know, dopey, weird, broken man that's in an orange jumpsuit.

[881] And so it's really hard for us to recognize, like, why people would have been fooled by this guy.

[882] And so the film was really about, like, you know, he was the good guy.

[883] He was the nice guy.

[884] That's who he presented as, you know, always working in autism circles.

[885] His daughter had autism, you know, happily married, always wore a wedding ring, seemed genuinely non -threatening, like he was a friend of yours.

[886] and then would participate in this vaginal treatment to help you.

[887] And, you know, I think that there's just so many layers to that because, like, you know, adolescent sexuality, how do I tell somebody my, because we don't talk to our parents about sex because it's seen as gross.

[888] Right.

[889] So, like, when someone violates, like, how are we supposed to talk about that?

[890] And so Larry Nassar, as a doctor and as a family friend was one of, you know, he was a genius at setting up his life to get.

[891] access to people.

[892] And but like really, really disturbingly, there was about 17 instances of like reporting him to MSU where people are like, is this normal?

[893] Is it not normal?

[894] Like he escaped capture so many times.

[895] Well, there were so many things I was thinking about during it, of course.

[896] One of the more provocative things I'll probably say about it is it's so weird to see a guy with such a lack of control over his own behavior.

[897] yet these crazy boundaries where he, I don't, I mean, he did manage to do this to hundreds and hundreds of girls and he didn't.

[898] Calculated.

[899] Calculated enough.

[900] He was a deeply calculated person.

[901] He didn't pull his penis out and try to have sex with them.

[902] He didn't, you know, like, now granted, there were some cases at his house with the six -year -old, which is horrific.

[903] So he did do that, but it doesn't seem at least in the documentary.

[904] In the treatments, quote, he had these kind of rigid boundaries he didn't break.

[905] It's like you don't really see someone out of control yet that in control.

[906] That was fascinating to me. Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

[907] If you dare.

[908] I think you're so spot on.

[909] And I've talked to literally so many people about this.

[910] And nobody ever identifies that.

[911] And as an audience member, you're kind of left, you're like, I don't want to say this out loud.

[912] But like, he was assaulting them with his hands like what stopped him from assaulting them with with his genitalia and so it's just like I think that he knew what he could get away with and what he could not yeah and like he wanted to keep the ruse up and so he was able to stop himself but here's you know not to be too graphic but like his other sort of ulterior life that nobody talks about is he was a collector of child pornography right and so there was this whole layer of victimizing children through his digital life where I'm sure, you know, there was no stopping him.

[913] I mean, he was found with 37 ,000 images.

[914] I was just about to say, how about when his fucking attorney says, 37 ,000 isn't really a lot?

[915] It was, by comparison.

[916] Imagine sitting there and like being in that room with her and I just, you know, like shoveling in the dog shit of that statement.

[917] I mean, every single photo is the victimization of a child.

[918] And she's someone.

[919] one, you know, she reached out.

[920] She thought the documentary was really smart and nuanced and showed, like, the real journey of it.

[921] So, like, props to her for sitting.

[922] I'm so impressed with her.

[923] Yeah.

[924] But, like, it's a reason why it's in the movie because it's ludicrous.

[925] Yes.

[926] And it's not appropriate.

[927] And we cannot lose our way.

[928] You know, she has dealt with so many cases surrounding pedophiles.

[929] So, like, in her life, that number is not a lot.

[930] In our lives, one is not, like, it's not acceptable.

[931] Yes.

[932] 37 ,000 to her was not.

[933] it was a challenging documentary to watch in the best way because I had to constantly check my emotions because I would go, oh, I fucking hate that woman.

[934] And then I would go, no, I do believe in the legal system people are entitled to a defense no matter what.

[935] And for the system to work, there has to be a person that takes that case to defend that guy.

[936] So I constantly was like fighting in my head in a great way.

[937] I didn't tell you about his background.

[938] I didn't tell you about his family life.

[939] I didn't tell you where he grew up because it was a choice like this is not Larry Nassar's movie.

[940] He doesn't get to have his own movie on HBO.

[941] You know who gets to have the movie is the women that survived him.

[942] Yeah, what a great.

[943] And were you worried if he had shown his childhood that he would start becoming more sympathetic?

[944] You know, I knew that the women were going to watch it.

[945] And I did not want, you know, we took a risk in including his instructional videos, which is like his taped sessions with young girls and including his voice.

[946] But like that was the extent of it because we can talk about the abuse without humanizing the abuser to a certain extent.

