First Draft Episode #240: Erin Lee Carr
MARCH 17, 2020
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Erin Lee Carr is a director, producer, and writer whose upcoming four-part docuseries How to Fix a Drug Scandal will be released on Netflix on April 1st. Carr has also directed the documentaries Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop, Mommy Dead and Dearest, I Love You: Now Die, and At the Heart of Gold, all for HBO. Erin also wrote a memoir, All That You Leave Behind, about her struggles wth substance abuse and the sudden loss of her father, New York Times media journalist David Carr. All That You Leave Behind Is out in paperback today.
Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Erin Lee Carr, director, producer and writer whose upcoming four-part docuseries How to Fix a Drug Scandal will be released on Netflix on April 1st. Carr has also directed the documentaries Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop, Mommy Dead and Dearest, I Love You: Now Die, and At The Heart of Gold all for HBO.
Erin also wrote a memoir, All That You Leave Behind about her struggles with substance abuse and the sudden loss of her father, New York Times media journalist, David Carr. All That You Leave Behind is out in paperback today.
Everything Erin and I talk about in today's episode can be found in the show notes, tons of great links to documentary filmmakers and other amazing movies and books. Lots of really good stuff in there. As a reminder, First Draft participates in affiliate programs. That means that when you shop through the links on @FirstDraftPod.com, it helps to support the show and at no additional cost to you.
If you'd to donate to First Draft, either on a one-time or a monthly basis, simply go to paypal.me/firstdraftpod. Another quick and easy way to support the show is to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening right now, and leave a rating or review on iTunes. Leaving a rating or review only takes a couple minutes and it really does boost the show and get it in front of new listeners who might not find it otherwise.
I'm gonna read a recent five-star review that was left by a listener. This was left by Dare To Be. Dare To Be says, "Delightful and insightful. One of my favorite podcasts. Sarah is such an amazing interviewer. Every conversation flows like two friends catching up. I get pearls of writing wisdom from every episode." Thank you so much Dare To Be, that means a lot, and I so appreciate you taking the time to leave that review.
Finally, if you have any writing or creativity questions that you'd me and a guest to answer in an upcoming mailbag episode, please call and leave that question at First Draft's voicemail. That's (818) 533-1998 or you can also send an audio recording of you asking the question to mailbag@firstdraftpod.com. Are you seeing the relation? I really want to hear your lovely voices. I love getting listener voices on the show, so indulge me.
Okay, now please sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with Erin Lee Carr.
Sarah Enni: All right, hi Erin! How are you?
Erin Lee Carr: Very wonderful.
Sarah Enni: I'm so happy to meet you. I'm so excited to chat with you today and I have a hundred thousand questions, so I'm just gonna dive right in. I wanted to start with I like to go way back and get some bio, so I'd to hear where were you born and raised?
Erin Lee Carr: So I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I say it in that very specific twang. That's the only word that you can tell I'm a Midwesterner. I am a twin. I was born with an amazing sister and we were raised primarily in the New Jersey, New York area.
Sarah Enni: When did you actually move out here?
Erin Lee Carr: Oh god. You think I would know that. I mean, I think eighth grade.
Sarah Enni: I want to ask about reading and writing and how that was a part of growing up for you. And in your case also movies. I know you were a big movie buff.
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah. I mean I think that so many people who end up doing this for a living, a formative part of their adolescence is escapism. It's like, "What does it mean to live inside a story?" And you start with things like Alice in Wonderland or Roald Dahl with The Witches. And you recognize that there are all these incredible stories that you can live in.
And so I took that to the next level in high school. I was incredibly dorky, as I'm sure a lot of your audience is [laughs] You know, know your audience! It's just, I was obsessed with Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I would make collages, I would rehearse dialogue. I just completely fell enchanted, completely fell in love with the show. And that was a huge part of my high school experience.
Sarah Enni: I read that you had wanted to be a film critic at some point.
Erin Lee Carr: Yes. And so I loved movies, loved watching them. I had a seven or seventeen page document of all the films that I wanted to watch that I'd found in film books. And I just went through them and I started writing about it and I made a film club at my all girls Catholic school where we reviewed the work. It was like Pleasantville and Moulin Rouge, it was all five-stars. It was definitely five-star stuff [laughs].
And I remember telling my dad that I wanted to be a film critic. My dad is David Carr, an amazing, legendary New York Times journalist who wrote extensively about entertainment. And he said, "Okay, well how many jobs do you think there are for film critics?" And I said, "You know, there's enough for me to do it." And so he basically explained to me that with the democratization of the web, there's gonna be fewer and fewer jobs, so that I should not try and do that. And I was like, "Hm, that's rude!" And he was like, "Do you think your writing is good enough to do that?"
And he was just, to most people that'll sound like he's an asshole. And he's discouraging me from having my dreams. But it really wasn't the case. It was just him being realistic and it pointed me in a more realistic direction. That's why we're sitting here today.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I mean, it's also very interesting how your dad was very prescient about the internet, with mixed feelings, which I share. But that's really wise of him to say, "The writing's on the wall already. Let's not go too far down one path."
Erin Lee Carr: Right.
Sarah Enni: So perfect segue, cause I wanted ask about your dad's book, The Night of the Gun. Do you mind kind of just describing for my audience what this book is about?
Erin Lee Carr: It's a beautiful, mesmerizing memoir that he, David Carr, released in 2008. And at the time he was a New York Times journalists. And in his life previously, he had suffered from pretty graphic cocaine, crack, and alcohol dependency. And there was this, in the wake of James Fry, there was like, "Who was that guy and who am I today?" And so it's this very Don Quixote journey into self to understand what happened? How did he become the single father of two girls when he had been one of the worst people available? One of the worst people really around.
And so the book is this really careful meditation and investigation into him, reporting it out. It's four hundred pages. It's really dense, it's incredibly colorful, and it's some of the most beautiful writing I've ever seen.
Sarah Enni: I listened to it on audio book, which was really cool, because it made you slow down and appreciate his sentences. On the sentence level, he's really doing some amazing work. And I don't want to gloss over this, as you mentioned, it's him applying his considerable journalism skills to his own life, which is such an interesting approach to memoir, I think.
But I wanted to bring that up and everyone listening to this should, should read it or listen to it because it was amazing. But I wanted to talk about the fact that this is a book that contains some brutal honesty about your family. And it came out...how old were you in 2008?
Erin Lee Carr: So I was in high school when he gave me the manuscript and I believe I was just, [pauses] yeah, he was on this really dark journey with self and the way that he liked to talk about it is he had tongs on the manuscript, and he handed it over to his teenage children and he was like, "Hope this is fine." You know what I mean? Pretty, I think, very surreal, only in our family sort of stuff.
Sarah Enni: Well, it struck me that that's also, for someone like you who was getting really consumed in story, this is now the story of at least a part of your life, your early life. I'm just curious about how you think that did or did not impact your thinking about story? Or, I dunno. And it also was exposing you in a way that wasn't necessarily your choice.
Erin Lee Carr: I didn't feel exposed. I knew that if you grew up in my household, it was baked into our family, what had happened. And so it really felt important for my dad to be able to share that, and share that so well. It's so weird. I always felt insanely proud of the book. And you know, I think that it's difficult because there are specific sections that surround his attitude and violence towards women. And how does a young woman really figure that out.
