How to Cultivate Your Authentic Voice With Sam Jones

This week's episode is a bit of a departure. But like Frost's road less travelled, it's a direction well worth pursuing. My podcast was borne from a love of the art of the long form conversation. Authentic expression is a predominant theme of virtually every episode. And I sheepishly admit to a slight obsession with talented people at the nadir of their creativity, expressing their specific life purpose with unapologetic conviction. Sam Jones is the embodiment and ethos of all these ideals and more. Lauded photographer, documentary filmmaker, award winning music video director, magazine publisher, television creator and podcast host. Oh yeah, he's also married with kids. As a photographer, Sam is the go to guy for top tier magazines such as Vanity Fair, Esquire, Rolling Stone, GQ and Time for creating timeless portraits of luminaries, A-list actors and musicians like Barak Obama, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Bob Dylan, Jack Nicholson and Dave Grohl. All of this is super cool of course. But quite frankly it's not what motivated me to want to sit down with Sam. What really captivated me about this talented artist is Sam's newest venture, a multi-media, multi-faceted project he created entitled offCamera. It's photography. It's a magazine. It's a television show. It's a podcast. It's journalism. It's entertainment. It's art – the art of exquisite portraiture achieved through images, words and conversation. Simply put, Sam performs up close and personal, uninterrupted long-form conversations with today's most prolific cultural icons – people like Matt Damon, Sarah Silverman, Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Laura Dern and more. Each conversation is filmed for initial broadcast on DirectTV's Audience Network and subsequently available on the offCamera website as well as on iTunes as an audio podcast. Accompanied by a formal portrait, the interviews are also reformatted in print to comprise a printed magazine. After listening to Sam's intimate dialog with Robert Downey Jr., I was left to ponder this question: where else could I possibly listen to (or watch) someone like this converse for a full hour on the particulars of life and art? Nowhere. You can't. Blame our soundbite obsessed world, but conversations like these are extremely rare if not altogether nonexistent in publicly available form. Complemented by his extraordinary attention to detail and quality, these are all reasons why Sam's work is such a gift to us all. I have been so moved by offCamera that I felt compelled to turn the mic around, point it at Sam and get to the bottom of his story. Thank you Sam for your willingness to engage me in a dynamic conversation that explores the intersection of art and commerce; the importance of authenticity in the expression of one's creativity; and what can be learned from working with the most prolific musicians, actors, filmmakers and artists in the world. In the words of Sam, “it has taken me a lifetime to develop my attention span, and I want to use it.” Me too Sam. Me too. I sincerely hope you enjoy the listen. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  Learning to say no has been really productive and it's contributed to my success because that sort of opens me up to doing work that's right for me.

• 1:20Rich Roll?

  That was Sam Jones, and this is episode 126 of the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:34Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Rich Roll, ultra-endurance athlete, bestselling author, your friendly neighborhood wellness evangelist, lifestyle entrepreneur, husband, and father of four. Thank you so much for tuning in and welcome to the show, where each week I sit down with the best and the brightest, the most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in health, wellness, fitness, sports, nutrition, the arts and creativity like this week, and entrepreneurship to help you guys discover, uncover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. Thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing to the show on iTunes. Thank you for spreading the word to your friends and on social media.

• 2:18Rich Roll?

  Thank you for clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases.

• 2:30Rich Roll?

  Okay, so this week on the show, it's a little bit of a departure from the kind of content that maybe you're used to on the RRP. But I think it's a departure that you're going to really enjoy. And obviously, if you're a longtime listener of this show, you know that I'm a big fan of the art of the long-form conversation. I'm a big fan of authentic expression. And I admit to being slightly obsessed with people who are fonts of creativity. Sam Jones is one of those guys. Sam Jones is the embodiment. He is the ethos of all of these ideals and more. Lauded photographer, documentary filmmaker, award-winning music video director,

• 3:11Rich Roll?

  magazine publisher, television creator, and podcast host. This is a guy who leaves me wondering, is there anything that Sam Jones can't do? As a photographer, he's the guy. I mean, he is the go-to guy. He's photographed everybody: Barack Obama, George Clooney, Jack Nicholson, Bob Dylan. He shoots for all the big magazines: Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, Time, on and on and on. In fact, you might have seen a recent Vanity Fair cover story that he did with Bradley Cooper. It's really cool. If you page through the magazine, you'll see this extraordinary photograph of the actor with an elephant. It's really quite something. As a filmmaker, he directed a beautiful documentary about one of my favorite bands,

• 3:55Rich Roll?

  Wilco, called "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart." I highly suggest checking that movie out. It's really cool. And more recently, he directed a documentary for Showtime called "Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes." And that takes a look at Bob Dylan's basement tapes and documents new recordings of those lyrics with people like Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford and other people. He's also an award-winning music video director. He's done videos for the Foo Fighters, and Mumford and Sons, and Tom Petty, and people like that. That's all great. It's all super cool. But quite honestly, that's not why he's on the podcast today. That's not what caught my attention about Sam. What really put him on my radar is someone I just felt compelled to sit down with and

• 4:38Rich Roll?

  talk to is Sam's newest venture, and that's called Off Camera. So what is Off Camera? Well, it's incredible photography, it's journalism, it's a magazine, no, wait a minute, it's a TV show, no, hold on, it's a podcast. Well, it's all of these things and more. Basically, Off Camera is up-close and personal, full, one-hour, uninterrupted, long-form conversations with today's most prolific cultural icons. I'm talking about people like Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, and Dave Grohl. And the truth is, you have to ask yourself this question. I mean, where else can you listen via a podcast, or watch on DirecTV if you have it, something

• 5:23Rich Roll?

  like this? And the answer is, nowhere. You can't, because it doesn't exist anywhere else in our soundbite-obsessed world. And as somebody who appreciates what it takes to put something on like this, I'm really in awe of what Sam has done. It's just awesome. I absolutely love the work and the attention to detail and quality that he has put into his program. In the words of Sam, "It has taken me a lifetime to develop my attention span, and I want to use it." I agree with that, Sam. Me too. Me too. So, this is a great conversation that spans the intersection of art and commerce.

• 6:04Rich Roll?

  It's about what it's like to pursue a creative life, what it means to be an artist in the world. It's about authenticity, truth, being real and authentic in the expression of one's art and creativity. It's about the tension, the push and pull between working within a system and on one's own terms. And it's really about what it's like to work with and learn from some of the most prolific and well-recognized artists and musicians and actors and filmmakers on the planet. So let's drop in and see what Sam has to say.

• 6:41Rich Roll?

  I wanted to just say that I so appreciate what you're doing with Off Camera. You do a brilliant job and I was reflecting on it as we were driving down here today and just thinking, where else could I possibly go to hear an hour-plus interview with these amazing guests that you get? I mean, it's such a treat. I don't know that that kind of exchange, that kind of interaction even exists anywhere else, so it's a gift to all of us. Thank you.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Oh, well, you know, when we started doing this thing, I didn't know it was that different. And it was sort of after we got it onto DirecTV on the Audience Network that we noticed that it was different. You know, it's not so different from, say, you know, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, when someone goes on the radio and you get to really hear about their lives. But in terms of a television medium, I don't think there's room for that. Or people don't think there's room for it now. So, you know, the old interviewers like David Frost, or Dick Cavett, or even Tom Snyder to some extent.

• 7:55Rich Roll?

  It's a bygone era.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a bygone era, the idea that you could just sit and have a conversation and have the normal ebbs and flows or the lulls of, you know, normal conversation without feeling like you have to constantly entertain or put on the Dog and Pony Show. That sort of disappeared a little bit. And luckily, we're given the venue through the Audience Network to kind of just give them the show we want to give them.

• 8:24Rich Roll?

  Was it conceptualized from the beginning as a television show? I mean, did you have DirecTV lined up? Or were you just starting it and then trying to find a home for it after you'd already begun?

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Well, funny enough, it began, a friend of mine, who's a director, and I were out. We did a little weekend together away from the kids with our wives and we were talking about podcasts. And I'm a big fan of NPR and of just radio shows in general. And I grew up listening to the radio to fall asleep at night. And so, we were talking about them and he said, "Do you have any interest in doing a podcast?" And I said, "I never really thought about it." I had a little radio show for a while, like ten years ago, a music show that I did. But the more we talked about it, I started thinking, well, if I was gonna do something like that, I might as well film it.

• 9:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  And then, once I film it.

• 9:22Rich Roll?

  You're a visual guy.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:23Rich Roll?

  It seems silly to not.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Right. And then, I might as well photograph the person. And so, all of a sudden, it became this experiment. Could you have someone in and have a conversation with them and sort of turn it into a podcast, a magazine, and a television show? So, it was sort of an experiment, and it started out online. And I think we did maybe seven shows online before DirecTV found it and made us an offer. You know, it's interesting, because it's shot in black and white. And there's no option of color, because we use these red monochrome cameras that are a 5K black and white monochrome camera. So, it wasn't really an option to do it in color, which was great.

• 10:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Because I love.

• 10:02Rich Roll?

  They couldn't come and say, "Well, you know, we know you're an artist, but..."

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Right, right. You know, they were kind of stuck with it, if they wanted the early episodes.

• 10:10Rich Roll?

  You know, we're in this attention deficit culture, you know? No video can be longer than 90 seconds. Nobody can stand to watch anything longer. And yet, at the same time, you know, we are seeing the increase in popularity and the ascension of these longer format, you know, media opportunities. And you just look at the explosion of podcasting recently. I think there's a real thirst and desire for like adult, like mature content. And so, refreshing to hear, you know, just a real conversation. And so, you know, you've really hit like a soft spot with that.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Well, I don't believe that people don't want long stuff. I think that we've been so inundated with the short stuff that, on the surface, it seems like that's what everyone is looking at. But, you know, there are... People go to full-length movies all the time, and they read novels. So, I think it's just that...

• 11:06Speaker 01

  With YouTube and all these things, there was, there was all of a sudden this explosion in this new format where in three minutes you could learn, you know, something that normally might take you, you know, a week to learn. Like, it's amazing. You know, the other day I was trying to, um, adjust the derailleur on my bike.

• 11:28Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  And it was great to be able to go on YouTube and find this little three minute video that was the shortcut for, you know, what screw is tension and what screw loosens it. And I was able to adjust my derailleur. And, uh, and same with my wife. She loves going on YouTube and, and like figuring out some craft with the kids, you know, like rainbow looms, which the kids do, which are exploding. Um, you know, there's, the videos are so much easier than, than the instructions. So I think there's this beautiful place for this short form content. Um, but the two are very different. And I do think, you know, it's kind of sad. I grew up loving The Tonight Show and Letterman, when Letterman was on

• 12:08Speaker 01

  late night. And, you know, now it does seem like some of those shows are all about coming up with bits that kind of go viral the next day.