[947] Right.

[948] Now did you request an interview with him?

[949] Yes.

[950] You did.

[951] And he obviously said no. You know, as a general rule of thumb, journalistically, you reach out to everybody and they get to say no. And to be honest, like a lot of people at the jump said no. You know, I think that it's just, it's just even for you as an audience member, it's so painful to get through.

[952] So, like, for people to relive and for me to ask them to do that, it's just, it's a choice.

[953] Have you had any trauma?

[954] It's a genuine inquiry for people because of Mommy Dendiris and gymnastics.

[955] I don't, I don't know.

[956] I think I'm just, I'm put on earth to try to give voices to the voiceless.

[957] Mm -hmm.

[958] And that's something that resonates with me is, like, like, being a kid and being undefined.

[959] sure and how to regain your voice, but not experience sexual trauma in that way.

[960] Why do you think that film is so difficult to watch?

[961] I really have been getting that feedback from almost everyone, and I really tried to limit the time spent, like it's an 88 -minute film.

[962] I wanted you to exist in there, but to feel empowered.

[963] Why is it so painful and difficult?

[964] Well, the fact that the victims in this movie are both young girls, that seems to be where our empathy is strongest.

[965] That's what makes the cover of the New York Times.

[966] So that's an element.

[967] I think another thing is, and this is documented by Paul Bloom, I think, that it's a double tragedy when you've availed yourself with vulnerability to somebody and it's exploited.

[968] For some reason, getting tackled in an alley is less troubling to us than us participating and being vulnerable with someone that's trusted, i .e. a medical professional.

[969] Yeah.

[970] He calls it betrayals betrayal bias.

[971] So it's very weighted.

[972] And the example is this doctor who was faking people having cancer and was treating them and killed many of them.

[973] And for some reason, that's much higher on the, you know, the pissed off meter because we acknowledge that you're exposing yourself to somebody in these girls' case, for sure.

[974] They're laying on a table and they've just, they're surrendering kind of.

[975] A trusted person.

[976] Yeah.

[977] So I think that's an element.

[978] And they're also in pain.

[979] And so he's helping with their pain to a certain extent.

[980] So, like, really confusing them.

[981] Sort of psychologically, like Elizabeth Hutchins, who's in the film, who's a gymnast.

[982] She said it made me wonder what pain really was.

[983] Ooh.

[984] Uh -huh.

[985] Yeah, I also think it's probably really hard for people to watch because they feel like that really could have been me or that really could be my daughter at any moment.

[986] Like, it's easy for that to happen to people.

[987] And that's not the same thing with Gypsy Rose.

[988] Like, it's so far away from our sort of concept of, like, of motherhood and a, you know, of the youth.

[989] That's interesting.

[990] And then I think yet another layer is there's no way that you can write the victims off.

[991] These are people who have dedicated their lives to make America farewell in the Olympics.

[992] They're already sacrificing them.

[993] You know, you can't possibly paint them with a dismissive paint brush.

[994] Yeah, no one could say like Simone Biles, like whatever deserve.

[995] anything bad.

[996] Like, this is a girl who's brought glory to our country in, in, national treasure.

[997] Yes, and through great, great pain to her own body.

[998] Like, we, we see that.

[999] We're like, if anyone doesn't deserve this, it's these gals.

[1000] I think that's part of it.

[1001] But the thing about abuse is, like, like, no one does.

[1002] No one.

[1003] No. That's why this is a great story.

[1004] Because you can't paint anything on it.

[1005] You have to just take it in as this is happening and it's abuse regardless.

[1006] But it is, it's a, it's a human phenomenon.

[1007] Like, you keep thinking it can't be worse and then yet it keeps getting worse but at the same time you can acknowledge it's all equally terrible but we do have these layers of like no that's even more vulnerable yeah make it the victimhood even yes wow it's such a good documentary okay a couple things i thought of when i was watching it well one of the things that's really complex in it and that led to a good healthy debate between christ and i last night was she He had zero sympathy for the people who were friends with Larry, who was brought to their attention that he was abusing the girls and they covered it up for him.

[1008] And I think it's horrific that they did.

[1009] There's the one woman in particular, Kathy Kegas.

[1010] Clagus, yeah.

[1011] Kegas, who seemed particularly offensive in her denial.

[1012] So this gal finally at MSU goes to her and says he's doing something that he shouldn't be doing.

[1013] and she says, that's crazy.

[1014] No, it's not she brings in all these older gymnasts to tell her she's crazy.

