Hearts of Darkness, Editors, Michael Greer / Jay Miracle / Shana Hagan

0:00Guest 1A… an older box, you know, a banker's box, and it just had a bunch of stuff. I think it was labeled Apocalypse Now or Ellie's, Ellie's Apocalypse Now or something like that, which was sort of a clue that, you know, it was something that she had done or she had put together and that was just on, you know, on a shelf in storage. And I, it looked at them and they were sort of dated, 1976, I think 1977, and I was like, "Wait a minute."

0:20Guest 3When Shana came back, I said, "Listen to these when you get a chance." You know, 'cause she... And she went away for, like, half an hour, and she came back and said, "You should listen to this. It's Francis saying, you know, Martin Sheen is not dead until I say he's dead," talking about the whole instance of his heart attack. And then we just started listening to more and more.

0:42Guest 2You know, George and I came on kind of like, you know, 'cause they were thinking, "Oh, we'll finish this in a couple weeks."

0:49Guest 3Oh.

0:50Guest 2And, it was like, "I don't know about that."

0:53Guest 3Yeah.

1:03Jawad MirWelcome back, everyone, to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams podcast, The Making of Stories. I'm your host Jawad Mir. Today I have three special guests who worked on Eleanor Coppola's Hearts of Darkness, based on the Apocalypse Now film, the documentary that came out almost 35 years ago. My guests are Michael Greer, Jay Mirrigo, and Shana Hagan. All three of them worked tirelessly on this amazing documentary. The 4K restoration of this film comes out on July 28th in a collector's edition form on a DVD. If you haven't seen this film, it's probably the best documentary you'll ever see about a film, and maybe one of the top documentaries out there, period. With the access of footage and the audio interviews and everything that was found and how they sort of unraveled that and brought this amazing story onto the screen. So without further ado, here is my conversation with the three duos for Hearts of Darkness.

1:59Guest 2I was just gonna say, I was just, I was gonna ask, "Wait a minute, are you related to Jawad Mir, the, that made all those documentaries?" And I'm like, "Wait a minute, that looks just like him."

2:10Jawad MirSounds good. How are you, Jay?

2:14Guest 2All right. At some point we'll have to talk about Lesbos.

2:20Jawad MirDo you know about the, Lesbos island story, Moria?

2:23Guest 2Very much. Very much, yeah. But that's a whole other…

2:26Jawad MirYeah, we can do it some other time. That's interesting…

2:28Guest 2I have a project based there, so anyway.

2:32Jawad MirGot st… good stuff, good stuff. Well, thank you so much, guy, guys, for joining to speak about, Heart of Dark… Darkness, which is the documentary based on, Apoca… Apalo… blah, sorry.

2:45Guest 2Apocalypse Now.

2:46Jawad MirApocalypse Now. Thank you so much. And, I had seen Heart of Darkness a long time ago, and I just finished watching it. And, just wanna tell you what a... I mean, you can just experience the amount of work that you guys had to go through just, like, possibly the actual film itself, with so many hours of footage and so much material. So thank you so much for working on that. Really enjoyed it.

3:15Guest 3No, I mean, it was, I think, for all three of us, it's, it's a piece of work that kinda keeps living on and on and on. And we keep, people keep approaching us about it, and it's, it's really something. You don't have too many of those in your career.

3:31Guest 1Right. Right. Yep, constantly people ask about it, like you mentioned it and they're like, "Oh my gosh. Well, tell me about this part. Tell me about this part." Or… ... You know, they wanna know the insider scoop. But it's, it is, it is, it's a film, literally that's, like, I think one of the, one of the best films made about the making of a film. Sort of like, you know, it's not just behind the scenes. It's sort of like, you know, it's more than that. It's really about a, about an artist that is, you know, literally going up the river to discover maybe, you know, something about his work or about himself or whatever. I mean, he sort of literally dove into the work a… as, you know, Willard did, in the search for Kurtz. But, pretty interesting parallels. But yeah, it stands the test of time for sure, and I'm glad that they're, they're-releasing so a whole new…

4:15Jawad MirYes

4:15Guest 1... A whole new aud… a whole new audience will get to experience it and enjoy it. Yeah.

4:21Jawad MirAmazing. Jay, you have something to say?

4:24Guest 2No, it's, it's just, it's just interesting, so, you know, it's true. Me, all film ca… I mean, I was, I was just at the Cannes Film Festival and I was astounded at how many people that were s… 'cause I work with all these students. I mentored these kids at the pavilion and all that for IndieWire, and, all of them knew the movie and all of them, it's like, you know, it's a, it's an educational piece just like Shana said. It's amazing. No matter what the budget is, you all go through a lot of the same problems, the same kinda situations. So it's, and it's amazing how it resonates with so many y… film students every year, every generation. So, it's very powerful that way.

5:03Jawad MirYeah. It is, and I think it's beyond to me, I mean, even though I'm in the wor… fil… film world, but ch… for the f… after the first five minutes I was, I didn't even realize it was about a director. It was just about this guy who's trying to finish a project and trying to stay sane, while doing so. And it just takes you completely out of it because there's just so much authenticity to the making of, and obviously credit goes to his wife, his late wife Eleanor, t… for documenting all that stuff. And, you know, it, yeah, it just speaks volume more than just a, the making of, to me at least.

5:39Guest 3I mean, I think what sets it apart is those audio tapes that Eleanor recorded of him over dinner. I mean, that gives you, like, an avenue into his mind in a way that I don't think anything else could have. And we didn't ha… we didn't even know those existed initially. We had the footage that Eleanor shot. She had done very few interviews, and we knew that we were gonna re-interview everybody and, We ha… I had, we had sent Shauna, who is our assistant editor, up to Napa to root around in his barn up there to see if she could find any other material. And, Shauna, tell, why don't you tell the story?

6:24Guest 1Yeah.

6:24Guest 3You came back with a box of audio cassettes.

6:29Guest 1Well, I think they were, yeah, they were in storage. You know, I think, me and the Coppolas had kind of, you know, done a great job of sort of archiving a lot of their older materials. But just literally had a box from Apocalypse Now, that at the time was about 10 years, 11 years before. So it had just been, you know, not too old, but it was, you know, a… an older box, you know, a banker's box, and it just had a bunch of stuff. I think it was labeled Apocalypse Now or Ellie's, Ellie's Apocalypse Now or something like that, which was sort of a clue that, you know, it was something that she had done or she had put together and, it was just on, you know, on a shelf in storage. And I looked at them, and they were sort of dated, 1976, I think 1977, and I was like, "Wait a minute." And I asked the archivist at the time, and she just said she didn't know what they were. I think they were just literally audio cassettes. And so I brought them, I said, "With your permission, certainly," and we logged them all out, brought them back to the edit room and started to realize what they were, and we realized there was a whole treasure trove of incredible audio that, you know, Francis was sort of...

