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Hark, fair maids, lairds, and theys of the Vulture kingdom!
All of this is executed in fantastical, intimate style by filmmaker Lance Oppenheim.
Is the cast all watching?
Everyone has seen it.
Jeff told me, Thank you for making something so wonderful out of something so horrible.
I relate to that.
Jeff is clearly someone who processes his own life through fantasy and art.
Did you feel a kinship with him, as a creative?Yeah, 100 percent.
But for him, it was this weird mixture of therapy and theatricality.
In a way, its a true method performance.
How do you gain access and trust from your doc subjects?
A lot of people did not want to speak poorly of, or speak out against, George.
When I finally met George, I realized he indicts himself by behaving the way he behaves.
I thought it was probably best to just let him be himself, uncensored.
No one needs to say anything negative about him.
As time went on, the question sort of shifted.
Its a portrait of an American empire in retrograde, in miniature.
It feels like a version of the reality we live in.
George is someone who clearly needs to be in control of any situation hes in.
So as a director, was he hard to work with?George is a complicated person.
But I listened to him.
He had a captive audience.
Wed be filming and Id say, George, if possible, just try not to acknowledge us.
But he would resist that, and look at me to say things.
At first, I thought maybe he just doesnt understand, and maybe I need to tell him again.
Just pretend theyre not there.
At that point I realized George is extremely savvy.
He loves to play with people.
As documentarians with cameras, theres a lot of control we wield.
You feel it in the photography.
The camera is handheld and a lot more mobile with him.
I thought filming it could reveal a different dimension of his psychology.
The date asks him, Wont you miss being king?
And he says, Shit, no!
And right after that moment, he so quickly turned on her, and turned on the whole experience.
Hes so upset about that experience that he cant control his impulses and rage.
George is very powerful, but hes also definitely elderly and somewhat vulnerable.
Its an invitation to a process.
I even share the same birthday as Jeff.
We really clicked on exactly what we thought this could be.
We talked a lot about the way he sees his life as this Shakespearean story.
Hes constantly talking aboutKing Lear;he referencesThe Madness of King George.
The same went for Louie, whose references were more contemporary.
I remember when I first met him, he said, Its a real-lifeGame of Thronesout here.
People are stabbing each other in the back all the time.
Its almost like simulating the experience of going to a renaissance festival.
Theres a scene in the second episode where a dragon speaks to Jeff.
That was a moment where I knew Jeff was in a really dark place.
The pain was real, the emotions were real, but the fantasy is also real.
Its real to every person that lives there.
Thats what keeps them there.
They both watched many cuts of this project as we were figuring it out in the edit.
So he was like, You gotta find a way to address this.
Do you do guys do press notes?
And I was like, I dont think HBO does press notes.
And he was like, Oh, okay.
I thought they did them for my show.
And I was like, I dont think thats … Let me inquire.
Then my editor Max Allman came up with the idea to call it a docu-fantasia.
And because he suggested doing something like that, he deserves a special thanks.
And ultimately, the answer being George felt very apt.
All documentary editors are writers in a way.
They help assimilate footage into something thats consumable and meaningful.
They have a writing credit on this, because they really taught me what the story was.
A lot of filmmakers watch reality TV just as much as they watch Stanley Kubrick movies.
People engage with them in a way thats similar to how theyd engage with a Hollywood movie.
No ones really questioning the sense of reality or manipulation when you watch a reality-TV show.
I think thats just like they would with the reality-TV show.
That would be great, but hey, maybe I just need to work with Jon Taffer or something.
Reality TV governs our existence.
We had a reality-TV president of the United States, and who knows if it happens again?
I dont appreciate when people bad-mouth it, because theres a lot to learn from it.
And yeah, Frederick Wiseman is truly brilliant.
Im trying to do something between these two things.
Theres a moment where you see a sign in his room that hes sober.
He just lives, eats, consumes, breathes festival.
He doesnt just attempt to buy it.
Hes in the kettle-corn booth sweating his ass off as hes singing Lady Gaga.
And I think for Louie, its a very physical cost.
By the end of the show, its almost like everyone has aged dramatically.
Everyone looks like a different version of themselves.