• 12:17Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  You know, so you've got, uh, Jimmy Fallon throwing a, a beach ball into Julia Roberts' face and filming it in slow motion. And, cause they know that'll get a huge amount of traffic on the internet. Um, whereas, you know, it seems like some of these guys that used to have, used to have a little bit more of a free format to just talk if the conversation was interesting. Maybe those opportunities aren't there as much anymore.

• 12:40Rich Roll?

  Right. And I also think, I mean, when you look at the, the Tonight Show format, it's so condensed, it's so canned. And you know that when celebrity X is coming on, it's because there's a movie coming out and there's a canned joke and there's a setup. And it's so, you can just see right through the whole thing that it becomes, you know, maybe I'm just, you know, grandpa, you know, rich or whatever, but it almost becomes unwatchable to me, you know, so that, that when I do find, you know, something that's, that's real, that's authentic, it's like, ah, finally, like where has this been? You know, why didn't this happen a long time ago?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I do think that, you know, We we tell people that come on here that you're not here to plug anything but yourself. And it's not even really plugging yourself. It's more about, you know, most of those shows, they see the person coming on as an entertainer and a star or a celebrity. And we tend to look at the people that come on off camera as artists and craftsmen, and we want to know how they do their craft. We want to know how they got there and what things, you know, make them want to keep going to work every day and what they want to pass on and things like that. So, so, you know,

• 13:56Speaker 01

  sometimes we run into a little bit of a logjam with our publicist because we have to explain the format a little bit, you know, and it doesn't really matter when it airs or it doesn't really have to tie into anything because we're talking to this person as the end result. We're not talking about their movie, using them as the conduit about the movie, you know. So I think when people figure that out, it sort of, it is sort of refreshing that they can just talk about, you know, things that no one else asks them.

• 14:26Rich Roll?

  Right, and I I feel like the sort of unstated thing when I, when I listen and watch these interviews is they're happy to be there. They're like excited that they can just relax and talk about stuff that they actually care about, rather than, oh, you have 90 seconds to say this and, you know, get out or, you know, make sure you plug the movie and just talk about what interests them. I mean, they must, there's like a sense of relief and relaxation that kind of permeates the whole thing.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Right. Well, imagine if you were a really serious craftsman at something and you work really hard at it and every time you're on television, someone just wants you to be funny and tell, you know, a silly story about something that happened with another celebrity and, um, and then plug the movie for a second and you're gone. That's got to be kind of frustrating for, for someone who, you know, clearly works really hard at what they do, you know?

• 15:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  And in the case of someone like, you know, um... We had Jackson Brown on recently and musicians don't get that opportunity a lot as it is. I mean, when you think about a musician, most of their serious stuff is going to come out in print media.

• 15:39Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  And if they're on a talk show, they're just going to perform their song, you know?

• 15:44Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  So it's very fun to sort of have a long conversation with a musician for me because it does seem like something that they don't get to do that often.

• 15:52Rich Roll?

  Right, but I also think that there's something about you as the host. I mean, there's a level of trust there and I would imagine that, you know, you've worked with a lot of these people in the past and so they know you personally. And so there's a level of kind of, it's like it's a safe zone, right? Like they feel comfortable with you opening up in a way that you just don't get elsewhere.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Well, I think there's some of that. I think definitely at the beginning of the show, I certainly went through my, you know, phone book for the people that I felt comfortable asking to come on. And now we've sort of transitioned into phase two, which is we have people on occasionally that I've never met before.

• 16:31Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  But I'll tell you, the way we do this show is we also do a photo shoot. And so we usually do that before we sit down for the interview. And I'm very comfortable in that format and that environment. So that gives us a little, a little bedrock of experience, even if it's only an hour. By the time we sit down in the chair, it's not like we've just met.

• 16:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  You know, we've already worked together. So that gives, you know, it sort of gives some sort of breaking the ice period and also hopefully people watch the show before they come on and so they get that, you know, I'm not trying to, I don't know, I'm not trying to get some juicy gossip out of them or something like that.

• 17:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  I really do want to know what it is that makes them love their jobs and what it is that...

• 17:24Speaker 01

  They do that that gets them to that performance or that a piece of art or whatever it is they do, you know, what gets them there and what what have they learned along the way? I'm so fascinated in that.

• 17:35Rich Roll?

  Well, let's talk about that with you, right? I mean, you do you do so many things. I mean, how do you even qualify as an artist? I mean, you're a photographer, you're a documentarian, you're a filmmaker, you direct music videos, commercials, documentaries, you direct a television, you do all of these things. I mean, I think that, you know, an artist that was proficient or successful in any one of those disciplines would be happy. And yet, you you're so multidisciplinary and you seem to be able to, you know, gravitate between these different worlds with a relative level of ease. And, you know, an outside observer may think, oh, it's kind of the same thing, but these are, you know, very specific skill sets that don't necessarily always overlap.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I noticed pretty early on in life that I was somebody that, you know, one thing did not sustain me. I would get into one thing for, you know, a month, and all of a sudden, through that, I would find something else. I remember when I was a kid, I was so into snakes, and I thought I was going to be a herpetologist, and I had four or five snakes. And I met a friend who loved snakes too, but I went to his house and he also made models. And Star Wars had just come out, and all of a sudden, I got really into making models because I could see how cool it would be to to create special effects models that were in television shows or movies.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  And then, and then, you know, from there, I got into skateboarding, and from skateboarding, I got into playing music in bands. And then, I wanted to photograph my skateboard friends, and I wanted to figure out how to record my my band. And so, and each one of these things, I just, I go down the wormhole pretty deep. And it's not enough for me to get a surface level of knowledge in something. Like, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it all the way. And I think that, I don't know, I'm surprised more people aren't like me. I'm surprised more people don't, you know. When, you know, when they discover something, wanna go deeply into it. I don't understand how someone is one thing.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  I don't understand how if you're a photographer, you can wake up every day and just think about making pictures all day long, every day. Like, at some point, it's gotta come into your mind, you know, what would the music be? What's the soundtrack to that picture?

• 20:01Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  And, and would that be interesting to explore? Or what would that picture look like if it moved? You know, so for me, I just, as, you know, from a very early age, I just liked doing a bunch of things. And I never understood that you should just do one.

• 20:18Rich Roll?

  Well, I think that, that, that, you know, what I hear when you say that is a healthy relationship with fear, you know? And, and being comfortable getting out of your comfort zone. Because I think a lot of people, they just, they settle into one thing and it's comfortable. And it's frightening to step out of that, like, hey, I'm good here. You know, why should I risk this by trying something else? Or, you know, letting the peanut gallery, you know, influence whatever decisions they're making. So, so it sounds like you, you like that. You like taking that, you know, risk, for lack of a better word, and, and stepping out and allowing yourself to try new things. And, you know, without worrying about the results of them as much.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Well, luckily for me, I, um, you know, I had kids a little bit later in life. I had my first child when I was thirty-two. So, um, I didn't, I didn't feel like I was in a situation when I was younger where I had to make a bunch of money. And I also was able to work pretty steadily as a photographer. So, when other interests came up, they felt like hobbies to me. And because I had this life as a freelance photographer, I had the time to explore them. One of the things I did in around, uh, two thousand was I had a little cabin up in a community called Pine Mountain Club.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Which was, it's, it's off, it's kind of like if you go up to the top of the grapevine and then you go.

• 21:43Rich Roll?

  Like Fraser Park.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  You go west, Fraser Park area. And I, I rode motorcycles. And so. I would go trail riding and then I would, I would race at the track um on the weekends and, and then, you know, cook barbecue and, and hang out and it was a great thing. And, and there was a gas station there, um, there was also the video rental store and the guy also uh had a little amateur radio thing going and he would basically play like his disc of rotating CDs and he would call it the Pine Mountain Radio Station. And he took one of the unused frequencies up there. So I came to him one day and I said, can I uh, can I do a radio show? And he was like, yeah, sure, why not?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  So I went to my home studio back in Santa Monica during the week and I put together a two hour radio show that was like an hour and a half of playing songs that I liked and then a half hour of a live band that I would bring into my, my studio. And so for, I don't know, for about six months, I guess I had this little radio show up there. And it was a total hobby. It was just for fun. It was like in 2000 and I called it sweetheart of the radio and um, and I would give him two CDs of pre-recorded radio show and he would play them on Saturday evenings at five o'clock. Cause that's kinda when everyone was in their house up there. And uh, and I loved it and I, and um, and it was a total, total hobby, but like anything

• 23:11Speaker 01

  else, I, I dug in pretty deep to the point of where um, I remember being really uh unprepared for a shoot I was about to do. And I wanted to finish the radio show and I remember this feeling of what am I doing? I'm making a radio show for like 800 people in these cabins up in the woods that's being played out of a gas station and I'm having the time of my life and, and I'm putting more time into it than my photography career. And that's that's sort of always been me like if if I have an interest in it, I'll go deep in it and and you know, that ended up sort of paying off in a weird way because

• 23:53Speaker 01

  I enjoyed it so much and it and it it made me realize sort of how much I love music and how much I love music documentary and and sort of crossing that line between talking about music and playing it. So each one of these things sort of they sort of end up weaving their way into my life one way or the other.

• 24:11Rich Roll?

  Well, it you know, it's sort of following your creative muse, right? Like whatever way that speaks to you and that that's sort of integral to what you do and however that manifests, whether it's a photograph or a film, right?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:22Rich Roll?

  You have to be able to listen to that voice.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Well, in college, I was on a skateboard team and I was also in a band and it just seemed like, you know, everyone in that little world, they were making their own flyers for their band shows. They were making their own like, you know, self released cassettes or forty fives and they had their own little skateboard zines. So I was in a community of people that just wanted to make stuff and be creative. And, you know, for instance, we would build a ramp in someone's backyard and then six months later, we'd have a contest at the ramp and, you know, it would end up in a little local zine and a band would play

• 25:06Speaker 01

  in the backyard and so, you know, I grew up in that really creative time when, you know, kind of pre, of course, pre internet, but but pre social media where, you know, you reached out to people through your little communities and and that that was a good, solid basement education for me that, you know, if you make your own things, good things come and people come and the right people come.

• 25:30Rich Roll?

  Right, right. I mean, it it's sort of the Orange County version of the DC, the Washington DC episode of Sonic Highways. Did you see that yet?

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that whole Minor Threat scene was very emblematic of that kind of thing. And I think Seattle had that scene and Athens, Georgia and Minneapolis for sure had it with, you know, the Replacements and Husker Du and stuff like that. But yeah, I think these little these little scenes cropped up all over the place. And and in my little town, which was Fullerton, the Fender Guitar Factory was there and There were a lot of pawn shops that had really good guitars because there was a lot of guitars in in Fullerton.

• 26:10Rich Roll?

  Circulation.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  And there were a lot of empty pools.

• 26:12Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  And so there were skateboarders and people starting bands and and and so that's how our little scene started. You know, my high school, um, the adolescents, Agent Orange and Social Distortion all had kids that went to my high school. And so, um, there was a healthy little punk rock scene and skateboard scene, you know.