And so I guess it was like, I have been in therapy a long time, but it was never a question of, or I never had a gut feeling of like, "Oh, I wish my dad didn't do that." I remember he was on The Daily Show with Colbert and he was just so good at it. And Colbert asks him, there's this amazing clip of like, "What do you think is more damaging to society, crack or the New York Times?" And my dad's like, "That's not even close." I guess we lived in the humor moments of it where we were excited for him and yes, acknowledge the darkness. But all of my life now is about acknowledging darkness. So obviously there was a deep imprint.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, that's kind of what stood out to me was, and we'll get into it because right out the gate you haven't been shying away from some of the darkest stuff. But shedding a light on it in a very particular way, that shows a lot of humanity. I think your dad writing about that book, and including his family, it just is a very specific and unique and original way to deal with something that is very dark. And in some hands wouldn't be handled as gracefully. So it seems very unique.
Erin Lee Carr: And at the time people didn't think it was particularly graceful. I think now we think of it as, you know, a masterclass in memoir writing. But I think he got a rough review in the New York Times. There was a couple of reviews that were like, "This is just so graphic and he doesn't pull back." And the strengths of the book were seen, even in a small way, as flaws.
And I think had he done it maybe a couple of years later, it would have sold insanely more. I mean his star was beginning to ascend in 2008 when he released, and it was really this combination of being in this film called Page One: A Year in the New York Times directed by Andrew Rossi, one of my mentors. And he was an entertainment reporter at the Times covering the Oscars.
We don't know about the timing of these things. And so he released it when he could release it. But to this day, people bring it up to me. And a couple of people have asked me to sign the book, and I can feel my dad being like, "Absolutely not. You did not sign that book." Excuse me, "You did not write that book. Get the fuck outta here."
Sarah Enni: I wanna talk basically about, I want to get to how you came to video as a way of telling stories, and early approaches to short documentaries.
Erin Lee Carr: I think that I knew that I could not be a journalist. That was off the table.
Sarah Enni: Why is that?
Erin Lee Carr: My dad was one of the more famous working journalists in New York and once you try to put on dad's shoes, they're ill fitting. I could never achieve the amount of excellence that I would want. And so I just was a consummate consumer of all forms of media. And I remember I watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room when I was in high school. And that's an Alex Gibney film.
And it's about these guys that try to pull a heist, these guys in Texas that worked for an energy corporation, that pull a scam. And their worth gets inflated and the bubble bursts, but in this incredibly spectacular fashion. And I just was like, "This is it! This is accountability. This is showing what happened." And I just remember being so hooked by that.
And I think that a lot of people now have that reaction to documentaries. They love to deconstruct, they love to learn things. But that was not the case when those films came out. But I instantly had so much affinity for them. But I always thought honestly like, "Oh, I'm gonna work for that guy. I'm gonna be a researcher. I'm gonna put together dossiers." And as a young person, I didn't think, "Oh, I'm gonna be doing that." That didn't really factor in.
And I remember I interviewed to be his assistant later on, we'll get into the Vice stuff, but I interviewed to be Alex Gibney's assistant. I think it was like three interviews. And he was just like, "You're amazing. You're not gonna be a good assistant. I'm not gonna hire you." And so he did me a great service.
Sarah Enni: Well, let's talk about Vice cause I'm really interested in you finding your voice and your feet as someone who's reporting stories in the field with documentaries. So how did you kind of get into that?
Erin Lee Carr: So I graduated college in four years. It was incredibly close I almost didn't have one credit. I went to the Czech Republic to do this film conservatory and Wisconsin let me graduate, but it was very close that I wasn't gonna graduate and I skipped graduation. I thought I was so cool. And so I took inventory. And I sat with my dad, and this is a very privileged positions, so I'm gonna be thoughtful about how I talk about it. But I said, "What do you think I should do?" And he said, "Let's figure it out."
So, I had done an internship at Fox Searchlight that had been medium, it was in publicity. And he said, "Okay, let's sort of be thinking about it." And there was this company called Vice that was on the up-a-lator. They were making things about war lords in Liberia. And these crazy food shows, and Vice Guide to Travel and they were just somebody in the scene that was really doing new stuff. And I've looked back and I wrote Shane Smith, the founder of Vice, I wrote him this truly horrific email asking to work with him. I also attached my clips and I had done a short form narrative piece, which I think included someone naked.
it was just the most head-scratching, like "What is wrong with you?" Really insane. But you could tell from my email that I was: One, thirsty. Two: That I was a worker amongst workers. And that I was drinking the Koolaid of Vice. And when you get somebody like that, there was no shot that I was gonna get to that company, and fuddle around. I was there to be a part of the team.
So I think they saw that. And I started working in the Vice London office. I could not get a visa. I was incredibly lonely. And so I went back to New York, I worked on the show Girls as an office PA in the interim. And Vice felt bad about the visa situation. So they were just like, "Hey, why don't you work as an associate producer?"
And they just didn't know exactly what to do with me. And so I started working on this thing called Motherboard, which is about the internet. And it was almost as if things started to click into place. I just needed what's called a prompt. I needed something to make things about. And there was not a dedicated producer on that team because it was seen as like, "This is the dork corner, nobody cares about this."
And so then I started pitching my own ideas and much to their credit, they let me do stuff. And I would pitch things about tardigrades, about internet personalities, about guys with guns. And I just very quickly was making things that got millions of views. And once you have something that has millions of views, it's currency. And basically, at 23, I was able to say, "I know what I'm doing."
I did not know what I was doing. I did not. But I've had a persistent 'fake it till you make it' attitude that serves me.
Sarah Enni: How do you find stories? And what makes some things stand out to you as opposed to whatever else is on Reddit?
Erin Lee Carr: It's so funny cause one of my boards is behind us, and I'm really trying to find a lot of stories for HBO, my beautiful benefactors. And I've always been like, "I'm really good at this!" Turns out it's very difficult to do. So how do I do it? This is what is most asked and I try to be as transparent as possible. So you have to read everything. You have to read the New York Times every weekend. You have to have a media diet of information that you're taking in.
Be a person that looks at Reddit, that looks at Twitter. And it's about you as a person. What makes you want to continue reading? For me, it's very specifically issues that surround women, mental health, the psychiatric network. Last night we had an interview at 9:00 AM this morning and I was supposed to be in bed by a certain time, cause I am a gal that requires eight hours, and I was up late reading this legal verdict. And I was like, "Well, I should stop." And I was like, "You know what? I'm not gonna stop."
I am figuring out and processing this information. And not every story teaches me that I want to do this. And so it's, does it have an interest? And then does it connect to the cultural zeitgeist? Is it something that people out there are gonna talk about? Is it going to create a conversation? Is it about women? Cause that's what I do. And is it provocative? And does it have to do with technology? So as long as it's kind of hitting those checkmarks, then I'm likely going to be interested in it.
Sarah Enni: I love that. And we'll get to it in a second, but how you incorporate technology is visual medium, but it's also not. I feel there's been some interesting, really smart ways that you've incorporated these texts and tweets and things. But I want to quote you to you really quick, you were talking about just in the vein of developing your voice as a documentarian, I read somewhere you said, "I will give you an empathetic portrait, a human rendering of something really terrible that happened. I will look at it from all sides and it will feel nonjudgmental. I think that so often filmmakers have a point of view, but with my films, I don't know if you can really tell what I think."
And I just want to know if that came naturally to you?
Erin Lee Carr: Was that the Times? Which one was it?
Sarah Enni: I think it was LA times.
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah. Amy Kaufman, who is so amazing, she wrote that piece. So I think that, and I don't want to always bring it back to dad, but I mean I grew up in an empathic, understanding, nonjudgmental household. When we looked at these things, these horrific things had happened in our society. My dad really pushed us to understand it from all sides.
