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