Stewart Brand: America's Last Great Optimist

Factual America

16 Jun

Written By

Stewart Brand has been at the forefront of multiple societal trends since the 1960s, and now he’s trying to bring back the woolly mammoth and other species from extinction.

Is this folly or is he once again ahead of the curve?

Stewart might just be one of the most influential people that none of us have heard of.

He travelled around with the novelist Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. Afterwards, he kick-started the modern environmental movement, by pressuring NASA to release a satellite image of the earth.

Stewart’s Whole Earth Catalog inspired a whole generation, including Steve Jobs. As if that was not enough, Stewart went on to mentor the early pioneers of Silicon Valley.

We talk to the directors of We Are As Gods, David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg, about Stewart’s life and the different inspirational movements he has been involved with.

Since the coronavirus has delayed the releasing of the documentary, we also discuss how the pandemic has affected the film industry as a whole. And we learn what it is like to have your premier at SXSW cancelled at the last minute.

“We are as gods and we might as well get good at it.” - Stewart Brand

Time Stamps:

03:06 - A short background of Stewart Brand.
04:04 - Where David and Jason are based.
04:42 - How the riots have been affecting them.
06:42 - Who Stewart Brand is.
08:26 - Stewart’s involvement with Ken Kesey and the 1960s counterculture movement.
11:40 - The first satellite picture of the earth and Stewart’s role in the environmental movement. 15:26 - The Whole Earth Catalogue and how to rebuild society.
18:30 - What Stewart meant by saying ‘We are as gods’.
21:45 - How Stewart changed his message as the production of the film progressed.
23:02 - The first clip and the history of the hackers conference.
26:00 - The De-extinction Movement.
29:28 - What the film is really about.
32:14 - Whether Stewart is happy and his experiences with depression.
36:11 - How David and Jason got involved with the project.
39:26 - Interviewing Brian Eno and using his music on the documentary.
43:10 - The 10,000-year clock.
45:00 - How David and Jason collaborated with their post-production team.
47:26 - How the coronavirus has disrupted the release of the film.
50:17 - The endless difficulties involved with marketing a film without film festivals.
53:15 - Different people’s reactions to the film's delayed release.

Resources:

We Are As Gods
The Merry Pranksters
The Whole Earth Catalogue
Alamo Pictures

Interesting Reading from Factual America:

Transcript for Factual America Episode 18 - Stewart Brand: America's Last Great Optimist

David Alvarado 0:00
Hi, my name is David Alvarado. I'm one of the directors and producers and the cinematographer for We Are As Gods.

Jason Sussberg 0:07
Hi, I'm Jason Sussberg and I am one of the director - producers of We Are As Gods.

Speaker 1 0:19
Stewart is a lot like the great American P.T. Barnum.

Speaker 2 0:23
Well, Stewart is the intellectual Johnny Appleseed of the counterculture.

Speaker 3 0:27
Stewart might be the Zelig or maybe the da Vinci of cyber culture.

Speaker 4 0:34
It's actually a little bit eerie, how often Stewart has been at the right place at the right time...

Speaker 5 0:39
(...like an invisible string...)

Speaker 4 0:41
...and by the time all the rest of us get there, he's gone. On to something else more interesting.

Speaker 6 0:46
Stewart has this remarkable Forrest Gump superpower to sense where the frontiers are and then be there.

Speaker 7 0:56
He's like, Killroy, you know, he shows up in the background of every important thing going on.

Speaker 8 1:04
He could see into the future that this technology was going to be a huge part of American culture.

Speaker 9 1:10
... Welcome mister Stewart Brand ...

Speaker 10 1:12
It isn't so much that he's ahead of it, he's actually creating the future.

Speaker 11 1:16
Steve Jobs, not surprisingly, was fascinated by Stewart.

Speaker 12 1:20
When I was young, The Whole Earth Catalog was one of the Bible's of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand. It was sort of like Google and paperback form 35 years before Google came along.

Speaker 13 1:34
So many of the ideas that you may find vital, either originate with Stewart Brand, or were really articulated by him.

Speaker 6 1:42
Ideas that seem at the edge of believability, from environmental movement to the technological movement, to genetics.

Speaker 13 1:52
He's also a stubborn bastard.

Speaker 14 1:55
Still loves being the technophile who has the answer.

Speaker 13 2:01
He had an understanding of that humans were on a trajectory towards greater and technical possibilities. And he made an important statement: We are as gods, so we might as well get good at it.

