'Trekkies', Director, Roger Nygard

0:05Jawad MirHow are you on this long Saturday weekend evening?

0:08Roger NygardOh, great. Every day is awesome. As long as I wake up and I'm still here, I, it's a great day.

0:16Jawad Mir100%, man. 100%. Thank you so much for tuning in. I appreciate you, agreeing to doing this. And, looking forward to chatting with you about Star Trek and your documentary, of course, Trekkies.

0:28Roger NygardI'll share whatever I can think of or make up.

0:32Jawad MirWonderful, man. Well, are you in LA?

0:36Roger NygardI am, yes. Live right in the middle of Hollywood.

0:39Jawad MirWonderful. What are you working on nowadays?

0:43Roger NygardCurrently I'm working on Curb Your Enthusiasm, editing, season 12.

0:48Jawad MirWonderful. It's one show, 'cause I'm a big Seinfeld fan, once, you know, it came out. I've been trying to get into Curb Your Enthusiasm. I just haven't found time. I need to get into it. I mean, it's already 12 season? That's crazy.

1:00Roger NygardYeah, you're a little behind now with 12 seasons to go.

1:04Jawad MirGod. How many episodes are there in each season? Still, like, 14, 15?

1:08Roger Nygard10. 10, so it'll be 120 you've got waiting for you when you've got, a lot of hours to kill.

1:15Jawad MirMaybe on the traveling, when I'm traveling, that's when I pretty much catch up with most of my stuff is on the plane, but

1:22Roger NygardIt's pretty funny stuff.

1:24Jawad MirI'm sure. I'm sure it is. And Larry David is a genius. But I'll probably, I'll definitely check that out in the next coming months, for sure.

1:33Roger NygardI always tell Larry that he's, like... I think if they make a list of the greatest comedy personas in history, he's gonna be on it, y… you know, with, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin, and Steve Allen, and Lucille Ball, and then Larry's gonna be there, and he just goes, "Ah, I don't think so."

1:54Jawad MirYeah, he seems like a very modest individual from the interviews that I've seen and all the stuff. He doesn't seem like…

2:00Roger NygardBut I think he will be. I think he's gonna be considered one of those, unique talents.

2:05Jawad MirWell, you look at Seinfeld now, I mean, I don't know if you ever watch it. I was actually watching it again with my wife because she was never into it, and I... And it's, it's such, like, you know, you pay attention to it over and over again, it's such a genius piece of writing, and there's so much philosophy and psychology in it. Like, it's just insane how much depth there is to that show.

2:26Roger NygardYeah, I think part of the reason I really enjoy working on the show, and one reason that his comedy i, is so strong is that because he's fearless. There's no topic that he will not take on.

2:39Jawad MirYeah.

2:39Roger NygardAnd very few people can take on some of the topics that he takes on and get away with it.

2:45Jawad MirWell, that's what comedy's supposed to be. It's supposed to, challenge you, disturb you, make you think, and I'm glad he's doing that. That's awesome.

2:53Roger NygardI mean, you know, speaking, if you wanna bring Star Trek into it…

2:57Jawad MirYeah

2:57Roger Nygard... What set that show apart from other shows, one of the things is that it took on challenging topics. But in order to make it palatable, they had to put it o… set it on other planets and clothe it in aliens and other ways so that they could transpose these issues. You know, half Black, half white, Char… you know, Frank Gorshin. It seems obvious, but it was a very difficult subject to put on TV in those days, race relations. But that's the way they did it and got away with it, and it's, it's so simple, yet brilliant.

3:32Jawad MirYeah, no, Star Trek, I mean, it did all those things. I probably didn't pick up on those race relations stuff when I was watching it because I was very young. But looking back at it now, like, yeah, you know, you definitely see that. But for me, aside from all the most amazing e… episodes, like I don't remember the episodes' names, but the one with the Yesterday Enterprise, and then where the time keeps looping. They made a movie like that now with Tom Cruise, Day After Tomorrow. I don't know if... Not Day After Tomorrow. What is that movie with the Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise that came out five years ago? Edge of, Edge of Tomorrow.

4:06Roger NygardOkay, yes.

4:06Jawad MirIt was, it was a similar plot where they keep looping in time. But the most powerful episode for me was the second last episode. I don't know if you remember that.

4:18Roger NygardOf which series?

4:20Jawad MirNo, Generations. Generations. It was called Journey's End. It was, a send-off to Wesley Crusher character when he goes onto the planet to talk to these, natives, and then he goes on their side and he goes against the Starfleet. That was, that was such an amazing episode, and nobody talks about that episode as much as they should, just because the way it ended.

4:42Roger NygardJust like Avatar, right?

4:44Jawad MirYes.

4:44Roger NygardThat's the sa… story of Avatar, and FernGully, and

4:47Jawad MirLast Samurai

4:47Roger Nygard... Dancing with Wolves.

4:49Jawad MirLast Samurai, that's the same way. But yeah, no, that Star Trek is just an immense show. You know, I remember, yeah, it had profound effect on me. But anyways, we'll get to that. Tell me how you got started in Trek world or in d… in kinda crossing path with art of filmmaking and where you are right now. Like, how did that all began, the journey?

5:13Roger NygardOkay, here's the short version so I won't bore you too much. But…

5:16Jawad MirNo, please

5:16Roger Nygard... I grew up, in the '60s and '70s, and Star Trek was on in syndication. Every day after school in the afternoon, Star Trek was on, so I've seen every episode of the original series multiple times, and we would commit lines of dialogue to memory and utilize it in our games and playing. And, it was just part of the wallpaper of my youth. And I always wanted to make movies ever since I was about age seven and eight, discovered my father's camera. I didn't know how I was gonna pursue it necessarily in those days, but I kept that forefront as I was going to college. And then I moved out to Los Angeles. And when I met Denise Crosby I cast her in my first feature film in a role. She came in and read for the part. It was shortly after she had left The Next Generation and was doing other things, and she was fantastic and got the role because she's brilliant, and we stayed in touch.

6:20Roger NygardAnd then years later, we were having lunch and talking about these Star Trek conventions she had been attending, as the actors do, and she was describing what that world was like, and how bizarre and amazing and funny and strange and cool all at once, and this was before Comic-Con was even a thing.

6:41Jawad MirRight.

6:41Roger NygardAnd, you know, we said, y… we can't remember who said it first, but one of us said, "You know, I can't believe no one's done this yet. We should make a documentary about this phenomenon." And it was like, "Y… yeah, it's a,.. Why has no one done it? Let's do it." But we don't know how to make a documentary, and, I had made, you know, narrative films, feature films, but never done a documentary, and I said, "Well, how hard can it be? Let's just learn it." You know, l… you know, of course, I'd learned how it's, it's really fricking hard, and you... It's not an easy thing to do. It's much harder than it seems. But Denise Crosby and I, we had our own documentary screening seminar at her house. I went and rented a bunch of videos at, the local weird video store that had all the weird offbeat titles. It was called Vidiots. And I got Brother's Keeper and Crumb and, Hoop Dreams, and a bunch of video…

7:41Jawad MirOh

7:41Roger Nygard... Documentaries by a documentary filmmaker named Les Blank. And we just watched the movies and talked about them and started brainstorming. And then when one day not long after, she had a convention coming up at the LAX Hilton. It was called Fantasticon.

8:00Roger NygardAnd she was invited to speak, and most of the original actors, series actors, were scheduled to be there, and we thought, "Well, here's our opportunity. If we don't do it now, we'll never do it." So we found some producers we had been working with on, who had produced my prior film. It was an action picture called American Yakuza 2, back to back. And they were intrigued and put up enough money to shoot that first weekend. So we pulled together a crew, a c… a director of photography who owned a 16 millimeter film camera, and he brought it, and we got some short ends, which are inexpensive leftover pieces of film basically. And we filmed that whole weekend, and the footage was so incredible that we just kept going. And nine months later, we had, the, a film, a completed movie.

8:52Jawad MirAmazing. And how did, Paramount pick that up? Was that, was that through the connection of Denise, or was that just through the response it was getting at screenings and whatnot?

9:03Roger NygardE… my next book... I'm writing a book. My... Well, my prior book is about how to edit comedy. It's called Cut to the Monkey. My next book is going to be about making documentaries, and Trekkies is going to be the case study.

9:17Roger NygardAnd you would think that it would've been easy to sell that film to Paramount once it was done.

9:23Jawad MirI don't think it would be easy. That's why I'm asking you. I don't think it would be.

9:26Roger NygardWe thought it might be easier than it was gonna be. That's for sure. It took us nine months of, cajoling and insulting and haranguing and stalking, doing screenings, and Paramount couldn't even be bothered to look at it. We couldn't even get their attention until Universal made us an offer. And then suddenly, Paramount was like, "Oh, wait a minute." "Well, maybe we are interested." So we had to screen it for them as well, and we ended up w… it ended up in a bidding war between those two studios ultimately, which, pushed the price up…

10:06Jawad MirGood

10:07Roger Nygard... Much higher than, you know, is typical for a documentary.

10:11Jawad MirThat's, that's amazing. And y… yeah, you know, it's, it's so right that making documentaries, you know, when we watch it's, it seems like it's just a walk in the park. I used to think that.

10:22Roger NygardRight.

10:23Jawad MirI never want... I never wanted to... I never thought of myself doing documentaries, but I just kind of landed in that realm where I've directed, three feature documentaries, narrative feature documentaries. And it's such a difficult task to do because, you know, especially nowadays, e… especially you have so much footage, but at the same time, you're trying to figure out, where is the story going? At least for me, I like to follow my protagonist in real time, and I have no idea how the story is gonna end. But yeah, it's the most craziest thing. And everybody does think for, about their film, including myself, "Oh, it's gonna be a piece of cake selling it," but it's not. It's so challenging. It's so challenging.

