Director Chris Smith and former Eternal Values member Hoyt Richards discuss their new HBO docuseries and the charismatic leader who kept people in his grasp
Director Chris Smith and former Eternal Values member Hoyt Richards discuss their new HBO docuseries and the charismatic leader who kept people in his grasp
Greetings friends,
It’s been a busy week at Penny Lane HQ. First, we announced the theatrical release of Wild Inside, my feature documentary about Flaco the Owl’s magical odyssey through the island of Manhattan. The ~WORLD PREMIERE~ is under the stars in Central Park on July 29 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and the movie hits theaters shortly thereafter, starting on International Owl Awareness Day. A special roll-out for a special film. 🦉
Here is the trailer — it’s incredible, thanks to the geniuses at Wheelhouse Creative, especially creative director and lead editor Sheryl Haley.
The engagement on Instagram to the trailer has been phenomenal. I look at these numbers and imagine a real person behind one each one, not just seeing it, but liking, saving, sharing… it’s beyond validating. It’s more like awe-inspiring!
In the midst of this excitement, I received the news that the protagonist of a different film I am making died. It was not unexpected — she was elderly, and ailing — but I am grieving, while also scrambling to figure out how to “cover” this moment for the film, and figure out how this may alter the structure of the story. And, did I mention grieving? I am determined to make the film a fitting tribute to this special person. ❤️🩹
This week’s newsletter was inspired by my chat with about The Perfect Neighbor. Geeta also spoke about grief, how documentary can serve as a mechanism to process it, to heal, and to memorialize someone who is gone.
But what I wanted to write about this week was not grief, but the promise and the peril of archival storytelling.
Lessons in Archival Storytelling
Archival storytelling was my first, and in some ways is still my deepest, love in nonfiction storytelling. I love the way archive brings us into contact with the past in a present-tense, primary-source kind of way. I love the meta-narrative potential of employing someone else’s footage in my timeline. Basically, I love history, and I love historiography. And I have already confessed I don’t love filming. What I love is someone having filmed the stuff I want to edit. Sometimes, the constraints of pre-existing archive are just what I need to narrow my focus.
Over time, I’ve developed a handful of questions I ask whenever someone brings me an archive-driven project, or when I am daydreaming up my own. These questions are especially crucial in the development stage.
They’re not foolproof. But I think they can help distinguish between archives that merely contain interesting material, and archives that can actually power a film. What follows is the checklist I wish I’d had myself years ago.
Greetings friends,
It’s been a busy week at Penny Lane HQ. First, we announced the theatrical release of Wild Inside, my feature documentary about Flaco the Owl’s magical odyssey through the island of Manhattan. The ~WORLD PREMIERE~ is under the stars in Central Park on July 29 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and the movie hits theaters shortly thereafter, starting on International Owl Awareness Day. A special roll-out for a special film. 🦉
Here is the trailer — it’s incredible, thanks to the geniuses at Wheelhouse Creative, especially creative director and lead editor Sheryl Haley.
The engagement on Instagram to the trailer has been phenomenal. I look at these numbers and imagine a real person behind one each one, not just seeing it, but liking, saving, sharing… it’s beyond validating. It’s more like awe-inspiring!
In the midst of this excitement, I received the news that the protagonist of a different film I am making died. It was not unexpected — she was elderly, and ailing — but I am grieving, while also scrambling to figure out how to “cover” this moment for the film, and figure out how this may alter the structure of the story. And, did I mention grieving? I am determined to make the film a fitting tribute to this special person. ❤️🩹
This week’s newsletter was inspired by my chat with about The Perfect Neighbor. Geeta also spoke about grief, how documentary can serve as a mechanism to process it, to heal, and to memorialize someone who is gone.
But what I wanted to write about this week was not grief, but the promise and the peril of archival storytelling.
Lessons in Archival Storytelling
Archival storytelling was my first, and in some ways is still my deepest, love in nonfiction storytelling. I love the way archive brings us into contact with the past in a present-tense, primary-source kind of way. I love the meta-narrative potential of employing someone else’s footage in my timeline. Basically, I love history, and I love historiography. And I have already confessed I don’t love filming. What I love is someone having filmed the stuff I want to edit. Sometimes, the constraints of pre-existing archive are just what I need to narrow my focus.
Over time, I’ve developed a handful of questions I ask whenever someone brings me an archive-driven project, or when I am daydreaming up my own. These questions are especially crucial in the development stage.
They’re not foolproof. But I think they can help distinguish between archives that merely contain interesting material, and archives that can actually power a film. What follows is the checklist I wish I’d had myself years ago.
Carroll has defeated Donald Trump in court twice, but he is coming after her now with perjury and money-laundering charges.
By Gregory Crofton I want to hear a Jason Molina metal record. I don’t think he ever made one, but he grew up on Ozzy and Metallica and the first few bands he was in were metal, one was named Chronic Insanity. Molina could be goofy and loved making penis jokes, but according to a…
The post Figuring Out the Mournful Rock of Jason Molina appeared first on Channel Nonfiction.
By Gregory Crofton I want to hear a Jason Molina metal record. I don’t think he ever made one, but he grew up on Ozzy and Metallica and the first few bands he was in were metal, one was named Chronic Insanity. Molina could be goofy and loved making penis jokes, but according to a…
The post Figuring Out the Mournful Rock of Jason Molina appeared first on Channel Nonfiction.
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In this video I give you a quick sneak peek at what I am filming for my feature documentary RADIS. In this particular case it’s a sunset session we shot at Cascina delle Rose, one of the incredible wine producers of the film. I already shot around 10tb of footage and plenty of BTS, but rather than create a long BTS I am gonna release a bunch of these videos. Hope you like it! Shot on Ursa Mini Pro 12K and Leica R 15 and 28mm. Edited and graded in DaVinci Resolve with BUTTERY LUTs.
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Huge hanks to all my members!
Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video with the wonderful . It was incredible to learn more about Geeta’s early career, how she worked for the animator Suzan Pitt before (literally) chasing Spike Lee down and getting a job with him. This led to her working as the Emmy-winning lead editor on Lee’s seminal documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006), and her long-term creative collaboration with documentary legend Sam Pollard (with whom she founded Message Pictures).
We started out talking about how Geeta and I met in 2017 as fellow recipients of the Chicken & Egg Award (at that time, it was called the “Breakthrough Award”), an unrestricted grant for mid-career female and gender-expansive filmmakers. Around that time, Geeta was seeking to establish herself more as a director and less as an editor.
Geeta shared how The Perfect Neighbor came to exist out of necessity and grief, her personal connection to the story, how she knew there was a movie in the 30 hours of body cam and other evidentiary material she was given access to, how her independent film ended up on the Netflix Top 10, and what it was like to end up with one of the biggest docs of 2025, including her history-making turn as an Oscar nominee for both Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short (for The Devil is Busy) in the same year.
Geeta also generously shared a really emotional view of what the comedown from all of that feels like, how she might be just now finally processing her grief, and what she’s working on now.
Finally, check out Standing in the Gap Fund.