Factual America Outro 2:22
That is the trailer for the soon to be released documentary We Are As Gods. And this is Factual America.

Intro 2:31
Factual America is produced by Alamo pictures, a production company specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for an international audience. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood, and every week we look at America through the lens of documentary filmmaking by interviewing filmmakers and experts on the American experience. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Alamo pictures to be the first to hear about new productions, to find out where you can see our films and to connect with our team.

Matthew 3:06
Stewart Brand is a renaissance man who has been at the forefront of many societal trends since the 1960s. Literally launching the modern environmental movement and mentoring giants of the tech revolution, like Steve Jobs. In his latest incarnation, Stewart is trying to bring back the woolly mammoth and other species from extinction. Is this folly, or just another example of Stewart being ahead of the curve yet again? Recently, we caught up with David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg, the producers and directors of We Are As Gods, which is about Stewart Brand. In the process, we found out what it's like to have your premier cancelled and learned about the challenges of releasing a film in the middle of a global pandemic. David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg, welcome to Factual America.

David Alvarado 3:54
Thank you happy to be here.

Jason Sussberg 3:56
Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Matthew 3:56
Hey, so how are you doing? Are you, where are you guys? Are you both in New York? David, maybe start off for us?

David Alvarado 4:03
Sure. I'm in New York, here in Brooklyn. Jason's in San Francisco. So, it makes for an interesting work relationship. You know, we're 3000 miles apart at all times. But he's in a city that handled the the Coronavirus, a little bit better than my city did, for sure.

Matthew 4:20
Yeah, I saw something recently, New York was more akin to northern Italy and California was more akin to Germany, if you're making European comparisons. But what about I mean, it's been an interesting few months. I'm trying not to be glib about this, but, and also the last week or so, I mean, have you been affected by the demonstrations and now also the riots going on?

David Alvarado 4:42
Yeah, it's true. I mean, New York is really, yeah, it really is. So we're getting hit twice. You know, there's the plague and then there's the riots and so... it's insane going outside to get groceries is, it's pretty interesting right now.

Matthew 4:59
How about you, Jason?

Speaker 14 5:00
I mean, yeah, it's been a, you know, this has nothing to do with the film. But it's just been interesting watching. More or less, feels like a revolution happening outside, literally outside my apartment in San Francisco. I live downtown, in the Mission District. And we just had a major mobilization happen yesterday that shut down all of traffic and we had tens of thousands of people on the street fighting for police reform. So, it's, it definitely feels like COVID has sort of taken a back burner of ever pressing concern and right now it's, it's everyone's focused on police brutality and racial justice. It's heartwarming, but I'm also worried that there's gonna be a second wave.

David Alvarado 5:45
I guess, on both fronts, and in some ways.

Jason Sussberg 5:48
Yeah, exactly.

Matthew 5:49
Well, I think we can, later in the podcast, we have a chance to talk a little bit more about your personal experiences and also how this is affecting the project. But the film our listeners have just heard a intro to that about your film We Are As Gods, gives us a little background mentions a fella named Stewart Brand. Now, I ask this question in every show often because there are a lot of listeners out there who may not know or are too young to remember certain famous individuals. But literally, I would think this is the most influential person that none of us has ever heard of. So, and indeed, I think the film just scratches the surface in some ways about who Stewart Brand is. But David, maybe you can kick us off. Tell us a little bit about who Stewart Brand is.

David Alvarado 6:41
Yeah. Well, Stewart Brand is an interesting character. Like you say he, he's been involved in all sorts of cultural keystone moments from the 60s onward that everybody knows about, but nobody really knows his name. And, and if you do, you're probably already a Stewart Brand fan or you really disagree with him and think he's a, he's a villain. And so he's a perfect character for a documentary in some ways. There's, we think that in Silicon Valley especially, he's, he's sort of just been behind the scenes in the key moments, especially in technology and conservationism. So, the film tries to weave that story onto the tapestry of what he's doing now, which is sort of the focus of the film, which is he's trying to de-extinct or other resurrect extinct species in order to fight climate change, which is interesting to say the least.

