632. When Did We All Start Watching Documentaries? | Freakonomics Radio

It used to be that making documentary films meant taking a vow of poverty (and obscurity). The streaming revolution changed that. Award-winning filmmaker R. J. Cutler talks to Stephen Dubner about capturing Billie Eilish’s musical genius and Martha Stewart’s vulnerability — and why he really, really, really needs to make a film about the New York Mets. You can find the transcript and show notes for this episode on our website here: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/when-did-we-all-start-watching-documentaries/ FOLLOW FREAKONOMICS RADIO: YouTube: https://freak.ws/3yIl6dl Apple Podcasts: https://freak.ws/3yAvQh0 Spotify: https://freak.ws/3TsdCmV ABOUT FREAKONOMICS RADIO: Discover the hidden side of everything with host Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the Freakonomics books. Each week, Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers to uncover things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) — from the economics of sleep to the future of education, from markets for marriage to the surprising utility of wolves. ABOUT THE FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK: Freakonomics began as a book, which led to a blog, a documentary film, more books, a pair of pants, and in 2010, a podcast called Freakonomics Radio. Hosted by Stephen J. Dubner, it’s one of the most popular podcasts in the world, with a reputation for storytelling that is both rigorous and entertaining. Its archive of more than 500 episodes is available, for free, on any podcast app, and the show airs weekly on NPR stations. Freakonomics Radio is now the flagship show of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which includes the podcasts No Stupid Questions, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK PODCASTS: Freakonomics Radio: https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/ No Stupid Questions: https://freakonomics.com/series/nsq/ People I (Mostly) Admire: https://freakonomics.com/series/people-i-mostly-admire/ The Economics of Everyday Things: https://freakonomics.com/series/everyday-things/ Special series: https://freakonomics.com/topics/ CONNECT WITH US: [email protected] https://twitter.com/freakonomics https://www.instagram.com/freakonomics/ https://www.facebook.com/freakonomics/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freakonomicsradio https://www.linkedin.com/company/freakonomics-media Subscribe to our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bKm0cf

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

• 0:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Over the past few episodes of Freakonomics Radio, we dug into the economics of live theater. And we followed one show on its long journey toward Broadway. In that series, we learned that live theater has become very expensive to produce. So ticket prices have also risen. And at the same time, attendance is falling. So if fewer people are watching plays and musicals, what are they watching? It turns out that a lot of people, and I mean, a lot of them, are watching documentary films.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  This explosion of documentary on streaming, the conviction that this was a popular art form and its full popularity was just waiting to happen, is what matters most.

• 0:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  R.J. Cutler is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who has produced and/or directed dozens of documentaries. You may not know his name, but there's a good chance you've seen his work. Martha, his film about Martha Stewart, has been a big hit on Netflix. He recently made a film about the young pop star Billie Eilish called The World's a Little Blurry, and a film about the old pop star Elton John called Never Too Late. His 2009 film, The September Issue, shadowed Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour and her colleague and sometimes antagonist Grace Cottington. Cutler has also made a number of political documentaries, like The World According to

• 1:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Dick Cheney and A Perfect Candidate about the failed Senate race of Oliver North, and his first film, The War Room, which was about Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign. That one was nominated for an Academy Award. Cutler's most recent project is a docu-series on Apple TV Plus called Fight for Glory, about the 2024 World Series. You may also recognize Cutler's name if you are a regular Freakonomics Radio listener. A few months ago, we did a live show in Los Angeles that was supposed to be recorded for this podcast, but the theater failed to record the show, which was a shame because we had two great guests that night. One was the Hollywood super agent and entrepreneur

• 2:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ari Emanuel, and the other was RJ Cutler. As for Ari, him, we had interviewed a couple of years ago in a studio, episode number 544. So you can hear that if you'd like. But RJ had never been on this show before, so we asked him to sit down in a studio and try again.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Oh, you mean we taped this?

• 2:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yes, we did tape it, you wise ass. Today on Freakonomics Radio, the filmmaker becomes the subject, and it starts now.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Hello, Stephen.

• 3:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hello, RJ. Robert James, what is RJ?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Jason, Robert Jason.

• 3:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  RJ has such good initials.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  They are. You know, my mother insisted on naming me RJ. Well, she actually named me Robert Jason so that she could call me RJ. That was her plan. Wouldn't let me change it. She passed away recently. One of the stories I recounted at her funeral was that when I was in eighth grade, there was a ninth grade girl from the other high school in town who I had a crush on who called me Rob. I came home one day and said, I'm changing my name to Rob. And my mother would not hear of it. She didn't even want to discuss it.

• 4:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Robert Jason Cutler grew up in Great Neck, New York, on Long Island. He loved sports and journalism. He started his own underground magazine. And he also loved theater. At Harvard, he studied dramatic theory. And one important lesson stayed with him.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  I can't remember the number of times a teacher said to me something like, you're gathering people in a theater. You've asked them to come and spend three hours of their lives with you. You better have something to say and you better damn well know what it is.