7:30Guest 1Yeah, I mean, they were sort of after a shoot, you know, sort of maybe a glass of wine or two, just, you know, that he was more relaxed and really kind of, processing, you know, a… at the day's shoot and kind of what was going right, what was going wrong, and just kind of very candid, very, you know, sort of wonderfully off the cuff kind of, you know, you know, conversations, mostly just sort of Francis kind of, sort of trying to work through some of the, some of the problems with the film. Not problems, but just, you know…

8:00Guest 3It's stuff…

8:00Guest 1Any… Yeah.

8:02Guest 3It's stuff you never…

8:03Guest 1But…

8:03Guest 3Would have gotten from him in an interview situation.

8:06Guest 1Good point. Yeah. Sort of…

8:10Guest 2100%

8:10Guest 1... Sort in a situa… Yeah. Like, you know, and then real…

8:13Guest 3When Shauna…

8:13Guest 1Yeah

8:13Guest 3... When Shauna came back, I said, "Listen to these when you get a chance." You know, 'cause…... She said, "Well, th… they had this and this, and there's this box." And she went away for, like, half an hour, and she came back and said, "You should listen to this." And it's Francis saying, "You know, Martin Sheen is not dead until I say he's dead," talking about the whole instance of his heart attack. And then we just started listening to more and more and more, and it's like, it was, like, unbelievable.

8:45Guest 1Yeah.

8:46Guest 2That's incredible.

8:47Guest 1I…

8:47Guest 2Jay?

8:48Guest 1I mean, yeah.

8:49Guest 2Well, no, he... Yeah. It's funny 'cause Francis all, on all of his movies, that was his m… mode of operation. He always recorded everything. I did, I ha… I did work on Apocalypse, and I certainly remember even prior to shooting and all that, God, somewhere I have this inter… tape of him talking to Steve McQueen in this kitchen with his kids and dogs running around, about playing the role of Kur… I mean, he just, everybody that he did, he always carried around little miniature recordings. So he was, like, kind of obsessed with that in all of his projects. And so that wa… yeah, it was fortuitous because, you know, certainly Eleanor, you know, it was obviously helped her in terms of creating notes as well, which is certainly very useful in the, in the, in our project. So, yeah, he loved to record things, so.

9:42Guest 1I also got the impression that, yeah, it was, like, recording for himse… like, he was trying to articulate issues or problems, but also just as a historical record, but also something he could refer back to. You know, like, hey, you know, just a verbal memo. You know, it's long before smartphones, whatever, but just a way for him to record his thoughts in the moment, so if he…

9:58Guest 1... You know, busy man, doesn't forget them two weeks later, like, "Hey, what was that thought I had?" But so yeah, lucky for the edit team certainly that we had this incredible wealth of audio from that, from that time, during the production, so during the po… pro… production of the feature.

10:15Guest 2Right. Right. No, that's incredible. Let's, let's go back to the time when this all started, right? The film came out in 1991, I think, but obviously the documentation started way before, about 15, 16 years before. When did it become, sort of a realization that it needs to be turned into a documentary, and how did you guys come on board? Who wants to take a stab at it first?

10:38Guest 3Well, I was approached by a production company I'd worked for in the past, ZDM Productions. That's George Sallum and Les Mayfield. And I believe it was George who had heard that this footage existed and there, that there was amazing stuff in there and that had never seen the light of day. And I believe he contacted Doug Clayborn, who was a producer on Apocalypse, with this proposal to do a documentary, and then he put George in touch with Eleanor and Francis. And I don't know what the process was to convince them to do this, but, they agreed. I mean, I th… I think that Francis has had sort of a complicated relationship to our film and to just this whole part of the story of Apocalypse in general. I mean, he had come off of, he had just come off of, Godfather I and II, and they, I don't know if they had garnered, like…

11:44Guest 2And the…

11:45Guest 3... Academy nominations…

11:46Guest 2Conversation. Conversation, I was gonna say.

11:48Guest 3Francis won three or four Oscars himself.

11:51Guest 2Yeah.

11:52Guest 3And I don't know. I think part of him felt that, you know, the craziness of the production had somehow overshadowed the film itself. And so I'm not sure…

12:06Guest 2Right

12:06Guest 3... That he was crazy about doing this, and you can see in his interviews, the new interviews w… we did with him… He s… didn't seem like he necessarily wanted to be doing it. He seemed a little uncomfortable.

12:27Guest 3But I, you know, I… this is just conjecture on my part, but I think he did it mostly, he agreed to do this for Eleanor, 'cause she had spent so much time on this, and she had tried to put, something together with it n… numerous times over the years and had never really come to anything. And I think that the, this chance for her to have it finally see the light of day, I think, is probably what kinda…

12:52Guest 3... To, agree to do the film.

12:54Guest 2Yeah.

12:57Guest 1I remember, I was, I was brought on before Michael and Jay were on. I got a call from George, Zaloom, one of the producers on the documentary, that I had done an internship when I was in film school. And Hearts of Darkness was actually my first sort of paying gig right out of film school. You know, I was a young cinematographer and hadn't, really had many opportunities to shoot. And so I thought, "Well, maybe if I'm..." and I was asked to sort of be the assistant editor. A… and George approached me saying, "Hey, we've got these boxes of dailies from, the making of Apocalypse Now, and we think there's a film there, but we'd like you to kind of go through them." certain people had, you know, over the, over the, you know, previous, you know, 10, 12 years have began to do cuts. So there were some select reels. There were some sort of really rough cuts, assemblies of different scenes. And everything was kind of like, you know, somebody had made some serious effort to kinda cut stuff, but there was like, I wanted to look, say, maybe 350 to 400 camera rolls of dailies. There's a lot, a lot of footage. And so, you know, people were having a challenge to kind of like really wrap their head about how they're gonna do it. So, George had me actually reconstitute all of, this was on 16 millimeter at the time. They were, the re… reels were in kind of a little bit of a, you know, I just sort of, I love organization, and as an as… assistant editor, I loved kinda the task of like putting everything back in order.