11:01Roger NygardYou're only halfway there. When you have your final…

11:04Jawad MirYeah

11:04Roger Nygard... Cut of the film, that's the halfway point in the process and in your expenditures. So…

11:11Jawad MirYeah. Making a documentary…

11:13Roger NygardAnd the biggest mistake…

11:14Jawad MirYeah. Sorry, go on

11:15Roger Nygard... S… the biggest mistake that I discovered that people make with documentaries is they, you think that, "Okay, we'll just get a bunch of interviews and cut them together."

11:27Jawad MirYeah.

11:28Roger NygardB… but a documentary is not just a series of talking heads, as you just…

11:31Jawad MirNo

11:31Roger Nygard... Pointed out. You put your finger on it when you said it's about story. And a documentary needs a three-act structure and a protagonist with a goal and obstacles and an antagonist or antagonists or protagonists as much as a narrative feature needs, and that's the real challenge that i… is hard to f… figure out.

11:51Jawad MirYeah. No, it is, but once you do figure it out, it becomes easier. But like I said, it's so funny, every time I've made a documentary, I always think that, "Oh, it's gonna be tough," which it is. I mean, it's challenges with anything, but that's how you motivate yourself. But by the time it comes to selling it, every time it's the same story. It's like, "Oh, I…" Now the real part begins, like, you know, because selling is not an easy thing to do. And nowadays there's just so much, so much stuff out there, as you know, just not even documentaries and everything. You know, Netflix, Amazon, Peacock, Paramount, everybody has streaming platform, and they're get so much submissions and stuff, and then festivals. But it's fun at the same time. It's, it's storytelling, and that's what we do, and we love doing it, otherwise we would've given up a long time ago, right?

12:37Roger NygardYeah. Well, y… y… you... If it was easy, everybody'd be doing it, right?

12:42Jawad MirExactly.

12:42Roger NygardAnd if, let's say, you're a, an executive at Netflix or Hulu or, Amazon Prime, and a filmmaker with a documentary comes to you, what are you looking for, right? Well, you're looking for, "Okay, this... I've got three great documentaries in front of me. Which one of these filmmakers is going to get the most eyeballs to come to my platform?"

13:07Jawad MirYeah.

13:08Roger NygardSo you've gotta bring, the audience as well as the film and a, or a way to reach them, or some core group, or a huge mailing list, or you won every festival. And so you've got all this notoriety and name value, something that sets you apart from all the other documentaries that are also probably great, but who need... Who's gonna watch them?

13:29Jawad MirYeah. I agree, man. I agree. In terms of Star Trek, are you, like, more of a original show…

13:38Roger NygardYes

13:38Jawad Mir... Fan or all, not Generations or…

13:40Roger NygardYes. Full stop. Yes.

13:42Jawad MirFull stop.

13:42Roger Nygard'Cause that's what I grew up with. It was the original series.

13:45Jawad MirYeah.

13:45Roger NygardAnd so that's it. That's the one. That's nothing... There's no time like the first time.

13:51Jawad MirYeah. I agree.

13:52Roger NygardRight?

13:53Jawad MirI agree.

13:53Roger NygardAnd…

13:54Jawad MirBecause I…

13:55Roger NygardSo I mean, I love the movies and I've watched all, every movie, of course. And but I wasn't really... I mean, here's the real, controversy. I'm not a Trekkie or a Star Trek fan per se. I didn't... I was a science fiction fan growing up. I loved all science fiction. I watched all sorts of, you know, Time Tunnel and, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and UFO, and Star Trek was just one of the many science fiction things that I loved. I used to watch sci-fi movies with my, with my dad. He was big into sci-fi. And Mysterious Island, y… you know, was, like blew me away as a kid. E… I don't know if you've ever seen it, but, like, these g… these men in a balloon land on this island by accident. They're blown off course in their big balloon, and on the island are these giant monsters and dinosaurs, and it's like, "Wow, how cool." And…

14:47Jawad MirIt sounds…

14:47Roger NygardBut Star Trek was among all of these things.

14:49Jawad MirYeah.

14:50Roger NygardSorry?

14:51Jawad MirI said, sounds familiar what you're saying about the balloon, the film. It sounds…

14:55Roger NygardYou know, like Ray Harry… Ray Harryhausen films…

14:58Jawad MirOkay

14:58Roger Nygard... With animation, stop-motion animation. That's what these films generally had in common. I realized later I was a Ray Harryhausen fan to a great extent. I loved the…

15:10Jawad MirDid he…

15:10Roger Nygard... Stop motion animation monsters.

15:13Jawad MirDid he also do Jack and the Giant Killer and Sinbad and Seventh Voyage?

15:18Roger NygardHe did Sinbad movies, yes.

15:21Jawad MirThat I have grown up with Sinbad and Seventh Voyage, and Jack and the Giant Killer or Giant Slayer, I don't remember the name. But it wa… it had like…

15:29Roger NygardWhat really s…

15:29Jawad Mir... Giant monsters and serpents and...

15:32Roger NygardYeah. And, the Medusa. Remember the... I think it was in a film, what was it called? The, Mysterious World of, I forget the title, but it was about this crazy circus that came to town, and one of the things they had was a Medusa with the snakes for hair, which would turn…

15:51Jawad MirOh, okay

15:51Roger Nygard... Men into stone.

15:52Jawad MirOkay. Yeah.

15:53Roger NygardI... That was like, it scared the crap out of me, and I loved it at the same time. So I just loved that world of science fiction and fantasy, and Star Trek was one of the many things that captivated me when I was young. And it wasn't until much later as an adult, I knew Trekkies. My brother was a huge Trekkie. I mean, could... There's a dividing line, right? When someone becomes a Trekkie, I think, and one of the symptoms or giveaways is, have you ever been to a convention? If you've been to a convention, I think you've, that you've crossed that line. But also if you start naming, like, my brother named his dog after, Bashir. And…... There's, there's a lot of tells. And I have a good friend who is a huge Star Trek fan, and he's memorized every line of dialogue and could talk endlessly about it and collects the comic books and the, everything. And they're funny people. They're really interesting, colorful, unusual, entertaining people, and what you need for a documentary is an entertaining subject.

16:59Roger NygardAnd so that's what I think struck me originally was, I think this will be really entertaining.

17:05Jawad MirAnd it was because I had seen it long time ago, right? Maybe when a couple of years after it came out. I think it was the early days of internet, '97, '98. And

17:15Roger NygardYeah. '99 it was released to the movie theaters. '97 we started doing festivals.

17:21Jawad MirOkay. So '99 I probably saw it then. And I had forgotten most of it. I mean, it's been like 24 years. And I just saw it yesterday again, and I can't tell you…

17:31Roger NygardYeah, we just restored it, you know, for Blu-ray and scre… HD streaming.

17:37Jawad MirI saw it on, is it Tubi, platform?

17:41Roger NygardThat's, that's one place you can find it, yes.

17:43Jawad MirYeah. So I saw it there, and I can't tell you how throughout the film I had a smile on my face because it was... Obviously it was like, you know, something you grow up on, like Star Trek. Like, I grew up with Generations, like the way you grew up with the original series. And just seeing these people so serious and dedicated into this world of Star Trek, and they have absolutely no concern about what anybody thinks about them, you know, crazy or whatnot… But that's dedication, and I love that about the scene in the dentist office, right? And then the guy who made his own little, robot where he kinda goes inside and his head is sticking out, and he's going on the sidewalk…

18:29Roger NygardCaptain Pike. The Pike chair. Yeah

18:30Jawad Mir... Yeah. I mean, it's just crazy the amount of... And then them building their own stuff, they're building their own projects. Absolutely love the dedication. I mean, it was... It, the thing with, your film was there was three-act structure, but it was just a pure dedication to the world of Star Trek, and it was just done in a such a beautiful way, in a nostalgic way. Like, looking back at it, I just couldn't help, like I said, and just smile throughout the film. So thank you for making that, man. It just really…

19:02Roger NygardNo, you're very welcome

19:03Jawad Mir... A memory of that

19:04Roger NygardWell, it had to make us... It had to entertain us first. Denise Crosby and I, and the producers, we had to be entertained, and we had to laugh, and we had to enjoy it, and we had to feel something. And Denise Crosby really was the heart of the film, and that's why it has some really strong emotional moments, I feel like, as well. Because…

19:22Jawad MirYeah

19:22Roger Nygard... Of her connection to the fans and what she drew out of people.

19:27Jawad MirY…

19:27Roger NygardTesting recording of my laptop.

19:28Jawad MirOops. Sorry. What's wrong? Sorry about that. Yeah, so one story that I really loved, and I'm terrible with names from the old Star Trek series, so forgive me. The gentleman who plays Scotty, what's his name?

19:42Roger NygardDeFor… or, James Doohan.

19:44Jawad MirJames Doohan. His story about that woman who was gonna commit suicide, I mean, that was just crazy, the fact that he was able to, over the course of eight, nine years, his connection with her became the reason for her to keep on living. I mean, that's the amount of impact these shows have on people, and we don't realize that.

20:08Roger NygardIt, w… yes. Huge impact. And that's what we discovered when we went out into the field and started meeting actors, and asked them to tell, "Tell us what's your most amazing story about fandom you have?" Not knowing what would come up, but a lot of these stories, you know, became the, repertoire of these actors when they went on the road and went to festivals and, or conventions and told these stories. And there was, there's a limited number. I mean, I, it's sort of, common knowledge, I guess, how William Shatner remembered very little about his time, making Star Trek. But people would tell him stories, and so he would s… sort of appropriate stories and pretty, start telling them, and pretty soon they became his stories, which he would tell over and over again. But they're stories that everyone loves to hear. And so making the documentary, we loved hearing stories, and collected them, and narrowed it down to, a few great ones from each to try to interweave some kind of, a version of a documentary that would hold attention for 90 minutes.

21:15Jawad MirAnd it did. It most certainly did. I'm looking forward to watching Trekkies 2, which I've never seen. So I gotta figure out... I'm curious as to what that one is about. Like, how do you go to that next level after making the first one?

21:28Roger NygardWell, you have two babies on the cover, right? And so it's two.