• 26:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's interesting when you look back and you think, you know, how much, you know, those sort of random things that, you know, really just by happenstance you happen to be surrounded by end up informing the fabric of your life. Like when I was listening to your conversation with Stacy Peralta and he's talking about, you know, when the urethane wheels came out and just, you know, sort of the the water, you know, the water shortage and suddenly there's all these pools without water and like these random things that end up becoming so, um, you know, sort of the touchstones of what your life as an adult ends up becoming. Cause I think, you know, the lazy question for you is, is, well, how has music informed your, you know, your creativity and your art, but it's like they're they're inseparable.

• 27:16Rich Roll?

  It's the same thing, right? Like skateboarding, that music scene, what you grew up in, what you do now is really kind of an extension of those passions that you had as a kid.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I think in a way it's like when you, when you get inspired about something, whether it's a record that you buy or you see someone on a skateboard do a trick or there's someone down the street that can draw really great and made his own comic book or whatever, you want to belong to that kind of group or have or be in the conversation with those people. And so I remember the first band I was ever in, you know, I think we played one show and we were already designing album artwork on a cassette and just giving them to our friends because I wanted so bad to to be in that community of creative people and sharing

• 28:11Speaker 01

  what we were making. And and I think that that is not that different than what I'm doing now. Um, and by the way, it still feels like an experiment. It still feels like a hobby to me.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  You know, there's certainly work that I take very seriously and clients that I have in my directing world and the photography world and but then there's, there's all these sort of things that I get myself into as more of an experiment that end up becoming serious, you know, but for me, I find that I'm happiest when I'm making something that, that pleases me, you know? And it doesn't matter if there's a monetary thing on the other end of it. You know, we make a joke about how it's more exciting to sell a physical issue of Off Camera Magazine and to see that we sold one to someone that lives in Singapore

• 29:08Speaker 01

  than it is to land a really big job with, say HBO. Because Off Camera is our little baby and someone in Singapore found it and decided to like give us the money and have us ship them this magazine and, and that feels like that same excitement that I had as a kid.

• 29:24Rich Roll?

  As a kid, yeah, just, just being authentic to your creative voice. And, you know, kind of going back into your, you know, Fullerton origin story. I feel like Cousin Mo is like patient zero.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Cousin Mo.

• 29:37Rich Roll?

  Like, it all goes back to him.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  You did your research.

• 29:41Rich Roll?

  I try.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, Cousin Mo, he, big influence in my life and two things happened. Number one, my mother and her sisters all lived within a mile of each other with us growing up and so Cousin Mo was five years older than me and really cool, five or six years older. And, and so whenever we visited that house, I always just wanted to go in Cousin Mo's room and check out his posters on his walls or listen to his records or, you know, just have attention from this guy who, you know, who because he was my cousin, he sort of had to tolerate me hanging around. So, and as it turns out, Mo was just into some cool stuff, you know?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  He discovered punk rock really early and, and or it seemed early to me because he was older and You know, he, he was always the first guy to give you a cool record, like even before punk rock, like, he gave me a Creedence Clearwater Revival record when I was really young. And, so, I, I could always sort of look to him and see what he was into, and then this amazing thing happened when I was in eighth grade, or seventh grade, I think, they bought the house next door to us. So all of a sudden Cousin Mo lived next door, and I actually, I could see into his bedroom from my bedroom window, and so, then he couldn't get away from me.

• 31:05Rich Roll?

  He's got the black light going.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  He had, he had crates of records, and he was, he had, he was a great reader, you know, he was, he had all, all the, like, he introduced me to Charles Bukowski and John Fonti, and, just sort of, sort of was a few years ahead of the coolest high school buddies of mine.

• 31:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  And, so, yeah, he, he really sort of set me on my way in that, in that sense.

• 31:35Rich Roll?

  What's, what's he doing now?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  You know, he is a sound man, and he does sound for commercials mostly. And, yeah, he's, you know, he's still a cool dude, but now he's got kids, he's got a kid who's graduating high school, and, yeah.

• 31:54Rich Roll?

  That's a trip. Well, I think there's this idea for people that are listening who, who maybe aren't familiar with Southern California, that, oh, well, you were, you were in LA, and so it was just a sidestep for you to suddenly be in Hollywood and do what you do. But, you know, irrespective of that very specific subculture that you were immersed in in Fullerton, you know, in certain respects, it's, it's a million miles away from Hollywood. It's like its own thing, right? Like, so, you know, I would imagine you could make the argument that you, you could have been in St. Louis doing that, like, in terms of its, its relationship to kind of the entertainment world, I suppose.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  That's true. I think that it's geographically not that far away, but you know, in terms of when I think about all of the friends that I had there, how few of them ended up in a big city. Uh, most of them stayed in Fullerton. So I think that's the case all over the country. Like you can be in a suburb thirty miles outside of, you know, Chicago and never take in all of what Chicago has to offer or, or never sort of have any desire to go live in a big city, you know. For me, it was just, I think,

• 33:14Speaker 01

  there, it started with going up to see bands because I was so into music and Cousin Mo was helpful there too. He had a driver's license, yeah. And, uh, and so, you know, having the record business in LA really helped and, and then, um, also being a skateboarder. Once some of the friends that I had started to get driver's licenses and things, um, you know, you fanned out all the time in search of skate spots. And so your circle got wider. As, you know, on, on the search for the perfect empty pool or the ramp or whatever. And, uh, you know, so for me, but it wasn't a straight shot to LA. I, I spent a year in Spokane, Washington.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  I went to Gonzaga University briefly and I spent about a year in Utah with a friend of mine who was in a band and he was finishing school there. So I kind of bounced around a little bit, but ended up in LA, um, uh, when I was, I guess around twenty-one or twenty-two.

• 34:15Rich Roll?

  Right. So did you go to photography school or?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  I went, I ended up at Cal State Fullerton after my experiment in Gonzaga failed because it was like snow and cold five months of the year and you couldn't skateboard. So I came back and, uh, finished school at Cal State Fullerton and lived at home and did that, which was great because, um, it, it was a great school for journalism and communications. And I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but eventually found myself at the Cal State Fullerton, uh, newspaper. And it was a daily newspaper. It was like a sixteen-page paper that was published every day. And that was my first taste, really, of what it would be like to be a professional photographer and a professional journalist. And I wrote for the paper and took pictures. And that led

• 35:03Speaker 01

  to getting a job out of college at the Associated Press, being a photojournalist as well. So I did go to school for photography, but I would say the emphasis at that time was more on photojournalism rather than art photography.

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  And you had the opportunity to shoot some pretty cool bands there, right? Like The Replacements, all these cool, kind of like, groovy acts were passing through Fullerton.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was great. I mean, Firehose would play at lunch, or X, or The Alarm played there. And so, you know, and that was a part of it. But I think, just more than anything else, going to that school and working for that newspaper, and really having it as a full-time job. I mean, it took a lot of work to put that newspaper out every day. It gave me the sense of what a fairly interesting career could look like as a photographer.

• 35:58Rich Roll?

  And so, you know, how do you bridge the gap between, you know, young photographer at AP and now, you know, Vanity Fair covers? Is it just a progression of refining and getting better and slowly, slowly moving up? Or did you have like a big, like, break that you could point to and say, you know, that really turned the corner in my career?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny. I never do things the right way. I never take the correct path. If I had said when I was 22 years old, "My desire is to shoot Vanity Fair covers", I would have taken a totally different path. Because the way to do that would be to go become an assistant for a big photographer and learn how that's done and kind of go through the ranks that way. But because I've always been this sort of experimental person who follows whatever I'm into in the moment...

• 36:55Speaker 01

  It never sort of occurred to me to have that long of a life plan, like to look that far in advance. So I did photojournalism until I realized it was what I didn't want to do. Mm-hmm. And an opportunity opened up around then to be a still photographer on a movie set. And at the time, I thought, well, God, that's great. I love films. I love filmmaking. And I love the idea of cinematography. So I'll go hang out on a film set and learn about all of that and see what I want to do next. And I was able to go on a film called Bob Roberts and become the still photographer. And it was a Tim Robbins movie. And he ended

• 37:37Speaker 01

  up having a lot of his friends do cameos in the film. And so I sort of hustled my way into a lot of portraits that they didn't really need for the film. Right, right. By saying, you know, at some point this week, I'm going to need to pull you aside and do a portrait of you. So I photographed like John Cusack and Susan Sarandon and Peter Gallagher and Gore Vidal and trying to think of who else was on that film. John Malkovich? James Spader. John Malkovich wasn't on the film. But there were a lot of folks that I was able to make pictures of. So I found out pretty quickly, I did not like the still photographer gig, though, because there's a lot of standing around, waiting

• 38:21Speaker 01

  around. And there's also a lot of being in the way, which I hate. I think it's the same reason I didn't love photojournalism. I don't like being in a situation where I'm not wanted. My ego, not even my ego, but my confidence can't handle that. I need to sort of be invited into a room and know that

• 38:46Speaker 01

  That people want me to be taking their picture. And I found out both of photojournalism, you know, there were some uncomfortable moments where I had to photograph a funeral once for Hank Gathers, who was a basketball player at Lowell and Merrimount, who collapsed and died on the court. And I hated the experience of having to photograph a grieving mother at a funeral. I felt like a dirty person that day, you know, and I also didn't ever like the experience of being on a film set where I was seen as in the way by the gaffers or the grips or whatever. You know, trying to do my job while another job was being done. But what I did find out was that I was able to make a bunch of portraits quickly of these actors

• 39:30Speaker 01

  and I enjoyed doing it. And I found out I really enjoyed sort of environmental and cinematic portraiture. So I was able to build up a portfolio from that and go off and start showing my work. So rather than having to take the route of being an assistant for a photographer, I was sort of able to build a portfolio in an unconventional way. And there was enough work in there to convince a few photo editors to hire me.

• 39:57Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Do you think that by sort of not taking that path of being an assistant, that it allowed you to really figure out what your style is, rather than be influenced by somebody else's style that you're working underneath?

• 40:10Speaker 01

  I think so. I think that, first off, it forced me to be a small business owner really early on in life. I had to figure out, you know, it wasn't until I got my first assignment that I realized, oh, I need to be able to invoice this person.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  You know, that I have to sort of have an infrastructure built around this picture that I was about to take. And that was really helpful. And it was also really helpful knowing that That because, you know, often my clients were out of state and they weren't coming to the shoot. I was sort of like the only one responsible for making sure that

• 40:50Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  a picture was gonna come out and it was gonna work for them.