Matthew 7:36
I mean, I think you made a, you make a very good point about weaving this story on this tapestry about what he's doing now. But while you were very artful, we're going to be fairly boring here at Factual America and take a much more linear approach. And I think, David, you and I caught up a little while ago and you sort of described him as this Zelig or Forrest Gump character. Well, Jason, why don't we start at, not at the very beginning, but sort of the beginning of when Stewart really sort of rose to fame and that's kind of the beginnings of the 60s counterculture movement. I mean Ken Kesey, Merry Pranksters. say he's the founder of the Haight-Ashbury scene in the 60s. Do you want to say a little something about that, especially since I think you're just a stone's throw away?

Jason Sussberg 8:25
Yeah, that's right. I was. Yeah, I just was at a Ashbury yesterday, actually. Yeah, Stewart, at that point in the late 60s, Stewart was in his late 20s. And that's when he really became a public figure. Before that, he was sort of in and around the San Francisco peninsula area, Silicon Valley, what became Silicon Valley, but he was a Stanford student. And around the late 60s, he got involved with a character named Ken Kesey, who was a sort of a roustabout in the counterculture scene, and was started popularizing LSD and what became the psychedelic counterculture scene. And Stewart was, I heard a lot of people saw him as adult supervision for these young hippies, because he was in his late 20s. And so, what Stewart was doing was sort of at the periphery. He didn't, he wasn't really involved in any thing directly, but he was, he was just a merry prankster going around with Ken Kesey. And then that all changed in '66 when Stewart started getting involved in major acid tests, bigger and bolder acid tests and sort of merging them into these like sensational concerts married with interactive, psychedelic art.

Matthew 9:55
And yet, it's not to much to say they falling out with that scene. But he, I think there's a part in the film where he talks about he just kind of wanted to be his own man. I guess that's also a theme of Stewart Brand that Ken Kesey was the charismatic leader of this Merry Pranksters crowd. And, you know, Stewart wanted to kind of find himself.

Speaker 14 10:19
Yeah, that's accurate to say. I think, he additionally, he wanted to take agency and be his own person. But also at the time, I think he recognized that there was an end point to what they were doing, like Stewart famously wants to start things and then leave it up to the people to move on to the next. And at that point, I think he saw that the, the sort of the writing on the wall that it was this movement that the 60s, the counterculture scene had achieved, what it was going to achieve and now it needed to become something else. And it was time to move on. So, I think Stewart just has a really uncanny nose for something what's popular in the popular culture and sort of riding that wave and then eventually starting something new.

Matthew 11:06
Well, I mean, starting about, you know, on that point about having a nose for these things and sort of being always ahead of the curve. David, he, then we had this, about the same time he got this, he had an acid trip and decided that we all needed to see an image of the Earth from outer space. I didn't know the backgrounds of the story. Some might be familiar with this, you know, Al Gore talks about it in An Inconvenient Truth. But, you know, maybe talk us through this a little bit. It's basically the beginnings of the modern environmental movement, as I understand it.

David Alvarado 11:40
Yeah. It could be viewed that way. I mean, it's interesting, because, you know, someone, you know, my age, I just grew up with images of the Earth in the middle school, you know, in the classrooms, right? Like, I just knew what the world look like from photograph from outer space. But in a lot of people's living memory, that was not always the case, you know. And the early 60s, and just imagine in the 1950s, you know, your idea of Earth was either a drawn map, or, you know, a globe, which, you know, was a representation of the Earth, but it wasn't quite the same thing as seeing a photograph, you know. Like photograph, as we all know, can have such an impact on people. There's photographs that have like, changed the course of entire cultures or wars, if you think back to the Vietnam. And so the power of seeing the Earth in a photograph was something that Stewart started thinking about during this acid trip. It's just like, well, wait a minute, what does it actually look like? I mean, you know, what would the impact be if somebody could see the planet that we live on? Like everything you've ever known could be like, captured in one square frame of a photograph? Like what kind of impact would that have on how we think about, you know, the preciousness of the world. And so, he began a campaign to try to get NASA to release these photographs. Because, you know, it was already the case that we were, we had satellites up in the air, there must have been somebody thinking about taking a photograph of the whole damn thing. And through a course of asking NASA, of asking Congressmen, he even put on a sandwich board and, you know, passed out buttons that said - Why haven't we seen the whole Earth? to pizza places in different colleges and so on. And so it was sort of just a one man campaign to try to get this photograph out into the public. And so when, when NASA finally did release the photograph, it was something that a lot of people look back and say, well, that's interesting. It was around the time that we got that photograph that a lot of these organizations started popping up. The beginning of a sort of new, much more modern era of, of conservationism and environmentalism, and even the image of the Earth itself began, landed on flags and other things. It became an icon. It became a symbol for this is home and we're all on the same, in the same home together, let's all take care of it together. So, you know, it's funny because it's not like NASA said, Oh, hey, Stewart Brand, thanks for asking. Here you go. It wasn't so direct, but it was something that he saw on the horizon and something that might have an impact on in a systematic and large scale cultural way. And sure enough, when it arrived, it did have that impact. And so, it's interesting because his life is full of stories just like that. And when you think about his mission today to resurrect extinct species, he's actually more interested in animals like the woolly mammoth, not just because he wants more mammoths, he wants mammoths back on the planet, living in their ecosystem, and playing their role. He does want that. But it's also because of the symbol, the icon, the image of a mammoth on the Siberian tundra would change how humanity thinks about our role and taking care of the animals under our stewardship. So, he wants us to be inspired to do a better job of being conservationists.