21:33Jawad MirYeah. No, I know. I know. I'm just, I'm just trying to figure out... I'm just curious, and I… I'm interested, intrigued to see it. But, you know, so did you see Generations at all, like, f… when it came out?

21:46Roger NygardThe feature film?

21:48Jawad MirThe next generation.

21:48Roger NygardOr the series…

21:49Jawad MirI…

21:49Roger Nygard... The Next Generation?

21:50Jawad MirYeah. Sorry, I shouldn't say it's on Generations because there's a movie called Generations. I'm talking about the series or the films associated with the series of the second show.

21:58Roger NygardI've seen all the films, but I've seen very little of the television series that followed the original series. I've seen episodes here and there.

22:05Jawad MirGot it.

22:06Roger NygardBut I didn't get into, go down the rabbit hole of watching every series, which, I mean, there's another tell, right?

22:13Jawad MirYeah.

22:13Roger NygardIf you're a hardcore fan, you've gotta see everything so you can talk about it. Because part of it is going to conventions to talk about these things. You, to talk about it, you have to have seen it all.

22:24Jawad MirYeah. And I think the way you are with the original series, I'm like that with Next Generation, even though I did see Deep Space Nine because it came out around the same time when Next Generation was playing, and Voyager. They still weren't the same thing as, for me, it was The Next Generation. Just because when you grow up on whatever you grew up on, right? And you have that deep connection with those, characters and those series. And now I haven't seen Picard, which I've heard the third season is amazing, so I'm looking forward to checking that out when it's done. But having said that, when your s… film came out from Paramount after it was released, what was the reaction that you started getting from audiences abroad, like, beyond festivals and, you know, beyond executives?

23:09Roger NygardWhen it was first released into theaters?

23:12Jawad MirYeah. When I say… ... Re… first released in theaters, I mean, like, not just from a box office standpoint, but also from…

23:19Roger NygardSure

23:19Jawad Mir... A standpoint of people, like fans just watching it or non-fans watching it.

23:24Roger NygardWell, I'll tell you all three. The box office, it bombed at the box office, essentially.

23:29Jawad MirOkay.

23:29Roger NygardBecause they opened it in 320 theaters, which is pretty good for a documentary.

23:35Jawad MirYeah.

23:35Roger NygardBut on the same weekend as, the fourth, Star Trek movie... Or sorry, Star Wars movie.

23:44Jawad MirOh, yes

23:44Roger Nygard... Which became episode one ultimately. But…

23:48Jawad MirYeah

23:48Roger Nygard... So that murdered us. However, the film gained a huge following after that, and the strategy, the Paramount strategy, was to put it out, and they didn't really market, they didn't really put a lot of marketing behind it. They spent very little on marketing. They just kind of threw it out there. But the fact is, if you put it, just put it in theaters, it gets reviewed, and talked about, and there's an awareness, so that when it comes to video, home video, and, cable, and now streaming, it's done amazingly well. It's huge, and, hugely profitable, after its long tail of profits have come in. So that was the financial result. Very profitable, but not at first. The r… the reviews were largely very positive. I would say about 78, 70 to 80% positive or mixed, and about 20 or so percent hated it. And, you know, can't please everybody.

24:49Jawad MirYeah.

24:49Roger NygardBut there was a similar percentage of fans, I would say closer to 10 to 15% of the fans really hated it, and the rest enjoyed it. And the reason they typically hated it, we found, was that they would usually say their biggest criticism was, "You just showed the wackos. You didn't show enough normal fans." And my response was, "Well, wait a minute. Who decides what's normal?"

25:14Jawad MirExactly

25:15Roger Nygard... Who, what's the yardstick? As a filmmaker, we're looking for exceptional fans. I wouldn't call them wackos, I would call them, they're really interesting fans because they're the exceptional ones. They really stand out in some way. Who's gonna go to a documentary about normal people? Because the, a synonym for normal is average, right?

25:34Jawad MirYeah.

25:35Roger NygardDocumentaries about average people, even the fans wouldn't go see a documentary about average Star Trek fans. They wanna see something abnormal, exceptional, unusual, strange, amazing, funny, intriguing, heartwarming, whatever. It's go… it's gotta be more than, every day, every day person.

25:57Jawad MirYeah.

25:57Roger NygardSo we incorporated that. I t… but I took that question to heart, and I didn't just dismiss it. And so for the sequel, I even asked that question, I, of fans. I had, Denise, asked a lot of fans, "Define what's normal. What's a, what's a normal Star Trek fan?" And that's one section of the documentary is fans explaining what is and isn't normal. And of course, there's no agreement. Everyone disagrees because what's normal is typically what people look at for themselves. The level of fandom that they do for themselves, that's appropriate. Anyone who goes beyond that is a wacko or goes too far, and which is really very, subjective, right?

26:41Jawad MirIt is. It is. And it's not just limited to Star Trek. I mean, if you know, even growing up in a, as a kid, like when you're in school or even in the, in the job environment or family or friends, you know, who decides what's normal? If somebody does, is doing something that is out of the ordinary, people will call you weird. People will call you strange. You know, so who decides that, right? You're, you're absolutely right. Like, people will always talk, and I'm glad that you kinda used that to set that an answer that in the sequel. Now I'm more intrigued to see what that answer was and how you tackled it.

27:14Roger NygardWell… ... The tagline of the film is, "How much is too much?"

27:19Jawad MirNice.

27:19Roger NygardRight? Which is ba… basically, what's too far? What level of fandom is too extreme and should be prohibited, right?

27:28Jawad MirYeah.

27:29Roger NygardAnd who's to say what should be prohibited? That's what's so much fun about that question, and the fans really enjoyed that question and talking about it, and it, they talk about it all the time.

27:40Jawad MirSo did the second one get picked up by Paramount too or?

27:44Roger NygardYes. Well, we, part of our deal when we licensed the first film to Paramount was sequel rights. We had the rights to do a sequel, but they had the, what's called the first right of refusal or first right of negotiation.

27:58Roger NygardSo if we were going, planning to do a sequel, we had to bring it to them first, which is what we did. I sent a letter to the head of Paramount and said, seven years later I said, "Hey, we're gonna do a sequel. Do you want to, have first crack at it?" And ultimately they did, and we made a deal, which was essentially just a repeat of the first deal, which I said, "This, how about this, let's make it easy. Let's just take the original deal that took us a year to negotiate and just use that as the template, and we'll make a number two." And, that's basically what we did. And also what's different about number two is that we went international. In Trekkies one, it's really all in the United States and Canada.

28:39Jawad MirRight.

28:39Roger NygardAnd in Trekkies two, we go to France and England and Brazil and, essentially we got a short list of what, which countries have the largest number of fans, biggest fandom. And so of course something like Germany is going to be on that list because wherever you find, engineers and computer geeks, you're gonna find Star Trek fans, and Germany is a country of engineers.

29:02Jawad MirYep. Yep. And so I guess Paramount didn't finance the second film. Was it more or less so independently financed or it was just a distribution deal?

29:11Roger NygardNo, they financed the second one. They gave us a budget.

29:14Jawad MirOh, that's good. That's fantastic. That's really good. Did you ever see Galaxy Quest that came out the same year that your film did?

29:22Roger NygardYeah, of course. The writers of Galaxy Quest, screened Trekkies when they were researching the script be… because one of the producers was a friend of Denise Crosby's and she arranged a screening for them. And you might notice some similarities in, like, the cha…

29:41Jawad MirOh

29:41Roger Nygard... There's a character who resembles Gabriel Kierner from Trekkies.

29:44Jawad MirYes. Yes, I was gonna say that. Yes. Yes. I noticed that for sure. And actually s… I spoke to Dean Parisot, the director of Galaxy Quest, and he's such a, he's such a great guy, such a nice guy, and we were talking about the inspiration of Star Trek. This was, like, months ago, and I was, I was so glad to see that in Trekkies when I was watching it, that similarity, and I thought I was crazy enough to pick that up, but I'm glad that you mentioned it. I thought maybe I was looking into it too much.

30:11Roger NygardNo, this was a direct lift.

30:14Jawad MirNo, that's fantastic. And what'd you think of Galaxy Quest? Did you enjoy it?

30:18Roger NygardOh, yeah. I, it's, it's great. It's very funny. It, you know, it's satire, and, it also stands on its own story-wise.

30:27Jawad MirYeah. What I, it actually, they had a similar fate as Trekkies did because, their marketing department, DreamWorks marketing department, didn't market the film properly. And then later it became, like, a classic, like a cult classic. Like, on DVD it did really well, and it generated, like, a strong fan base. And it's... I wonder sometimes if studios do that sometimes on purpose or just because it's not worth it from, even though if it's millions of dollars. Like, you know, in the long run they look at the VHS and DVD release dates. But yeah, it had a similar fate as you guys, your film did, but it made up for it later on.

31:07Roger NygardYeah, you know, th… nobody really knows what's gonna work or not work.

31:10Jawad MirYeah.

31:10Roger NygardAnd sometimes they, you know, they've got a limited marketing budget, and they have to allocate this to this film, and if they do, it's gonna take away from that film. And they probably didn't really understand who the audience was for a film like that. And…

31:23Jawad MirThat's…

31:23Roger Nygard... It's hard to know.

31:24Jawad MirIt is. It is. It's funny you mention that about the budget and allocation. I remember in my screenwriting class a w… a long time ago, somebody came in from a studio or a production company. I don't remember, but he said, and I still remember this, he said that we have to make bad films, as in, like, you know, plot-wise and just mindless films, to make a lot of money so we can put that money into making great films that are not so expensive, like independent versus mainstream. And that's, I think that makes sense still to this day, that sometimes you have to take... Because at the end of the day, it's a business. Everything is a business. Like, film is a business. Yes, it's an art, but at the same time it's a business too.

32:08Roger NygardYou g… yeah, you gotta drive people to your screen or to your, mo… your, television set or your streamer somehow.

32:16Jawad MirYeah.