[1015] She says, okay, I'll file the report, but everyone's going to get in trouble.

[1016] You want everyone to get in trouble?

[1017] And then she finally says, no, don't file the report.

[1018] She talks her out of it, right?

[1019] And it's horrendous.

[1020] It's so horrendous.

[1021] And yet I forced myself to imagine that they come to me and say, Monica has been molesting kids.

[1022] It's complicated because I'm now in possession.

[1023] of information that's going to ruin someone's life that I love.

[1024] Now, of course, from the outside, yes, their life deserves to be ruined, but the one thing I was a little sympathetic was is Larry's the piece of shit.

[1025] And now everyone around Larry is infected by his piece of shitism.

[1026] Kathy might have been a beautiful person outside of that situation.

[1027] I don't know or I've never met her, but we could at least presume it's possible that she otherwise has led a great, life.

[1028] And now because he's such a vile piece of shit, she's now in this crazy unique situation where she has a moral conundrum that she has to choose right or wrong and she chose wrong.

[1029] And it's just she too is a victim of this asshole.

[1030] She did the wrong thing, but she's also a victim of this asshole.

[1031] Yeah.

[1032] I mean, that's a deeply elevated way of thinking about it because it's like putting yourself in the position of, you know, what do we do when someone confides in us?

[1033] and because adults protect other adults.

[1034] And I think that there's always this tendency with young girls, you know, with Kathy and we're talking about Larissa Boyce, the gymnast who came to her, and that you're confused.

[1035] He's, he's helping you.

[1036] He's never done that.

[1037] And Lersa's like, no, like, it's happening to my body and I'm telling you.

[1038] And so institutions and individuals will protect people in their community.

[1039] And so that's why it has to be handed over as mandatory reporters to investigators.

[1040] Yes.

[1041] But one of the issues that I find with that argument to, you know, to poke holes in my own argument is like, Nassar was investigated in 2004.

[1042] In 2014, like, you know, he, he consistently met with police officers about his behavior.

[1043] And he was able to talk his way out of it.

[1044] Oh, Monica, the tapes of the interviews by the police.

[1045] Which we foiled and like it was, you know.

[1046] See, now here we go.

[1047] So now we're back to kind of the point I was making like, I would have loved the alpha bulldog motherfucker to be interrogating that piece of shit.

[1048] Now I want it.

[1049] Now I wanted him to go, bullshit.

[1050] Wait, where are you putting your fingers?

[1051] That's not a fucking treatment.

[1052] I don't care if you say you've lectured on it at something.

[1053] You know, like, I wanted someone to call bullshit.

[1054] I wanted there to be a really strong convicted investigator to go, you're full of shit.

[1055] So that's why all this is so complicated.

[1056] It's like I did want that person at that moment.

[1057] But he wouldn't be, do you wouldn't be actively trying to get a false confession?

[1058] He'd be getting a real one.

[1059] Yes, but I do think it's tricky for those.

[1060] people, I don't know that I subscribe to the notion that many of those guys know that they're getting a false conviction.

[1061] I think they drink their Kool -Aid quickly.

[1062] They do?

[1063] I think they did.

[1064] You know, it's by get a confession by any means necessary.

[1065] You know, as a person who has watched the entirety of the Nassar tapes, you know, me to you, he is deeply comfortable.

[1066] He is making jokes, even if he were with the alpha guy.

[1067] Uh -huh.

[1068] Like, he would not get the same guilty signals that he does from typical defendants.

[1069] Nassar was able to pull the wool over most people because he believed in the lie so deeply.

[1070] He is a medical professional.

[1071] This is what he does.

[1072] He needs to follow the procedure.

[1073] But like he made everybody around him sort of believe and emboldened the lie.

[1074] And that's, you know, that's what made him sort of so beloved because he was charismatic and able to do it.

[1075] And also like that you just didn't suspect him.

[1076] Like many of the gymnasts that I spoke to and it was like dancers and other people, they came to his.

[1077] his defense at the jump because they were like, he couldn't have done this.

[1078] He told me this is for me helping people.

[1079] One of the most surreal moments of my life was when I was sitting across from Trinay Gonsar, who's a survivor and a gymnast, and she realized in real time that she had silenced other gymnasts who came to her about the procedure.

[1080] Yes.

[1081] It's so heartbreaking that there's the first wave of guilt and trauma from being a victim of his.

[1082] And then a second wave of guilt, which is maybe even surpasses that, that she had silenced so many people and prevented this person from being found out.