And I think that that's not giving people breaks. I remember we had a conversation about the assassination of John Lennon and I had a throwaway comment of like, "You know, that's really sad." And he was like, "No. That is not sad. That is not the word to use. Sad is when an egg gets broken on your head. This is a tragedy. This is unthinkable. You can't just remark that something is sad. What does sad mean?"
And I was like, "Ah! This it very intense." And you know, obviously he had those very strong feelings about that. But it was something that in the thousands of conversations we had, sort of stuck out to me. And I don't know, I think that I understand why people do bad things. I think there's evilness in all of us. And that's a prime example that we'll talk about, is the gymnastics doc. But I'm not gonna give Larry Nassar, one of the most prolific pedophiles, the human treatment.
And I have to use my lens and guide myself on what feels fair, what feels human and yeah, I don't tend tell people how I feel within the films. I do a lot of, "You think this, then you think this. You think this, then you think this." Because I think that's what is a compelling portraiture. But I think some people might feel that's manipulative. I don't.
Sarah Enni: And that's the next thing. And I'm very preoccupied with the concept of objectivity. I graduated with an English degree and a Journalism degree and I'm very obsessed with nonfiction storytelling. But narrative storytelling or narrative nonfiction, is putting a lens of narrative on top of what really happened to whatever extent we can understand objective truth.
So I'm just interested in how you think about the objective nature of what you're doing. Is it possible you're also the first draft of history? It's all this stuff that you're aware documentaries are on the borderline of journalism, but they're not, there are distinctive other thing, like you're saying.
Erin Lee Carr: I feel that it's journalism. I use evidence in a court system to show you what happened. And yes, it is not textbook journalism because I'm adding music and cutting to it. But I remember I was hanging out with Patricia Bosworth (documentarian and memoirist, author of The Men in My Life: A Memoir of Love and Art in 1950s Manhattan, Diane Arbus: A Biography, Montgomery Clift: The Ultimate Insider's Guide for the Budget Savvy), one of the best memoirists and biographers of all time. And she said, "Do you consider yourself a journalist?" And I said, "You know, I'm a very proud filmmaker and director." And she's like, "You. Are. A. Journalist! Think about what you do. You've interviewed over hundreds of people. This is your job. This is what you do. You need to own this." And I was like, "Patricia." And from that moment on I said, "Yes. Okay, I agree."
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I love that. So do you feel then, if you take on that mantle, does it mean you feel [pauses], I don't know. I guess I'm interested in how you think about yourself as a journalist and a storyteller.
Erin Lee Carr: I think that my strongest suit is interviewing people. Going into a room and extracting something that you have not said before. I used to take very long interviews. It used to be about three hours. Now I try to do it in about an hour. And making people feel comfortable like this conversation, but really thinking about, "What is this person? How do I see them adding to this? How do I see them?" Cause they're giving me their time and I'm very serious about that.
I don't want to take anybody's time and then cut them from the film. It's a really embarrassing part of what I have to do sometimes. And so you would think that as a documentary director, it's about the verite, or it's about setting up the scene, or what it looks like. And it's like, "No. What I am best at is story, interview. And getting that story."
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I love that. I have a million questions about interviews, but I don't want to bog us down. Let's move forward a little bit and then I'll come back to it. In your memoir you share, and you've talked in other places, about the HBO pitch with Sheila Nevins (former president of HBO Documentary Films and currently launching MTV Documentary Films), which I thought was such a fun story. Do you mind kind of talking about that and how you launched out of Vice to this other phase of your career?
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah, so it's so funny. She's incredible, but it was pretty scary at the time. So I was at Vice. I got poached by a competing organization for double the money. I had alcohol issues and they were like, "No! This is not a job for you. We're not interested in you working here anymore." I was fired. I was embarrassed. I was humiliated. And I really couldn't go back to Vice with my tail in between my legs. And so I had to think about, "Well, what is the next step? What do I do?"
So I was like, "You know, I really love making films. Why don't I reach out to a filmmaker? And I reached out to many, many filmmakers. Andrew Rossi, the director, I mentioned of Page One being one of them. And he had been developing things with HBO. He knew Sheila Nevins, who is the president, and Sarah Bernstein. And he said, "Look, let's go in and pitch them." Okay, so setting the stage for you. I am in my mid-twenties I have a pitch about the dark web. HBO has never really done anything about the dark web.
They're not super into technology stuff. But I was convinced that I could bring this movie to them. I had a ten page document and I was very, very, very nervous. I got there an hour-and-a-half early, I ordered chocolate cake and coffee and just started wilting under the nerves saying, "This isn't gonna go well. This isn't gonna go well. I don't know what I'm doing." And I was just like, "Pull it together." I went to the bathroom, I looked in the mirror and I said, "You're gonna nail this. This is when your life is about to start." And I pulled it together.
Got to the building. Sheila Nevins was there. Sheila is infamous for her meanness and her vibrancy. I got there, she doesn't look at me, and she says, "It smells gasoline in here." And I was like, "Is that a comment of me farting?" Like, "What is the deal here?" It basically pushes you off your axis because you can't really pitch when all of this stuff is going on.
And so she's commenting about a gas leak. I don't know what's going on. So the men come up to check if there's a gas leak. I've never actually asked her about if the gas leak was real or not. But we sat down and I was like, "Okay, that has subsided. I'm gonna pitch her the story." I pitch her the story. I'm about two minutes in and she's like, "I'm not at all interested in that. That's, no! Absolutely not." I was like, "Oh my God!" You know when your fears come into reality, and you're having that like, "Wait, is this real or is it not real?"
She just completely said that, completely, not at all anything she's interested in. I've spent two weeks preparing for this. I started to look at my shoes and Andrew just starts pitching other things. Cause that's what you're there for, you have to pitch other things. And ten minutes into the pitch, I'm like, "I have a couple other ideas." And I mentioned these two words, cannibal cop.
And that's when Sheila's interested.
Sarah Enni: That's amazing. Yeah, that moment when the exact thing that you've been like, "Well there's no way this worst case scenario is gonna happen." Then it does. And you're like, "Okay, we live in this reality now." I've had a few moments like that in my life. I love that she was so forthright, and then willing to be like, "Yeah, I am interested in this." I love that story.
Erin Lee Carr: We spent time together over the holidays. She said, "What I loved about the first meeting with you is you didn't ask anything of me. You didn't say the words, 'well, what do you think we could do together?'" And she's not here so I don't want to speak for her. But it really was about, she had been in so many rooms where all these Slick Ricks were like, "Well, you know, we should do this together. What do you need from me? What can I do for you?" And she's like, "I don't want that. I want people with ideas." What I want to acknowledge is it's very difficult for an organization like HBO to take a risk on a young filmmaker.
And they very rarely do it. It's high risk. I had no proof of concept that I could actually do what I was saying that I was gonna do. And so I think we need executives that have that gut check. That, "I think that this person can do it." Or, "I think this person can help guide this person."
It's also because I was with Andrew Rossi and I wasn't gonna completely go off the rails. But yeah, I think so many people ask me, "How do I go from making short narratives or making short documentaries to being a feature filmmaker?" The path is so unclear. And I don't have peers because it's just borderline impossible.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Right. Well there's some saying that I was just reading recently about, every path is so unique. Your path wouldn't work for someone else. You can't replicate it half the time.