32:16Roger NygardAnd so what is it g… gonna be? And how are you selling this? And you can't really sell a product... I… it's harder to sell a product in a complex, multifaceted way. You really have to pick an angle and work that angle. Like, is Galaxy Quest, is it a comedy or is it a science fiction film?

32:33Jawad MirYeah.

32:34Roger NygardWell, and, films or books or anything that sort of straddles the line makes it harder to sell. You know, I d… I had a... I made a film called Suckers about car salesmen. And it really straddles the line between is it a comedy or is it an action film? Or is it about salespeople? What is it? And it's hard. Audiences wanna pigeonhole when they're d… deciding, "Okay, what should I watch? I wanna watch this, that. I want a, an action film tonight." And if something is between bar stools, as they say, it's harder to get a yes, a commitment for viewing from people. So that's one reason why you'll see a lot of y… you know, blockbuster films are very specifically targeted. This is a Tom Cruise action film, the end, here it is.

33:23Jawad MirYeah.

33:23Roger NygardWe know how to market it. Everyone knows what they're getting. They're gonna eat it up with two spoons, and it's a success. But then there's other films that's what they used to do in the old days, right? They would s… give it time to grow legs, put it in a few theaters, and give it time to find an audience. And it's harder because they don't really do that so much anymore. And then with, streamers, like, they will just throw things up there sometimes with no publicity. It's just suddenly here's a new thing on the streamer. Well, how do you know that it's there? And how are you going to find it? And that's what advertising used to do, right? It would tip you off that something exists. You know, they might put it on their front page for a day or something, but then it's buried, and, you need a gimmick, a hook, a way to reach people so they, to find your product, to find your film. You know, my film Suckers, I r… I restored that also recently and put that on Amazon, and it has found its audience all on its own as well.

34:29Roger NygardIt turns out it has a huge cult following among car salespeople. If I go to a car dealership, they go nuts. It's like, Francis Ford Coppola showing up at a gangster convention or something. They wanna…... They wanna take pictures with me. They want me to sign autographs. They, that film, that's the audience. We didn't re… necessarily think of that while we were making the film because it's kind of an exposé. It shows, this is how people get ripped off at car dealerships. I… i… and that's part of the story, but salespeople love that for some reason it turns out. They love the stories. They love... I guess it's like the way gangsters l… maybe like The Godfather, it sort of glorifies them while at the same time tarnishing them.

35:17Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. I... You're so right about that thing about, finding your audience because I know I was victim of that on my first film, and I learned it from there, is that... So my f… first film was about a small village and them trying to, survive because of the hurricanes destroying their seawall, which any, all levels of government in, Nova Scotia, Canada, were denying ownership of. And here you have an interracial gay couple that just moved to Nova Scotia, and they lead the activism. I think what happened... And, the film did all right, but it was just, I was trying to think so many things. "Okay, I should cover this. I should cover that." Try to find all the different audience and bring them in. The, that, but that's not the case. You have to have a very specific target as to what your story is. Otherwise, audience loses interest, and even if they like it, they're not gonna remember it more nece… most, you know, necessarily.

36:22Roger NygardIn my next book about making documentaries, I inter… I interviewed a film representative, a film agent, and asked him about… Sort of that question. It's like, what do you look for in a film that, for its w… to determine its salability?

36:36Jawad MirYeah.

36:36Roger NygardAnd one of his biggest pieces of advice was, "Don't try to make a film for everybody. Try to make a film for a very narrow slice of a demographic that's easy to identify. That's going to be much more saleable." And y… you know, if you're, if you're making a sports documentary, well, is it about, m… male athletes, female athletes? Is it about... Let's say it's about bicyclists, okay? Female bicyclists who, make their own bicycles and... Or is m… na… narrower and narrower until it's a very specific group. That's what he can really latch onto, and f… it's much easier to find a home for.

37:22Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, I agree, man. It's, it's, it's a challenging thing, right? Like, even if you look at war movies, like, some… sometimes... I don't know if you've read that book, they even made a film on it with Sandra Bullock and Chris O'Donnell. I forget the name, but it was based on Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, book. It was like a W… World War II love story, and sometimes you can't figure out if it's a love story or if it's a war movie. And because each elements of the genre were, like, so equally distributed, there was no subplot. You couldn't figure out what was the sub and what was the main. And that hurts because you, it's not targeting the main core of the audience that you think you're reaching, but it's reaching somebody else.

38:08Roger NygardI'm guilty of that, too, when I'm looking for something to watch. I'm looking for a specific, genre or idea or topic, but what I've noticed is that there's generally always a love story in almost everything.

38:22Jawad MirYeah.

38:23Roger NygardIt's ubiquitous because it's, it's, it's the number one story i… in every…

38:29Jawad MirEvery movie

38:29Roger Nygard... Almost every movie has boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back, or vice versa, girl meets boy, blah. It's hard to make a film without that, but that's what we like to watch.

38:41Jawad MirTo watch.

38:42Roger NygardHuman beings…

38:42Jawad MirBut you know what…

38:43Roger Nygard... Like to have their stories told to them in a certain way. And so it's not like the studios aren't regurgitating, cliches on purpose. Audiences like certain stories, and if you deviate from the way they like their stories told to them, they'll go watch something else. And it goes all the way back to the Greeks and Aristotle and the discovering types of stories that audiences wanna watch, and it hasn't really changed much since then. This is the way human beings are. There has to be a fight of some kind. You need conflict.

39:21Jawad MirYeah.

39:21Roger NygardIf there's no fight in a movie, there's no versus, this versus that, Godzilla versus Megalon, or, you know, man versus society, or man and women fighting, y… you know, over a, in a, through a divorce. If there's no conflict, you really don't have a story.

39:40Jawad MirYeah. I agree, man. I agree. I'll send you a link, to one of my films that you might,.. It is actually, we're talking about that thing about, you know, boy meets girl. It's not really about that, but it's more about a bigger issue of migration, but at the same time how one man left his family behind, and him trying to figure the band, the Band-Aid for that while trying to figure out asylum himself. And that's where I think that was the film for me where I figured out, I think I did, that you need to have plot B, and in a specifically plot B way. It's not, it's not gonna come at the same level as the main plot, otherwise the audience is gonna get confused and lost.

40:26Roger NygardYeah. They do. I mean, I find, again, you know me, I'm the same way. I notice, I want to know at the beginning who's my hero, who am I rooting for, and what do they want to achieve? And now, well, if you, if you introduce that in the first five or 10 minutes at the, at the latest, now I'm hooked and I'm gonna stay to the end to see if my hero achieves that goal. If that doesn't…

40:52Jawad MirYeah

40:52Roger Nygard... If there's no hero with a goal by the 30-minute point, pretty, audiences, they get restless. They start look… They'll sh… they'll change the channel.

41:03Jawad MirI don't even think it's first 10 minutes nowadays. I think it's the first 30 seconds to a minute because…

41:10Roger NygardIdeally

41:11Jawad Mir... You have to have... I mean, there's so much stuff out there, you literally have to hook the audience in the first minute for them to hang on. And obviously you gotta maintain it throughout the entire, film, the character journey and rooting for the main protagonist, but you have to hook them on in the first... Like, what, you have to answer who the character is, what they're trying to do, where they're trying to go, and that's it. Like, you know, those questions need to be, like, addressed in the very beginning, and then the, it unravels like an onion, layers of onion unpeeling it until the rest of the movie.

41:46Roger NygardThat's probably, if you notice, a lot of, probably, I don't know, most, a lot of y… your favorite TV shows probably they start with a dead body right in…

41:54Jawad MirYeah

41:54Roger Nygard... The first scene. Now you got a mystery.

41:58Jawad MirYeah. Same thing with Star Trek. I don't know if the old Star Trek did that. Before the opening, they would have that, like, a, you know, like, a pre whatever you wanna call it, prologue, or you wanna call it, like, just the set up the pr… premise, like, what is gonna happen for the rest of the episode. Did the old series did that?

42:16Roger NygardY… you pretty much get introduced to who the monster is right away.

42:20Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. So this was 60 years ago when they were doing it back then, so imagine now it's more needed than ever before because there's so much stuff out there.

42:30Roger NygardIn the first scene, they're beam… beaming down to a planet and some red shirt gets killed by a monster and we're, we're off and running.

42:38Jawad MirYeah. No, it's, it's true, man. It's true. And what... You're, so you're working on Curb, god…

42:45Roger NygardCurb Your Enthusiasm, season 12

42:47Jawad Mir... Curb Your Enthusiasm.

42:47Roger NygardYes.

42:48Jawad MirSo is this your…

42:49Roger NygardWhich w…

42:49Jawad Mir... First season that you're working on or you've done previous seasons too?

42:53Roger NygardI've been on since season six off and on. I missed a season in between when I was working on Veep. But, yeah, I've been on it pretty much since the middle season six.

43:06Jawad MirS… so I, y… you have, you've done work on Veep as well, and obviously it's funny, both of them have Seinfeld connections. And which one, not to put undermine any one of the shows, I've heard they're both amazing. Which one you've had the most fun networking? Obviously, one has six years versus one year, but where did you, where do you, where did you enjoy the most and, you know, in terms of post-production and editing?

43:34Roger NygardWithout a doubt, the greatest job I've, I've ever had is working, with Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, hands down. He's so much fun to work with. He's so funny, and he's, he's, he treats everybody well, in contrast to his character on the show. Which is an exaggeration of himself, but it is him to a great extent exaggerating what's funny about his own life and his own neuroses. But just a amazing job. Working on Veep, I worked for three seasons, and that was a very challenging job, but it's one of the funniest shows that's been on television, and that was…

44:10Jawad MirYeah

44:11Roger Nygard... Really, rewarding. And the Seinfeld connection is when I started on season six of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the three writer producers who were working with Larry David were Jeff Schaffer, who's the co-executive producer…

44:26Jawad MirOh, okay

44:26Roger Nygard... On Curb right now, and he created The League, which I worked on…

44:29Jawad MirGreat

44:29Roger Nygard... For many seasons, which is also similarly improv dialogue style. And David Mandel, who b… was the showrunner, halfway through on Veep, and Alec Berg, who c… co-created Silicon Valley and Barry. And so those three people, writers, went off to do other things and, have kept me employed ever since.