Matthew 15:09
And I think, then it wasn't long after that, that he started The Whole Earth Catalog, which I was not aware of. And it's targeted to the communal living crowd, I guess. Jason, what can you tell us about about that?

Speaker 14 15:25
Yeah, I guess it was a couple years after the whole Earth image came out, that there was a parallel movement going on, not just environmentalism. But around the US and the world there was a lot of civil on strife, not unlike what's going on today. It was 68, tere was the Martin Luther King assassination, the Robert Kennedy assassination. We were at the height of the Vietnam War. There was a lot of distrust in civilization itself. And so a lot of young people wanted to disengage from society and go what they called back to the land. And so Stewart saw a lot of the cities empty, not unlike what's going on now with Coronavirus, and, and these protests. But what Stewart saw was that they, these liberal arts students and you know, young 19-year olds had no idea how to build a water pump or how to grow wheat. And so Stewart had put together a compendium of information on how to go back to the land. And it was a futuristic take on how to rebuild society. It wasn't just how to rebuild a primitive society but it was how to rebuild a society that you'd want to live in, complete with electronics and televisions and also sort of backwards facing on how to turn your own butter. And that Compendium became known as The Whole Earth Catalog. And it came out every, I think quarter, or every half years, spring and fall edition and it, it changed the world. Steve Jobs called it the Bible of the counterculture. Everybody from Al Gore to more conservative people, had a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog. It was, it was seen as, as just tools for reinventing the world.

Matthew 17:20
And I mean, I think, and I duly note your Earth flag on the wall and I think your comments about, your comments about '68 are interesting enough to, this is a political show, but increasingly, when I've been thinking about the election, that's about gonna happen in a few months time, it starts feeling more and more like a, in that way, as the 1968 election. So it will be, I think the timeliness of all this is is apparent. But yeah, I mean, the tagline was "access to tools". The title of your film comes from the introduction, doesn't it, "we are as Gods and might as well get good at it". Would you, in any, even the end, Steve Jobs noted, it closed with "Stay hungry, stay foolish". I think those are some three interesting quotes there. I think you've talked about the "access to tools" and I think someone else refers to it as like the Google of its time, but on paper. But, "we are as gods and might as well get good at it". What, what did, what does Stewart mean by that?

David Alvarado 18:26
Well, so, "we are as Gods and might as well get good at it". It's funny, it sounds a lot like, you know how some people accuse scientists of playing God, that's, that's an often quoted line. And say, a bad TV movie or show it's like, oh, scientists thought they were playing God, you know, trying to play God and they created the zombie, you know, virus that made us all turn into monster zombies and attack each other. Well, you know, it sounds like that but I think what what Stewart is saying is, you know, from the beginning of mankind, you know, you pick up a stick and you can create fire. We have slowly emerged from the, the adolescence of our species. And bit by bit, it's always been by using tools and by figuring out ways to survive in our, in our environment. And for the most part, the tools have been something that have been beneficial to us. Protecting our families, getting food, even, you know, being able to store food, everything we build is kind of is beneficial to us as a species. But there's been a complete imbalance about how we treat the environment that we're around. I mean, we we treat the environment like it's a resource that we can plunder and, and destroy and there won't be consequences because after all, the globe is so big. And and, that turns out that that's very, very wrong. I mean, what we've seen is that humanity has had, by creating more tools and more systems to protect ourselves from the things we care about, we're doing more and more damage to the world. And we've gotten to the point, especially in the last couple of centuries, where we are so powerful that our technology and tools are so immensely unbelievable. Our ancestors wouldn't be able to recognize it as anything other than godlike, right. I mean, we fly in the air, we, we can, we can use energy to move vehicles, we can do all sorts of things that just seemed like magic, even a few hundred years ago. And so, we are as Gods, to Stewart, we are as Gods because we have the technology and the power to do what we want to do. But we are bad Gods, in the sense that we are destroying the planet in the process of looking after those things that we're interested in. So the idea is, well, what if we became good Gods? What if we became, instead just of trying to consume energy and make ourselves more comfortabl, we did that, but also to the benefit of the planet? We start to restore the ecosystems that we ourselves have destroyed. We start to reverse the extinctions that we ourself have caused, we start to suck carbon out of the air that we ourselves put in there, thereby causing climate change. Let, you know, according to Stewart and the people who are thinking like him, let's stop pretending that we are ever going to stop, you know, consuming and protecting ourselves and making ourselves more comfortable. But let's do that only with the benefit of the planet in mind as well. So, that's the balance that he's trying to hit with that quote, as far as I understand it.