[1083] Yeah, I mean, I would encourage everybody to, one, watch the movie, but two, watch Renee Gonsar's victim impact statement in its entirety.

[1084] And it's on YouTube.

[1085] And it's the only one where Nassar completely lost his mind and broke down emotionally because he almost like he wouldn't recognize the young women who came up to do the victim impact statements Trinay he knew yeah but she told him I've known you for 31 out of 37 years you know we loved you like family because we thought you loved us back yeah the whole time I'm waiting to see him admit to himself he's done this and that was the only moment that I thought, oh, God, she got him to leave denial for a minute.

[1086] And that is really what's key here for a minute.

[1087] Yeah.

[1088] Yeah.

[1089] You know, in his apology and, you know, you know, I've spoken with Judge Aquilina, like when he reverted back to his former self of like, you know, this is, the victims are being opportunistic and, you know, I really was trying to help them.

[1090] Yes.

[1091] I mean, it's, it's psychological and yeah, that's a very crazy moment, my Monica, because all these people over the course of four days, 156 people, say into a microphone how his actions have impacted their life.

[1092] And for the most part, he's in another place.

[1093] I mean, he's, in fact, I was obsessed with wondering, like, where does someone go during this?

[1094] As much as I hated him, I couldn't help but imagine being him.

[1095] Like, what if I was sitting there for four days hearing about hundreds of lives I've ruined?

[1096] How could, what is that experience like?

[1097] Where do you go mentally?

[1098] to survive that you know it's the ultimate where do you go now when he's in solitary i mean they go to the same place it's it's the absence of nothing it's it's the memories of my life used to be like yeah at the end of that he gets to say something and it starts off you think he's kind of copping to it and saying sorry and then you start realizing he's doing it in front of you all over again he's re -grooming all the women in that he's like looking at them he turns away from the judge and he starts employing his fucking superpower skills real time and i don't even know that he's aware of it it's so who he is it's freaky okay it was articulated in this the hardest elements of it for many of the athletes in dealing with it is they have been demonstrating since they were five or six that they're incredibly strong.

[1099] It's their identity.

[1100] They're indomitable.

[1101] They don't feel pain.

[1102] They can march through anything.

[1103] And so that dissonance between being a victim and being your identity as someone who's strong is so powerful.

[1104] And it's such another layer of mind fuck to it.

[1105] I think it's like the duality of identity.

[1106] Am I stronger?

[1107] Am I a victim?

[1108] how can these two polar opposite things exist in one person in myself?

[1109] And there's just what's it called?

[1110] Survivor's complex, survivor's guilt.

[1111] It's like he did it worse for somebody else and like, you know, I'm still here and I'm, you know, I'm, you know, that didn't happen to me. And then girls would be like, it did happen to me. And I just was like, you know, blacking it out emotionally.

[1112] Yeah.

[1113] The shame and remorse that I would come into close contact with, like interacting with this woman.

[1114] in, and I really wanted to be a person in their life that said, like, you did nothing wrong.

[1115] Yeah.

[1116] Yes, but here's, so this is a thing that has come up like three times on here, and I haven't refined it enough to make a really elegant point about it, but in my own experience, I had been dealing with it for however many years, 30 years, in just terms of, it's not my fault.

[1117] That person was a predator.

[1118] It wasn't giving me relief.

[1119] No matter how many times someone says it's not your fault.

[1120] It wasn't giving me relief.

[1121] And I didn't know why.

[1122] And it wasn't until I did the four step in AA where I was like, what if I applied that lens to this scenario?

[1123] And what happened for me was going, oh, I didn't want to be there.

[1124] I knew I didn't want to be there.

[1125] My spidey senses were saying this is not right.

[1126] But I wanted something from that person.

[1127] And that person had leverage over me, but I wanted something.

[1128] That's why I was in the situation.

[1129] Once I admitted that to myself, I at least isolated why it wasn't going away because it doesn't matter how many times people say to me, it's not your fault.

[1130] I needed to first go like, what am I actually feeling guilty about?

[1131] Oh, I know what I'm feeling guilty about because I wanted something from the person and I wasn't listening to my insides.

[1132] Now I can at least own that and then I can forgive myself because I was fucking seven years old and seven year olds, they make bad decisions and I made a bad decision and it's okay.

[1133] But I couldn't jump to that where it just I was solely a victim.

[1134] like I've never sought treatment for this and hopefully the people that guide people through this experience isolate that part.