• 40:53Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  So I sort of learned early on that there was the picture that they expected. And then there was this sort of open opportunity to try and experiment with something else. So my, my sort of working process became, okay, what does the magazine expect and let me make sure I make that picture. And then let me see if I can try something a little different. And that's how I, that's how I built up my style, I think, was by taking the opportunities and the, and the parameters of, of the shoot, you know, and sometimes it was, hey, you know, it's, you're only gonna have an hour with this person. But sometimes it was, you know, you can have all day or you can, you can pick the location or whatever.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  So, um, so I learned, you know, I, I think, I think I'm an assignment-based creative in the sense that I, I wanna make my style fit the subject.

• 41:51Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna, I'm not the person like, I don't know, um, you know, photographer like say Annie Leibowitz or, or, um, maybe Dan Winters, who has a very specific visual style and is going to fit their subject into that style. And they're immediately gonna look like they're in a Dan Winters photograph or, you know.

• 42:16Rich Roll?

  No matter what.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 42:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no matter what, like.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  No matter what.

• 42:19Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  And for me, I wanted the style to reflect the person and, and reflect who the person was and their personality and what it was about them that, that seemed to really identify them or, or really define them. And so it took a longer time for my style to emerge because it was sort of at the will of whoever I was shooting.

• 42:40Rich Roll?

  Right, it was malleable depending upon what you were doing. I mean, if you had to articulate what your style is, I mean, how do you answer that question?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  It's a hard question. Um, I think the term I came up with a long time ago that seems to fill in as good as anything else is cinematic portraiture in the sense that, um, I try to make a picture that, that draws elements of a larger scene happening. So.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  If the person I am shooting is, say, Steve Martin, and it's, he's essentially this icon of comedy, I'm going to try to create a cinematic landscape to take that portrait in that allows the picture to reflect who he is inside, but also maybe tells a bigger story about what his life experience is. And I use that example because it was one of the times I feel like I best pulled that off. And I photographed him on a street with about eighteen hundred banana peels. And he's strolling through the banana peels without a care in the world. And to me, that was what he's done his whole career is he's somehow,

• 43:52Speaker 01

  working in the broadest sense, he's still managed to avoid the cliches of comedy.

• 43:56Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Yeah, I like that.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  So for me, that's, it's always the challenge of how do you, how do you come up with a picture that sort of, it, it gets the essence of the person, but it also does a little more. It has a little, a little extra information in there.

• 44:13Rich Roll?

  What is, what is your creative process for kind of conceptualizing these shoots? I mean, is it just, it comes to you? Or do you have like a method that you rely on to kind of, okay, I'm shooting this person? You know, what are the aspects of this person's personality that I want to capture? Like, is there a design to how you kind of walk into these kind of opportunities?

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Well, it's different depending on the medium. If it's, if I'm directing a commercial or a music video, it's a little bit different than if I'm taking a picture or if I'm preparing for an off-camera show. But there are some things that are the same throughout. And one of them is, you kind of have to either know or define your narrative. Because you're always telling a story, whether it's in a single frame or whether it's in a two-hour documentary. So-

• 45:02Speaker 01

  The first thing for me is to know what story I'm telling. And with photographs, it's often, you know, I read about the person and I start sketching ideas and hopefully I can make up a story that I can tell that is true with that person. If it's a music video, I'll sort of really try to, you know, get what I want to say about the song, whether it's trying to be very literal or trying to be very opposite, but I still have to know the story I want to tell. And then, you know, with doing off-camera, it really is, you know, you could talk to anyone for a hundred hours and not get even close to their whole deal.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  So the idea is to try to pick the things that you want to really look into and develop a little narrative. You know, I'm sure you deal with the same thing doing a podcast, you know, what's interesting to you and...

• 45:56Rich Roll?

  And what's universal.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, I mean, in the context of what you do, there's generally, I mean, what I do is just, it's me and Tyler sitting over there. So I can do whatever I want, which is, you know, probably similar to what you do with off-camera. But with most of your work, there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, right? There's ad agency people, there's art directors, there's publicists, there's all kinds of things that are influencing these creative decisions. And I'm interested in how you kind of navigate that, you know, does it constrain you? Or I would imagine that you've found a way to make all of that work, like this intersection of creativity and commerce, which is really kind of like, you know, that's the theme of, you know,

• 46:41Rich Roll?

  I'm Trying to Break Your Heart, the documentary, which I want to talk about. And that, in a kind of a meta sense, it's really what your career is about as well.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Right, well, I sort of always think in terms of not having a client. I think as an artist, you don't want to, you want the client to be yourself or the thing you're working on. And I think I do my best work when I...

• 47:14Speaker 01

  I'm so excited about the project I am doing that and it becomes so clear what that end result should look like that that it's clear to everyone I'm working with. So when I say having no clients, in a sense on off camera, I don't have a client. We we give the show to DirecTV, but we license it to them. They are not here during the shoots. They don't have any creative control over the edit. It's sort of like, you know, you we live or die based on the decisions we make here and and it's great because things get done quickly and and I can live with anything I do. You know, it's much harder to live with something where you made a compromise for somebody and then it doesn't turn out right

• 47:59Speaker 01

  than it is to live with your own decision. You know, I'm I'm OK with my own failures. And so I always try to have a mindset of no client. Even when I have a client, and I think that that they're happy for that, too, because if they have a director or photographer that's completely engaged in an idea and they get out of the way, then then that idea can be, you know, more pure, I guess.

• 48:26Rich Roll?

  Right, right. But they don't always get out of the way, do they?

• 48:29Speaker 01

  No, no. But, you know, the goal is to find people that that are hiring you because they love what you do anyway. And you do this long enough, you can sort of sniff out the situations where it's just not the right fit. And and sometimes you you sort of have to be able to say that. You have to be able to say, hey, I think you want somebody else on this. And I know that sometimes when you know, after an initial conversation, I'll get a bunch of layouts and a bunch of scrap materials that, you know, are you know, sort of, sort of.

• 49:06Rich Roll?

  They're just moving in a different direction.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Or, or, or these things are, are supposed to dictate the mood of the shoot, or the mood of the, the commercial, or whatever. And if it looks nothing like what I do, then I realize it's gonna be an uphill battle, where they really want something else than what I can do.

• 49:23Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Cause I, I think that, you know, I can't be good at what I do unless I'm allowed to do what I do. You know what I mean? Like...

• 49:33Rich Roll?

  Well, you're, but you're also at a level now where you probably have a very finely tuned radar about that, and you can make those kind of choices. But like, you know, when you were coming up, and sort of like, oh, well, this job came up, like, I probably should take this, even if it doesn't feel right. I mean, you must have had bumps along the road, kind of getting to this place where you have that kind of clarity.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you definitely have to find your way, and you don't always get to make those distinctions. And I'm very lucky that sometimes I can say no to a job, but I think, learning to say no has been really productive, and, and it's contributed to my success, because that, that sort of opens me up to doing work that's right for me. And I, I was listening to, um, uh, an interview with Louis CK, and he was talking about,

• 50:22Speaker 01

  you know, even to this day, if he gets booked into a show where it's the wrong audience, and not his audience, then he just becomes a bad comedian, because he's in a room with people that just don't get him.

• 50:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  And the gist of his conversation was, a big part of his success, is being in the right room, with, with an audience that, that sort of understands his humor. And, and not everyone is gonna get what you do, ever. So, you have to be able to find the right people to work with, and the right audience for your stuff, so that, so that, you know, you feel like you're communicating.

• 50:55Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  You know? So, I'm very lucky that, that some of the magazines that I get to work for are also magazines that, that like what I do enough to sort of say, "Yeah, try it. Try what you wanna do." And, and, you know, I'm very lucky with Vanity Fair, that they pretty much let me do any crazy idea I have.

• 51:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  And, you know, I've earned that, because I've worked for them for 20 years, and they also understand that that's how they get the best work. I mean, I'll tell you this much, when I get a job, and then I get a really heavy-handed, sort of, um... You know, communication from that job of exactly what they want. I get sort of divorced from the process anyway because I know ninety percent of the time is going to be spent trying to make that person happy. And there's not enough room for me to sort of do what I would have done on my own.

• 51:49Rich Roll?

  And they have an idea already in their mind of what the picture looks like and you're never going to be able to match that.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Right, so I sort of disconnect a little bit and I can do a very professional job at that, but I don't think I'm, I'm at my best in those situations.

• 52:04Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. And all this time that you've spent, I mean, you were talking about communication, like communication with the client or with the talent. I mean, you know, looking at your, the volume of your, your work, I mean, you've photographed everybody. There's like, you know, it's, it's amazing, you know, the, the people that you've had the opportunity to spend time with and, and to, you know, capture on film. And I'm just wondering, you know, what have you, you know, what have you taken away from that experience of spending so much time with a diversity of, you know, incredibly talented people? Are there like themes that emerged that have informed kind of how you perceive your life or approach your career?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Well, one thing that is super important to differentiate between the whole, you know, having a no-client type of mindset or something is that I'm photographing people. I'm not, I'm not setting up a still life of apples and acorns and shooting that. I'm, I'm photographing a person who has their own idea of who they are and, and what's best and, and who they, you know, what's important to them. And so it is very important that, that I make a picture that's true to that.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  And what I've learned over the years in photographing people is that I may have a great idea and it's just not right for the person that is in front of the camera. And I have to be willing to totally change gears midstream if that idea is just not connecting with the person the way I thought it would. Because we all have perceptions of who someone's going to be before we meet them. Whether it's a job interview or a distant cousin or whatever, right? And, and you meet somebody and, you know, as a photographer, you get this opportunity to be pleasantly surprised by someone you thought, you know, was maybe going to be,

• 54:04Speaker 01

  you know, a bit, a bit uncomfortable or shy or whatever, and you, you find, you find that you could be surprised and this whole new side of someone could come out. And if you're too rigid about what your idea is, you may miss an opportunity to make a picture that really reflects who that person is. So, part of my job and what I've learned is, is whatever situation it is, whether it's directing or, um, or, or taking pictures or whatever, is knowing that I am working with another person and having to make not only compromises, but, but sort of subtle shifts in, in, uh, in the plan for the day in order to, in order to best capture what

• 54:47Speaker 01

  it is about that person that, that reflects who they are, you know?

• 54:51Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, how often, how often is the picture that just nails it, how often does that one come from, you know, spontaneous sort of, you know, idea that you just had in the moment or just being present as opposed to kind of following your plot line of how you thought you were gonna lay it out that day?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Well, it's such a living, moving thing, you know, you can look at a picture, or you can look at a, uh, you know, a session of pictures that you shot 10 years ago and see something totally different that you missed the first time. But for me, I always try to have some ideas in my back pocket in case the person kind of shows up and is a blank slate and just says, "Hey, just direct me and do what you wanna do." I wanna make sure I have some good ideas. But, um, but so many of my favorite pictures and so many of my favorite scenes and things that I've filmed are, sort of came about accidentally. It's almost like if you take the time and do all your research and build the environment for something to happen.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Then something will happen and it may be unexpected. And the accident may be better than the, um, you know, than, than the thing you had planned. And sometimes it's just a matter of, you know, turning around and turning your back on what you thought was your set and, and there's a whole nother picture there that you never would have imagined. So the process there is to just put up, you know, do all the work and come up with a plan, but leave enough time and room and knowledge open that you could be totally surprised and, and try to be, try to be open to that possibility.