44:56Jawad MirThat's wonderful, man. Are you looking to do something, not now, down the road, like direct something on your own, whether it's a narrative, whether it's a doc or TV or... I mean, right now you're more involved in comedy from what I can see, the Curb and Veep, right? Like, or do something, take on a serious project as an editor?

45:16Roger NygardAbsolutely. I worked on Grey's Anatomy for a season, which I really, pursued that job because I wanted to work on a dramatic show. And one of the reasons that Krista Vernoff hired me is because she was trying to bring the show back toward its comedic roots. And so she was looking for an editor who understood comedy. And, it was still a very dramatic show, but they were bringing back what she called, she said she learned this from the Commedia dell'arte world of theater, what she calls the comedy couple.

45:53Jawad MirHm.

45:53Roger NygardWhen you've got the main plot, the A plot going on, it's a very serious plot with life's at stake and people dying or what have you, there's usually a subplot, a B plot of this comedy couple who are trying to get together and everything's going wrong and they're bumbling and it's funny, and it offsets the much more serious A plot. And you might notice that it was the interns generally on Grey's Anatomy would be, dating each other and having comedic mishaps. And I thought that was a very interesting…

46:25Jawad MirHm

46:25Roger Nygard... Original source for that idea, and it, you'll see that also in Star Trek in the B plot sometimes there's a love story going on, sometimes with a green alien, but…... Or a woman from the past, that Kirk's always falling in love with some woman, somewhere. And it's, the love story's never far behind.

46:48Jawad MirDid you ever get asked or did you ever wanted to work on the re-launch of the original Star Trek, like by JJ Abrams with the, with the new cast, like the young cast? Did you ever wanna be part of that? That came out I think 12 years ago, I think the first one came out.

47:06Roger NygardSure. I mean, yes, I would have loved to, but, I haven't stopped working ever since I met Larry David. And…

47:16Jawad MirYeah.

47:16Roger NygardI started out making my own films, and, you know, your question was

47:20Jawad MirYeah

47:20Roger Nygard... Do I wanna direct other things? And yeah, I've, you know, I've made, a dozen feature films and documentaries, and the documentaries have been a way for me to keep that alive and be directing and producing my own projects on the side. You know, the TV work paid for my documentary passion to a large extent.

47:42Jawad MirYeah.

47:42Roger NygardBut I've also directed TV shows like The Office and The Bernie Mac Show.

47:47Jawad MirOh.

47:48Roger NygardBut editing really captured my heart, in a, probably more than anything else.

47:57Jawad MirIs it because, and I'm just guessing, right? There's a part of me, I love, I've always wanted to be a filmmaker, like a director, but I, this is a long time ago, before S… before even Seinfeld started, or after Seinfeld started. But then I realized there's a thing called editing, right? Which I knew, but I didn't know. And then I, there are times when I really enjoy editing over anything, but there are times when I can't do it because i… it's just a combination of sitting there and not being on physically on the set, and some people like that kind of environment. You know, you're just kind of with couple of people, with the director, with the producer, with your assistant editor. Is that something that attracts you more then? Or is it more so that you're-edit… retelling the story, recreating it or rewriting it in post?

48:52Roger NygardWell, I like both and I try to alternate and sort of,.. The more I learn about directing or writing, the better I am as an editor and vice versa. So, I have alternated and done both, over and over again. The directing aspect is really physically challenging. You've gotta get up really early and you get no sleep and it's very stressful because it, the, everyone's counting on you and the budget depends on your choices, which is all worth it when it's done and you're finally screening it for an audience, all that pain finally pays off. Editing is a sort of very creative, enjoyable process that I can do every day in a non-stressful environment.

49:41Jawad MirExactly. Yeah.

49:43Roger NygardSo it's very enjoyable to be able…

49:47Jawad MirIt is

49:47Roger Nygard... To be creative daily without having to get up at the crack of dawn.

49:53Jawad MirIt is enjoyable, but do you feel at times, and when I say at times, I don't mean all the time, I mean just like, you know, a random day where you're like... Because editing doesn't involve interacting with people as much as directing does, right?

50:06Roger NygardOh, you've gotta be an introvert.

50:07Jawad MirYeah, exactly.

50:08Roger NygardYou gotta be an introvert to be an editor.

50:10Jawad MirI think, I think that's the thing that a lot of us, and there's nothing wrong with being an introvert, a lot of us don't like that aspect. You know, not necessarily the stress or getting up in the morning, I think that's a second thought, afterthought, but it's more so about just having to go out there and just, you're in charge and everybody's looking up to you and you have to make these decision, then you have to be an extrovert, right? The introvert can't do that. Not mo…

50:35Roger NygardRight

50:36Jawad Mir... Most of the time, at least. But…

50:38Roger NygardYou need to be able to cultivate both sides, your, you're introvert and extrovert. I'm a natural introvert and so when I'm directing or public speaking or at a, at a convention or at a, at a film festival, I have to find the extrovert within me, and I can do it. A… a… you know, like talking to you now, the ex… this is the extrovert version of Roger. But I find it, very taxing and it uses up a lot of energy to do so. I'm exhausted after a…... A screening where I've had to answer questions…

51:10Jawad MirYeah

51:10Roger Nygard... You know, do a Q&A afterward.

51:12Jawad MirBut…

51:12Roger NygardWhereas an extrovert, their energy is renewed by that sort of environment. They actually get more energy by being amongst people, and I think that's another symptom of, which one am I, right? I'm natural, I can sit in a room for eight hours and concentrate on editing. There's a lot of people who can't sit and concentrate for five minutes on one thing at a time, and so they're not natural introverts.

51:38Jawad MirBut I also think, I mean, you said that, you know, you have to force yourself to become an extrovert when you're on stage. I mean, I don't know you, but at the same time, because I go through something similar, I d… I can't talk about something on the stage that I'm not passionate about, right? Like, when I say passionate, I don't mean, like, politics, I mean just films. Like, if I, if somebody else told me like, "Okay, go talk to some… on the stage or answer questions about this," I wouldn't have a cl… forget about not knowing, I wouldn't even know how to get up on the stage and talk because it's not my domain and it's not something that interests me. And I think the fact that you are interested in it, that's your natural extrovert personality. I don't think you're pushing it out.

52:23Roger NygardWell, luckily it's there, and so I can tap into it when I need it.

52:26Jawad MirYeah.

52:26Roger NygardAnd you have to be, the, part of being on stage, w… whatever fashion, whether you're an actor or you're doing a Q&A after a screening or you're teaching a class or a, he… you know, leading a podcast or whatever, it has to naturally be within you to some degree, and it is in all of us to more or l… some more or less degree. You have to cultivate it and then you have to amp it up because you have to be engaging. You've gotta engage people. You have to hold their attention, so you've gotta become more. You've gotta become bigger. You've gotta have something in…

52:56Jawad MirThat's true

52:57Roger Nygard... Interesting to say. You gotta be charismatic. You got, you gotta perform. It's a performance. People need to be led. They need to be, to feel your energy because they respond to your level of energy. If you go up on stage and your monotone, delivery puts them to sleep, that's not gonna work, right? You gotta, you gotta bring it on.

53:19Jawad MirYeah. Well, that's why most of the pro speakers who are really well speakers are, they know how to perform, whether it's with high intensity or someone like Steve Jobs who would pause for, like, five seconds then say something and still grab your attention at the same time.

53:38Roger NygardHis charisma flo… flowed in his own way, in his own style, and there, he was a master of the fact that you have to have levels and when, and, rhythms whereas you can't just yell the whole time. You know, there's moments to be bigger and there's moments to pause and reflect or be, to bring it down, and it's the rhythms that keep people engaged. Because if you're at one level, one gear the whole time, you're gonna lose them.

54:06Jawad MirWell, that's the same thing with editing. It's all about rhythms, right? It's all about beats. It's all about…

54:11Roger NygardThat's life, right? Li…

54:12Jawad MirExactly

54:12Roger Nygard... It's, it's life.

54:14Jawad MirYeah. But…

54:14Roger NygardIn engaging with people. If you're on a date, if you're on a date with somebody, you need to entertain them, right, to hold their attention. And so there are ways to do that, to be less boring than there are ways to be very boring.

54:28Jawad MirYeah.

54:28Roger NygardAnd so whether you're editing, performing, going in for a job interview, I try to remember and be a little bit calculating and manipulative. If I want the job… I have to remember to praise the person right up front. If, you gotta start with praise.

54:44Jawad MirYeah.

54:45Roger NygardW… whether it's them personally, the show that they created, or the way they've decorated their office, find some way to give them a sincere compliment, and then you're starting off on the right foot. Because people like people that like them.

55:00Jawad MirYeah.

55:01Roger NygardAnd they're more likely to hire you if you, if they like you. So that's the first lesson to getting a job. And the more you can get them to talk about themselves, the more likely you are to get the job, because you're already there because of your resume, right? So they just sort of... The only reason for job interviews is to get a sense, an instinct of, do I like this person or not? And if they get a good sense, then you'll probably get the job. Larry David makes all his decisions through instinct. He often says, "I don't know why that's even funny. I do, I dunno why, but I know it is funny. I know it's gonna work." And he is cast… casting, his show, it's all instinct. He'll meet with someone and he knows very quickly. Like when they cast an actor named J.B. Smoove on Curb Your Enthusiasm, who plays a character named Leon Black, Larry went to read with him, to meet with him in a casting session, and he said that Leon had the part, or, J.B.

56:04Roger NygardHad the part before he even spoke a word, because the expressions he made were f… so funny. Larry was already laughing before he even spoke, and so his instinct was, "Oh, you're hired." And so the more you follow your instinct, the better you are…

56:24Jawad MirYeah

56:24Roger Nygard... In general, and it's true for…

56:27Jawad MirEverything

56:27Roger Nygard... E… e… well, basically for everything, right.