[1135] But I just wonder if that's an element that's missing that I happen to be lucky enough to cross streams on.

[1136] Well, it's like knowledge is power.

[1137] You activating that understanding of like why the shame wasn't going away is this deeply powerful because it's not what what most people do is would they push it down until it doesn't exist.

[1138] But like, you know, this persists inside of us.

[1139] And again, I would be projecting and just imagine.

[1140] me, but if I'm in this militant, terrible scenario and then I'm meeting with somebody who's being kind and loving to me, and then there's one part of it I've got to ignore because I do like that kindness and I need it and I need that.

[1141] And he is healing.

[1142] He's doing like actual work on your body.

[1143] And so what was scary is like girls would tell me like they felt better after the appointment.

[1144] Yes.

[1145] And so it was just like, I feel better.

[1146] But so I was a willing participant what happened.

[1147] And I'm like, right, which is not your fault.

[1148] But if you're that person, I think you have to, it's okay to first acknowledge that.

[1149] Like, yeah, that's part of it.

[1150] And that's what's so complicated about it.

[1151] And it's what's complicated about Neverland is like, they loved him.

[1152] That, you know, it's not getting tackled in an alley.

[1153] Yeah.

[1154] That's, I mean, that's what Dan Reed, the director.

[1155] I mean, he groomed them and like that Michael viewed them as partners and treated them as equals and like how to be equal.

[1156] with a dummy god like you know how would you ever say no to that reality because everyone's like well why did you keep going back to the ranch yeah how could you not i know i hate these people that are saying like oh they want money they well they defended him at one time it's like yes they did nobody wants this tied to their identity no no amount of money is worth it no no it's horse shit okay another i would say the most heartbroken i was during your documentary and of course It's because I'm a dad, I think, is there's one case, Monica, where the girl, her name is.

[1157] Kyle Stevens.

[1158] Kyle Stevens.

[1159] She went to her parents and said, he's doing this.

[1160] And they were friends with him.

[1161] And they said, no, he's not.

[1162] You're lying.

[1163] Stop lying.

[1164] It caused this rift between her and her dad.

[1165] Every time they get in a fight, he'd bring up, you need to go say sorry to Larry.

[1166] Oh, God.

[1167] Then it eventually came out and the dad killed himself.

[1168] And so there's a shot in the film, and it's the court cinematographer Nick Loud, who Kyle Stevens is talking, but she's talking about denial of her parents and that they did not believe her.

[1169] And so the camera slowly shifts towards the mom.

[1170] And so when you're in doing victim impact statements, you can have a support system and you have a person next to you.

[1171] And the grief and trauma that is on her mother's face, like I did not believe her.

[1172] my family has been decimated and like she it just she wears it on her face they'll never exist as a family again because they picked larry nassar over their kid that's yet another element of the movie that makes it hard to watch is that as a parent you could you could fail at your job of protecting them once you have kids it's it's you could fucking rate me for the next eight hours every day for the rest of my life to spare my kid having one thing happened you know so So, Monica, the parents were in the room many times while he was doing this.

[1173] Well, see, that's a part of this that's very confusing is people, like, sure, that's part of the procedure.

[1174] Like, why wouldn't it be?

[1175] There's a lot of weird stuff in when you go to the doctor.

[1176] There's no reason for you to, for a doctor to have an ungloved hand inside your pre -preascent vagina.

[1177] Like, so in he, he would put a towel over.

[1178] I mean, what I as a person who's heavily.

[1179] researched it, I really thought of it as an escalation.

[1180] Like, you're talking about that Larry Nasser was able to exist in this sort of like coded space of boundaries.

[1181] But I personally think that like the behavior started to ramp up.

[1182] He, it was less about picking the person that was quiet and more about that he couldn't, he had to pick everybody.

[1183] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1184] I mean, we're talking about his addiction grew like all addictions.

[1185] Yeah.

[1186] Yeah.

[1187] One of the, uh, gales interviewed the mind fuck of laying on the table, feeling him enter her vagina and going, I don't, this shouldn't be happening.

[1188] Then looking at mom and mom's fine.

[1189] So this must be fine.

[1190] Yeah.

[1191] That's deep.

[1192] Hard.

[1193] Yeah.

[1194] Yeah, it's horrible.

[1195] Do you think the mom is avoiding the situation or is she thinking it's fine?

[1196] I think that the parents were as groomed as the kids were.

[1197] Yeah.