• 4:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  After college, Cutler got work on some major theatrical productions, including the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods, assisting the playwright and director James Lapine. Cutler also directed a workshop of Jonathan Larson's first musical, Superbia, years before Larson wrote Rent.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Even though I was a theater kid, who was very committed to my career in the theater and pursued it, you know, with some real success into my late twenties, I always had in the back of my mind that I would end up making documentaries. And I would speak to people about it. And it was such an odd thing. It's not a well-worn path.

• 5:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Talk me through the recent half-century lifecycle of documentary film, including your mentors and heroes, and this evolution of documentary generally.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  The essence of the American documentary movement, which comes of age in the early 1960s in the hands of people like D.A. Pennebaker and Ricky Leacock and Alan David Maisel's and Robert Drew and others, is that the technology has advanced to the point where you can carry a camera on your shoulder, have sync sound and film people through their lives. This is an enormous breakthrough. And it allows people to make what are extraordinary films, films about politics, such as Crisis and Primary,

• 6:09Speaker 01

  which tells stories of the Kennedys and others who were running for office. Film. Like Don't Look Back about Bob Dylan and Gimme Shelter about the Rolling Stones. Soon thereafter, films like Harlan County, USA by Barbara Koppel, which is a film that had an enormous personal impact on me when I first saw it. All of these films, they have many things in common, but the biggest one is that they are made by people who have a conviction that this art form is as viable as scripted filmmaking and that it has a place in cinema, the same way that scripted filmmaking does. Documentaries are no longer just about education.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  They are fully cinema, fully narrative, fully character driven. And as I like to say, just like a real film. The idea was if Cary Grant and Robert Redford could be movie stars, why too couldn't the coal miners from Harlan County be movie stars? Why couldn't Mick Jagger be a movie star? And they were right.

• 7:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  At what point did you become a believer in that thesis?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  I became a believer in that thesis without even knowing that I was being a believer. I became a believer when I saw these films as a teenager and as a college student, most of all as a 17 year old seeing Harlan County, USA. By the way, on a TV set, a PBS screening on a rainy evening that I can remember as if it were yesterday and being so mesmerized, not only by the narrative and the filmmaking, but by the voice of the director off screen, Barbara Koppel, in the middle of what was essentially a war zone. These battles between the local coal miners and the thugs who worked for the mining company who were threatening to kill them.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  And there she was in the middle of all of it. This was the film that made me think this is what I want to do.

• 8:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  In 1992, Cutler had an idea for a documentary that would track that year's presidential campaign, including the rise of the young Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  When I started with The War Room, you could count the number of career documentary filmmakers on two hands.

• 8:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Two of those filmmakers were the husband and wife team of DA Pennabaker and Chris Hedges. They liked Cutler's idea, and they took on the project as directors. Only the Clinton campaign gave them access, so the film focused on James Carville, the campaign's lead strategist, and George Stephanopoulos, its communications director. Even today, there are many memorable moments in The War Room. This is the origin of "It's the Economy, Stupid." One of my favorite moments is an emotional speech given by Carville to a room full of campaign workers when it's looking like their candidate will win.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  There's a simple doctrine. Outside of a person's love, the most sacred thing that they can give is their labor. Labor is a very precious thing that you have. The harder you work, the luckier you are. I was 33 years old before I ever went to Washington, New York. I was 42 before I ever won my first campaign. And I'm happy for all of y'all. You've been part of something special in my life. Now, don't forget what y'all done. Thank you.

• 9:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  The War Room premiered in 1993, and by documentary standards, it was a huge hit, grossing nearly $1 million. Back then, most people who saw new movies still watched them in theaters. The biggest rental company was Blockbuster. A few years later, Netflix would emerge as a competitor.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  As the producer of The War Room, I would run into Ted Sarandos at film festivals, the head of Netflix, when Netflix was a red envelope company that was sending out DVDs. And every time I'd see him, he would tell me that The War Room was one of the most popular films that he was sending out. His membership loved documentaries, and The War Room was one of their favorite films. So when Netflix started to do original programming with House of Cards, it was obvious to me that documentaries were going to soon follow. And what do you know, they soon followed. And now we have evidence. They have the data. They know how many people watch them. They know who watches them.

• 10:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  They don't like to share the data, but they have it. They don't like to share it with the public.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  They share with some of us, and the numbers are good.

• 10:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  On that point, let me ask you this. The story you just told me about Ted Sarandos and The War Room being so popular among the early subscribers of Netflix would suggest to me, but please tell me if I'm wrong, that lying out there, sort of dormant or underserved this whole time, the last several decades, was a large audience for documentary films, but that the system, the filmmaking system, Hollywood and the theater system and so on, didn't pay as much attention to documentaries as to the standard fiction films. Do you think that was the case, that there was dormant demand out there that nobody ever knew? And that's why we're seeing so much demand now, is simply there is a distribution technology that allows that demand to be satisfied?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Well, every town with an art house was showing documentaries. October Films and Fine Line Films, part of New Line, and Miramax, which became the Weinstein Company, and others were distributing documentaries. The War Room ran for months and months in the art houses. George Stephanopoulos was a matinee idol as a result. But the art house audience is smaller than the multiplex audience, and it always was, and it always will be. Now, the art house comes to you through the streaming services. So if you are someone who loves a documentary, those people now have a healthy menu of films to see.