56:31Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. When you are working on Curb Your Enthusiasm, are you, ever into this... Well, obviously you probably have the script when you're doing the post-production just to make sure everything is in, all the notes and everything. But are you in ever cons… like, given the script beforehand before you start editing? Like, before even it goes to production, are you ever on the set watching the performances or watching how it pans out?

57:00Roger NygardRarely on the set, and yes, the scripts are sent. I don't even read the script. It's alm… it's almost irrelevant to me what they wrote on a piece of paper, because I am going to react to the footage. The footage tells me what to do. The script was a hope. The footage is the reality…

57:18Jawad MirYes

57:18Roger Nygard... That I have, what I have to work with. And so the reason I will read a script though is if it's a new product or a new project and I need to know, well, is this good enough to intrigue me to say yes to do the, do the job. So I'll read it for that reason. But when I'm editing a scene, I'll usually, I'll edit the scene without looking at the script. Once I finish a cut of the scene, I'll go back and read the scene just to see if I missed any intent…

57:43Jawad MirSure

57:44Roger Nygard... That they had written in there that might be in a footage that I overlooked, as sort of a, just a fail-safe. But generally, I like the footage to impact me fresh, and the jokes impact me fresh, the way it will an audience when they see it for the first time.

58:01Jawad MirYeah. And i… is it a multi-camera shoot, just like Seinfeld?

58:07Roger NygardWell, the old m… style of multi-cam is sort of dead.

58:11Jawad MirSure.

58:11Roger NygardThere are very few shows that have a live studio audience. But they call it single camera even though everyone shoots with two or three cameras at the same time now.

58:22Jawad MirThat's what I…

58:22Roger NygardSo…

58:22Jawad Mir... What I meant, yeah. Yeah.

58:24Roger NygardYeah, there's three cameras going at once at all times.

58:29Jawad MirThat helps. That helps because, I mean, yeah, the audience stuff, they tried that with a show that Jamie Foxx did with his daughter, I think, on Netflix. They had, like, I don't know if the audience was actually in, they were actually on the stage the way it used to be with Seinfeld, Full House, and all those shows, but you would hear their laughter and it bombed. Like, it got canceled like after five, six episodes. But yeah, that system is gone, like, where the audience laughs, unless it's like a Tonight Show, with one of the late night, comedians. And in terms of post-production, do you guys do Avid Pro Tools or...?

59:06Roger NygardAvid, yeah, every show I work on is an Avid show. That's really the industrial strength…

59:10Jawad MirYeah

59:10Roger Nygard... M… version of editing. But the, lower budget shows generally use Premiere now at this point. Final Cut used to be on its way to becoming king, and then they blew it when they, totally revamped the software.

59:25Jawad MirDon't, don't even get me started. I went to an Apple, what was it called? A FCP user meet in Las Vegas in 2009, and they were like, "We're gonna introduce Final Cut." And I remember the presentation they did. It was the first time they were gonna reveal... N… not, it wasn't an Apple presentation, but it was gonna, they were gonna give it more depth, more than what Apple normally do with their own stuff. And everybody was, like, amazed and everything, but literally the next day everybody went back home and hated it. Like, I used to be a Final Cut user up until version seven, and then I switched to Premiere, and…

59:59Roger NygardSame here

1:00:00Jawad Mir... And then I... Yeah, and then I did DaVinci for a little bit, and now I'm getting into Avid. I'm just waiting on next project, whatever that is, and I wanna edit that on Avid just to get myself rolling into that, because it just a more s… just so more stable and more, multi-user workflow and everything. But yeah, Avid is the way to go. Avid is the way to go.

1:00:24Roger NygardI tell editors when they move to Hollywood, you know, if they're looking for work, you may have done most of your work in film school and on lower budget project, projects on Premiere, but you need to know Avid if you wanna move up in the business.

1:00:37Jawad MirYeah, you do, 100%. Tell me about your book that you're working on, as we come to the closure. What, tell me more about the book and when is it out. Yeah.

1:00:48Roger NygardOkay. Well, the previous book came out last year, and so I've been working on the new one ever since. And this one, I haven't settled on a title yet, but it's about how to make documentaries using Trekkies as the, case study for, a lot of it. But I also spoke with m… many other filmmakers, documentary filmmakers like Davis Guggenheim…

1:01:09Roger Nygard... Who, y… you're nodding your head. You know, an in… in… An Inconvenient Truth, is what he won his Oscar for.

1:01:18Jawad MirYep.

1:01:19Roger NygardAnd, I just recently interviewed Ken Burns, and he was amazing to talk to. I mean, he's made dozens of award-winning documentaries. Obviously, the Civil War is what he's perhaps most famous for, and baseball and jazz, many others. And…

1:01:38Jawad MirWhat about Michael Moore?

1:01:40Roger NygardHe hasn't responded, so… ... You know, I tried, sent a few emails, and that's all you can do. And so…

1:01:47Jawad MirYeah

1:01:47Roger Nygard... The ones that say yes are in the book. So I've got about, eight or nine other documentary filmmakers, very successful, as, you know, in the business, and a very diverse group whose wisdom that I also include, as well as my own experience, in how to make a documentary, how to be c… how to creatively find the next project, and then how to be successful, financially successful…

1:02:14Jawad MirYeah

1:02:14Roger Nygard... As a documentary filmmaker, because there's a way to do it, and all of the people I talk to have made that their career. And there's a reason why that they've been successful at it. So I really wanted to get to the heart of the business side as well as the creative side, like how to interview people. There's a trick to interviewing people. The, there are g… ways to do it well, and there's ways to do it badly. For example, if you ask someone... If you have someone in an interview chair, you wanna ask one question at a time. That seems obvious kinda, doesn't it? But, you might find yourself, and I've seen a lot of interviewers, they'll ask multi-part questions, and people only answer the last part of the question. And if you ask a question, don't start offering guesses of what the answer will be. You know? Talk about being a doctor. Is it like being this, or is it like that? Is it like... No, just let them answer, right? And don't ask yes or no questions.

1:03:15Roger NygardDo you like being a doctor? Yes. And then they're shut down, right? You wanna say, "Tell me what it feels like to be a doctor," or, "What was it like when you had the, that traumatic moment in the ER? Describe everything that happened." You know, now they're off and talking.

1:03:35Jawad MirYeah.

1:03:35Roger NygardSo the, there's, there's a lot of, tips. Like, when I worked on a, I worked on a documentary series called The Comedy Store… ... Which is about the history of this building in Los Angeles and all the comedians who came through it. Every big-name comic came through there. And the director, is a comedic, comedian writer named Mike Binder, who I had worked with before on a film called Black or White and other things. And Mike had never made a documentary before, and I... So he already shot several interviews, and my biggest advice to Mike was, "After you ask a question, just shut up," because there's a tendency to wanna fill that awkward space…

1:04:17Jawad MirYeah

1:04:18Roger Nygard... 'cause it feels awkward. Let the interviewee fill the space. Just ask the question and shut up. The first p… person to speak loses. And so his interviews got much better when he started doing that, and, those moments of silence actually, brought a wealth of really great moments to the, to the documentary as well.

1:04:43Jawad MirYeah. One thing, one thing that I've learned, very early, and I never expected myself to pull that off, but you just learn that, you know, as you start interviewing people, I always now, no matter what it is, whatever, whoever I'm speaking to, whatever I'm speaking about, my first question is, because most people are not used, are comfortable with camera or having, you know, answering in front of this lens and a director, a cinematographer, is like, "Who are you? Where were you born? What's your story?" Not in those together parts, but just, you know, build it up slowly because they love, they know that story by heart because they've lived it. And they change their... They become so comfortable in a matter of 10 minutes than you. And that footage never sees the light of the day. It's just to make them easy, feel comfortable, easy. And then they just go on their business and answering questions as they should.

1:05:39Roger NygardTh… that's a good piece of advice too. Yeah. And I feel like when I have someone in the interview chair, I wanna warm them up, so I'll start with easier questions, right? You wanna get them…

1:05:50Jawad MirYeah

1:05:50Roger Nygard... Going. And generally, easier questions are factual questions. Tell me about how many books you've sold. You know, tell me what it was like, growing up in Baltimore. That's, those are easy questions to answer. Now they're getting warmed up.

1:06:03Jawad MirRight.

1:06:03Roger NygardThen you can throw in the, dif… difficult questions. You know, wait till you're getting into it, to the middle of the quest… You know, so what do, is it a sin to masturbate? Right? You wanna, you don't wanna open with that one. You wanna slip that one in later.

1:06:21Jawad MirYeah. You just... I find people are more comfortable, the pattern that I've seen, when you ask them about their childhood. They love answering that because it's something that you have forgotten about, that you don't talk about or you think about as much, and it just takes you back into the memory, you know, and just to just, they just love talking about it. And it's not being narcissistic or anything. It's just we all like to revisit that part of our life, you know, in our heads or while talking to family members or friends, and people become comfortable that way. But yeah. No, man, I'm, wh… your book is expected to come out this year or next year, you think?

1:06:56Roger NygardEnd of the year, yeah, before Christmas, in time for the holidays is the goal. So, that's the plan.

1:07:03Jawad MirWell, I'm looking forward to that. Maybe, we can, chat about things more as the book is about to be released, and would love to have you on again.

1:07:12Roger NygardAnytime

1:07:12Jawad Mir... It's been a blast, it's been a blast talking to you, man. I really enjoyed it. I hope you feel the same way. And, really looking forward to chatting more with you, and if you have anything to add at the end, feel free to.

1:07:24Roger NygardWell, to me, the most important thing about what I do, and what we all do, is a lesson I learned when I made my documentary The Nature of Existence. And that's a documentary about existentialism, which it's an impossible topic to make a documentary about, I discovered, because how do you make a documentary about, existence? Ex… the philosophy of existentialism, which if you wanna break it down to listeners who are, "What's that?" It's basically asking the question, why do we exist?

1:07:58Jawad MirYeah.