14:18Guest 1So when Michael and Jay were hired, they were able to see the camera rolls, like, you know, start to finish. So that was my job. But then also George, I remember, you know, a few weeks in saying, you know, he immediately, like after the first week, he said, you know, "What do you think? Is there a, is there a film here?" And I said, "Are you kidding me? Of course. There is a treasure trove of incredible material that as a young filmmaker, as a young c… you know, cinematographer, also as a fan of Apocalypse Now, I love Vittorio Storaro's work in the film. I'm a big Coppola fan. You know, I mean, I just, it's like ticks all the boxes for me." I said, "Absolutely, you know, you have a film here." and, you know, yeah. And then we, and certainly Michael and Jay, you know, came on and then we just kind of started from there. But it was a little bit of a, little bit of a mess, but also a real challenge. A… and also n… n… a nice thing to kind of see again what we had. So it was a lot of stuff that, again, people hadn't seen in years and years, and maybe nobody's ever seen it, you know? Like, 'cause there was so much footage. It was just fun to be able to like literally watch it. I don't... How long did it take you guys to watch all the footage?

15:19Guest 1I remember, Mike, you were doing it for weeks, weren't you? I mean, like watching…

15:22Guest 3Yeah

15:22Guest 1... All the footage.

15:23Guest 2Many.

15:24Guest 3Many weeks.

15:25Guest 1Many weeks

15:25Guest 3... I started first, and I began working on what we had. All we had was what Eleanor had shot initially, and it took months to get all the new interviews with people. Just the logistics of getting these people to sit down, it was taking forever. And we were about, I don't know, two or three months into it, I think, when we finally these started coming in. And by now, I think our original schedule was probably less than six months or something. And I ended up being on it for an entire year. But like three months in, it's like, we're gonna get slammed here time-wise, so let's, we need, let's get another editor in. I was working with Director Fax Bahr, and we s… we decided to bring in another editor and another, like, director to work with him. And, we interviewed a n… number of people, and one of the people we interviewed was Jay. I think we got, also got his name from Doug Claiborne.

16:26Guest 3And we were looking at people's reels, and I saw Jay's reel and I was just like, "This is the guy. We gotta get him." Where were we? Do you remember, Jay, where we were when you began?

16:39Guest 2Well, you, y… oh, you definitely had assembled s… some, definitely s… things assembled. Yeah, quite a, quite a few things. 'Cause we had a, r… remember, we had a screening the first week that we were there. And it was, as I was telling him, 'cause we met earlier this week and I w… and I was telling him that, you know, George and I came on kind of like, you know, 'cause they were thinking, "Oh, we'll finish this in a couple weeks."

17:06Guest 3Oh.

17:07Guest 2And, it was like, "I don't know about that."

17:10Guest 1Yeah.

17:12Guest 2So, yeah, I was thinking, "All right, well, I, maybe I'll last through the day or something like this." And then, and then later in the week, Steve Hewitt came and looked at it. 'Cause I don't think there'd been a sh… this was, like, the first, I think, first time he'd really taken a look at it, and he sort of thought, "Well, yeah, you might need to spend some more time on it." So that was kind of what... 'cause, 'cause I know you'd, you'd already looked at a lot of stuff, and then we kinda went back and re-looked at them. I mean, it just, it was, yeah, it was quite a bit of, going back and trying to sort of think about the structure, think about it, you know. And a lot of this sort of evolved as far as certainly as the notes and the use of, you know, Orson Welles, the story about, you know, him do, you know, all of that, the, with hi… his version and, about the book and the audio tapes, everything. So yeah, it took a while to sort of start to kind of re… figure that out.

18:11Guest 3There were a lot…

18:12Guest 1Ex…

18:12Guest 3... A lot of elements we were working with and trying to figure out…

18:16Guest 1Yeah

18:16Guest 3... How they all meshed.

18:17Guest 2Yeah.

18:18Guest 3I think that was, that was the challenge.

18:21Guest 2And then, and then the per… and the sheer, you know, level of the production, just the art direction, the cinematography, everything is just kind of overwhelming because it's such a huge production. You know? And then it's like, okay, that's really impressive, but what's gonna elevate it beyond just kind of like, you know, behind-the-scenes thing? It's gotta be really... You know. And that's, you know, why it, you know, I think we really got a chance to think about it and, yeah, 'cause it just, it is, it's overwhelming. It's just there's so much in the sheer production and the, all the value of that, not at, even behind the scenes, but also just from the film itself. And we didn't get in half the stuff that was going on in the movie, so it's, it's, it's funny in a lot of ways. I think it paralleled a lot of, at least from my experience, a lot of the things that went on with the actual with Apocalypse Now, the actual making of the film. And it's certainly, it was, yeah, it's interesting how it somewhat, it paralleled it in a lot of ways, so anyway.

19:25Guest 1Wow. There's also something too, you talk about elements too. I mean, we, there were a lot of scenes that never made, you know, there's so many scenes that were omitted from the feature. You know, French Plantation for one, a Playboy Bunny sequence for another, you know, several other sequences that didn't make, you know, didn't make air. Didn't make air. Didn't make the cut, didn't make Francis' cut. You know, I think you, they may have, a s… a couple of them may have been included in Redux, but in the original at the time, that was not even, not even a thing. But just finding those elements, finding the dailies, finding, you know, this was again before, you know, we're talking about everything's cut on film. There was nothing really di… digitized, so I would actually physically go and watch, you know, getting a 35 millimeter cam and like, you know, just watching dailies, Apocalypse Now dailies, which is so super fun. But A, finding those, B, the, what is useful? To Jay's point, like, what is useful? You know, it isn't just regular behind-the-scenes. But finding all these pieces together, I give these guys... Ab… that was my job, is to kind of give them as many pieces as possible, and then they just, you know, took it and ran with it.

20:28Guest 1I mean

20:29Guest 3And the Fran… the, Marlon Brando outtakes, of all the stuff he improvised, you know, in that cave where he was with Martin Sheen, that was amazing watching that stuff. It was... And, you know, and a lot of it is just like, you know, well, obviously that's, there, he's trying to make up stuff and it's not particularly good, but then there were these moments, and we have stuff that were fabulous that weren't in the feature film in there.

21:01Guest 2Hopper as well. I mean, there's…

21:04Guest 3It, yeah. And I love the stuff of, Francis working with Dennis Hopper.

21:09Jawad MirYeah, I love that scene, by the way.

21:11Guest 2Yeah.

21:12Guest 1Yeah. Dialectics, man. It's dialectics.

21:18Jawad MirYeah.

21:18Guest 1Yeah. It's good stuff.

21:20Jawad MirSo you guys talked about, you know, obviously you probably edited on M… Moviola, in terms of the actual post-production. And going through so much footage, even in digital is, it can take a lot of time obviously, right? But going through film and you, and you guys said that it was almost like a parallel. Where was the point when you guys realized that it wasn't cutting out to be the way we thought it would? You know, kind of like how Francis had this vision and it wasn't flowing as he wanted it to. There was all these discrepancies. So in the post-production of this doc, where did you guys feel that this is not going anywhere other than just some behind-the-scene footages and there's no arc to the story, and how did you guys sort of deal with that?