• 12:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  I've seen you describe yourself as a theater director who makes documentary films. I mean, it's now coming clear to me that that is technically and literally true. But what does that mean? How does it manifest itself, do you think?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  I mean, this is the foundation of my training. Structurally, I think of narrative as Aristotle taught me to. I want the audience to have a rollicking good time at the theater. I want them to laugh and cry and stomp their feet. I'm thinking cinematically as well, but I'm also thinking in terms of character and obstacle and overcoming obstacle and the things we learn when we overcome obstacle. One of the things you look for when you're making a film is an inherent structure. There's nothing better than election day. There's nothing better than graduation. And if you're making a film about Billie Eilish, there's nothing better than the Grammys. But we didn't know that she was going to win however many Grammy Awards she won that night, and they were an armful.

• 13:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  This was the 2020 Grammy Awards when Eilish won Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Best New Artist. She was 18 years old. Cutler had been embedded with Eilish and her family, her older brother Phineas, who's also her collaborator and producer, and their parents Maggie and Patrick, who homeschooled the kids.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  I made this film at a time when I was probably a little out of love with documentary filmmaking. A little bit had lost the spark, and this film rekindled that spark in a huge way.

• 14:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  How did you meet the Eilish family?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  I was invited to meet with them. They had seen the September issue, they had seen The War Room, I think. They were familiar with my work, and I was one of the people that they met with, and we instantly connected.

• 14:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  So there were others they were interested in also?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  I don't really know the full details. When someone invites you to a party, you don't ask them who else is invited, and you don't ask them why. In that case, I was thrilled to meet them, and I was thrilled to work with them because it was very... Very clear to me that there was a purely verite film to be made. A film that would tell the story of the coming period of their life. Billie, I think, was 16 at the time. She and Phineas were in the middle of writing When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, their first full album. I was intrigued thematically. I was intrigued in terms of who they were. I saw in this a great film about family and a great film about raising kids. I saw in it a great film about being

• 15:10Speaker 01

  an artistic prodigy, as they both, both Phineas and Billie are, and being kids coming of age in America at a very particular moment in the world. I saw that all at once. That much was very clear to me. And so, once we started filming, you're doing what I call following the puck. At the height of his success, Wayne Gretzky was interviewed and he was asked, what was his secret? Wayne Gretzky being one of the greatest hockey players to ever live. Gretzky said, well, it's quite simple. I just follow the puck. And that's what we must do as verite filmmakers. We must follow the puck. We must try to see life as clearly as possible and tell the story that is unfolding in front of us.

• 15:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  The Gretzky quote, as I've always heard it, is a little bit different from what you just said. It's something like, skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is. So when you're thinking about the Billie, let's call it the Billie and Phineas story, because he's obviously so central to it as well. Tell us what you knew and thought about them when you started working with them? And where you thought maybe they were going?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  I saw them in their moment. I do have a different sense of it. I'm not looking for where you're going. I'm not expecting anything. I'm asking questions. I'm not answering anything. People would say to me, what were the biggest surprises you had in making the film about Billie Eilish? And I don't have surprises because that would mean that you're expecting one thing and something else happens.

• 16:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  In one scene of the Billie Eilish documentary, an executive from her record label asks Billie about choosing to speak out about the harmful effects of drugs. Billie's mom, Maggie, is also there. The first voice you'll hear now is the label executive.

• 17:00Speaker 04

  What do you both think about talking about your feelings about drugs and cigarettes and alcohol? My only thought is how like you say things and then maybe you grow up and feel differently and then get dragged for it.

• 17:16Speaker 05

  I have my moment and then I do drugs and then people are like, haha.

• 17:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  And then Maggie speaks up.

• 17:22Speaker 06

  Are you actually not gonna let her be authentic to who she is now in case she grows up to do drugs?

• 17:27Speaker 04

  I don't mean doing any of that.

• 17:29Speaker 06

  Can you do this, please?

• 17:32Speaker 05

  Stop yelling at Chelsea.

• 17:33Speaker 06

  I'm not yelling. I just think that's borrowing trouble and...

• 17:37Speaker 05

  Well, she's right, though. She has a point.

• 17:39Speaker 06

  Well, maybe don't grow up to do that. What, do you have to plan right now that you're every, every person who does what you do has to grow up and [bleep] up that way? And, and, and you have to plan it so that you don't get hate later when you do it? Because when you were younger, you said you wouldn't? You know? Why are your parents with you all the time? I mean, you've got a whole army of people trying to help you not decide to destroy your life like people in your shoes have done before. So are we gonna literally not release something for fear that later she will do that?

• 18:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  When you're that intimately involved in a family, in this case, or a scenario of any sort, how concerned are you that your presence is influencing events?