1:07:59Roger NygardAnd philosophers throughout history have been wrestling with that. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, Camus, you know, I'm not the first person to wonder what's the point of everything. But I became obsessed with that. That's typically what happens when I make a film. I become obsessed with a topic, and then I s… I'll read a stack of books, you know, five feet tall, and s… and learn everything I can about it, start writing questions, and then seek out the experts, many of which are in the book… the authors of the books I've read, and go and interrogate them until I solve the mystery, right? And the mystery, like the mystery of Trekkies was, why this show? Why are these people so obsessed with this TV show? The question for The Nature of Existence was, why do we exist? What's the point of everything? And so I tracked down experts all over the world. Religious experts, were the obvious first choice, so I talked to people from all the major religions, a… and I chased the Pope in Italy and I talked to the Pope of atheists, Richard Dawkins in England. And, Christians and Hindus, I went to India and tracked down s… Sikhs and, Jainists, and Hindus, and Muslims.

1:09:09Roger NygardI went to China to talk to Confu… Confucianists and Daoists, and asked them all the same set of questions about why are we here and what are we supposed to do with our lives, and is it a ma… is it a sin to masturbate? And I talked to, particle physicists and, scientists, and I found actually that the scientists were the most philosophical out of everybody.

1:09:33Roger NygardParticularly the particle physicists, because they are looking for the original building blocks of the universe, the origin. What is the origin of all the particles? You know, we used to, m… molecules used to be the smallest thing, then it was atoms, and then it was electrons and neu… and neutrons and protons. And then it was quarks, and then it was strings, and it's ever m… more granular as they keep taking apart the universe. And once they can determine where did those particles come from, then we know where we came from, because we're made of all these things. And it puts them into a very philosophical state of mind, I found. Loved, I love talking, to the scientists and the cosmologists about what's the point of everything and is it a sin to masturbate. And…

1:10:17Jawad MirWell…

1:10:17Roger Nygard... What, here's what, I'll give you a quick quote. I asked…

1:10:19Jawad MirSure

1:10:19Roger Nygard... A physicist at Oxford, "What is the soul?" And he had the greatest short answer. He said, "The soul is a type of wishful thinking that resides in the frontal lobe." Oh, great answer, and that's in the documentary. That's what you want, right? You want a very succinct soundbite that's intriguing, makes you think…

1:10:43Jawad MirYeah

1:10:43Roger Nygard... It's kinda funny, and perfect. So I collected a bunch of those. And ultimately, what I learned from that whole process of talking to all these people, which is what a lot of, everyone eventually goes through this, you know, what's the right religion I should be following? What's the right way to live my life? Why do I feel so aimless and pointless? And w… w… there's a something missing inside me and I need to fill it. And a lot of people fill it with drugs or they fill it with raising a child for 18 years until they get old enough to kick 'em out of the basement, but that becomes the focus of their life. What I learned from that whole process is that we're all trying to be happier, right? The question that we're, we're asking is, how can I be happier? And when I spoke t… to, one of the, people in the film, I discovered that's a false question.

1:11:44Roger NygardIt's a false goal, because you can't really pursue happiness. It's a side effect. Happiness is a side effect of having a purpose in life. And so once you know your purpose, once you have a purpose and are following it, chasing it, pursuing it, happiness comes automatically.

1:12:05Jawad MirYep.

1:12:06Roger NygardAnd so the real question then is, okay, what is my purpose? Well, you can't, no one can give you a purpose. It's something you give yourself. And if y… if you look within, you find we're naturally designed to be creative. There's really two opposing forces in the universe, you know? In my, this is my reading and what I learned from all this, right? There's, you know, the yin and yang of the universe is creation and destruction. Stars are being born and they're being, they're being destroyed all the time. So you and I, w… we humans, we can align ourselves with either one of those forces. We can be destructive our whole lives or we can be creative. And it's easier to be destructive and I know a lot of people, you pr… probably someone comes to mind to anyone listening, someone who's destructive in their life. They're des… it's easier to smash things and to tear things down, to critique things…

1:13:01Jawad MirYeah

1:13:01Roger Nygard... To break things… It's much harder to build things up. S… and what... I'll give you some examples. Anyone, you can be creative by, hosting a podcast, by writing a book, by writing a poem, by creating a new dance, by planting a garden and bringing forth life. You're creating life. By, a… any, it doesn't matter, poetry or, pottery. It's why a lot of people when they retire, they suddenly take art classes because they need to get back into creating something. And if you find you're depressed, it's because you're not being creative. O… one reason anyway. There's many c… there's chemical reasons and, lots of other things at play. But one major reason in modern human society is that people have lost touch with their creative impulse. They've gone to jobs that don't allow them to express their creativity. They're just a cog in the machine.

1:14:02Roger NygardThey're moving papers from one box to another. So if you wanna be happier, this is what I learned, be creative every day in some way. It doesn't really matter how, it just has to be important to you. A… and so get a piece of paper and start sketching, or write a poem, or keep a journal. Or des… if you're an architect, right, you design a house. Or if you're in business, you b… build a new business plan. I make documentaries or write books or edit projects, edit c… comedy television. Anyone can f… you can find something, making, you know, pottery or painting, whatever. Find something which, you know, you could call it a hobby, that you can do daily for a few minutes a day. F… make time for it, and express yourself creatively. And you will just generally be a happier person because now you have aligned yourself with what is innate within human beings, what we need to do. And then you'll finish your whatever it is eventually. Maybe it's a painting or a sketch or, a new bicycle or a garden you planted, and then share it with your social group.

1:15:08Roger NygardBecause we're social beings…

1:15:09Jawad MirYep

1:15:09Roger Nygard... And we need to receive feedback on what it is that we've created. And that w… is a self-fulfilling loop that you'll keep doing it, and, it, you'll be a much happier person and a much more productive person than you were if you weren't being creative in some way. That's the lesson I took away from my, study of existentialism, and making that documentary about it is what it took for me to learn that lesson. So

1:15:43Jawad MirBut…

1:15:43Roger NygardThere's my diatribe. I've...

1:15:46Jawad MirNo, it, you know, it's so funny you mention that. I have this conversation with pretty much every person that I know, is that if you take... A lot of people that I know, and I'm sure you know too, they're just doing that mundane nine-to-five job for security purposes, for cash, for money, and all that stuff, which is fine. But I'm like, "If you can find something every day for 30 minutes, right? Whatever the hell it is, if it's interior designing, it's cooking something, whatever it is, that makes you happy, and you do that for one year, 30 minutes a day," and everybody says they don't have time, you, in two years, that thing will become your full-time thing and your job will go away. But the problem is people don't wanna follow that because people don't wanna put time and effort into it. Everybody has an excuse, for whatever reason. And I, and I think that's what diff… and you're so right, man. Like, that's what differentiates people. It's not about money all the time. It's happiness does not come from money in the long run.

1:16:46Jawad MirIt comes temporarily, sure, but you have to do something that puts a smile on your face and not just do something that other people are telling you all the time, because that's not happiness. But anyways, we can just go on about this all, long for a long time.

1:17:02Roger NygardI concur, doctor. Ex… you're exactly right that…

1:17:06Jawad MirOh, I'm not a doctor

1:17:06Roger Nygard... That's the problem. It, part of w… what we're fighting against now though is the invention of social media. Because where people express their creative energy now is in posting, a message on Facebook or on Instagram, and that s… it's like candy. It's not really substantive food for our creative needs. It gives us a brief moment of feeling creative, but then that message or that tweet, it's gone. It doesn't exist anymore. There's nothing to show for it.

1:17:40Roger NygardYou haven't really created anything that's permanent, like if you had made a piece of pottery or if you had written a poem or, planted a garden. Those are more tangible…

1:17:55Jawad MirYes

1:17:55Roger Nygard... And with a result. And so try to stay off of Facebook and stay off of Instagram. I stay off them almost entirely, except when it's time to promote my book, and then I'm on it to pr… 'cause it, then it serves a purpose for me, you know, a business purpose. But it…

1:18:09Jawad MirThat's…

1:18:09Roger Nygard... I try not to let it suck away my creative energy. I try to avoid it and put my creative energy for four hours a day into my writing and my books. Or when I'm editing, that takes my creative energy for the day.

1:18:21Jawad MirYeah, I think people are just so more in tune to instant gratification and short-term happiness, which they think is…

1:18:27Roger NygardIt's easier

1:18:27Jawad Mir... Yeah, it's easier. And not just social media. It's just, you know, even if you go and buy like a brand new BMW or, I don't know, Maserati, whatever, and you're gonna try to impress people out there. Yeah. Or even buying an iPhone. Like for example, you and I, if we go to Apple Store, I need a new phone. Okay, fine. It will bring me happiness. You go buy it. I guarantee you, seven, eight days later at the most, that happiness is gonna go away because it's not…

1:18:51Roger NygardIt's called habituation, right?

1:18:53Jawad MirYeah.

1:18:53Roger NygardThings be… we get used to it. It's no longer novel The same thing happens in relationships. Habituation. The person becomes s… too s… too much the same because y… you've spent so much time together. And so, I mean, I made a documentary called The Truth About Marriage, and that's another of my obsessions that I try to solve the mystery of why is it so difficult for human beings to be in relationships? Something's wrong here if 50% of the marriages are ending. That product has a 50% failure rate. They would send that designer back to the, to the shop i… in any business. But not in a marriage. Everybody wants one. You're, everyone's signing up for this defective product, and so why is it? You know, so I got became obsessed with that mystery to solve as well.

1:19:41Jawad MirI gotta watch that. That sounds very interesting. I gotta watch that.

1:19:45Roger NygardI found the answer. There is a very simple answer. You know, if you want, I'll tell you that one, too. If, you know, how much time have we got?

1:19:52Jawad MirGo ahead. I can guess the answer, but go ahead.