Erin Lee Carr: Also, I look at so many Ted Talks, I look at so many keynotes. And I just think that that's a little bullshit because every time I watch one of those, I was watching, Corey Richard's, this Nat Geo photographer, last night. And his story, obviously, he's a climber and he's basically was homeless prior in life, and he was figuring it out. But I was like, "There's so much about connecting to the climb." I have a post-it note that said, "The climb is what makes the view at the top so significant." Cause you know that you sweat through it. I think everybody should be listening to all these things because we can apply a little bit of this to our own life.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, that's a really good point. And this may be a sidestep, but what we're talking about also is ambition, right? And you talk a lot in your book about, and your dad talks a lot about, being really ambitious. And that seems something that you had in common. You have a lot in common with your dad. Then what's different is you are a young woman and he is your dad, different generations, different genders, different professions. How do you feel about being this ambitious and this driven with this whole other set of circumstances?
Erin Lee Carr: Love it. I had an ex boyfriend, or somebody I used to date maybe not a boyfriend, reach out to me this past year and say, "You know..." He sent me a joke thing about my social media being nauseating. Cause I put two movies and a book out this year. And so much of putting a book out really relies on self-promotion. And yeah, people don't that.
And I said, "Hit mute. This is part of my job." And he tried to push me a little bit on it and say, "You know, it's becoming a lot." And I said, "I am loud and proud of my work, like any dude would be." And I put it on social media and on Twitter [laughs out loud] and he was horrified. He was just like, "Why would you do that? Why would you cannibalize and make this into content?"
And that dude and I don't speak anymore. He is not pro me and my ambition. And like, move to the left. And I do have people in my life, like my boyfriend Jeremy, who can reel me back a little bit. It's like, "Hey, you're doing a lot of this. You know, maybe we take a break from social media for a couple of days." Or, "Maybe we think about that stuff." But that's somebody who I'm in love with. Who knows me and knows the work and isn't trying to rib me, and is just trying to provide some guidance.
And so it's been very interesting. I am one of the most ambitious, most intense people around me. I don't know, I guess it's like I sometimes think about dialing it back, but then it's just like, "I think it's fine and I just am gonna continue." But I so agree with you and your understanding of my dad and I being both very ambitious. But it looked really good on him and it looks sort of creepy and promotion-y on an early thirties person.
Sarah Enni: It's different. And just so I'm transparent, a lot of the sources of these questions is that I also felt really close to my dad. Wanted to be like him. And he died young as well. So when I was reading your book I was like, "Yeah, this is it. Dealing with a lot of..." He was so driven, he got what I was doing. And now he's not here anymore to help.
Erin Lee Carr: Who's gonna root for us? Who's gonna cheer?" It's called cheerleading. But it's like that is the dude that's gonna cheerlead for me. I mean, I'm sure you feel fucking robbed. And people say to me, and I think this is so disrespectful, "Well at least you had him." I'm like, "I don't have him now. I would rather have him now!" Like, "What do you mean?" I'm actually a sober bad-ass person who can carry on a conversation. I wish I had him now, not when I was fusing my words together.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Yeah. It fucking sucks.
Erin Lee Carr: How old were you?
Sarah Enni: I was 23 and he was 50.
Erin Lee Carr: It's just... that's so unfair. It's so painful. And it's like, think about you now as a person and about all that you've become. And it's just deeply unfair.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Agreed. Well I want...
Erin Lee Carr: Segue.
Sarah Enni: Well the ambition thing too is obviously gonna play out as we go forward. Cause I'm so interested in how hard you've worked, like you said, in such a period of time. I want to talk about Thought Crimes at first though. Do you mind just super quick pitching what Thought Crimes is about.
Erin Lee Carr: It's my favorite film I've ever done.
Sarah Enni: Is it really? That's awesome.
Erin Lee Carr: Yes. It's so much a reflection of inside my brain. So it's a feature film about a New York city police officer that was convicted of conspiracy to kidnap, rape, torture, and eat young women. And he was convicted by a jury of his peers. And it was interesting because basically he was somebody who fantasized about these really dark things about women on the internet. He would go and talk on these online communities.
And it was him engaging in fantasy role-play. His wife found out about it. She was horrified. She contacted the FBI, and the FBI and the local police department intervened before he quote "did anything". So here was this young man, Catholic, Italian, sitting in a jail and he said, "I wasn't gonna do it. I absolutely was not going to do it. This was all a part of a role-play. You don't understand, you've got this all wrong."
And I started visiting him in prison to try to figure out, "Was it real, was it false or was it a combination of things?" And it's just so dense, and unclear, and says so much about sexuality. But it's a very weird movie because there's a lot of eating in it. Gil is a guy, the cannibal cop, and he loves to cook. He was under home confinement. So all he could really do was watch television and cook. And so one of the chief criticisms of the film was like, "There's a lot of eating in this movie." And I was like, "Yeah, it's funny." I would put the less eating in it now.
Sarah Enni: Well, you shared a story in your memoir about interviewing him and getting close to him and the experience of your interactions with your subjects. I'm just interested in how, if you don't mind going over that, and how that's informed how you approach subjects now.
Erin Lee Carr: Yes. So it completely changed how I approach subjects. So when I started meeting with Gil, I really did think that he should not be in jail. There was not enough commiserate evidence to suggest that he was absolutely gonna do it beyond a reasonable doubt. Fine. I'm some goon from New Jersey that believes that.
So I start kind of telling him that, and we're working together. He gets out of prison, he gives me an interview and there is a huge difference between advocacy documentary filmmaking, and journalism documentary filmmaking. And as I started to figure out the evidence and put the film together, I realized there were some difficulties where I believe that his fantasy stepped over into real action, real thought. But not enough beyond a reasonable doubt, but enough to sorta incriminate him in a certain way, to make me feel uncomfortable.
And I was a young reporter and I don't think I had the best boundaries. I think it was pretty friendly, we ate a lot of meals together, and slowly I was working out like, "Would this guy have killed women?" And sitting and having dinner with him. And so there was this falseness to me, that I think I existed in. One to protect myself, because I didn't want to be in a tough or difficult spot. But two it was almost as if I lacked courage to be totally honest with him.
And there needed to be a moment where I sat down with him and I said, "I have a lot of conflict about what happened, and I really need you to explain it." And I just was almost like I just couldn't do it at a time. So then the edit did it for me, and we showed it to him at HBO, and he hated the film. And I ultimately think the film is fair and rigorous and journalistic in nature, but my handling of that situation really would have been different. And there was this added layer of like, he was a man, I was a woman, he might've had a crush on me and it was just like... He just would text me a lot.
And so it was like, "How do I manage this? What is going on? What do I do? How do I handle this?" And it was just a cluster fuck.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it sounds really complicated and like you're saying, on top of the actual subject of the film, it's you and this person and there becomes an interpersonal thing, and you're telling an intimate story about the worst thing that happened in his life. I mean, all of this is very intense.
Erin Lee Carr: I just have never made a film about a man since.
Sarah Enni: Okay. I was gonna say, so what are the...
Erin Lee Carr: I can't. [Pauses] I understand women. I understand their motivations. I find that I don't feel physically threatened by women. If I had an issue with you that I had to go through in terms of your story and your veracity, I could sit and I could ask you about that.
And that's not to say that men are dangerous or scary or to generalize about them, but it's something that traumatized me. And I'm not a wallflower. I'm not a daisy. But I just was like, "If I, in my life, get to pick what I make stories about, I'm gonna pick."
Sarah Enni: Did it change how you actually approach being in the room with interviews, how you structure interviews, how you communicate with people. I'm interested in all that.