22:11Guest 3Well, wh… when things started to pop and come alive for me was when we started inserting that audio of Francis into the scenes. Whereas before maybe we only had, you know, an, the current interview from him and, you know, behind-the-scenes footage and some lines from Eleanor from her book. But when you started layering these things, it just, things just opened up in a way that I had never, you know, got, you know, imagined was something that would be possible on this.

22:51Guest 3I mean, Jay?

22:53Guest 2Yeah. It's a, I mean, it's kind of, you know, it's tr… it's true of so many documentaries. You know, you initially kind of sort of think, you know, you know, what's really great on the, what's really great on the bus? What are we gonna, what are we gonna have on there? What's gonna take, what are you gonna take on the journey? And sort of then you're initially you're sort of just thinking about things in terms of like, okay, highlights or things that are like, that really pop to you and all that, or that are, that whatever, emotional or that are very, you know, that have, that are very powerful el… elements of story. And then it's like, you know, it's just kind of an evolution because you, th… 'cause as you keep finding things. You know, I think also, again, like, you know, just even going back and thinking about more of it along the kind of like let's think about it like a, like any s… like any feature, like a story. Let's think about the writing of it. Let's think about how we might really kind of lay it out, 'cause I remember we certainly did... This is back in the days when there weren't word processors and you had to cut and paste.

23:54Guest 2You know, this is, you know, you know, ancient times where you had to do all that kind of stuff in terms of just even storyboarding and things like that, 'cause I certainly remember we certainly did a good bit of that, just thinking about it. You know, it's, and then that, I think and then that and certainly is the more the material that showed up then you know, it really helped. You know, as Michael was saying, you know, like the audio tapes and everything. It was just really, yeah, it's very powerful. 'Cause, you know, then you've got this and you have this emotional…

24:22Guest 3... Core, this kind of thing, right? That c… you can just, you know, go right on the journey and you kind of, you're, you're right with them and very connected. So it's, it, you know, I really think it elevates it that way so much more than just, okay, then this happened, then 8,000 gallons of whatever. I mean, who cares? It's kind of more about just a lot more about all the other things and the dynamics that was going on. There was a lot of, you know, there's a... Like I say, we just touched on it like any movie. We really, yeah, there was, there was a lot of stuff going on that went on just, you know, that just, you know, we just because it's, it was Francis and Eleanor's project ultimately, so we had to, you know, we had to be very, you know…

25:05Jawad MirMindful of that

25:06Guest 3... Mindful of that. Sure. Yeah. So, you know.

25:10Jawad MirOkay. And w… I know it's been a long time, right? And it's hard to recall certain moments, but do you guys remember…

25:19Guest 1Long time

25:19Jawad Mir... Well, I mean t… in terms of refreshing your memory more than anything else is that were there any days where it was like, you know, pulling your hair and like, okay, this is like w… we're just so F'd up, this is not... I mean, I know you guys talked about all these archival audio that you found, but I know from experience that almost every day, whether it's production or post-production, there's something that's not going right the way you want to and you have to pull your hair and give yourself a break. Were there any moments that you guys recall, any one of you or each of you?

25:51Guest 1I can, I can speak of the, like just to tell my personal story about. So as an assistant editor, I would record audio, of,.. So again, all these different elements, part of the element, p… one of the elements was, using captions or sections from Eleanor Coppola's book called Notes.

26:09Guest 1... You know, sort of her diary of, the production. And so we, they would have me read as the s… assistant editor. I would like every night read, you know, certain passages that they would want to edit with. And it would be late at night because everybody would have gone. I would have needed it quiet, you know, and I was reading with very little, very little like kind of emotion. I'm not an actor and just I would just be like, da, whatever. And I would, you know, not read it too fast, too slow. So, you know, the idea was to maybe replace it with a, with a narrator. And so most of the cuts that everybody saw, my voice was in there. And we, when we screened it, a couple weeks before Cannes, we had recorded, Micah Learned, who was an actor, an actress who, in a... She was cast originally, right? They shot, she was cast as Colonel Kurtz's wife, and I believe they had shot some sequences with her, Willard coming back. I think either it was scripted... No, they did shoot it, right, guys? Do you remember? I think they shot it.

27:06Jawad MirYeah.

27:06Guest 1I know it was scripted. Anyway, so Micah Learned had played Col… Colonel Kurtz's wife. Willard comes back to the States, talks to her and says, you know, and he, that's when he, you know, there's a scene with them. Anyway, so Micah Learned, we, they brought just as a, you know, as a trivial, a trivia thing. You know, hey, Micah Learned's gonna come and do the VO for this. And she did a great job, but it was, it was not... So when we were screening for, sorry, for Cannes, there's new VO and there's a lot of people in the room. And Francis in particular said, "Wait a minute. Everything is great. You know, I had some couple notes here and there, but the VO is totally wrong. Absolutely wrong." And again, we're like, French subtitles are like on the film. It's like almost ready to go to Cannes, and he's like, "We have to redo the, we have to redo the VO." And they said, "What happened to the last narrator?" And they, everybody pointed to me like, "That was our assistant editor. It was sort of temp." And he's like, "Well, that was so much better 'cause it was not acted. It was like, it just felt like the one, the one element of the film that was not right." And so it was lots of conversations and they decided instead of me recording, re-recording, they actually went with obviously with Eleanor Coppola, which was the perfect choice.

28:09Guest 1And again, it was sort of it, added another layer of authenticity to the, to the storytelling in that essentially it's, it's her film and her journey as well as well as her husband. So, that was a moment for me where I was like, I almost was the, their narrator on Hearts of Darkness, but not quite. Didn't, didn't quite make it. But that for me was an interesting like last little minute, last minute... And it was also an incredible scramble too to get her recorded, get that into mixed and right bef… you know, get another print, get the subtitles, you know, done and all that stuff. But, anyway, that was, that was a moment that I remember. It was a little bit of a, little bit of a gotcha moment. But, in the end, it turned out to be actually a much better decision and a, and a, for, you know, for the film overall.

28:47Jawad MirRight. That's true.