[1198] And I think that if you are a gymnastics parent, you're trained that these are people in positions of authority.

[1199] They're trying to get your kid in the right spot.

[1200] And so it creates and fosters a culture of silence and that I don't get to have a voice in the care of my child.

[1201] I mean, at the Crowley Ranch where a lot of the national team members trained, parents were not allowed in the gym.

[1202] I mean, gymnastics is a culture that represents our society in that, like, it's ambition.

[1203] It's intensity.

[1204] It's the amazing.

[1205] American dream.

[1206] It's succeeding.

[1207] You will break down your body to get where you want to go to get that one of five spot in the Olympic Games.

[1208] At what cost?

[1209] Yeah.

[1210] There's a much broader question on the table while you're watching it, which isn't really explicitly asked, which is they show an x -ray of a gal's tibia that had broken.

[1211] They are ignoring it and it just keeps working its way deeper into it and splitting it like a like a railroad spike going through.

[1212] piece of wood.

[1213] And you look at that and you go, what the fuck is this all about?

[1214] I mean, like, okay, there's sexual abuse, but there's most certainly by any rational definition, there's just straight up physical abuse that is accepted to even do the thing.

[1215] And then I just go, what is this all about?

[1216] So someone can say they're the best in the world at something.

[1217] Is the American way, man. Is there inherent value in that?

[1218] Or is that just ego?

[1219] Is that we want to say it as a country the kids want to say it the parents want to say it it's like i see the pure pursuit from the kids point of view and there's something kind of unsullied about that but everyone around that's participating no one's going wait what the fuck are we doing there's a contest every four years and these kids have to fucking ruin their lives and their bodies permanently all these things to say i'm number one i just something about it doesn't feel entirely self -actualized even as a pursuit in general.

[1220] You know, as a deeply ambitious person, like, I got it.

[1221] I understood, like, you think you are the lottery ticket winner.

[1222] Uh -huh.

[1223] You are this American exceptionalism that we sort of participate in, that it's like, you know, all the sweat equity of the last couple of years will pay off in this moment.

[1224] And, like, you know, in, in, A .A., we know that it has to be sort of delusions.

[1225] But when you are a part of a community that, you know, is just incredibly, incredibly siloed, you believe in it.

[1226] And I think that, yeah, I mean, I love that you're having this, like, what the fuck?

[1227] Because, like, why does this matter?

[1228] But, like, as somebody who, like, always desired something like that, I got it.

[1229] I felt a part of it, a part of the rationale.

[1230] Right.

[1231] Yeah.

[1232] Within it, too, foundationally, it's story.

[1233] I mean, that's really what we're, it's fucking the Iliad.

[1234] It's, it's greatness.

[1235] It's the hero.

[1236] It's the, you know, the victor.

[1237] It's all these things.

[1238] Like, it's all.

[1239] And a role that young women don't always get to play.

[1240] Mm -hmm.

[1241] You know, I think that it's so incredible that gymnastics is like the premier sport at the most watch, right?

[1242] And, you know, I think that it's always the dude in the Iliad.

[1243] Like, we're always looking at who is Homer.

[1244] And so I think that it felt really good for women to be in control of their bodies and be powerful and can do things that nobody else could do.

[1245] I also said this the other day.

[1246] Winning feels amazing.

[1247] It does.

[1248] It really does psychologically feel incredible.

[1249] And you chase it, especially if you have the opportunity to.

[1250] I suppose if you're an addict.

[1251] You're like, where's the dope me?

[1252] What's the lever?

[1253] Monica's a state champion.

[1254] Hell yeah.

[1255] Two -time state champion cheerleader.

[1256] For cheerleading, it gets a little less impressive when I said that.

[1257] No, no. But yeah, it was really fun.

[1258] And I, at the state championship, the second year, I had.

[1259] torn my hamstring.

[1260] And I still was like, no, I'm doing it.

[1261] I'm obviously doing it.

[1262] I worked so hard this whole time for this last day.

[1263] I can push through.

[1264] Yeah, I guess I just, I just, I wish there was a version where all of the self -esteem just came from, you should be proud of working hard and pushing through challenges.

[1265] But America doesn't reward that.

[1266] Yeah, yeah.

[1267] It's just going to the championship.

[1268] We don't talk about every day she worked.

[1269] We talk about her getting to the championship.

[1270] Yeah.

[1271] Right.

[1272] And when it's a. team.

[1273] I mean, gymnastics is a little different, but there's still a team aspect.

[1274] You're letting everybody down.