• 18:27Speaker 01

  I'm not concerned that it's influencing events in large part because I don't think of myself as a camera. I think of myself as a person. And I don't think of myself being there as a film crew or as a fly on the wall. One of the great misperceptions of what we do is that we're flies on the wall. You've met me. I'm six foot one. I'm no fly. I've got red hair and a beard. I come with a... A guy with a microphone and a woman with a camera. We're people. We're people in a room and we're in a dynamic. We're in a relationship. And like all good relationships, the relationship thrives if there's trust. If we feel like we're impacting the environment, we get out of there.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  I'm always saying, let's stop shooting 15 minutes before they ask us to stop shooting.

• 19:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Talk to me about editing. I want to know who does what and how big your team is. I'm also thinking about what Sean Baker, the director of Enora, said when he won the Oscars. He won for direction and editing and something else.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  And producing.

• 19:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. Best Picture and Best Screenplay, too. Anyway, in his acceptance speech for the editing award, he said, "If you saw the footage, I saved this film in the edit. Trust me, that director should never work again." Which was funny, of course, because he was also the director. So in your case, how does it work? What kind of team do you have and what does everybody do?

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Well, I have a very small team and it includes two editors in the case of this film. Greg Fenton, an editor who I had worked with since 1999 and who had edited many projects that I had done. And Lindsay Utes, a brilliant editor who I had never worked with before. They were my editing team. And Jonathan Rowain, who is a producer and a researcher, was a post-production story producer for the project. And the four of us were the team. And you're starting at the beginning, you know? You have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage. You're identifying first everything that you have and then everything you think you need to look at.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  And we spent a month every day just looking at what we considered to be the golden scenes. And then we met for several days. And then we talked about it and added some scenes and removed others. And then the editors worked for another couple of months. And then they had a 27-hour cut.

• 21:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  And we watched the 27 hours.

• 21:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is this part of the process enjoyable at all? Because it sounds-

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. It's fantastic. If it's not enjoyable, maybe consider a different line of work, I would say. But for us, yes, it's enjoyable and it's illuminating. And sure, there are moments where your mind wanders, but that's illuminating too, right? And then there are moments where you're riveted and your heart is pounding and that's illuminating. We discovered story and we discovered character and we discovered journey. And we discovered how long the film wanted to be. You know, it's a two hour and 20 minute film with an intermission. And when Billy saw it, she said that she didn't think it was possible for anybody to see her the way she saw herself. It's a film I'm incredibly proud of.

• 21:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up after the break, from a teenager who's about to be a pop star to a superstar who's about to get busted.

• 22:06Speaker 07

  Guilty, guilty, guilty on all these counts of whatever.

• 22:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Martha Stewart. I'm Stephen Dubner and this is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

• 22:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime and Apple TV Plus, documentary films are no longer confined to the art house theaters where RJ Cutler used to see them. Let me read you something from a recent piece in New York Magazine. Between 2018 and 2021, demand for documentaries on streaming services more than doubled. And films that once had hoped to eke out a couple million bucks at the box office were now selling to streamers for 10 or 15 or $20 million.

• 23:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  When Cutler was coming up, deciding to make documentaries for a living was like taking a vow of poverty and probably obscurity, too. But that is not the case today. Consider Cutler's 2024 film about Martha Stewart.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  I'm told between 30 and 40 million people saw that movie.

• 23:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Stewart has been called the original influencer. She was also the first self-made female billionaire in American history. Cutler's film tracks her life from her childhood in New Jersey to a couple of early successes as a model and a stockbroker, to the creation of her lifestyle empire. And then a conviction on felony charges related to insider trading that sent her to prison for five months and bruised her brand badly. But she has been rehabilitating herself ever since. Cutler's film is a chronicle of that comeback and, to some degree, a part of it. I asked Cutler how this project happened.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  That film came about because my wife Jane and I, we go to Montauk, Long Island. We're both from Long Island and we love to go back to Long Island a couple of weeks every year and we bring our kids. And we were having dinner with our friend Alina and that afternoon, Alina called and said, would you mind? Martha Stewart would like to join us at dinner. And we both said, that sounds terrific. Let's have dinner with Martha Stewart.

• 24:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wait a minute, wait a minute. Did it not make you a little bit nervous about what you were serving and maybe how the house looked?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  I'm very confident in my cooking, but we were going out to dinner.

• 24:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, good move.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  And out to dinner we went and I sat with Martha and what a lovely evening we had. We talked all about her upbringing and her background and her family. And I learned that, counterintuitively, she was not a child of privilege, but one who came from a working-class background, one of six children who herself had to go to work as a teenager to feed her family because her father had a hard time holding down a job. I learned all sorts of things about her. I also got the strong sense that she was interested in having a film made about her.

• 25:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is that why she invited herself to the dinner?

• 25:18Speaker 01

  It seemed very clear that that's why she invited herself to the dinner. And so a conversation began because I was certainly intrigued. I didn't know a lot about her going in. Of course, I knew the fundamentals, but I wasn't somebody who subscribed to her magazine. I was not somebody who watched her show on a daily basis, but I was aware of her. And then at dinner, I became incredibly intrigued and in subsequent meetings and conversations, we decided to make a film together.

