S3E34: What’s Up Doc

The How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast

Our good friend Roger Nygard makes his bread and butter editing and directing TV. Shows like Grey’s Anatomy, The League, Who Is America, Veep and Curb Your Enthusiasm. But, Roger’s passion – the thing that drives him creatively – is making documentaries. That’s part of what motivated him to write his new book “THE DOCUMENTARIANS: The Way to a Successful and Creative Professional Life in the Documentary Business“. Roger’s first documentary out of the gate was the raging success “TREKKIES” about, well, Trekkies.

From there, he went on to make Trekkies 2 and documentaries about The Nature Of Existence, The Truth About Marriage and The Comedy Store.

Roger’s interviewed an incredibly wide range of people for his movies. He’s tackled deep, provocative subjects. Throw in the DIY nature of making documentaries and you have to figure that when Roger sat down and wrote a book about how to make documentaries? Inevitably it was going to be not just meticulous, thorough and exhaustive, but entertaining-as-hell, too.

A lot of the stories Roger uses for illustration come from the making of “Trekkies”. As you’ll hear, Roger has always been a note-taker. It’s one of his suggestions about how to be a successful documentarian.

In fact, Roger is filled with great suggestions about how to make documentaries or even just movies and TV shows in general. And every single lesson he learned, came with a great story to go with it.

And it’s all right there on the page.

If you live in LA or will be in LA on Monday September 23 at 7:00 pm? Roger’s having a book launch party at West Hollywood’s BOOK SOUP!

And all you have to do be part of it? Just show up! If only the rest of life was that easy…