28:48Guest 3I mean, as far as the, as far as, you know, days where you're struggling and, you know, nothing's happening, I think, you know, all of us have those kind of days. I can't rec… actually remember any. I mean, when I try to look back on something I've done and I don't even remember how…

29:07Jawad MirIt was done

29:08Guest 3... I got it to where it, to where it got. I mean, there's really no such thing as editing. There's, but there's certainly is re-editing and re-editing. I mean, it's a matter of, we have s… something with this much material, it's kind of like if you're doing a sculpture out of marble and it's just slowly whacking away everything that is not the story. And the bigger that hunk of rock is and, you know, the more narrow your story is, the more you have to keep chipping away at it. And it's something that it only starts to appear, you know, with time. And it's often not something that you initially envisioned because what you're working with is fluid and you start to see, as you go through miles and miles of stuff, you see thing… you see connections between things that you didn't even know existed, different ways that you can structure it, and how this can lead more elegantly into this, which then that would have more impact.

30:09Guest 3And it's, it's just this process that, you know, you keep doing it until eventually you run out of time… ... Or money and

30:21Guest 1Or things click.

30:22Guest 3Or things happen.

30:23Guest 1Or things... Yeah. Or things click and you're like, "Okay, I can move on to, you know…

30:29Guest 2Jay?

30:32Jawad MirJay

30:32Guest 2I don't know. I... Yeah, or you collapse in a heap after. No, I, yeah, it's, I don't know. You know, the funny thing is that what's more fun is when you're, like, looking at something. Like, I do definitely remember times when we would be thinking about something, and then you obviously, when you think about all those boxes sitting behind you that you've put away, you thought, "We'll never look at that again." You know, we went back that bunch, whatever it was. J… and then suddenly you're like, "Oh, God, if we just had a shot of something that would metaphorically work for blah." Like…... You know, and I remember a couple, you know, like the little toy boat sinking in those, in, the beach.

31:15Jawad MirYeah

31:15Guest 2Little stuff that you s… don't think of when you're first th… you know, just stuff like that. That to me it's like that's, you know, magical because most of it, yeah, a lot of it is you're just, you know, you're just so focused. I don't, you know, I don't necessarily remember, like, you know, whatever, being freaked out. It's just like, you know, editing is like I said, you know, you gotta re-edit, you gotta, you just have to kind of keep... It just keeps evolving. And especially in docs, it's just a really, yeah, it's just…

31:42Jawad MirYeah. 100%.

31:45Guest 3That's why I went more... I went to film school. I wasn't planning to do documentaries. I gonna do features. But I hooked up with…

31:53Jawad MirSame here.

31:54Guest 3I hooked up with all the... You know, I did an internship when I was at UCLA with a documentary filmmaker, one of the David Wolper New York crew that had come out here. And I was in the, this building on La Cienega across from the Beverly Center called the Production Center, and there were all these documentary producers in there. And they worked for one guy, and then he said, "Hey, you should work with this guy. He's a good editor." And then one after another, after another. So, you know, it became this whole career that I didn't really envision. But when I started doing documentaries in film school, I realized the power of editing and how it is one of the most powerful positions on film, especially once I started doing documentaries on a documentary because you're creating the story.

32:46Jawad MirYep.

32:47Guest 3You know? If there's a script, you have a story that you have to sort of adhere to and you find the best way to tell that story. But when you're doing something unscripted, you're the one who's deciding of the many possible stories that are inherent in that footage which one you're gonna tell and how you're gonna tell it. So I mean, in the end, I think I probably enjoyed... This has been more fulfilling in a way than if I was creating somebody else's story, you know, in a way that works for them. I feel like in a lot of way, there's a lot of me in this film, there's a lot of Jay in this film.

33:28Jawad MirRight.

33:28Guest 3And Shawna in this film, you know. I mean, we... I don't wanna take too much credit, but…

33:37Guest 1No.

33:38Guest 3I think…

33:39Guest 1Yeah

33:39Guest 3... You know, that's what I love about documentary editing i… is the amount of im… of, impact you have on the story in the end.

33:51Jawad Mir300%, absolutely true. I've, I just recalled something and I will send you guys a link if you're interested. There is a... I had a conversation with J.V. Hart, who's a screenwriter who worked with Coppola on Dracula, and, he had some fascinating stories about how he sort of worked with him. And the same problems that he went through, on The Godfather, on Apocalypse Now, and everything was exactly the same with Bram Stoker's Dracula. I just recalled that, so I thought maybe I'd just throw that in. It's definitely an amazing conversation I had with him, and he's, he's a great storyteller. But moving back to, this particular film, w… when it premiered at Cannes, did you guys go, any of you, at the time?

34:37Guest 3I did not.

34:38Guest 1No.

34:38Guest 3I, it played at Telluride also. I did go to that, but I did not go to Cannes.

34:43Jawad MirSo let's put Cannes on the side for all of you for a second. In general, when it was done and it was showed to public, when it won the award at Cannes or just in general any other screening that you guys attended, how surprised, if at all, were you guys based with the reaction that it received even at that time, and obviously continuing on all the way 35 years later?

35:06Guest 3Well, watching a film with an audience is always a completely different experience than watching it with your crew. I saw it twice at Telluride and it got an amazing response, and which is always very heartening, you know, that it turned out in a way that there was people responding to. Jay?

35:37Guest 2Oh, yeah. Well, I have been at... I actually have been to the Cannes Film Festival a number of times, subsequent to that. And then they did, they, there was a s… kind of an informal screening. I'm trying to remember what year it was. My God, it's, it's been over 20 years, the last time. It's just, yeah, it's interesting how people react to it just because, it's just, like it just, it does resonate with anyone who's had anything to do with filmmaking. You know, I remember, the, distributor, was it Jonathan? Yeah, Jonathan Danis was the rep or whatever along with Tom. There were a couple people or something. They were sh… they were surprised at how well it was 'cause th… th… documentaries back then, documentaries were not a big thing at Can… Cannes did not normally do that. It was a very unusual... That was a very unusual situation. So, they do it more often now. I mean, Errol, what was there the other Errol? I'm trying to remember the one about, I can't think of his name.

36:41Guest 2Former…

36:42Guest 1Fog… Fog… Fog of War?

36:44Guest 2Fog of War, thank you. Yeah. That, it's, yeah, or, Fahrenheit F… you know, Michael Moore's movie. But this, yeah, it's, th… this, it was, it's very rare. So, I think people respond to it because it's so accurate, and it's, everybody goes through it, and so it, a lot of the same problems. And it's a great learning tool for everybody about, who's interested in film and filmmaking, so

37:11Guest 3I mean, I mean, I realized that, you know, this had gone into a whole 'nother, 'nother level that I wasn't expecting when Siskel and Ebert, I forget which one of them, one of them ca… called it the number one film of the year. It was their favorite, their favorite film of the entire... Not favorite documentary, but favorite film.