• 25:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  A lot of documentaries, including biographies, use talking heads to fill out the story. Friends and family of the subject, maybe a rival or critic. And you do use talking heads in Martha, but we never see them. We only hear their voices. So was that something that you did from the outset? Did you shoot them on film and then only use audio? Or did you decide early on to only record audio? And I'm just curious how much of the vision of the finished film was made as you were producing.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question because in this case, it shows how the form and content in post-production can interface and get you where you're trying to go, but don't know how to get to. I knew that we wanted to interview Martha on camera. She's Martha Stewart and I wanted her to be at the center of her film. Her story has been told so many times before, but never by her. I knew that I wanted to interview Martha on camera, but I'm always looking and I'm always open to alternatives. I don't want analytical talking heads that pull you out of the moment. I want you to be in the moment.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  In this case, I nevertheless started interviewing people on camera and we would edit them in. And I just, I didn't like it.

• 27:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did it take you out of the flow?

• 27:13Speaker 01

  It took you out of the flow. I didn't understand why I was looking at people in their living rooms, talking about something that Happened 30 years ago. It wasn't the cinema that I felt this story needed. One day, he said, let's take everybody off camera, but keep Martha on camera. And what do you know? There it was. Martha emerged as the center of the film. Martha emerged as a complicated central character in a way that she hadn't been quite as much before. The fact that she's kind of an unreliable narrator became more of the, and that's a literary construct, but a very revealing one. People reveal themselves in the things they say and the things they don't say.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  They reveal themselves in the truths they share and in the mistruths that they share.

• 28:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you could use that audio documentary, the voices of the people who were with her, but you would use them sometimes to challenge or to expand the version of reality that she's giving. As you're putting that together, how concerned are you about offending her? I remember one time you asked her about her feelings and she says, you know, I'd rather do things.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Have you had any relationships where you talk about your feelings?

• 28:33Speaker 07

  No, and that's probably why I haven't had very many personal relationships with men, for example, because I couldn't care less. I don't know what the real reason is. It doesn't interest me so much to know, you know, oh, Charles, you know, how do you feel this second? I don't care, actually. I do care about Charles. What are you doing? What are you thinking about? So I sort of gravitate towards people who are doing things all the time. And I think more about everything that I'm doing, things that I'm working on, things that I'd like to work on, things that I'd like to accomplish. That's where I'm best.

• 29:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  And it's so revealing about her, but it also is a little bit of a slap like, you know, hey, we're doing this in a certain way and not that way. I'm curious, when you're editing that, do you think about that as slightly hostile testimony in a trial kind of voice? Are you thinking about how she is going to respond to it?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Honestly, I'm just thinking about making the film. I hear what you're saying and clearly I'm including those moments in the film because I want you to understand that it's very difficult for Martha to open up in this way. Cause it has to do with who she is as a person. It's great that I can be the foil because that illuminates who she is. And that's what I'm thinking about is clarity there. And same with the other voices, I'm looking for clarity and complexity and, you know, a journey towards truth on your behalf as a viewer.

• 30:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  I found one of the most powerful pieces of that film was around a series of letters that she had written to her then husband. You're interviewing her about this marriage that ended up going bad. One point she basically says to you, RJ, you know, like I gave you the letters.

• 30:30Speaker 07

  It's hard for me personally to talk about it. Some people revel in this self pity, et cetera, et cetera. I just don't. I handed over letters that were very personal. So guess what? Take it out of the letters.

• 30:47Speaker 08

  Dearest Andy, I cannot sleep.

• 30:51Speaker 08

  I cannot eat. My skin is worried and many lines that were not there are now there.

• 30:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Talk to me about those letters, about what it's like to come upon material like that and how you think it through.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Well, it's a great resource for filmmaker who's looking to tell the truth in the moment. Letters are a verite element and they're better than someone describing what they remember or what they said. It's as valuable as a piece of film and I was incredibly grateful to her for. Trusting us with them. And by the way, there's a 45 minute audio edit of the full length of letters that she gave us that is riveting and powerful and very emotional because it's the letters written during a divorce, you know, and a woman whose heart is broken.

• 31:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Talk to me through the completion and release of that film and especially Martha Stewart's reaction. Anyone who's read the media a little bit about her response will have, I think, a misperception of the reality, according to what you've told me earlier.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  A person who's in a film like this, especially somebody who's used to controlling their image and their narrative for their whole career and who's had some ups and downs and difficult times, is going to be very vulnerable seeing the film. I mean, if I made a film about you and showed it to you, it would probably differ than the film you would make about you. If you made a film about me and showed it to me, it would differ than the film I would make about me. It shouldn't surprise any of us that Martha Stewart would have made a different film than I did. In those early days, she was public about the fact that she wished I had used different music. And there was a scene towards the end of the film where she felt it didn't depict her as flatteringly as she would have.