• 56:28Rich Roll?

  Right, this perfect melding of preparation and flexibility. I mean, I think you were talking about that when you were chatting with Robert Downey Jr. Like he was talking about how he can go, you know, deep into the prep, but also you have to be ready to just be completely like spontaneous and present and like be willing to put the script aside.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Right. It's almost like, it's almost like you have to do all the work, even if, it's kind of like a magic trick. Even if you know you're not going to use it, if you don't do all that work and you don't sort of, you know, plan something out, then you didn't create something to deviate from in the first place. You can't deviate from nothing. You know what I mean? The hardest thing for me is a blank piece of paper or a blank studio and, and, you know, the idea that, oh, we'll, we'll just plan on spontaneity. You can't plan on spontaneity. You have to make a plan and then if spontaneity occurs,

• 57:28Speaker 01

  great, you know? But I, it's funny, I do really, I really admire the photographers and filmmakers that can do something with kind of that blank canvas. You know, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn were masters at, you know, taking a person and very little else and making a really compelling image. And one of the challenges for me on off camera is, is that very thing is can we?

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Can we make an interesting image and an interesting conversation with a very clean canvas?

• 58:05Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  And I found it's been really helpful for my work. You know, with each off-camera interview we do, we do a photo shoot that becomes a magazine cover. And also, there's a few other pictures inside that magazine. And for that, I specifically don't plan anything, and I don't know what I'm going to do right up to the moment when we start shooting. And sometimes it's great, and sometimes I find myself wishing I had made a bit of a plan. But I think it's a great exercise for anyone who's visual to remember that I'm photographing a living person, and that's the subject. The architecture of their face, and the movement of their body, and the way they hold their

• 58:48Speaker 01

  hands, or the way they decided to dress that day, you know? And so I guess what I'm saying is that, like, you know, anything you become comfortable at, maybe it's good to try the other side of things.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  With the magazine, you're also, you've established these artistic constraints. It's going to be black and white. You're not going to go out with a thousand banana peels in the street. You're going to probably do it in the studio. It's going to be very simple. It's going to be a portrait. And so how do you maximize creativity and capture this person within the confines of these kind of rules that you've established, which what I would imagine, you know, kind of pushes you a little bit more?

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 59:37Rich Roll?

  In those constraints.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  And that's the thing, is that sometimes we just need reminding that we don't need all that stuff. I need that, for sure. Sometimes I think I can rely a little bit too much on the idea side of things. Like, I've always been very lucky. I am able to sit down at my computer or at a piece of paper and throw a bunch of ideas against the wall. And some of them are going to be good enough to execute, you know? I'm not someone who doesn't, you know, I'm not someone who wants for an idea.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  But what I what I'm not as good at is trusting that with just a camera in my hand and a person in front of me and no previous thought or planning, I can come up with an interesting image. And so for me, it's like that that thing where, OK, if my regular job is to have these, you know, big ideas and more thematic narrative photo stories, then my hobby will then be to do the opposite. You know? I see off camera as sort of the opposite of what I what I'm known for in the editorial magazine world.

• 1:00:50Rich Roll?

  Right now, we'll see.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:00:53Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean, right? I mean, in, you know, after conducting all these interviews and and just the photo shoots that you've done with these people, are there, you know, what is your takeaway about kind of, you know, the the way they live their lives? Like, how is that? I guess what I'm getting at is like, like, have you learned, like, oh, you know what I noticed, like, in all these people, they all have this way, this is how they approach their art, or there's a consistent theme in the way that they kind of try to work on their creativity or how they live their lives? I mean, has any of that informed kind of how you go, yeah, I should, maybe I should take that, I'm seeing this lesson kind of emerge from these experiences and and I'm going to try to put that into my life?

• 1:01:36Rich Roll?

  I mean, I would put, maybe it hasn't, but I'm just curious about.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  No, definitely. It definitely does. And and with each, you know, since I am so multi-disciplined and and I'm excited about doing so many different things, one of the side benefits of off camera has been that I can bring in people that have had huge success in these areas I'm interested in and pick up little things about them that maybe didn't occur to me or maybe is a confirmation of of what I suspected. And, you know, when I think of some of the things that have come out of off camera, one of the things that's amazing to me is how many of the very successful people that I've had conversations with knew what they wanted to do at such an early age.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  And that that's a little bit frustrating because I was just the opposite and I wanted to do so many things, you know? You know, you take guys like Judd Apatow and Matt Damon and Tony Hawk and

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Amy Mann and they discovered.

• 1:02:43Rich Roll?

  Laura Dern.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Laura Dern, they discovered when they were so young that this is all they wanted to do and it made their life path so clear. Even Matt Damon said he felt sorry for his friends that were graduating from college and didn't know what they wanted to do because he was so clear, you know, that he was on his path already. But, you know, you also get things like when I spoke with Stacy Peralta. One of the things I always say about being directors or photographers is that we live on islands. We don't get the chance to go and hang out in these other people's environments and see how they do it. We sort of all have to make up our own processes.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Especially for me, because I didn't assist a bunch of photographers. I'm always fascinated with how other people set up their shoots or how they deal with, you know, having clients on set or how they deal with publicists or how they, you know, how they work their video village setup, you know, so that they can handle bouncing back and forth between sort of the producer and the talent. And, you know, so doing off camera, I get a little peek into the process. It was very nice when I interviewed Stacy Peralta to find out how he sets up his sort of, his organizational outline for editing his films.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Because I did my first long form documentary very differently and by talking to Stacy, I actually, for this recent one, I just did the Bob Dylan Basement Tapes thing.

• 1:04:19Rich Roll?

  Right, which is, that's premiering in a couple of days.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  That's premiering in a few days, yeah. But I actually was able to take some of the things I learned from that interview and incorporate them into my edit approach, which is great. So, you know, and Judy Greer, we had her on here and she said that a light bulb went off for her one day. She talked to a friend and she realized that she shouldn't be doing her passion and her dream. She should be doing what she was good at. You know, maybe her dream was to be a professional ballet dancer, but it was killing her because she wasn't enjoying it. She loved the idea of being a ballet dancer, but. She was never going to be one, but she was great at, you know, being on stage and feeling comfortable and improvising and

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  and her life got a lot easier when she realized she should do what comes naturally to her. So that's something that I also took a lot away from.

• 1:05:13Rich Roll?

  That's really interesting because you always usually just align like, oh, well, your dream is, is, you know, what you're probably naturally good at and what where your passion lies. But

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think that's true.

• 1:05:23Rich Roll?

  Things are not always the same, right?

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  No, they're not. And I think especially being a parent,

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  you know,

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  you want to be careful with your kids that you you don't just provide lip service of, oh, yeah, you're great and you can do anything you want. I think it's much more valuable for a child to have a message that they could do something with. And, you know, it really takes knowing somebody to be able to say, hey, you're really good at this and maybe you didn't consider it. But I have this friend who's a production designer and and he works with me on all my jobs and he, in my opinion, could write stand-up comedy or write television comedy because he always has great timing and the best line and it comes so naturally to him.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  And I'm always encouraging him to, you know, like, hey, you should actually try this. You're probably, you could probably in five years just own a writer's room on Saturday Night Live or something, you know, and and you struggle so mightily at at your other job and you're great at it and you love it, but like you're just naturally this guy that has the best line at the best time in the room, you know? So I think about that all the time, like, what do we ignore in ourselves? Like, because maybe it comes too easy for us. You know what I mean? Like, what do we take for granted because because it just seems

• 1:06:49Rich Roll?

  Like, it can't be that because it just, yeah, right, right. Like, it's just, well, that's, that can't be the thing because that's just me.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  And I question, I do question that with directing and photography because I don't think of myself as a particularly sophisticated visual person. I think of myself that has just enough

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Talent or ability in a whole bunch of related fields that it all works as a photographer. In other words, I'm okay at coming up with a cartoon. Like, I can sit down and sketch out a little drawing that makes me see a picture. And I'm pretty good at getting my idea across to somebody and talking them into giving me money to try it. And I'm pretty good at making someone feel comfortable in the room. And so they open up and, you know, and try something they normally wouldn't have tried. And all these things come together and they make a photograph. You know, but I don't consider myself, you know, this, this visual talent that, that has the ability to just make a great picture out of nothing.

• 1:07:52Rich Roll?

  Well, I think other people would disagree with that, probably. But I think that, that what I think distinguishes you maybe on some level is the fact that you execute. Like, you're not just talking about ideas, like, you're doing things, you know? There probably are other photographers out there who think about doing a documentary. Or maybe it would be cool to have a magazine, but you're actually following through on all of these things. And I think that's important because, and I talk about this a lot, but, you know, ideas are, on some level, ideas are cheap, right? They're nothing until you actually put them into motion and, and, you know, create reality out of them.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:30Rich Roll?

  You seem to be, you have a great facility for that.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think the more you go on, the more you realize, you know, in the beginning of your process, you realize which ideas can be successful. And that's something that, that was earned over a lot of failed ideas. Right now, in our office, we are kind of going through my film archive and trying to deal with the whole digital nightmare of, of, you know, cataloging all the work. And so I'm having to look at a lot of old work. And it's amazing how many ideas that I tried, that I now look at it and I see them as failures or I see them as, as. You know, sort of amateur attempts that later I sort of refined, but it is important

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  that you execute something through to the end because you won't know. You know, anyone could say, oh, gosh, I've had this great idea for a script and I just, I can't get it made and I'm not a writer, but the idea is great. Well, maybe the idea isn't great, but you wouldn't know until you really took it all the way. And what are the steps of that? I mean, maybe you have to go take a screenwriting class. Maybe you have to partner up with someone who does know how to write. Maybe you have to take it all the way through an outline until you get there to find out.

• 1:09:47Rich Roll?

  That's no fun.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  That's no fun, right? But the rewards are really amazing if you do take something through. And I learned that on the Wilco experience because, you know, that was something that I took upon. I made this documentary in 2002 called I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, and it was a film about Wilco. And it became a film about art versus commerce, like you mentioned earlier. But I was under the false impression that I would start making that and someone would jump in and pay for it. And, you know, I was also under the false impression that you can shoot 10 minutes

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  of a documentary, present your idea, and find a distributor. And I learned very early in that process that I was going to have to have a finished film before I could even have those conversations, whether this could be distributed or whatever. So that was a great lesson in, you know, no one can see your idea the way you see it in your head, right? And so you have to sometimes finish your idea to let other people see what it looked like.

• 1:11:03Rich Roll?

  Right. And in the context of the Wilco documentary, which is just a beautiful, you know, portrait of this extraordinary band, I mean, it's really an art piece and, you know, I love the movie. And one of the things I loved about it is that...