37:30Guest 2Film of the year.

37:33Guest 3But, and that…

37:33Jawad MirI also think, I also think, I don't have any evidence to prove this, but there was a, when 1993 Jurassic Park came out, it was the very first time that a making of book was published, and there has been a lot of, you know, behind the scene documentaries, just like regular featurettes kind of thing. But I truly believe that Heart of Dar… Darkness had something to do with that trend in the behind the scene featurettes and making of that you see on DVDs and all that. They're obviously more one-dimensional, very, you know, very, fancy shmancy and lovey-dovey and all that, but, you guys truly started it all. And I always just think Bowling for Columbine was a documentary that started the documentary trend, but I found out four or five years ago, later, four or five years ago, I realized that it's Heart of Darkness, 'cause that really set the tone for everything else that came after it, even to this day.

38:28Guest 1That's a nice compliment. Thank you.

38:32Jawad MirYeah, the guys just said, "Sue said thank you." No, I'm just joking. I, were you guys directly working with Eleanor or Francis in any way, where it was, were the two involved in trying to... You know, because it's mostly about Francis especially, right? It's like he's conscious about it, obviously, as you said, that he was probably just doing it for his wife. Was there any kind of like, okay, how do we explain to him, even though, you know, there's a director and everything, that it's, we have to tell a proper story? Were there any kind of like interferences as a studio would interfere in his film?

39:08Guest 3We were mostly working with Eleanor. But even, but she even was very hands-off. I mean, I think we had discussed what we were hoping to do with the film, and I think she was very much on board with, you know, the direction we're going. And I don't know if, I don't remember sh… like having her in multiple screenings. I remember her seeing, like, our initial cut, and I think there were, like, two things that she thought maybe we should lose from the thing. But it was very minor. I mean, the, what gave me the most anxiety was showing it to Francis for the first time. And I was…

39:52Jawad MirWere you…

39:52Guest 3... Operating the Steenbeck. He was sitting behind me, so I couldn't see his reaction through the entire thing.

39:58Jawad MirYeah.

39:58Guest 3I was, like, sweating bullets. You know, I mean, there's a lot of stuff where he's kind of acting crazy in this thing. And when it was over…... You know, he says, "You know, I don't care if you show me with my shirt off acting crazy and doing all this shit, but as long as you show the context why I was acting like that, and you need to make it more clear how much I had on the line." And I think the only thing we did with that single note was we added a little bit more setting up, you know, how much personal investment financially and whatnot that he had in this film, and how basically everything was riding on it. And other than that, he was completely hands-off. Jay, do you remember anything differently?

40:53Guest 2Yeah, they were amazingly hands-off, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

40:56Guest 3Yeah.

40:57Guest 2Considering, you know. I mean, I, you know, I did, I had experience working with him in the past, on a few things, and he is someone who will ask everybody for their opinion, including the jan… the night janitor, the cleaning lady walking by, s… somebody, the receptionist. I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty amazing. So I, it was interesting that in a way, I think that there was, this was, yeah, pretty much hands-off. But you know, there had been a lot of heat on this, you know, 'cause, you know, he had financed this after Apocalypse, you know, even while we were finishing Apocalypse, you know. And I definitely remember a few people that were trying to do something with it. But I, you know, it was one of those things that, you know, it needed to gestate for about a decade before, you know, which is why we were lucky to be able to get access to it, 'cause, yeah.

42:01Guest 2He did have a lot of, you know, of his personality, a lot of things in it that, you know, some filmmakers would not wanna have exposed, so.

42:11Guest 3Yeah.

42:12Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. That's true.

42:13Guest 1My one recollection too of Eli was, both of them certainly were very hands-off, but with Eli, I had some, you know, just again, in trying to find elements of, you know, Francis' 40th birthday. We were trying to find the negative that a filmmaker Les Blank, documentary filmmaker d… Les Blank had documented Francis' 40th birthday. I think there's a little footage there. But we were just trying to find different elements. I would go up, you know, maybe, you know, three or four times I went up to try to find elements. And she was very lovely, and I think she also was really happy that somebody was actually making this film. I think it was a, you know, certainly a… You know, nice for her to be able to see it come together. So I think she was, you know, certainly hands off but also very supportive of whatever, you know, the filmmakers were wanting to do, with it. So but... And, made us a lovely salad in her kitchen one time. She was very sweet, but, you know, she wanted to make sure that she was helping in any way she could. You know, and, we did find some elements in the, in some closets in the house.

43:15Guest 1So, which, you know, they were again in other boxes and such, but

43:19Jawad MirSure

43:19Guest 1... But we, she was lovely, so.

43:23Jawad MirSpeaking of her, was there ever a point, because, you know, Francis is married to her and he's put his financial investment, his mortgage, everything, and here we have his wife documenting his journey, which was supposed to be originally, like, a small promotional piece, but it just turned into something, you know, gigantic. Was there ever, in the, in the editing stage, a thought process or even during when you guys were editing there was pieces where it was her angle was more in there than it's in the final version? Or was it always more about Francis and just less about her kind of giving an outsider view to the world?

44:03Guest 3I mean, I mean, I don't remember there, if there was more. J… I mean, you, Jay, you worked on the stuff when they were back… ... In, the States. And there was a…

44:14Guest 2Yeah, I think there…

44:15Guest 3... The scene about her, there's a scene of her talking about how their lifestyle had kind of ballooned out into this 21-room mansion and, you know, entertaining all these people and famous people, and it was almost too much for her.

44:30Guest 2Right. Yeah. But I mean, I think she's... I mean, that's her character. I don't think she's, you know, it's interesting you ask that. I don't think she ever really kind of like, you know, was…

44:40Jawad MirNo, not her, but what was sort of in the story

44:42Guest 2... I mean, in a, in a way she's very, deferential and very much, it's astounding, 'cause there's a lot of things, there were, there were a lot of things going on. You know, and f… to, you know, that's just, you know, it was j… to her, to her credit. It's, it's, I thought it's amazing how calm and she's like, she's like a Buddha for Christ's sake, I think. You know, in terms of how she handled w… w… being with Francis, during the production. And so, you know, yeah, I don't know, I never really got that sense my… I never really got that much. Like, it was kind of her…

45:16Jawad MirN… I was more to referring to the fact that it, for the sake of the story, was it ever a thought that we should have her angle in there a little bit more? Not necessarily what, if she wanted all the limelight. That's not what I was suggesting in any way.

45:31Guest 2Her angle. Interesting. I don't think so. It's just…

45:36Guest 3No, I, it's why…

45:37Guest 2... It, I mean, I just…

45:38Guest 3Yeah.