Erin Lee Carr: It's all about how you reach out to somebody and you don't promise things and anything that you put in an email can be screenshot and can be shared. I'm reaching out and saying, "I'm making a thing for HBO, I'm making a thing for Netflix." And with great power comes great responsibility. I cannot act badly when I am reaching out because that reflects. I won't continue to work.
And so for me it's really about the source curation. It's about the pre-taped interview. It's about relying on a body of work to talk about journalistic in nature. And that's significantly Michelle Carter. It's in the heavy work with my editor Andrew Kaufman, who's cut all of the HBO films. It's very well put together. So now when I'm reaching out to people, it says in the reviews, this is journalistic in nature, this is rigorous. And so I can do that.
But you just have to be really, really careful. You have to read everything back. And you have to think about your bias. Like, "Am I putting in this interview because I like that person? Or I had a good time with them. Or, is it serving the narrative in that way?"
Sarah Enni: Ooh, I that. Yeah. When you spend that much time and get that into it, the forest through the trees is a real situation. Let's talk about Mommy Dead and Dearest really quick. Do you mind pitching that doc for us?
Erin Lee Carr: So imagine you are a young person and you have a lot of health issues. And your mom keeps telling you that you're really sick, and that you have leukemia, and that your stomach doesn't work, and you have to take your medicine every single day. But you know, it's fine because your momma loves you and she's trying to take care of you. But now she says that you have to be in a wheelchair when you're outside the house, but you tell her you don't need to use the wheelchair that you can walk.
That is the reality that Gypsy Rose Blanchard was confronted with, and it led to a violent and scary end for her mother. And this is a true crime documentary about disability, about health, and about who we pretend to be.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. It's so well done. It's very chilling. And it was your breakout. In some big way it broke you out. What does that mean? What did that look for you in your world? What changed?
Erin Lee Carr: It was so great because it was an unproven story in the marketplace. The national media had not caught onto it. So I think one of the best things that I have in my arsenal now is, I know how to do this. I have a gut level about stories and I was proven right. I think somebody, even when I was developing it for HBO, was like, "Don't use all your money on this. We're not sure about this." And I was like, "I'm sure." So it's really, that's in a very specific way about betting on yourself.
And it was the first film I made without my dad, he never saw a frame of it. And if people read my book, there's so much imposter syndrome, there's so much, "Who am I? Am I just in these rooms because of my dad?" There's so much self doubt. And this was a sure sign from the universe that it was not because of the strings that he was pulling, but it was because I actually knew what I was doing. And it was an incredible, crazy moment.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Literally, physically, did it mean that you were gone at things, speaking at things, doing a bunch of press? How did it look for you?
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah, I did about sixty to seventy interviews. I do a ton of interviews per project, but I got to premiere it at South By and I remember I was in a line for another movie and I heard somebody talking about it. And there is no better moment than somebody that doesn't know you, talking about it. And they were like, "Did you see that? It's crazy!" And her family really liked it, Gypsy wasn't able to see it because she was currently in jail. And I just remember people would watch it three, four, or five times.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I watched it twice.
Erin Lee Carr: Add it to the the cult nature of documentaries and I dunno, very, very, very proud and helped me get more work.
Sarah Enni: It brought me to thinking about documentaries versus narrative stuff. The most recent example is I watched Cheer and loved it like, beyond. So much. My friend pitched it to me and was like, "It's better than Friday Night Lights." And I was like, "You're out of your mind." But then I watched it and I was like, "Oh!"
To me, in my opinion as a consumer of media, when a documentary is that good, it's the highest form of any medium for that story to be told. So when I heard that Cheer was optioned, I was like, "How dare you, it's already been done perfectly." But then McMillions, for some reason, I was like, "No, that does. I can see how this would benefit from a narrative arc."
So when you come across stories that are so rich to you, how do you feel about this narrativization of stories versus just factually presenting them? This is just an interesting thing for me to think about.
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah, I think that we live in this age where people just really want all of this work and they want it in so many different ways. And so I feel gratitude about that. And I think so many people are like, "Your docs are so translatable into narrative." I do look for stories that can either be doc or narrative because that, in terms of me as director, I think it's very clear that those stories, after the act and I had nothing to do with the act, it's a huge deal for me to find stories that are unproven, and then I could sell it in terms of a doc and or a narrative.
Sarah Enni: And when, and this is getting in the weeds a little bit, but I'm interested in...say you came up with a new documentary, you sold it, and then it sells film rights.
Erin Lee Carr: That's called "The Dream."
Sarah Enni: You also get IP for that, right? You get to be involved in that?
Erin Lee Carr: It's very hard to option a doc. It's much easier to option an article, hence the Michelle Dean stuff, she co-showrun that show. And I'm still figuring it out, Sarah. It's confusing for me to figure out because I love making documentaries. I think it's the coolest, most epic job. I'm so happy doing it. So to even think about trying to do narrative, which I am trying to do, it's just crazy.
But I think that, ultimately, it's finding stories that have crossover potential is a big thing in the industry, and it's something that I'm looking for, but it just depends on if it's the right fit.
Sarah Enni: Let's talk about, I Love You: Now Die. Which I also just watched and found deeply intriguing.
Erin Lee Carr: It was a very national story. It's about a young woman that was texting her boyfriend to kill himself. He ended up unfortunately passing away. His name is Conrad Roy. He was an incredibly thoughtful, complicated, amazing young man. And the family was really, really angry.
It's very odd when an eighteen-year-old kills himself. And so the police opened his phone and there was this text message thread of this young girl basically cajoling and pushing him into suicide. And they said, "Well, I wonder if this is a crime?" And the film is an exploration into guilt and innocence in the twenty-first century when it relates to suicide and mental health.
And what I wanted to do with that film, and it's a two-parter on HBO currently streaming. I wanted you to kind of be the jury and think about all the evidence. And I gave you the prosecution's case first and then I give you the defense cases. And it's just so much more complicated. And I love that when people watch it, they come away with a deep conflict. And I think you can sense that I felt really conflicted too.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, absolutely. And when my friend who was like, "You have to watch this!" Was like, "You leave it and you have no idea." She was really impressed by how it was put together, and I agree. It was really compelling to sit there like a juror. And even the perspective, in the courtroom, was was very that. It also struck me, there's an enormous amount of research that must have gone into this one, because much like the lawyers for both sides, and the cops, you were going through hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of text messages.
Erin Lee Carr: I was going through thousands of pages. I was going through thousands of text messages. It took years. I think people look at me as a young filmmaker and they're like, "How do you do it?" And it's like, "Through years of hard work and having a team." And I'm tired, I need a nap.
I mean Michelle Carter was far and away so complicated because I did not have access to her. And this was the first film where I did not have what's called primary access. And much, in large credit to HBO, for believing that there was still a piece there. I think that we live in this really dense access filled environment where, I try not to come across as an asshole, but when I told people I was working on this it was like, "Oh my God, did you talk to her?"
And I'm like, "No! I did not talk to her." I don't have to. I can still make something that's worth your eyeballs if I don't talk to the main person. So I'm proudest of Thought Crimes because there was so many reasons for that not to get off the ground, but the sheer difficulty, the high wire act was definitely Michelle Carter.
Sarah Enni: And I am interested in that because research-based, like density of research, and in getting into this... I don't want to spoil anything, but by the time we get to the Lea Michelle stuff in the second one, I was like, "What?!" I was losing my mind. And to me I was like, "Oh that's so specific and deep in there." Someone having to cross reference that and seeing that this woman was texting her boyfriend quoting directly from Glee.