[1275] All these people who worked really hard don't get the thing.

[1276] Like, there's a lot of pressure.

[1277] Yeah.

[1278] And I guess I'm just projecting on to everybody.

[1279] In my life, when I've gotten the gold medal, it doesn't fill anything up for me. It does for a couple hours or maybe two weeks, but it being something structural in my self -esteem, it just hasn't worked that way for me. And probably it does work that way for some people.

[1280] Some people probably win a gold metal and they feel markedly better for the rest of their life.

[1281] That just wouldn't be me. Well, I think there's a validation to your effort and people like that.

[1282] You need that.

[1283] Most people.

[1284] Not all people, but like you know, writing a book about my father and being able just to actually write it.

[1285] Like when I turned in the fifth and final draft, I said, I have no control over how this sells.

[1286] I have no control how it's received in combination with a beautiful book the night the gun, but like this simple act of finishing it felt incredible.

[1287] And I was like, I need to remind myself because I'm going to get so looped into, you know, what's going to happen?

[1288] Like, whenever I make something, it's like, are people going to watch it?

[1289] You know, you can't control these things.

[1290] Yeah, the result.

[1291] Yeah, my favorite cliche is we're in the show up and work business, not the results business.

[1292] And if I can keep my eye on that, I'm generally happy.

[1293] But if I need a result to validate me. I'm fucked because then I'm at the whimsy of the universe.

[1294] But I feel like that's exactly where I am now as I sit here.

[1295] Like you just, you want the things to pay off.

[1296] You want the hard work to pay off.

[1297] Now, now I think it's a good pursuit.

[1298] If the reason you want it to work out is to allow you to do it more, then I think that's like a noble, intrinsic pursuit weirdly even though it's got an extrinsic goal but if it's just to allow you to keep doing the thing you love in allowing you to get things greenlit that feels like a good motivation but to be the toast of this town in the fucking win an award to me that just seems feels untenable as far as self -esteem goes you just can't be the toast of the town every year until the day you die yeah i mean i you know like many in this room like I'm a deep workaholic.

[1299] I measure my success against what I did last year.

[1300] And I want to get better, brighter, faster, stronger.

[1301] But at a certain point, like, I've been hospitalized twice in the last couple of years.

[1302] I have a chronic lung condition.

[1303] Oh, which is...

[1304] I had cryptogenic organizing pneumonia, which was actually interstitial lung disease.

[1305] Just like, I'm not going to, like, you know, sit in a cool attic with a toilet near me and, like, complain about my lung condition because I work too much.

[1306] I understand how that sounds, but I think it's real.

[1307] A cool attic with a toilet.

[1308] Like, I just, you know, I don't know.

[1309] Like, I'm interested in other people's perspectives on it.

[1310] Like, workaholism is so rewarded, but it doesn't create a deep sense of fulfillment like we thought it was going to.

[1311] That's kind of, what do you think?

[1312] That's the point I'm making.

[1313] So how do we do it?

[1314] How do we do the work, put in the time, feel good about it, and not be so goal -oriented?

[1315] Well, again, I think in a dream world, the process is the result.

[1316] Like, that's what you're after, is the engagement you have while making a movie, the connection you have with the people on your crew, the discovery of the story.

[1317] All that stuff is beautiful and wonderful.

[1318] All the other stuff is just faux reward.

[1319] There's no substance to the reward.

[1320] The substance is in the making it.

[1321] That's the on your deathbed.

[1322] painful the part is so painful well that's i think i think the goal of most creative people should be like how do i create the process in a way that i love it that i'm not killing myself for the result for me personally that feels like the healthy approach is like if i can learn to craft this mousetrap in a way that i'm enjoying every step of it then i've won and not be so fearful about losing it Like, I watched a video with you, like, off camera and talked about when we have something, our immediate impulse is to fear losing it.

[1323] Yes.

[1324] And, like, now that I have a career as a documentary director, all I worry about is losing it.

[1325] It's just like, you know, like, I keep adding gigs, adding gigs.

[1326] And, like, it's a scarcity complex.

[1327] I feel like I won't be hired again.

[1328] Right.

[1329] And, like, that's just, that's an idiot island, population of one.

[1330] Yeah.

[1331] All right.

[1332] So your book, All That You Leave Behind a Memoir, is out currently.

[1333] At the Heart of Gold inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal is playing currently on HBO.

[1334] And then your next movie, what's that entitled?

[1335] I Love You Now Die.

[1336] I love you now die.