• 1:11:19Rich Roll?

  You weren't trying to make it something that it wasn't. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know what your expectations were going into, where that journey would take you. And certainly, as a documentarian, you want like some drama and some things to happen. And certainly, there were elements of that with the label and kind of the band members, et cetera. But it wasn't, the movie didn't, it was really just, you know, a character piece of immersing yourself in these people's music and their life. And it wasn't trying to force like a plot-driven narrative on top of it. It really, you allowed it to breathe and for you to just feel like you're in the room with these people and this is kind of a slice of what it would be like, you know, to hang out with these guys. Is that fair, or is that?

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Well, what's fair is that the idea going in certainly changed based upon what ended up happening during the time I filmed and...

• 1:12:15Rich Roll?

  I mean, what did you imagine it was going to be?

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  The original impetus for the film was to follow a song from inception to completion. And that meant from, you know, Jeff Tweedy's living room on an acoustic guitar, writing a song, to that song either being, you know, one of a number on an album that brought them a larger audience and was played live and, or not. So it was, it was a more, more of a lyrical, nonlinear idea was to take a band, a working band that were my contemporaries and try to follow the creative process.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  And what ended up happening was the creative process ran straight smack up against the commerce process. And, you know, this was a crazy time in music where, you know, Napster had happened a few years earlier and the music business was feeling that for the first time. And some decisions were being made at labels about some bands that were underperforming in the old model. You know, Wilco was a band that would sell between 100 and 150,000 copies of a record. And so... As it turned out unbeknownst to me, this record had some expectations attached to it. And yet Wilco was so used to doing things on their own that they were given enough freedom

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  to be able to make a record on their own, in their own studio, without a label person there, and then turn it in. And what happened was they turned it in and it was rejected. And the person that was at the label that championed them was gone from the label. And a new guy had come in that just didn't get them. And he unceremoniously just dropped them. And, you know, cared so little for them that he gave them back their masters. That's the amazing thing. Yeah, and so it became this, it became this interesting thing where, you know, where you've got these fairly, at the time, young musicians who were dealing with the fact that they were on this label that had all their heroes on it, you know, Neil Young

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  and R E M and all these, all these seventies artists that they loved on Warner Reprise. And they were being rejected and they had to deal with that right around the time when you could, you could actually stream a record. Right. And they went with a pretty radical approach. They believed in what they were doing and they decided to reject the comments that they should, you know, write a single or, or go back in the studio and make a more polished record. And they, they, you know, they dealt with their fate in a very real way. And so the film became, what does an artist do when they believe in their work, but the, the entity, in this case, the record company, doesn't? And, and how does that resolve?

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  And I learned something from that as a documentary filmmaker, which is, you sort of have to wear different hats during the process. If I was wearing my storytelling hat while I was filming that, I wouldn't have probably captured all the things necessary to tell the story that it eventually became. So.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  You know, when you're a cinematographer, as I am, I'm the kind of director that directs with the camera. Because let's be honest, on a documentary, you're not directing, you're capturing and you're documenting. And so, on that film, it was very important to make sure I was capturing what was going on. And I wasn't just trying to fit my narrative into their lives. And that was something I had to learn on the fly. And then you get back in the edit room and you look at what you have and you sort of have to write a script in reverse, based on your footage, and see where the holes are and go out and film those things.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  But I think there's a valuable lesson in letting a story present itself to you and not trying to be so controlling that you feel like you have to take it in one way. But be aware enough of what's going on that you can shoot the elements you need. You know, I think that if I hadn't understood what was going on, I wouldn't have gone around to some of the people that ended up being big players in the film in terms of, you know, some of the record company people and lawyers that we talked to. You know, you also can't bury your head in the sand. And just, you have to sort of, you have to sort of be aware of what's going on, but be open-minded. And when I spoke to Laura Dern for Off Camera, she talked about judgment.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  She said the best directors, for her, have been the ones that don't judge her character because whether she's playing an evil person or a good person, or any nuanced version in between, you can't have judgment of your character. And it took me a long time to understand that what she was saying was that when you are gathering information to tell a story, you do not want to sit in judgment of the information you're gathering. You want to be aware of it, but you don't want to reject it out of hand because it isn't the story you want to tell or because you don't believe in it. You know, so...

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  You capture it all and then you make those decisions later.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  And then you make those decisions with an awareness of the story as it unfolds, you know.

• 1:17:42Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Because it still, I mean, it still has to work like a three-act structure. It still has to play narratively for an audience.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we're very used to the three-act structure and it is... Obviously, a medium that works very well. And, you know,

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  there's been hundreds of years of books and plays and movies and television shows that all sort of work in that structure.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  So, so, yeah, I mean, the Wilco thing fell kind of easily into that three act structure. Band makes record, band gets rejected, band figures it out.

• 1:18:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  You know, and it worked very well. But, you know, I'd also, it also sort of,

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  it taught me that there's a lot of room within a three act structure. You know, there's a, there's a, that's sort of a, a three act structure is sort of a, it's a loose description of something. I mean, in a studio system, you can get very specific where, you know, you'll have someone doing notes and saying, yeah, if, if, if X doesn't happen by page sixty, then this script isn't working.

• 1:18:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  But, yeah, I think that, I think that it's almost like Western music versus Eastern music. You know, we're very used to the model that, that was created based around the one, four, or five major chord scale. And we hear a pop song, we're, we're hearing the benefit of that being drilled into us from an early, early age. Whereas if you grew up, you know, somewhere in the East in India or something, you have a very different idea of what's tonally and melodically, you know, pleasing to your ears. You know, so I don't know. I mean, I, I saw this film recently, Boyhood. I don't know if you saw that.

• 1:19:39Rich Roll?

  It's incredible.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Incredible, and I, I don't feel like it follows a three act structure at all.

• 1:19:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  And I think that it's so refreshingly great storytelling because it's sort of surprising and doesn't follow that structure. You know?

• 1:19:55Rich Roll?

  I mean, it progresses narratively, but, yeah, it's not like, oh, this is the inciting incident, and this is where it all falls apart.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I heard an interview with Richard Linklater, and he said, you know, in real life, bad stuff doesn't happen. To everybody. Our life isn't filled with great moments of tragedy like they're on film. And he said some of the most tense moments in the film for the audience are like when the boy is driving off to college. Because as a movie going audience, we're so expectant on, well, he's now reaching down to grab some music to play for his girlfriend. And you're like, oh, this is where the car accident happens, right? And, and Richard Linklater said he was almost, he was fighting that in his, in the editing of his film. Because there's no way to not have those audience perceptions.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  So it makes you wonder like, is a three act structure like the only valid way to tell a story? Or are we just so used to it?

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  It's so hardwired into our expectations. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, the other thing, the other thing about the Wilco doc that was so interesting, you know, watching it recently is it works so well as a time capsule of the music business. Like it's, the music business is undergoing this traumatic transition. And you're seeing the evidence of that, like as this story plays out. And just the idea that like a band would put songs on their website, or they would go to a show and people would know the, the words to their song before the album came out was like a revelation.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Right, it was very new back then.

• 1:21:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like they were like, they were like trying to wrap their heads around that, which was really interesting.

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35Rich Roll?

  So are you, so you have this, let's talk about the documentary that's about to air on Showtime. Basement Tapes. So this, explain what this is. I mean, these are, there's a discovery of these Bob Dylan tapes, right?

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Well, there's discovery of lyrics. In 1967, Bob Dylan lived in Woodstock, New York, and he spent a year with the band, which was Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko and Levon Helm, although Levon Helm wasn't there for much of it. Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. And they would meet in the middle of the day at this house called Big Pink. And they would go in the basement and they would record a bunch of songs. And some were Johnny Cash covers and some were obscure old folk songs.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  And then some were new Dylan originals that he was writing, not ever for inclusion on a new Dylan record, but just as a way to make income as a publisher, as a way to, you know, write his songs and then other bands could hear demos and choose to record them, because that had been a very fruitful way for Dylan to make money back then. So he had a really prolific year. He had a motorcycle accident in sixty-six and it gave him an excuse to get off of the road and sort of raise a family and live kind of that quiet life away from being, quote, Bob Dylan, the, you know, folk icon, or rock, you know, Judas. And instead, he was just sort of living out this quiet life. And it just so happened,

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  he was incredibly prolific and wrote over a hundred and fifty songs in that year. Wow. None of which officially came out ever, until nineteen seventy-five. It's like a song every other day. Right. And what ended up happening was, the songs that he was writing were turned into publishing demos that got sent out to some of the bands of the day, like Manfred Mann and Peter Paul and Mary and The Byrds. And they got a crack at these songs and some of them turned them into big hits, like Manfred Mann made Quinn the Eskimo, which was a basement song. Well, because of these demos being sent around, they leaked out and they became the first bootleg record ever.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  That's interesting. And these things started the bootleg record industry. That's amazing. So that's sort of the history of what was happening back then. And then last year, a box of lyrics was discovered in the Dylan archives and someone in his office brought them to Bob and said, what are these? And he said, oh, man, I wrote those during my Woodstock time, during the basement tapes, but we never got to them. We never brought them down to the basement, so they, I haven't seen them since the day I wrote them. So it was a bunch of words, without any chords, any melody or anything. It was just lyrics, just prose.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  And they were given to T-Bone Burnett and he was tasked with putting a band together and they got to co-write with the 26-year-old Bob Dylan.

• 1:24:42Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  So he put together Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford from Mumford and Sons, Jim James from My Morning Jacket, Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes, and Riannon Giddens from a band called The Carolina Chocolate Drops. And they got first crack at these lyrics for two weeks at Capitol Records and they set these lyrics to melody and they made a record of all these songs. And so I was brought in to make a film about this and I was asked if I wanted to do it. My first response was, well, can I tell the history of the Basement Tapes too? Because I'm a big fan of the Basement Tapes, the 67 Tapes.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  And so that became sort of the thing is, can I make a modern cinema verite film about these five artists in Capitol grappling with these historically, you know, really relevant artifacts that had never been seen before? And then also weave in the creative, you know, sort of explosion that happened in 67 in this house and tell how those, you know, those two stories are connected.

• 1:25:56Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's cool. So that's what it is. So you actually have, I mean, I saw some of the trailer footage, like you're in the studio, you're documenting them, like workshopping these songs or recording them. And then you go back and you tell the history behind it.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Right. And the fascinating thing in the modern story becomes how different each artist approached the lyrics.

• 1:26:17Rich Roll?

  Did they do it individually and come together? Or did they just all get in a room together and hash it out?