1:19:58Roger NygardWhat I solidified or distilled down out of, 100 plus interviews in, I mean, in an 85-minute movie, if I was gonna impart one piece of advice to people listening today in relationships or wanting to improve relationships, here's what all the experts told me. We're all doing relationships wrong to some degree, right? We could be doing better. Let's put it that way. And no one... There's no class in high school for how to have a relationship, which there should be. Because arguably, the most important thing you're going to do in your life is pick a life partner, and so you should have some guidelines for how to do it better, right? Instead of just kicking everybody out through trial and error. Go figure it out. Good luck. No wonder everybody's having a hard time and there's a 50% failure rate.

1:20:50Jawad MirYeah.

1:20:51Roger NygardIf you wanna do better, if you, if you're in a relationship right now, I'll give you a little experiment you can try for a week, and you'll see for yourself if this works and improves. You can improve your relationship, your communication, your sex life, your happiness. Everything will get better if you do this s… basically a very simple thing. When you come home, first I'm speaking to the masculine partner in a relationship. And typically, we all have masculine and feminine traits to some degree. I'm…

1:21:24Jawad MirYeah

1:21:25Roger Nygard... Typically more masculine than feminine generally, and some people, are the reverse. But what you find is that in most relationships, one partner has more masculine traits and the other has more feminine traits.

1:21:37Roger NygardYou don't often find two masculines together and two feminines. Ev… even in gay couples, one is more of the wife and one is more of the husband. Whatever you wanna call it.

1:21:46Jawad MirRight.

1:21:46Roger NygardWell, let's say if you're the masculine partner, your feminine dominant partner needs to be heard daily. So what you need to do is go home and put your iPhone on airplane mode, and then make eye contact and say, "Honey, how was your day?" And then shut up. You know, or, "Honey, how are you feeling? What's new?" And then just let that person, let your part… let your, let your partner talk for about 15 to 20 minutes. It's sort of like a, an emotional nutrient that we both need, but the feminine partner needs it more than the masculine partner. And if that person is not getting that nutrient, that need met, eventually, the, they'll start to feel anxious and then angry, and it leads to arguments and eventually a breakup, or you go to therapy. So you can avoid therapy, or you can make, you can delay it, or you can just make things better by, "Honey, how was your day?"

1:22:48Roger NygardAnd then listen. To, and, on the, other side of it, if you're the feminine partner, or the partner with the more of the feminine traits, don't ask for more than 15 to 20 minutes. Don't get greedy. That's, the ma… the masculine brain can only handle about 30 minutes maximum of emotional talk before it starts w… what John Gottman calls flooding. Flooding happens. And it o… it's overloading. It's just not designed for more than about 30 minutes of talk about emotions. So get your 15 to 20 minutes, and c… a lot of couples have time with the... It's like coffee time, where the kids are away and where they j… they can have their moment. And just try that experiment. "Honey, how was your day?" Shut up for 20 minutes, then go watch the game, and see if within one week everything hasn't changed a little bit. And the reason why is the nutri… nutri, you know, emotional nutrition is being fulfilled that wasn't before.

1:23:51Roger NygardThat person wasn't being heard. Like, the eye contact. You're listening. You're actually listening, and you're not... Don't offer any advice. That's the mistake that a, the masculine brain wants to offer advice.

1:24:03Jawad MirYeah, I'm a lot of advice

1:24:03Roger Nygard"Well, you should go, you should... Well, if you're not happy at work you should quit your job." And, like, you're just making it worse. What you should offer is empathy, and the way you offer empathy is just go, "Oh, That's terrible. That's wonderful." Don't say anything more than that. Just acknowledge the feelings and listen, and then go watch the game. The other half of it, though, is the nu… the nutrition that the masculine dominant partner needs is what Jo… John Gray in Men Are from Mars calls going to the cave. The masculine partner wants connection as much as the feminine dominant partner. But once the masculine dominant person has the connection, then the yearning for freedom starts to grow, and he wants to ch… to draw away again, and goes through this cycle of connection and disconnection. Whereas the fem… feminine dominant tend, wants connection all the time And feels like it's...

1:25:05Roger NygardSomething's wrong if there's a, of dis… moment of disconnection. So what the feminine dominant partner needs to do to allow the masculine dominant partner to get what they need is to allow for disconnection. Allow that partner to go to the club, go on the business trip, to go golfing with his friends. And so the way to facilitate that, the, one wa… one way is to announce the disconnection. "Honey, I'm going golfing with my friends on Sunday." So you've announced the disconnection, and at the same time you announce when the reconnection will happen. "And I can't wait to see you for dinner that, on Sunday night at 7:00." So now there's no reason for the, that, the partner to feel nervous or insecure because you... "Okay, oh, it's the disconnection and I know when we'll be back together." If both partners can do those two things for each other, and we all need both, but you just need each in varying degrees.

1:26:06Jawad MirYeah.

1:26:07Roger NygardThat's, if I was to distill down the most important advice I could give anyone that I learned from talking to all these experts, that would be it.

1:26:17Jawad MirYou know, I think you should consider marriage therapy.

1:26:20Roger NygardI just listened to a whole bunch of marriage therapists, and that's what they all said in…

1:26:25Jawad MirYeah, no

1:26:25Roger Nygard... In essence.

1:26:26Jawad MirIt's true. It's, you know, I always say there's... You can... The most difficult thing in life, whether you want to or not want to, is surviving a marriage. If you... 'Cause marriage is difficult. Every day is difficult. It's not that it's bad, it's difficult. It's challenging because there are two different people, two different personalities, and trying to find that balance. And if you can survive marriage, you can survive anything in life. That's just my belief. Because everything else…

1:26:54Roger NygardYeah, that's... It's so challenging, right?

1:26:56Jawad MirIt is. Very challenging.

1:26:58Roger NygardAnd it's…

1:26:58Jawad MirNot in a negative way, like it's both ways, right? Like, it's just two people trying to find the right balance, and you're even discovering yourself too, because then you have to figure out, okay, how to adjust myself to the other person's needs and vice versa.

1:27:12Roger NygardAnd there's a reason, too, that we... W… we're out of balance with who we are innately and versus what our culture expects us to be. And this is what I learned from the anthropologists. Because we, humans evolved in a, in a, nomadic society in small groups of 140 or fewer.

1:27:31Jawad MirYeah.

1:27:31Roger NygardAnd that's wh… which is called Dunbar's number. We don't... We can't connect with more than 150 people emotionally. That's the maximum. So we…

1:27:40Jawad MirI was watching that somewhere. I think Jordan Peterson, I saw he said that. But go on, sorry.

1:27:47Roger NygardBecause we evolved in these small groups where everybody knew everybody, and, a… a… and you knew if somebody wasn't pulling their weight, and that's how everyone behaved because they knew everyone knew everybody's business. Everyone shared everything. The... All they had basically was what they could carry and as they moved from place to place. When things really changed was about 6,000 years ago with the discovery of agriculture, and we started... We stayed in one place now and we no longer moved around. And then civilization grew. Like small towns grew, and then cities, and now it's way more than 150 people. And so we, now we needed laws and different ways of interacting, and now our culture began evolving much faster than we could.

1:28:32Jawad MirYeah.

1:28:32Roger NygardAnd so we live in a culture now that expects behaviors that are out of sync with what is true human nature. And that's why everyone's so freaked out and having a hard time in relationships because they're not really what's natural for humans.

1:28:49Jawad MirYeah.

1:28:49Roger NygardBut it's what's natural for our culture currently.

1:28:52Jawad MirThat's right.

1:28:52Roger NygardMonogamy is the rule of our culture. And so we all are monogamous on the outside, and that's the face we show the world, but we're not really monogamous. What we are is serial monogamists. We're, we're with somebody and then we dump them and we're with somebody else through this series of people throughout our lives, most people. And that... If we were truly monogamous, we would stay with the first person that we mated with for our entire lives like a pair of wolves or something, but we don't do that.

1:29:27Jawad MirYeah. And, you know, just lastly I would say is that I think one more problem is... And this happens on both sides, m… you know, husband and wife, is that a lot of decisions or reactions that we make, whatever the conversation is not based on what we think all the time. It's based on what we think the society thinks about it or family members thinks about it or friend. And so we are always basing every discussion, I shouldn't say every, but majority of the discussion based around other people's opinion who have absolutely nothing to do with what you're doing. Steve Harvey said it really nicely. He's like, "You know, marriage is like a circle. You hold your hand of your partner and you don't let anyone in, period." In terms of your decisions, in terms of your emotions, in terms of your secrets, whatever that is. And, but yeah, it's, it's... We can always talk about these things. It's a never ending conversation. But I wish people adapted to it more quickly.

1:30:28Jawad MirAnd you should write a book about marriage. I think it would be... It will do wonders.

1:30:32Roger NygardI did.

1:30:34Jawad MirOh, you did?

1:30:34Roger NygardIt goes with the documentary.

1:30:37Jawad MirOkay. So you…

1:30:37Roger NygardIt's a companion book to the doc…

1:30:39Jawad MirWonderful

1:30:39Roger Nygard...umentary, yeah.

1:30:40Jawad MirI gotta look into the documentary and then maybe I'll look into the book too. But this is great, man. I love talking to you, not just about Trek, thank you so much.

1:30:49Roger NygardThey're all on Amazon. If you have Amazon Prime you can find most of my films.

1:30:54Jawad MirOkay. Well, the thing, problem is in Canada a lot of the films are not allowed to be seen from the US, so it depends on…

1:31:00Roger NygardAh

1:31:00Jawad Mir... The rights. But I'll…

1:31:02Roger NygardRight

1:31:02Jawad Mir... Check it out. I'll check it out. Great, man.

1:31:06Roger NygardWell, it's my pleasure talking. Thank you very much.

1:31:08Jawad MirLikewise, man. Likewise. Let's stay in touch, and, looking forward to your book. I might be in LA sometime in, May if you are free. Maybe our times align, maybe we can hook up for a coffee.

1:31:20Roger NygardYeah. Well, w… I consider you a friend now, so it'll be wonderful.

1:31:26Jawad MirTake care. Thank you so much, buddy. Have a good one.