• 32:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  She said she just had an Achilles injury and it made her look older than she actually is.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 32:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  More fragile.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  I'm, believe me, empathetic and we might not have used the footage she was referring to if it wasn't also incredibly beautiful and powerful and poetic. And if it didn't show her extraordinary landscaping abilities, which was a central metaphor in the film. It's not that I minded her having the criticism. It probably, you know, suggested to some people that they would want to see the film to see what all the hullabaloo was about. Martha continues to be incredibly supportive of the film and we speak all the time. What Martha has told me is that everywhere she goes, young women come up to her to tell her that

• 33:25Speaker 01

  her story of overcoming adversity has inspired them and adversity at multiple times in her life. She is a survivor.

• 33:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up after the break, who wouldn't RJ Cutler make a film about?

• 33:39Speaker 01

  My mother used to say, don't do anything you don't want to read about on the front page of the New York Times. There's a version of that here.

• 33:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

• 34:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  The latest release from the documentary filmmaker RJ Cutler is called Fight for Glory. It's a three parter about the 2024 World Series. Cutler and his crew were down in the dugouts of both the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees. Spoiler alert, the Dodgers win. Cutler is a lifelong and hardcore fan of the other New York baseball team, the Mets. His brother used to take piano lessons from one Mrs. Cohen, who happens to be the mother of the Mets' current owner, Steve Cohen. Cutler is very much hoping that the Mets make it to the World Series this year and that Apple asks him to make that version of Fight for Glory.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I will do anything to make the New York Mets film. Baseball is a beautiful game that has so much to teach us about life and about overcoming adversity. It's a game of failure. A success rate in baseball is 30%. That means 70% of the time, you're Juan Soto grounding into a double play with the bases loaded like he did yesterday at a critical moment.

• 35:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know, RJ, when you describe baseball as an exercise in overcoming adversity, it strikes me that every film you've ever made has had overcoming adversity at the core of the people you're following, no?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  This is life, you know? This is life. It's certainly something that attracts me to the subjects I've made films about, and everybody has adversity that they've had to overcome, and it's the way who we are is defined. We might think of-

• 35:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  You as celebrity adjacent, right? You're not a celebrity quite. You're well known, but you've spent a lot of time with people who are really famous. So I wonder if you could just talk for a moment about fame and the costs especially. I think a lot of people think that being famous is mostly wonderful because it also comes with wealth and power. I would argue wealth and power are kind of separate. If you could have those without the fame, it might be better. I wonder what you can tell us that you've seen about fame per se, having spent time with a number of people in a very intimate way, people who are famous and who have to deal with the upsides and downsides.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Well, I guess I will answer that by saying that I try to impress upon my kids that fame isn't what it looks like. And that from what I've seen, it's certainly a double edged sword. It's a culture that worships fame. Sometimes I'm not quite sure I understand why. I get asked about, you know, fame as a subject, and I understand that it has become a subject of some of the films that I've done, but I don't really see that as what has attracted me to the famous people I've made movies about. I see their greatness as the thing that attracts me more than their fame.

• 36:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  I mean, what you're pointing out about greatness, most people get famous because they're great. The problem is the thing that made them great at the thing they do has nothing to do with the ability to be famous. And indeed, even among some performers who set out to perform in public, they seem really overwhelmed if they happen to become famous and then they have to deal with that. It just seems like it's a condition, a side effect of greatness, maybe as much as anything.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  If you were around before People Magazine, which I was, you've seen the culture change. Remember when People was just a column in Time Magazine? And then it became its own magazine and we used to, you've seen the culture change. And of course, the internet changes it. I remember meeting a famous person in my early twenties and thinking, oh, she's famous for being famous. Now that's the culture. The culture is people who are famous for being famous. We have to understand fully what the real value is.

• 38:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let me ask you this. I can go to Netflix and watch your documentary about Martha Stewart. And I appreciate that it's a real piece of documentary work and all the things that that entails. I believe it to be nonfiction. I don't think anybody's making up stuff. I don't think anybody's leaving anything substantial out, et cetera. So to me, it's not journalism, but it's a cousin, at least of journalism. But then I can also watch a lot of other docs on Netflix or Amazon or elsewhere about well-known people that are made to feel and look pretty similar to, let's say, a Martha Stewart documentary. But I know are made with a very different level and type of cooperation.

• 38:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  They're essentially commissioned portraits. And I, as both journalist and as a consumer, I'm not super thrilled about that. And I'm curious to know your take on this topic.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  I think that it is absolutely critical that, you know, viewers have a sense of who's making the films that they're looking at. I'm a big proponent of media literacy. I think you should have a strong sense of what you're looking at and who the sources are. I think if you're watching one news service, you should know the difference between it and another news service. I think if you're reading a tweet online, you should know the source of that. And I think that if you're looking at a documentary, you should know the source of that. And I can only speak to my own work and the rigor with which we pursue truth. But we're filmmakers, we're artists. We're looking at the more poetic mysteries of life and its complexities

• 39:44Speaker 01

  rather than the journalistic facts of the matter. As much as we are equally obliged to the truth as journalists, what we do is very different.