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny. I think that, I think they all may have gotten slightly different communication from T-Bone Burnett because some came in with, like Riannon Giddens and Marcus Mumford came in with nothing prepared essentially, whereas Elvis came in really prepared and Jim James came in prepared and Taylor as well. But they all sort of approached it in a different way. And some saw it as more collaborative and some saw it as more... You know, the idea of really preparing for it. And so it made for an interesting story of how they all were going to work together and and how, you know, how each artist was going to connect themselves to a few of the lyrics.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  And it ended up being this creative, you know, sort of, just, you know, these two weeks of creative bliss in a lot of ways because there was so much material there. And I think, you know, if you've been in bands and you're a songwriter, the lyrics are always the hardest thing. You know, you could come up with an interesting melody and sing nonsense words to it. You know, a great example is Paul McCartney's story about "Yesterday." Started out as a melody in his head that was scrambled eggs. You know, scrambled eggs. And that's what he had. And then at some point, you gotta sit down and you gotta like, put on your thinking cap

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  and write these lyrics that are gonna be the song. So in this case, there was so much material and it was Bob Dylan's words. So these artists were freed up to sort of, you know, write songs to them. So there was a whole bunch of material. And, but it was very interesting to see the struggles and the different work ethic, not even ethic, but different work process that each artist brought to it. And that, in a way, the film becomes, again, about something else, which is, hopefully, really relatable to people.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Which is, how do you, you know, how do you take a thing that exists and add yourself to it? How do you be creative in a collaborative process?

• 1:28:43Rich Roll?

  Right, because these guys are all sort of captains of their own ship.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:28:47Rich Roll?

  And so then they're gonna get together. Who's gonna be the lead singer of this song? When they're all capable of, you know, putting their own imperimeter upon it.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Right, right. And it's a project that could have gone on for six months.

• 1:28:59Rich Roll?

  Or years.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Or years.

• 1:29:01Rich Roll?

  Or exploded.

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was probably good that it was only, you know, there was a minimum amount of time where their schedules all worked together because it made people have to kind of work very fast, which I think was the spirit of the original Basement Tapes. There wasn't a lot of thought. You know, one of the things that comes out of the film that becomes very... Thematically, uh, sort of becomes the theme for the movie, really, is that in nineteen sixty-seven, when Bob was in the basement with the band, recording these things, they really never thought anyone was ever going to hear them. They were, they were recordings made as demos for their own use, you know? So there was no thought of, oh, we gotta go back and fix this, or, uh, maybe we shouldn't

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  say that line, that, that sounds a little bit like it doesn't fit, or whatever it was. So there's this outpouring of creativity, and, and the thing in Capitol that, that was sort of related to that was, there wasn't enough time, really, to, to pour over yourself. And I think also, you know, if, if you're working on your song, and you know Elvis Costello's song is coming up next, you probably don't want to sit there and make him do thirty takes playing bass on your song. You're probably gonna be okay with a few takes.

• 1:30:17Rich Roll?

  Right, the level of mutual respect is probably upping everybody's game, and making them behave better than maybe they would.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Right. And you're right, you know, you said the thing about that, well, they're, they're all the captains of their own ships, um, but it was also an opportunity for them to find out how they would write when they're writing for people that, that they don't normally play with, you know? And, and I think some of the, some of the folks in that really took advantage of that, um, and really used it as a chance to go out of their comfort zone. Marcus Mumford is a good example of that, where, um, you know, he may have to write one way in Mumford and Sons for the sound they have, um, he was able to take advantage of the musicians in this room and, and write in a very different way.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  And it, it brought out a side of him where, where I think people are gonna walk away from this film saying, wow, I, I thought he was one kind of musician, and now I see him as somebody else, in a very positive way.

• 1:31:17Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Is the record done?

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  The record's done and out.

• 1:31:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's out now?

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  It's out. It's called Lost on the River, uh, and the band called themselves The New Basement Tapes, which is an odd name for a band, but it, it sort of fits the project.

• 1:31:33Rich Roll?

  Well, they have to come with some sort of traveling Wilburys kind of name, right?

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And the film is called Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  And the beautiful thing now about, you know, making a documentary on television is that it sort of lives for a long time, you know, with Showtime Anytime, or HBO Go, or Netflix, or whatever. It's great, because I think as consumers, we don't feel any pressure to have to watch it on the night.

• 1:32:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  We know we can find it, and it allows documentaries especially to have a longer life than they normally would. And I think documentaries especially have benefited from this Netflix iTunes.

• 1:32:17Rich Roll?

  How huge.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  You know, model, where you can have a word of mouth situation, and it can percolate slowly. I remember when the Wilco film came out, you know, we were in theaters, but then after we were in theaters, you had to buy the DVD if you wanted to see it. And that's a little bit harder. Someone could say they liked a film, but you weren't going to go spend 25 bucks on it, maybe. But now you can go rent it for $2 and see what the film's all about. And I think we're in a golden age for documentaries on television.

• 1:32:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no question about it. I mean, Netflix really is the go-to place. I mean, they're just, people are discovering documentaries in just glorious, new, and, you know, amazing ways.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's the Wild West out there in a lot of ways. There's, you know, there's Amazon Prime, and there's Hulu, and there's all kinds of places. And I think the viewer is winning, because there's a million ways to find things and watch them. I think behind the scenes, you know, a lot of the larger companies, the distributors and the channels, I think they're really trying to figure out how it's all going to shake down in the end. You know, is it going to be the broadband companies, or is it going to be the, you know, the satellite companies, or is it going to be, you know, are the traditional networks going to go away? But it's, for viewers, it's fantastic.

• 1:33:39Rich Roll?

  It's amazing. It's an amazing time. I mean, Tyler and I were talking about this on the drive down, like, you know, I was saying, it's kind of amazing that, like, Nielsen ratings, even like, anyone would even care. Like, why does anyone care what time you watch a program anymore? Like, why is that relevant? It's a relic of a system that is, you know, of yesteryear, you know, when it just shouldn't matter anymore, the way everything is heading. And, you know, how long it took HBO to just allow people to... Do HBO go without being a subscriber? Like in 2015, they're gonna let you do that whether you subscribe on television or not. And for the viewer, yeah, it just opens everything wide open.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:19Rich Roll?

  It's amazing to see. And it's kind of like, it's analogous to that moment in the Wilco movie. We're in this transition right now. You know, we're, we're, the television industry and the movie industry is trying to figure out, you know, how they're gonna make their next move. And, you know, it's similar to what the music industry obviously went through some years ago and, you know, kind of being unsure about what the next step is.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  Well, to me, it's amazing. I mean, there's, the only difference between the music industry and the, and the movie industry is bandwidth. You know, and now that, now that that issue's, you know, you could see, if you're, if you're a movie studio, you could see the paranoia that could grip you, looking at what happened in the music industry over the last 20 years. Because if it's just as easy to get a movie for free as it is to get a song for free, you know, what happens? I mean, maybe it only costs $50,000 to make a record, but it costs a lot of money to make a movie. I'm amazed that, you know, when you think about how lucky we, lucky we are, just, just

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  from my childhood forward, from things like Happy Days to Seinfeld to Nova, to whatever it is, that all I'm required to do is watch some silly advertisements and I get this programming for free, right? So, it is, you know, you, you gotta wonder, like, how's it going to work if everyone is taping their shows and DVR'ing them and not, you know, not, you know, not watching the ads? How does that all work? And it's, it's a golden age, but it's also, you know, you wonder.

• 1:35:57Rich Roll?

  Well, it has to be a sustainable business.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:35:59Rich Roll?

  And creators need to be compensated for their work, you know, certainly. There, there has to be some way of figuring it out. I mean, I think Netflix is, you know, with the subscription model, that seems to work. There seemed to, you know, be able to, you know, properly and fairly. Compensate the people that work on their projects and drive the content at a fair price for the consumer.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Well, the HBO model proved that subscribers, you know, it worked, it proved it a long time ago that it works.

• 1:36:25Rich Roll?

  But we're not going to subscribe, we were talking about this too, like, okay, I'm going to subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime and who, like, before you know it, you're paying $200 a month.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  Well, that's the big question. That's the big question. Because people say they want à la carte television, you know, here in Los Angeles, we have the situation where this year we couldn't see the Dodgers. And, you know, DirecTV wasn't adding the Dodgers to their slate because it would cost too much money for, and, and not everyone who's a DirecTV customer wants to watch the Dodgers. So it brings up the à la carte conversation, but what you're talking about is, God, the à la carte thing might end up costing as much or more than the most expensive satellite package, right? So I don't know, I don't know how it works, but, you know, that's why I say I think right now it's like, it's, it's sort of the Wild West and, and, uh,

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  and it's interesting to see, you know, how it'll shake down for, for, you know, being able to get everything we want to see and how, how we have to do that.

• 1:37:28Rich Roll?

  But content's always king, you know, and it's a great time for content creators like yourself. It's exciting.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I, I think that there is, there is this shift taking place towards, you know, I mean, I remember when, when I first watched something straight through, I forget the show it was, maybe it was, um, maybe it was the first season of Friday Night Lights where I wanted to catch up and I think I watched them all over one weekend, right? And, uh, and, you know, you think, man, it took them a year to make that and I, I took it all in in one weekend, you know? So I, I do think that, that there's. There's this need that people seem to have, once they find a great show and then they

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  end it, to find another one that fills that need or whatever. Much like, you know, any voracious reader just always wants to find the next great book. And how we can read so much faster than an author can write. You know, if your favorite author is, I don't know, Thomas Pynchon, like, he only comes out with a book every decade or something. So, you know, it's an interesting thing, and I think that it's, it's great to be able to make things and, and contribute to that giant world of stuff that's out there. And like we talked about at the beginning of this, I hope off-camera is something that people see that's a little bit different than what's out there. And, and there's, you know, it has its own little, its own little place.

• 1:38:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it's evergreen, you know what I mean? It's not, it doesn't, it doesn't matter whether somebody watches it in the spring or next spring, you know, it's, it's the same and it will always be there.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  Well, that is another interesting thing. I think that, you know, when we're doing off-camera, we try to really think about the, what qualities about it make it timeless? And if we're not plugging a movie, and if we're not talking specifically only about one project, then hopefully it has a longer life where people can tune in to something we made two years ago, and it still is very relevant because the person that I'm talking to is sharing something that has been true to them for 20 years.

• 1:39:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  So it doesn't feel old. And, and I like that idea. I like, you know, podcasts have been a great educator of that for me. I find with a podcast that they never feel old, I never feel like, like I have to find the latest one. You know, I, I think it's more common in a podcast to look through the list of Of who's on and and pick one.

• 1:40:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you don't have to start at episode one unless it's serial, but other than that.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. But I I think that, you know, in the case of, you know, someone like Marc Maron or or Terry Gross with Fresh Air, you know, you can find a conversation from 10 years ago and and you can get sucked in immediately, you know. And I like that. I like I like that off camera can hopefully be that for people, that they can discover one, you know, five years from now and and have it be completely fresh to them.

• 1:40:39Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. So so where are you taking this magazine publishing, podcasting, television show, directing, producing, documentary making, you know, photographing empire of yours? I mean, what what do you what have you not done yet that excites you? Like, what's the dream project? Or, you know, what are you working on now that you're excited about?