[1337] Oh, that's the text.

[1338] Oh, yeah.

[1339] So romantic.

[1340] I'll wait to see your take on it.

[1341] But we watched some shorter expose on it.

[1342] It might even been Dateline.

[1343] And Kristen and I were on opposite sides of the argument.

[1344] I was like, you're allowed to say whatever you want.

[1345] I'm sorry, people's, their own suicides, their responsibility.

[1346] But maybe I'll have a different takeaway after watching your, it'll be fun.

[1347] When does that come out?

[1348] Well, I designed it in a way.

[1349] So the first episode is the prosecution.

[1350] Oh, there's episodes?

[1351] The second episode is the defense.

[1352] And so Michelle Carter did not get a trial.

[1353] She opted for a bench trial, which means a judge decided.

[1354] her fate.

[1355] And so I want us to serve as her jury.

[1356] And so it's just like this like very sort of like in the trilogy of the stuff I've made for HBO like the push pull guilty innocent.

[1357] Yeah.

[1358] And you know, we have 10 ,000 of her text messages.

[1359] So it's a uniquely 21st century crime because you would go to her state of mind like when this stuff is happening in real time.

[1360] And it's just wild stuff.

[1361] Well, Well, the thing I saw, I would conclude she is a vomitous piece of shit.

[1362] Like that, there's, that's my verdict on her.

[1363] She is vile.

[1364] But I have enough libertarian in me that's like, tough shit.

[1365] No one can tell you to kill yourself.

[1366] That's on you.

[1367] At some point, you have to have personal responsibility for killing yourself, even if someone's a vile piece of shit in your ear.

[1368] But I'll be open to being wrong and having my opinion changed on what date?

[1369] it'll be in July Sometime in July Great My twin sister works in the mental health field And for our birthday I was like I want to show you Like the finished copy of the project And she got like 20 minutes in She's like yeah I can't This is my first thing I just can't with this Like as a mental health professional And she's like I can't This goes again to every instinct I have In my craft Like It's another sort of polemic devastated.

[1370] I'm not going to talk about my own work, but like my attitudes towards Michelle Carter really shifted after I learned more about it.

[1371] So this is like, there's a lot in there.

[1372] I believe that people don't know.

[1373] Oh, great.

[1374] So a lot of my sober friends listen to your podcast and I just was like, you know, I really want you, why do you like listening to this?

[1375] And they said like, it feels like I'm the one asking the questions.

[1376] Like it feels.

[1377] And so I think that like as I study other people's styles like it's just like how do you get people to open up and feel safe well to me it's a meeting we're having a meeting you and i happen to know how that goes but other people that come have never been in a meeting and then this is their first meeting you're like i think more people should just go to me yes i do too they don't let you in unless you're on anniversary meetings you can go also there's open meetings like they're labeled in the a directory what are open and what are closed and many of them are open it's like go in a room sit for an hour and you don't get to talk.

[1378] I think for anybody, especially in, like, media, it's like, no one cares what you have to say for the next hour.

[1379] Yeah.

[1380] It's like, and last night, it was 90 minutes I went to one.

[1381] I was like, oh, my God, when is it my time?

[1382] What's going on here?

[1383] He's talking forever.

[1384] The timer has gone up.

[1385] And it's just, like, being, you know, existing in other people's story, I think is a really healthy thing.

[1386] So I encourage everyone to go to open meetings and, like, exist in someone else's story.

[1387] because, like, we have a tendency to just, you know, just sit inside our own head.

[1388] Yeah.

[1389] And, like, what an uninteresting place to be, you know, because we're typically just telling ourselves the same thing.

[1390] Yeah, minimally, it's repetitive.

[1391] I was listening to the best of episodes.

[1392] All of them are great, obviously.

[1393] And I was, like, getting so psyched out.

[1394] I was like, what if I'm not as interesting as these amazing people?

[1395] And I was like, that, you know, path to madness.

[1396] We can just be what we can be.

[1397] That's right.

[1398] That's right.

[1399] Well, Aaron, it's been so fun talking to you.

[1400] Yes.

[1401] I was so delighted when I started connecting all the other dots, having met your father and loved that book and worried about you as a little baby and a story.

[1402] And now you're here safe on my couch.

[1403] I feel very relieved.

[1404] Me too.

[1405] I love you.

[1406] Please come back.

[1407] I'm sure you'll make 80 more movies before we're done with this.

[1408] I wish you luck and Godspeed.

[1409] Thank you.

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