• 39:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  I assume no money changed hands. Martha Stewart does not commission you to make a film about her, correct?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Oh, no, of course not.

• 40:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Would you ever accept a commission if Bill Gates or someone comes and says, RJ, I think your films are great. I want you to make an honest film about me, but I want you to make a film about me and here's $5 million, $20 million to make it. What do you do?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Well, those are two different numbers.

• 40:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  So that means 20 S, 5 no?

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Let's just say I call some people to talk it through and they make sure I make the right decision. I'm very blessed in that I have wise counsel from my partners.

• 40:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  I thought you were going to say you're blessed in that you've been able to make the work that you want to make without strings and get paid for it. That's also true?

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Yes, all of that is true. That's an even better answer.

• 40:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's the difference between or where is the line between access and approval?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  The line between access and approval is a conversation that I try to have with everyone as early in the process as possible. And that is the line of final cut. I had that conversation with Martha that very first evening and she embraced it the way that Billie Eilish embraced it and her parents embraced it, the way that Anna Wintor embraced it, the way that everybody who I've worked with since the beginning has embraced it.

• 41:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Define final cut for those who don't know?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  If the director has final cut, the director is making all the decisions. That doesn't mean that I don't respect the fact that the story belongs to the subject. It doesn't mean that I don't share the film beforehand and hear their feedback, but final decisions are mine.

• 41:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tell me about a project that you've been offered and rejected.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Oh goodness, I don't know.

• 41:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  What if, for instance, in November of 2023?

• 41:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hamas came to you and said, you know, RJ, we think we're being misportrayed here.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 41:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  But we'll offer you a full embedding, full access to everything.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I mean, it depends on the circumstances. That doesn't sound like anywhere you should. Anybody who loves me would advise me to go. My mother used to say, bless her memory, my mother used to say, don't do anything you don't want to read about on the front page of the New York Times. But, but, you know, listen, I made a movie about Dick Cheney. It's called The World According to Dick Cheney. He is somebody with whom I have absolutely no political common ground, but I was fascinated by him. He is perhaps the single most powerful and impactful, non-presidential political figure in American history. And he agreed to let me make a film.

• 42:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  And sat for a deep interview with you.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yes, five days of long interviews and I'm really glad that I did. So I'm not saying I always would need to agree with the subject, but you know, there's, we get into all sorts of complexities and I'm not going to make a propaganda film about anybody.

• 42:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tell me, with the Cheney film, how did it change you or what did you learn about yourself? Not about him, but you know, I think the reason all of us who write or make stuff do it is because it's thrilling to put yourself around people that are unlike you, to put yourself in situations that are unlike yours, because it changes you. So what happened in that case for you?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Certainly talking with him for those five days, eight hours a day, required an intellectual rigor and a level of engagement that was very satisfying. I mean, Dick Cheney is a remarkable figure and what was very interesting to me was how he had changed over time. He was the youngest presidential chief of staff in American history, as Gerald Ford's chief of staff, and somebody who had started his life, you know, his adult life as a drunk, forever dropping out of school and not really having a promising future until he got his alcoholism under control and then focused on his education and then on his career in Washington.

• 44:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Sounds like what you're saying you learned was that you could have afforded to drink more in your youth.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  I learned a lot about him, but I also learned a lot about the conflict between duty and honor, which is something that he and I spoke about and differed on. And the film differs from him on. He felt that duty outranked honor, and I think it led him to do some damaging things.

• 44:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  So RJ, you've made a number of films about politics, politicians, the electoral process. I want you to talk to me about Donald Trump. What do you see when you see him on TV? How do you think about him shaping his image and influencing the public? Who does he remind you of, et cetera?

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Well, I see a man who reminds me politically of Oliver North, who is the subject of A Perfect Candidate, the film that David Van Taylor and I made in 1994 about Oliver North's Senate campaign. I see a playbook that's very familiar, a playbook of grievance, and one that taps into a kind of dark side of American history and identity. I see a master media manipulator. Those of us who grew up in New York and are New Yorkers know we've seen Donald Trump our whole careers. We know his playbook, and we know Roy Cohn's playbook, and we see it in action.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  What Oliver North didn't have, and Donald Trump does have, is incredibly powerful media machine in Fox News, and I see that as a difference maker, a very, very powerful difference maker in its impact on his political success. I don't think that the anger that Trump taps into is not genuine, but the manipulation of the truth becomes a lot easier in the culture that we're in right now.

• 46:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Have you thought about making a film on Trump?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  No, no. No, I mean, I would always be curious to film in a verite environment that involves the government of my country. Honestly, I would be very curious. But do I get final cut? If the answer is no, then no, I'm not interested.

• 46:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  What if you did?

• 46:34Speaker 01

  If I were invited to film for 10 days in the Oval Office?

• 46:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Sure, I'd be honored and curious.

• 46:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  So we do have a lot of listeners to this program in the White House. We hear from them, you know, now and again. It sounds as though if an invitation were extended, you would accept. Chief condition being final cut, correct?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Yes, and I'm grateful to you for negotiating this on my behalf.