Erin Lee Carr: So I need to give a very specific shout-out on that. So that was reporting by Jesse Barron, the Esquire prince. He had uncovered that in his piece and it was shocking. I cannot, at all, take credit for knowing that that happened. He basically had all the text messages. He was critically thinking about it and he was like, "This doesn't feel like what a person would be saying to their boyfriend."
And so it's just by that sheer act of thinking about it, that he was like, "I think this is from somewhere else." And then he ended up reporting on it and then it went viral in our film, and you know, hats off to him. We did a four hour long interview, he's a writer for Esquire and New York Times magazine. And I saw his notes and I was like, "Oh my god!" He is such a journalist. He lived in Massachusetts and got a place while he was reporting that case.
So in all of these films, there's a journalist who's sort of a narrator and I just thank god for journalists.
Sarah Enni: He was a great voice in it too.
Erin Lee Carr: Sheila was like, "Get him out of the film. You have a crush on him." And I was like, "Sheila, come on. He's a journalist. I'm a professional."
Sarah Enni: I had a crush on him by the end.
Erin Lee Carr: Everyone did.
Sarah Enni: I was like, "This guy's got it together. Also in that film, I wanted to talk about displaying technology because it was a lot of, and in Mommy Dead and Dearest too, I'm just interested in your thought process. You have these thousands of text messages, which were integral to the story. Absolutely inescapable part of the story. So how did you go about figuring out the way to make them visually accessible?
Erin Lee Carr: Oh god. So it really was in working with Andrew Rossi and Andrew Kaufman, my two team members. It's very unfortunate they're both named Andrew. Yeah, I mean, the text messages had so much emotion, but we really put them over interesting but standard B roll of Massachusetts. But the core tenant was understanding what the text messages were doing at that scene. And I remember, so when you make a film, you end up having to watch it about forty-seven times. And that's forty-seven times, times I think it was a hundred and forty minutes.
So much of my life has been spent watching that movie and I would just sit there in the text message sequence, and be like, "Oh god! Am I awake? What happened?" Because it was so boring. Cause I had seen it before. And one of my big fears was like, "Yo! This is some fucking boring stuff!" But I would share it with people like you, who would be just dumbstruck by it because they'd never seen it before.
And so it was really about relying on others to understand like, "Is this still interesting? What am I doing with this?" And I think there's a couple of reviewers that didn't like it, but ultimately it was pretty universally loved. It's one of my most critically accepted, or acclaimed, pieces and it felt very satisfying that they liked that and they didn't see it as laziness.
Sarah Enni: Well, no. And the shots that you're saying were the B-Roll, but it was very moody and beautiful and it kind of lent some kind of atmosphere to it. And it was interesting for me to think about how you must've approached it because we as human beings living in the world right now in the United States, spend a lot of our dang time looking at bubbles appear on a screen, and we are very emotionally invested in that.
So it was kind of a step into accepting that well yeah, then that plays on the screen. It's a step up from subtitles as far as integration. So I liked it. But I'm a word person too, so I was like, "Ooh, reading."
Erin Lee Carr: So everyone was like, "It's too small. The print's too small." And I was like, "Oh God, everyone's a critic. Shut your pie hole." Thank you.
Sarah Enni: I want to talk about At the Heart of Gold. Do you mind pitching that and actually do you mind pitching that and also telling me how you decided to do this story or, what made this story something you wanted to tackle?
Erin Lee Carr: So I was working with Alex Gibney's company, Jigsaw Productions. I was finishing up an episode of Dirty Money about the pharmaceutical industry. And a pitch came in through a producer, her name is Sharon Gibson, about a scandal involving gymnastics. And I was looking for something next that had a baseline of footage and I think that it's really difficult to create something out of nothing. And when you have something like a subject like gymnastics, it is so beautiful. I am completely in awe of people who do gymnastics. It is just the most wild, crazy stuff.
So it really piqued my interest. And I really liked my first call with this producer, Sarah. I felt some kinship. And so we were gonna make a film about the predatory relationship between coaches and athletes. A lot of my work centers around power and balances, and things like that. So it felt very spot on. And then people kept saying this team doctor, his name is Larry Nassar, there's just a lot of really uncomfortable stuff brewing. And suddenly, and almost without notice, it became one of the biggest news stories of 2018.
Sarah Enni: So you were involved in telling some version of the story before it broke in that way.
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: Wow.
Erin Lee Carr: So I started working on it. In, I think, June 2018 the story broke. I worked on it through all of 2018 into 2019. And yeah, I mean, this is a film about the most prolific predator, one of the most prolific predators in known U.S. history. He was a team doctor for the USA Gymnastics League for the Olympics, for this gym called Twist Stars in Michigan.
But the thing is, it's not about him, it's about the athletes. And it's about the institutional failures of these places to protect these young women when they were at their most vulnerable, which is, they were very young. So it's just this pretty devastating heartbreaker about, what does it mean when you're trying to do something you love and somebody is trying to take from you? Innocence specifically.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, absolutely. With this subject, you talked about empathetic human portraits and as you're saying, Larry Nassar is not the subject of this film. The women are the subject of the film. But how did you want to center the story? You still had to talk about him and show his face a lot.
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah, I think it was very difficult. I was really scared when the gymnasts we're gonna watch the movie because his voice is in it. You don't want to re-traumatize people. It was all this up late at night, my hands on my forehead being like, "Oh! Is the right thing? Is this the right thing?" I worked with an incredible editor named Cindy Lee who sat with the footage. Anybody who's trying to understand documentary and understand directors and finding stories you are only as good as your editor. And it's not even close. It's as important a cast as the director of the film.
And I go out and do the interviews, but she's the one that really cut together the film. And it's when you're talking about finding the story or finding the heart, I think that for me it was always this weird ball of culpability that kept shifting. Like, who is responsible for the scandal? And so that's how we really built it. But it was a lot of trial and error and much credit to Cindy for making something that is not a long movie and it's such an incredibly big scandal. So credit to her.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I was struck by that too. Like, "Oh, I got a lot of information in the short period of time." You talked about not wanting to re-traumatize people by having them watch the movie. What were the interviews like? How did you approach that?
Erin Lee Carr: Ahhh! God it was... you have to do a lot of pre-tape interviews. They have to be comfortable with you, with your voice, with Sarah's voice. She was my really big partner in this. When you get to set, I tried to keep it pretty heavily female. My DP, both of them were males. I did a thing that you're never supposed to do. I go and we sit somewhere else and I say, "You have the power in this dynamic. You do not have to answer anything that you don't want to."
And there is a social response of, you asked me a question I want to please you, and I want to answer what you're saying. I don't have to answer anything you ask me. And the thing is, I say I don't want to talk about something? Boundary. I don't want to talk about that.
And letting people know that they have access to that boundary and I am not gonna be upset. You can talk about what you are comfortable with and giving the power over understanding. One of the most painful interviews in my life was with a young gymnast, and she just was not ready. And I could tell what I was doing was not the best, and we cut the interview short. Because there was just, there was no response, there was no processing. She couldn't really understand what was going on. And so there had to be a very high level EQ emotional intelligence of yeah, "I'm prioritizing the film, but I'm prioritizing this person in front of me."
I have this crazy binder I'll show you, but it has all of the interviews. I've never interviewed more people in my life.
Sarah Enni: That that also struck me was that you were... this is a really painful, horrible thing to have to talk about. And you are asking people to recount something that is deeply distressing to them, but then you're talking to people about it over and over and over and over.