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Well, I gotta tell you, I am I am father of three girls, and I feel so amazingly lucky that I'm able to have a studio in Santa Monica that is across the street from my kid's school. And I get to see them all the time. And one of the things I think about all the time, and it's a total conundrum for me, is how much of our industry takes place outside of Los Angeles. And I don't know how to, at this point in my life, take on a project that takes me to Romania for six months to shoot, or takes me to Vancouver. So I have

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  to say, as much as I'm excited about so many different ideas, one of the things that is most important to me is being regularly and boringly in my kids' lives every day. And that is sort of a big part of the decision of whatever I take on. And so I was able to do this documentary over the last year. And it was great, because most of it was here in town. And and the things we did shoot out of town, I was able to do with my family and bring them. And so, right now, I think I am.

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  I'm really happy with where things are. I feel like any idea that I have,

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  I can sort of dive into it and I have a little, a little studio space here to be able to do that.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  But I also really want to not forget that I'm fine, my family's fine, we don't need, you know, we don't need to come up with the next idea that makes millions of dollars. And I wanna, I wanna be in their lives on a daily basis, you know.

• 1:42:51Rich Roll?

  How old are your girls?

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  I have seven, eight, and sixteen. And so, you know, I know this is a little goofy to talk about, but I think that that childhood time is short and, and I look at some of these people that I admire that are so successful and they're doing amazing work. And on, on one hand, I look at them and I go, oh my god, like, like, how amazing is Nightcrawler? Or, or how incredible of a project is, you know,

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  like,

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  say, Masters of Sex, right? Incredible television making, incredible movie making.

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  But you'd be lying to yourself if you said that you can do all this and

• 1:43:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  be able to have, have a life.

• 1:43:46Rich Roll?

  Outside of it. Anybody else in your life.

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  So for me, I think, I think now, at the age I am and where I am in my life, balance is really important for me. And, and finding ways to be creative in the things I wanna do, while also balancing that with a life that feels full

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  in the other, in the other ways.

• 1:44:07Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. I mean, we're, we're about the same age, we're basically the same age. And balance is, you know, a tricky thing for me and, and I have two daughters that are seven and ten. And, and I think a lot, you know, especially living in Los Angeles, I think a lot about, you know, what's influencing them on a daily basis, like, how My wife and I are consciously influencing them, but all the passive influences that they're exposed to throughout the day. And as somebody who, you know, lives in breeze at this intersection of art and commerce and somebody who's kind of, you know, your job is, you know, kind of at the epicenter of pop culture, how do, you know, how does that inform how you parent young girls? I mean, you must think about like, you know, what am I exposing

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  them to? Who are their role models? And can I find better role models? And how can I, you know, create, you know, a more positive influence in their life?

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a big question always. And, you know, in my, in my experience, I find that, that being a father to girls has opened me up to so much of a broader understanding of what it's like to grow up as a woman and the pressures of that and, and wanting to find positive role models and wanting to find, you know, wanting to be as informed as I can about that because, you know, you realize at a certain point that your experience in life is only based on, you know, until you have kids, it's really only based on

• 1:45:45Speaker 01

  you trying to go out and make a living and have a place to live and, you know, sort of be able to, be able to get through life feeling like your sort of basic needs are met. And, and so I grew up as a, as a boy who turned into a man and, and learning about what my, what my daughters face and what they will face, I think about it all the time. And I, I think that proximity is huge. Just, you know, even the idea of, you know, say someone has a big house and the kid's wing is sort of off upstairs and away from

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  the parent's wing and there's a lot of physical separation in the house. I don't think that's good. I think that you can, your kids can be sort of right under your roof and you can still lose touch with what's going on in their lives. And, and so, you know, for me, I really, I really think

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  I want to be in my my kids' lives, like I said, in a very boring way.

• 1:46:52Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Where I'm just around and I know what's going on because

• 1:46:55Rich Roll?

  You again.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  I'm there, right? Exactly, so, um, because I don't have, I certainly don't have all the answers. I'm, I'm every day realizing how few answers I have for my kids. You know what I mean? Like how every single thing they have to go through, I have to sort of have an answer for it for the first time.

• 1:47:16Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:47:16Speaker 01

  You know, we don't get to have a practice fatherhood period.

• 1:47:20Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  We have to sort of like learn from our mistakes and they, our kids have to sort of deal with our mistakes.

• 1:47:27Rich Roll?

  Unfortunately.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  You know, unfortunately, like, there's no way to be a professional parent.

• 1:47:32Rich Roll?

  Tyler's laughing over there.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's too late for Tyler.

• 1:47:36Rich Roll?

  I know, he's fully formed at this point. Um, cool, well, we got to wrap it up, but, uh, I want to, I want to kind of end it on with one last question, which is, um, you know, any kind of wisdom or advice you could impart to, you know, a young creative person out there who's trying to figure out how to put the pieces together, you know, whether they're a photographer or whatever they are, like just some things that you've learned as a result of your experiences that might be helpful for somebody who's interested in pursuing the arts.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, if you're honest about it, that's a hard one because, um, so much of, so much of my career is based on luck. And I've, obviously I've taken the luck and tried to do as much as I can with it, but

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  I think that it's really hard to do what we do and, and be lucky enough to make a living at it, and it's much harder now. It seems like there's so many more people that want to be photographers or want to be directors now, whereas the playing field was a lot less cluttered when I was coming up. And so, you know, the first thing I think you, you have to be willing to do as a young creative person is say, okay, I'm going to do this whether or not I'm successful at it. Like, if that's, if that's how you feel, then you're going to be fine. You know, I think, uh, we had Matt Damon on off camera and, and I said, you know, what is, what do you tell someone that's young that's coming up?

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  And he says, you try to talk them out of it. And you try really hard to talk them out of doing it because If you can talk someone out of doing it in a single conversation, they don't really want it bad enough to be successful in it anyway, right? So I think if you're honest, the first thing you say is, yeah, don't do it. It's impossible and don't do it. And the ones who come back in five years and say, I didn't take your advice, those people have a shot at it, you know? But for me, I followed what I loved and I tried to make everything a hobby and I tried to, you know, emulate people who I thought were doing cool stuff. Because then it never really felt like work, you know? It always felt fun.

• 1:49:50Speaker 01

  I think that's the key to a creative life. If it feels fun to you, you're probably doing the right thing. If it feels like pressure and you're wondering if you're gonna be liked, or if you're gonna be good enough, or if you're gonna be accepted, then being a creative person probably isn't for you because every, every interaction with, you know, someone who could, who could potentially call something a failure or a success is going to be fraught with anxiety.

• 1:50:19Rich Roll?

  Right, you're just blowing in the wind.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Yeah, I think that it's, at a certain point, you've gotta say to yourself, you know, I'm doing this because I love it and I don't really care if anyone likes it or not. You know, I made it and I'm looking at it and I like it and I feel fulfilled. So.

• 1:50:36Rich Roll?

  It's an interesting time, though. I mean, that's harder and harder to do where everything lives and breathes on the Instagram like and the Facebook like, you know, it's like we're constantly, you know, keeping tallies of all these kinds of crazy things that in reality, you know, really don't mean anything but influence.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I don't think you can buy into that too much because it's almost like you're, you don't have a gestation period. You know, if you make something as a kid and you put it on Instagram. And you get fewer likes than you think you should have for that. You may mistakenly say, oh, that's because this piece of art or whatever it is you made isn't connecting with anybody, but there's so many crazy factors. And, you know, I think you have to keep the message really simple. And I think it comes back to, did you love making it? Did it satisfy you creatively? Would you be making it if no one liked it?

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  And if the answer is yes to those things, then it doesn't, all those questions go away. And you, you're having your own experience with it that, that no one can take from you.

• 1:51:43Rich Roll?

  That's beautifully put. I think that's a good, I think that's a good place to end it.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  Great. Well, thanks for having me.

• 1:51:49Rich Roll?

  Thanks so much, Sam. I really appreciate it. It was great.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's great.

• 1:51:52Rich Roll?

  Um, if you're digging on Sam, the best way to find out more about him is to go to offcamera.com and go to samjonespictures.com, right?

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:52:03Rich Roll?

  And you're on all the, you're on Twitter, there's an off-camera Twitter.

• 1:52:08Speaker 01

  There's an off-camera Twitter, there's, there's an off-camera Facebook. I'm not personally on Facebook because I just, I guess, never wanted to be sucked into the time vortex.

• 1:52:22Speaker 01

  But, uh, there's a.

• 1:52:22Rich Roll?

  You're on Twitter, though.

• 1:52:23Speaker 01

  I do, I am on Twitter and, um, yeah, so there's, there's many ways to find me.

• 1:52:28Rich Roll?

  Right. Sam, what's your Twitter?

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  Uh, Sam Jones.

• 1:52:31Rich Roll?

  At Sam Jones. Wow, how'd you snag that? You must've been on early.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  No, you know, I wasn't. Um, but someone who is a fan of what I do, works at Twitter, and I guess the person who had that account wasn't using it. So I guess they moved the levers a little bit.

• 1:52:48Rich Roll?

  That's super cool.

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:49Rich Roll?

  That puts you in the VIP room of Twitter alone. That's cool.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know about that.

• 1:52:55Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Thanks so much.

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:52:56Rich Roll?

  Appreciate it.

• 1:53:02Rich Roll?

  Okay, that's it. We did it. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Sam is a super busy guy, so it was a treat to spend some time with him, and I hope you got a lot out of it. For all your Plant Power provisions, go to richroll.com. We've got new t-shirts, we've got tech t-shirts in limited supply, we've got nutritional products, we've got digital products. And don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter for a free seven recipe download and to stay clued in as to what is happening and what's what. Hit us up with a review on iTunes if you're enjoying the show. We've got over 900 now. I want to hit 1,000. Come on, you guys. It only takes like a minute. If you want to access the back catalog of the podcast, as you know, if you go on iTunes,

• 1:53:43Rich Roll?

  it's only the most recent 50 episodes. Well, maybe you want to listen to episodes 1 through whatever it is, 80 or so. The only way, or the best way, I should say, to do that is to get our free iOS app. Go to the iTunes App Store, search Rich Roll. In the search window, it'll pull it up. It's totally free. You get the whole catalog there. The app is really cool. You see pictures, and you get all the show notes and all that good stuff. Finally, don't forget, I'm totally into doing this new Q&A, Ask Me Anything show. We're doing it kind of bi-weekly right now, but I need your questions. What do you guys want me to talk about? What questions do you want me to answer? So send those. Production, audio engineering, music and sound design for today's show was done by

• 1:54:27Rich Roll?

  Tyler Pyatt. Additional production and editorial support by Chris Swan. And thank you very much to Sean Patterson for all the amazing graphic art. Thanks, you guys. See you next week. Peace. Plants.