45:39Guest 2Yeah. We were just kind of like, I mean, her angle is, you know, this incredible connection through the audio tape and then, and the notes and the l… I mean, it's, it's pretty prevalent in the f… in the film.

45:51Jawad MirSure.

45:51Guest 2But it, she's very, yeah, s… she's, she's extremely calm throughout this storm.

45:59Jawad MirWell, some… some… somebody's gotta stay calm throughout the storm, right? Otherwise, there'll be insanity everywhere, so.

46:04Guest 2Right. Yeah.

46:07Jawad MirH… what did you guys think of Apocalypse Now, in, before you even started working on it?

46:17Guest 1I can speak as a, as a cinematographer. I mean, literally, I... So now I'm a, I'm a, I'm a professional cinematographer. I, that's, I, you know, I started in the edit room, but, and I use all these skills that I learned from these two and other editors that I worked with as an assistant editor, every day, as a cinematographer. I learned…

46:34Jawad MirRight

46:35Guest 1... All of what I learned in the edit room, I apply every day when I'm sh… I'm, I'm shooting. That said, in film school, you know, literally three or four years before I started working on this, Apocalypse Now was, I went to a 70 millimeter screening, I think at the, I think it was at the, at the Dome, Cinerama Dome in

46:53Jawad MirOh, yeah

46:53Guest 1... In Hollywood here. And ... I was absolutely blown away. I hadn't seen the film, but I'd seen it first on 70 millimeter, and it was just like, ah, I get what cinematographers do. I understand, you know, it just, it, I was, you know, incredibly disturbed by, you know, by the violence and the context of the film, but incredibly impressed with the, with the overall film and the cinematography as well, and just how this l… cinematography elevated the story. And so once I got the call about this, I was like, "Absolutely," you know, "Sign me up." you know, I also at times made excuses to make calls to Vittorio Storaro because like in particular, French Plantation, when they decided to use some of that footage, I said, "Well, gosh, no one's ever seen anything except for dailies." you know, and I d… I'm not sure how much of the dailies he was actually timing, so I wanted to make sure, somebody had to make sure, you know, if we're g… gonna go to Cannes with this, I wanna make sure it was, you know, as he intended. So I called him. You know, I was the one who made the call to Vittorio and talked to him about the coloring, the, you know, the color grading on French Plantation.

47:58Guest 1So, that was really fun to do. But I was a big fan of the movie, for sure. And then, you know, to come and do this, it was just a fantastic, experience for me all the way around.

48:10Guest 3I think…

48:10Jawad MirWonderful

48:11Guest 3... A… after working on this, I don't, I didn't appreciate Apocalypse Now from an editing standpoint before the film like I do now. Knowing what they... I mean, if we had a lot to work with, they had…... Way more to work with.

48:34Jawad MirYep.

48:35Guest 3And just, like the opening scene, which is, I mean, I was watching something on YouTube the other day, Francis, narrating, the opening scene about how it's, it's, it was an outtake in a bin… That he asked somebody what that was, and they put it on and it was a shot before the napalm run of just the, you know, the jungle with smoke. And a helicopter would come by occasionally. And then he thought, you know, to put, you know, the Doors song The End over it. And then after that it's transitioning that to, Martin Sheen in the hotel room, you know, with the fan and the helicopters. And it's just, it's, you know, amazing what... I think he was saying that, Walter Murch did that part, that opening scene.

49:37Guest 2Ritchie and Mar… Walter. Several people. Yeah

49:38Guest 3... But it was just, it was, just… ... To have your mind that wide open to, we have all this stuff. What can we do to create a really compelling opening scene? And it's, it's astounding. And then, you know, we actually interviewed Walter Murch for... It didn't make it into our film, but it was a post-production discussion about how they put together all those out… all those improvs with Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen. And how they developed these traveling shadow mats. So every time they took a piece of Brando's thing to make something coherent, they wouldn't have to cut away. They could do a shadow thing over the cut and you wouldn't realize they had done a cut. And just, you know, just the level of editing on Apocalypse, it's, you each see it, the film the first time. You know, you think that they scripted that, you know? And they shot it, and that's what they did. But it's, it's not unlike what we did on our film.

50:43Guest 2Right.

50:44Guest 3Where they just left themselves open to any and every possibility of ways to use this footage in a way that maybe it hadn't been intended.

50:55Guest 2Right. You know, before I decided to get into film, I saw Apocalypse Now and I couldn't care less for it. I'm just being honest. But then when I started realizing as, both of you guys said, that it's the vis… the f… the frame, the canvas. And then holding onto a shot and not cutting. Like especially a shot, that shot of Robert Duvall just sitting there and then the bomb explodes in the back. Any other director would have edited that right on the blast so that it just, you know, looks more like a grand sequence, but he just kept onto that. And it's a testament to his vision and all the stuff that he has done to date. Yeah. I mean, I completely agree with you guys. I just thought I wanted to put my two cents in there too.

51:42Guest 3Jay, were you around during, post-production on Apocalypse?

51:47Guest 2Yeah. A year and a half.

51:50Guest 3You…

51:50Guest 2Oh, you were

51:51Guest 3... You had sitting against the screen.

51:51Guest 2Yeah, I worked on it. I think that's kind of why, I think that's kind of why I got hired by... I think that's why Doug Claybourne said, "Well, maybe he knows something a little bit about it." So.

52:01Guest 3Yeah.

52:01Guest 2So yeah, I remember a lot of, yeah, a lot of the…

52:04Guest 1What were you, tell us what you were doing, Jay.

52:06Guest 2Yeah.

52:06Guest 1I think it's really interesting.

52:09Guest 2Mostly, well, mostly, well, I was coming in when there were actually so many different people working on so many different elements. Including Dennis Jacob. I mean, there was just so many people that were editing. It was, it was kind of wild. It was a, you know, so the bulk of what I did was in the, was in sound. So I w… worked with Walter, doing almost all the Foley, stuff like that. But then we were constantly recutting and recutting and, yeah, it was... And I'd worked, I'd worked on Godfather II. I'd worked on, you know, I kind of had been around Zoeto for quite some time, because I was in the Bay Area at that time. And I was, I was under Berkeley and I sort of fell into that, scene up there. And so I'd kind of been involved with Zoeto for, actually for quite a while. So.

52:57Guest 2So I remember even, you know, it's interesting 'cause, you know, you were talking about the length of shots. I think a lot of that he got from the conversation, which is when he really experimented in terms of timing. That was like his ode to very much European style filmmaking.