Erin Lee Carr: And also channeling their trauma into my face, into my eyes, into my heart, into my body. I've had a significant health issues. I don't think it's a coincidence. I think that this stuff gets under your skin. I think it makes you distrust people. It makes you distrust institutions. There's a collateral damage, that secondary trauma has. And to be very clear, it's not primary trauma. I am not somebody that was sexually abused by Larry Nassar. And so I can't sit here and complain like, "Oh, it was really painful."
But there were parts of it that were painful. I felt like a different person after I made that movie. And I think I feel okay saying this, I get invitations to talk about the film and it's really, really hard for me to say yes to it. I can talk to you about my book all day. And it's like, "That's some trauma too, that's about dead dads!" You know what I mean? But it's almost, it's just so much. I can do it more than I can... there's something specific with sexual assault. And I've been pitched many, many, many projects in the last year because now I have an ownership over this space. And I'm just like, "I can't do it. I can't do it." It's too painful. It's not good for my relationships.
Sarah Enni: It's true. I definitely support protecting yourself. And I'm asking from the point of view of someone that talks to a lot of people. I leave some interviews feeling bad, or totally drained, and upset. And that is tough in it's own unique way. But learning to manage that has been a whole other side of professional life, which is interesting.
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah. I mean, I worked with a trauma centered therapist when I was making that film. There's people in my family who are mental health. I take it pretty seriously in that you have to develop and get coping mechanisms that help you get through that work.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about All That You Leave Behind, which is your memoir. Do you mind pitching that for us?
Erin Lee Carr: It's a beautiful book. So where's my... I have paperbacks over there. The paperback comes out March 17th, on St. Patrick's Day, which is very odd. So it is a book about my life, but specifically about this crazy, amazing relationship with my dad, journalist David Carr, who died incredibly too young, he was fifty-eight. And one of the ways in which we communicated was through these really beautiful emails. He would send me emails about life, about health, about sobriety, about the next right thing. And he was very known in his community for these missives, for these really incredible pieces of information locked in these emails.
And so it's a story about grief, but also about life and love. And I was really scared to do it, but I think that there was just so much good advice inside the emails that I thought it was worth it. And it's not just related like, "Hey, you want to be a documentary filmmaker? This is David Carr's tips for it". No, it's about how to get up, how to have grit, and how to continue.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And I do want to hear just how it came about. You've been making films, you're very successful in the film space and then all of a sudden this memoir comes out. How did that project get started?
Erin Lee Carr: It was very long time in the making. I wrote a piece on Medium the year after he died. So he died in 2015, I wrote a Medium piece in 2016. An editor at Random House, Pamela saw it and saw like, "This is an interesting story." And she called me in and I was like, "Yeah, I really like my job. I don't know if I feel ready." Writing a memoir, one: People really hate it when you're in your thirties cause they're like, "Fuck off, you don't have enough to say yet." And two: I don't know if I wanted to share the dark parts of my life.
I knew that I would have to get into alcohol stuff. I'm in recovery now, but it was very new at the time. So we just kind of had an exploratory conversation about it and she's like, "Well why don't you try this?" Like, "Do some writing, try to write a proposal, see how it feels. And we'll go from there."
And I wrote a proposal, it was awful, it was awful. And I wrote it in between gigs. I think I was shooting Mommy Dead and Dearest and she wasn't super mean about it, but she was like, "This is not up to Random House writing level. Did you really focus on this?" And I said, "No. I didn't. I didn't really focus on this." And so I basically showed a couple of chapters that I could actually really write.
And we began this very tentative process of putting the book together. And it was just very, very, very painful. And I just almost wasn't ready for it. I don't know. You think I would've been more ready for it. And I remember at the time, I really wanted my ex boyfriend to read it. We were together, we lived together, and I would be writing this in our home in Queens. And I would really want to talk about it. And he had very long days and he was like, "I just, I can't talk about this every night." You know, "You're writing a book, but this cannot be my every night when I'm home." And I was horrified and insulted and it felt like a lot of people in my life were not very pro the book. And I was like, "What am I doing this for?" So it was just very complicated.
Sarah Enni: Well, you're incredibly honest in the book.
Erin Lee Carr: But I just didn't even, I never even thought of a different way of doing it. That's what the general feedback is, "It's honest, raw, not always graceful." And I'm like, "Well, that's sort of me as a person." But yeah, you cannot do a memoir in any sort of half-way. It would never be published. No one would want to read it.
Sarah Enni: I would say I've read some that were very, you know, you're like, "Okay." It's a PR piece, basically.
Erin Lee Carr: Name names! Ooooh! Ahhhh!
Sarah Enni: Not gonna go there. I don't have one on the top of my head, but I also felt, I wonder if this is true, I'm gonna throw this out there and see how you respond to it. But it felt like you were taking on the responsibility of being very forthright and clear about substance abuse and how it had impacted your life because being glib about that is disrespectful to people who are suffering from it. I don't know. That was the stuff that probably, I would guess, people are responding to. You're really honest about things that you are embarrassed of that happened while you were drinking and why you decided to stop?
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah, but what I loved about it is that I just did not inflate. And I think that when we have a canon like The Night of the Gun or Mary Karr's books (including Lit, The Liar’s Club: A Memoir, and The Art of Memoir), or Caroline Knapp's book Drinking: A Love Story, it has to get literally horrific before you put down the alcohol.
That has been dialogue of, you have to lose everything, you have to become a bum. And I mean, not Mary Karr, there was more of an emotional bottom. But what I wanted to do in this book is, you can just be frankly pretty really embarrassed about your behavior enough to change it. And there are so many stories in AA about vehicular manslaughter, and losing your children, or going to prison. And that is what it takes for some people to put down drugs and alcohol.
That is not my story. And I really wanted to flag to women in their twenties, thirties, forties, whatever that, "You know, that shame that you wake up with and it just grows all day long? What if you didn't have that shame? What if you could direct that energy at some place else?"
I think that one of the reasons why we get to talk here about four different movies that I have done in five years is because I'm sober. Oh my God. Last night I was thinking about this interview, I was reading the paperwork, I was not in a blackout. And that's what I would have been in earlier in my life.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And recently, uh, Beth from Best Coast and...
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah, I read that.
Sarah Enni: That was a really beautiful piece about it. And, uh, Jenny Slate gave a really great interview for The Cut where she was talking about it. And in Jenny Slate's case especially, she was like, "You know, I, I love alcohol and maybe I won't be sober forever but it just isn't right right now." And again, I'm asking, cause I'm in a phase where I have a lot at stake to be being productive right now. So I'm working with my network to be like, "Can we just stop? Can we just all pull back? Can I do this?"
Erin Lee Carr: I deeply, deeply recommend it even for a month to do it. There's just such a consistent social pattern of, we as women having a glass of wine. And it's like, "No, why don't we have coffee? Why don't we have tea?" It's seen as not cool to get tea together. But what if after that meeting where you had that and you felt very connected to that friend, you had time to think about other things and process it.
I am such a person in the bag for sobriety, even partial part-time sobriety. We don't need to be drunk. We don't need to have it to celebrate things. You can celebrate things as a sober person. So I don't know, I always get a ton of young people reaching out to me, but like, "How do I do this?" Even if you do not have a problem with alcohol, just cool it for a month and see what happens with your time. It multiplies.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. The time thing and then also sleep. Great sleep. I think it was your Fresh Air interview.
Erin Lee Carr: So good.
Sarah Enni: My God. So good.