• 46:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're welcome. I can get one of those tiny, tiny, tiny co-executive junior producer credits when it's on.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  No problem.

• 47:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tell me about your Greenland film project, what it is and the status.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  We're just beginning and it's incredibly exciting. In the wake of the Second World War in the early 1960s during the Cold War, the United States built an underground city in Greenland that was ostensibly meant to monitor environmental issues and demonstrate survivability in Arctic areas. The Danish government knew that we were there and supported our efforts to be there. What the US government didn't tell the Danish government was that it was really a military base for nuclear armaments pointed at the Soviet Union. We invaded Greenland in the early 1960s and we didn't tell the Danish government that we were there.

• 47:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Just to be clear, the Danish government is the official keeper of Greenland, correct?

• 48:01Speaker 01

  That is correct. And by 1966 or so, the US government abandoned the project, sent everybody home and got rid of the nuclear reactor, but left all the nuclear waste and just assumed that it would remain buried under the ice forever. And guess what? Guess what doesn't happen when you bury your secrets? They don't stay buried. And they especially don't stay buried with global warming and the polar ice cap melting.

• 48:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  At what point did the Danish government make this discovery?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  They discovered that the US had put missiles there right around the turn of the century.

• 48:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  So it wasn't until around the turn of the century that the existence of the base was even known outside of the military?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  The existence of the base as a nuclear arsenal, that didn't get revealed for many decades. And then it wasn't until 2017 that a glaciologist revealed a study that this nuclear waste was at the rate that the polar ice cap was melting and the ice around Greenland was melting, this nuclear waste would be exposed in a dangerous way within decades. And as you get into the history of this, you realize that the United States has had designs on Greenland for decades. In fact, for more than decades, for 150 years. And that's what this movie that we're making is about.

• 49:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  I mean, plainly, this intersects with your professed willingness or appetite to make a film about the Trump White House. What do you know about the US government's current level of concern about the situation under the ground there? In other words, to what degree is this being factored into the Trump administration's ideas about Greenland?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  We're going to find out and we're going to look to tell that story. I admire your craft and your craftiness. You asked if out of the blue, I was to receive a phone call inviting me to film in the Oval Office for a period of time, would I accept the invitation? And I said, under any circumstances, I would accept that invitation because it's true. And then later in your interview, you referred to my desire to make a film about the Trump administration.

• 50:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think I maybe amended desire with appetite or something like that.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Appetite even, which is a more ferocious desire. I would like for the record to clarify that it is not part of my current plan or appetite to make a film about this administration. I'm experiencing it as a citizen and I'm pursuing my art in other ways.

• 50:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Noted. However, short addendum, I learned my craftiness by watching documentary films, if we're being honest.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  I know no craftier storytellers than my colleagues in the documentary world. It's an extraordinary community with amazing work being done every year. New films that push the form and are rising to the call of the popular success of the form. And the challenges are greater now than ever because of the challenges in the entertainment industry and the fact that the bubble burst a few years ago in terms of peak programming. So craftiness is called on even more.

• 51:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  We're just about at time. I have another 1,800 questions I could ask you, but I'm just curious, is there a film, a topic, an idea, a person, a family member, a pet, anything you do want to talk about that I haven't asked about?

• 51:35Speaker 01

  No, I'm grateful that you've covered so much. My dog's name is Dexter. He gets very little attention in these interviews, but he is, he taught my wife and I about how to raise kids. He teaches us every day about love and empathy, and he's a good man. So since you gave me the chance to sing his praises, I will.

• 51:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  That was RJ Cutler, also known as Rob Cutler, briefly, a long time ago. I'd like to thank him for the conversation today and the films he's made over the years. He's got a dedication to storytelling that I really admire. I would love to know what you thought about this episode. Our email is [email protected]. And if you have any ideas for Cutler, we'll be sure to pass them along. Coming up next time on the show, baseball is not the only way to learn from failure.

• 52:28Speaker 09

  One big reason we don't learn enough from failures is that we don't share them systematically enough.

• 52:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  That makes it look like maybe you were incompetent.

• 52:38Speaker 09

  The brain just knows that you've been abandoned.

• 52:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Part of my problem was I did not ask enough questions.

• 52:46Speaker 10

  I think that was my tipping point, or I just went, I'm done. And it broke me.

• 52:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  But we don't want you to be broken. We look at failed relationships, failures of the imagination, failures of determination, and how to overcome them. That's next time as we revisit and update our series, How to Succeed at Failing. Until then, take care of yourself, and if you can, someone else, too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app, also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish complete transcripts and show notes. This episode was produced by Zach Lepinski, with help from Morgan Levy. It was mixed by Jasmine Klinger, with help from Jeremy Johnston. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also

• 53:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  includes Alina Coleman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abouajie, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Sarah Lilly, and Teo Jacobs. Our theme song is "Mr. Fortune" by The Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thank you for listening.

• 53:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Just to be clear, we do have your patent approval and permission to use this material in the making of our project, correct?

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Yes, you do. You have final cut.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.

• 54:16Speaker 08

  Stitcher.