53:13Guest 2And just the, especially the editing. I mean, 'cause there are scenes in that film, 'cause I remember that very well. 'Cause a lot of that was going on at the end of Godfather II. They were still o… they were overlapping at the time and everybody was sleeping on the floor and, you know, it was c… z… it was a crazy time. And so here's two very different films, structurally. But that really, I did influence him. It's interesting you mention that in terms of the length of shots that a, the director would allow. You really see that in the conversation, I think, you know. Which by the way, he was one in the Palme d'Or at Cannes. That was a very successful for him creatively, I think, in a different level, more than just financially. So.

54:02Guest 3That's great. Yeah. Amazing.

54:03Guest 2But yeah, this, it i… it's, as we've talked about it, really mirrors what we went through. We went through kind of the same process in a lot of ways. And like in a, like anything, you, at a certain point you just say, "Okay, we gotta, we're stopping now."

54:21Guest 3Yeah.

54:22Guest 2That's it.

54:23Guest 1Everybody off the boat.

54:24Guest 2This is the, this is the end. And so…

54:27Guest 3This is the end of the story.

54:29Guest 2Yeah.

54:29Guest 3You should, you guys should have done voice notes and then somebody would have made a documentary on that, right? You know, as we sort of wrap up, anything that you guys want to add that I may have overlooked or didn't ask? A… Anything?

54:51Guest 1We met earlier in the week and we were like, 'cause we, it's been a while.

54:56Jawad MirSo you wanted to connect the dots

54:58Guest 1... Unbelievable. Yes. We just gonna… And we hadn't seen each other for a while, and we definitely stayed in touch. I mean…

55:02Jawad MirYeah

55:02Guest 1... Honestly, we're sort of, it's not, it's not to say, trauma bonding is probably the wrong word, but I think, like, experience bonding. You know, when you're with somebody and when you're with a team, you know, for a year plus, working on something so intensely, you know, you form these bonds. And I, you know, I love these two guys, you know? I worked with them, you know, and I just... It's, just amazing how a film and the experience, is, it's like it's was yesterday. But certainly, it's, it's really wonderful to, like, my takeaway, you can edit all that crap out, but, my takeaway is I love that there's a new, a new audience for this film. 'Cause I feel like it's, it's, what we talked about before, is, like, it's a, it's, it's about so many things. And it's about an artist's journey, creating, you know, creating something, you know? And it's very, yeah, any artist, can watch it. Any filmmaker can watch it. Any aspiring cinematographer, editor. Any documentary filmmaker can. There's so many different people can see it, and take from it different things. And so, but I love the fact that there's a whole new audience for it.

56:04Guest 1And, I'm glad that people are, you know, are talking about it again. 'Cause it's a, it was a really fun, wonderful experience for me right out of film school. Fantastic opportunity to work with these two incredible documentary editors. You know, it's, it's, yeah, it's just wonderful to kinda look back at it, too. It's, it's, it's fun times.

56:21Jawad MirGood stuff.

56:22Guest 3It was a great experience. And it's, I, it has been very difficult to top Hearts of Darkness. And, you know, I've done a lot of things since then, and, some really good things. But m… that's, you know, I keep waiting for one that's gonna hit that same kind of l… kind of level. Because c… you know, creatively for myself, I feel like, you know, I really hit one out of the park. But, yeah, I mean, it was a, certainly a highlight of my career.

56:59Jawad MirAmazing. Jay?

57:01Guest 2Yeah, it, I s… you know, definitely a highlight for me as well. I, you know, I'm sort of in different areas right now. But, I think it's interesting also now that Apocalypse is coming out on Amazon, and then they're gonna release Hearts of Darkness within a month. It'll be interesting to s… It's funny, 'cause l… you know, I must admit there have been some people who said, "You know, I really liked Hearts of Darkness, in some ways better than the movie." And,... And, so it's kind of funny how, it's, that it's, that they're coming out almost concurrently again in r… in re… re-release. So that should be fun for people to see. But I think it's still abso… I still think Apocalypse is an amazing film.

57:43Jawad MirYeah

57:44Guest 2... Truly. Yeah, so.

57:46Jawad MirYeah. No, I'll tell you, I didn't even realize until after we reached out to you guys, then you guys said yes, that there was a 4K edition coming out. So there was no timing for us to do this. I just wanted to do it because of how an amazing of a film it is. And I've been meaning to do it for the last year and a half but just never got around to it. But thank you so much for your time, guys. And, again, truly, a… as a storyteller, as a audience, you know what you guys have created. But just to reiterate that, you have absolutely no idea what you have done for people out there in the world of film. And it's, it's a great, it's a great learning tool, and you, anybody can watch it over and over again. They will never get sick of it, and that's a testament to the editing.

58:30Guest 3Well, thank you very much.

58:31Guest 2Thank you.

58:32Guest 3Appreciate that.

58:33Guest 1Yeah.

58:34Jawad MirThank you so…

58:34Guest 1Thanks for having us.

58:35Jawad MirNo, pleasure. Pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much, guys.

58:38Guest 3All right.

58:39Guest 2All right. Thank you.

58:40Jawad MirAll right.

58:40Guest 1Do you need us to do you need us to do any name intros or anything for you for your podcast?

58:44Jawad MirNo, I, no. No, I'll just do an introduction myself.

58:48Guest 1Okay.

58:48Jawad MirAnd then we will, this is, like, from beginning to end aside from w… waiting for Jay, and then we just kinda go unscripted and unedited in any wa… every way…

58:55Guest 1Okay

58:55Jawad Mir... And just wrap it up.

58:56Guest 1Okay.

58:56Jawad MirYeah.

58:57Guest 1Well, my na… my, just for the r… for your record, my name is Shauna Hagan. So…

59:01Jawad MirGot it

59:01Guest 1... Just, yeah.

59:02Jawad MirPerfect.

59:03Guest 1Thank you.

59:03Jawad MirWe'll, we'll verify all the spellings with you guys before you put it up.

59:06Guest 1The pronunciation, too. Sometimes it, like…

59:08Jawad MirSh…

59:08Guest 1... Gets a little…

59:09Jawad MirShaina. Shauna.

59:12Guest 1Shauna Hagan.

59:13Jawad MirShauna Hagan.

59:14Guest 1Yes.

59:14Jawad MirNow that I know it's recorded. Okay, great.

59:17Guest 1Thank you.

59:17Jawad MirJay and Michael are easy. Thank you so much, guys. Take care.

59:19Guest 3Thank you.

59:20Guest 1Cheers.

59:21Jawad MirAll right.

59:21Guest 1Take care.

59:21Jawad MirCheers. Bye-bye.

59:22Guest 3See you guys.

59:22Guest 1All right, bye.