Erin Lee Carr: Ooooh, nelly. I was so nervous. She had to tell me to calm the fuck down. I was so nervous. And I'm sure that happens a lot with her where you're just like, " I've got to say the right things!" Maybe she hates that. I've listened to a hundred of those interviews in preparation for it. And she just said, "You need to take a deep breath. We're gonna get through this. And she reset me, I think about five minutes in. And we had, I think, one of the best conversation I've ever had about my book.
Sarah Enni: It was a wonderful episode.
Erin Lee Carr: And they left the pauses in. It was an interview that was very, very, very full of pausing. Cause I've studied her interviews. Where does she go? Basically writing down... I think the Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a really good one. And her a Howard Stern one is so good too. But understanding how Terry does things has been a recipe in how I conduct my interviews.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, yeah. Oh my God. I mean, listen, I'm super and into it. I could talk about that forever.
Erin Lee Carr: And she does all of it remote, obviously.
Sarah Enni: I know that's what kills me. We know that she's so brilliant and people don't even understand how brilliant because she's just staring at soundproofing and getting people to be so honest, and open up, and share such beautiful things. She's brilliant.
But anyway, in that interview you had with her, you did talk about at least one thing that you regret putting in the book. And I'm just curious about how your relationship with the book has changed since it came out versus when you were writing it. No more so specific. I mean, how do you think about it now?
Erin Lee Carr: I just think the sheer act in that I wrote something that exists in the world, it brings such deep pride. And that there are many people that take the book deal, try to do it, and they're like, "No, I just, I can't. I don't have enough here to say." And it really was working with Meg and with Pamela to make sure that I didn't feel that way at the end of the book. I feel like I have never experienced the vulnerability that it takes. And now people have conversations with me like they know me, and it's weird. And I have a lot of horrible, horrible, mean reviews on Goodreads.
People hate that I exist as a person. There's this nepotism thing. I'm like, "I was a crack baby and I work seven days a week to make sure it doesn't feel like nepotism. I am never resting on my laurels. Could you cut me a break?" And some person was like, "Necrotizing a dead father's corpse." And I read every review for my movies, I read everything for my book, and there's just such a meanness that is embedded within writing.
It's not the same with documentary, truly it is not. People take it personally that I decided to write a book about it. And people, "My dad is dead. If you don't like me, then stop reading it." It was a very alienating, confusing experience, but ultimately fucking proud as hell of it. And it exists and I get to have this really cool thing that I did.
Sarah Enni: Well, and I just want to be clear that you should be very proud of it. It was really beautiful book to read. And reading your dad's book and then your book was a cool experience. You guys are both really talented storytellers. So it was interesting to get a glimpse into your life because you guys opened the door for that. So I appreciated it.
I want to talk about what you are up to next, and then I like to wrap up with advice. But to whatever extent you can talk about what's coming up, I'd love to hear about it. And this will come out on March 17th, so whatever you can say at that date.
Erin Lee Carr: So the trailer will be released by now. It is called How to Fix a Drug Scandal and it is a four part Netflix series about something that goes very wrong in a lab. And you're like, "Erin why a lab? That doesn't sound very sexy." And I think that something that I really wanted to do as a documentary filmmaker, I tend to do true crime, but I think that it has a really big overlap with the criminal justice system.
And I'm really interested in prosecutors. I'm really interested in the system. I'm really interested in cracks within the system. So this is an homage and a lot of show dedicated to the scary nature of addiction, but also how the system can fail us. And it was crazy to put together and I hope you like it and it's made with my brain.
Sarah Enni: What was it like approaching a story that has to do with addiction? It seems like you're well-suited quite possibly.
Erin Lee Carr: Yeah, I thought about putting my VO in it and putting in my own personal story. And I worked with this editor named Ben Gold and he was like, "No, that is awful. That is an awful idea". And we had talked to the Netflix executives, talked to the my production executives, and we were like, "Yeah, maybe that'll work." And he was like, "No, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that." And I was just so grateful for this very intense reaction. He's a very celebrated editor. Again, I have a huge part of my life is about working with really smart editors and we just never did it.
And I think that it's a great tie in for doing interviews and talking about addiction from a personal standpoint, but it just didn't need to be in the piece. I have a lot of things that I'm working on right now. I'm developing projects for HBO. The Michelle Carter story is being adapted through Jesse's article. I am busy, but trying to take... cause here's the thing.
I want the material and my documentaries to remain at this high level. And like this weekend I spent in bed reading these books about the subject matter, and looking at the court documents. Because I think the only way for it to continue at the level that I've been working at, and the pace, is to really, really, really think about critical thinking. And that makes me less fun. I see my friends less often and I think I always pick work over things, but I don't know. I just love what I do. So it's kind of worth it.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Well finally I want to wrap up with advice. I guess I would just love to hear what you'd have to say to someone who is interested in storytelling through documentary films. What is a good way to get started? Or what should they watch?
Erin Lee Carr: So you have to, almost every night for a month, watch a documentary. Watch it, diagram it, figure out your favorite, figure out what your taste is. Don't just watch it to be like, "Well, I didn't really like how they did this." Every film is a miracle. It's impossible to put together. And we have so much to learn from things.
So I think that you can learn so, so, so, so much from watching, but also putting pen to paper and figuring it out. Reading a couple of interviews with the filmmaker, whether it be Liz Garbus (director of There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane, What Happened, Miss Simone? and more); or Alex Gibney (director of Going Clear: The HBO Special and The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley); or Andrew Jirecki (director of Capturing the Friedmans); or Amy Berg (director of The Case Against Adnan Syed and Janis: Little Girl Blue); or Errol Morris (director of The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara). All these people that are working as experts in this space.
I think that it's impossible to make things and you are gonna hear, "No. No. No. You're not ready. That's not a good enough idea. I don't think so. You can't get funding for that." The funding system has basically collapsed in terms of you can either get big bucks from a streamer or you can go the grant route, which is really painful and difficult. Sundance is not the only route to success. I think that is often seen. I've never been to Sundance. I'm on my fifth film.
And I think that it's really having role models either interpersonally, or personally, in this space and diagramming their career. That's something that I did. Who are the people that I look up to? How did they get their start? And knowing that yes, their journey is specific to them, but all of these things can apply in a certain way to us. Watch, watch, watch, pay attention, have gratitude. Write a gratitude list every day.
Sarah Enni: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Erin. This has been a total joy.
Erin Lee Carr: Awesome! Finally, say "Thank you" too!
Sarah Enni:
Thank you so much to Erin. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @ErinLeeCarr, and follow me on both @Sarah Enni (Twitter and Instagram) and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram).
Hayley Hershman produces First Draft, and today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey, and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneem Daud, and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson.
And, as ever, thanks to you, compelling and zeitgeisty narratives for listening.
I want to hear from you!
Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998 or send an email to mailbag @ firstdraftpod dot com!
Subscribe To First Draft with Sarah Enni
Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds; Creator of Sex and the City Candace Bushnell; YouTube empresario and author Hank Green; Actors, comedians and screenwriters Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham; author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast Linda Holmes; Bestselling authors and co-hosts of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast, Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow; Michael Dante DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish and co-host of the Sciptnotes podcast; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.
Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Track Changes
If you’re looking for more information on how to get published, or the traditional publishing industry, check out the Track Changes podcast series, and sign up for the Track Changes weekly newsletter.
Support the Show
Love the show? Make a monthly or one-time donation at Paypal.me/FirstDraft.
Rate, Review, and Recommend
Take a moment to rate and review First Draft with Sarah Enni in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your honest and positive review helps others discover the show -- so thank you!
Is there someone you think would love this podcast as much as you do? Just click the Share button at the bottom of this post!
Thanks again!