Matthew 21:27
And then I guess, David, that he ammends that quote, slightly, doesn't he? I think, towards the end of your film, even saying that, because it probably, I don't know, maybe recognizes it's a bit of the way that quote been misunderstood. I think he says, we are as nature, or something to that effect. Isn't that right?

David Alvarado 21:42
Yeah. Well, that was interesting. He said that towards the very end of our production, I mean, he had been saying we are as Gods, like you point out since the 1960s. And just in the course of our film, he started to, maybe it's because our film focused on these issues so much he was reconsidering it, but he kind of has a sort of, it's not change of heart, I think he means to say is the same thing. But I think he finally realized, well, maybe there's a better way to say what I've been saying. And you're right, his idea was, maybe we are as nature, you know, he wants to use nature to do things that nature was doing anyway, you know, but for the benefit of nature, so why can't we, you know, take our part in to the ecosystems that we've destroyed by repairing those ecosystems in the same way that nature would. So it's, it's an interesting thought, I mean, I think somebody could write a philosophy paper about it, honestly.

Matthew 22:31
Well, I think, you know, there's so many aspects to this individual, I think the next one, as they say in the industry, we should, it's better to show than tell. But Jason maybe you can lead it, give us a setup to the clip we're about to see, that's about the the computer hackers and it's this other side to Stewart Brand. The guy who really truly was there at the advent of the Internet, and all these other things happened in tech and then the computer industry.

Speaker 14 23:00
Yeah, this is probably what Stewart is best known for, at least in, in technology and in personal computing. But the clip you're about to watch recounts the history of the first hackers conference, and how that brought together people that would later become sort of lions of their field and sort of titans of industry. But this, this chapter of Stewart's life is a continuation of The Whole Earth Catalog - Access to Tools. The latest tool in the toolkit was personal computers, and they had just come out. The Apple One, I think came out in 1984. So they were just starting to emerge in the in the consumer market. And Stewart saw this as a potential to give humans superpowers. And so the clip you're about to watch is, is everybody discussing this awesome new power that was up their fingertips and Stuart's involvement in it.

Matthew 24:03
Okay, well, let's, then let's watch that clip.

Speaker 1 24:06
That's my soul is in that

Speaker 2 24:08
Tools I will give away to anybody.

Speaker 3 24:10
The software I wrote is a desk accessory. So it works on top of any other application.

Speaker 4 24:15
This program that allows you to switch very quickly between programs on the map. As I can show you here.

Speaker 5 24:21
Stewart was the first guy to get it. The personal computer was one of the most powerful examples of using machines as tools for independence, and you could build your own world out of this new technology. He saw that hackers culture shared a lot of values with The Whole Earth Catalog ideal - that information should be freely shared.

Speaker 6 24:46
Stewart was one of the first people who realized that actually it was a social movement. That wasn't just like a couple of new toys that appeared. That's very typical Stewart thing to understand that there is something there, to take it seriously, to give it a name. As soon as you call a situation something, the people within it start to look around and say, Oh, yeah, it is something. Yeah. Okay, we're in something together.

Matthew 25:17
Okay, I think that's a great clip. We've got some great images there. We're all going to start looking like the guys from the Homebrew Computer Club pretty soon with our lockdown haircuts and beards and whatever. But we got Wozniak, you got Jobs, you got so many other individuals and quite, quite incredible scenes there. Let's, I mean, obviously I've been dwelling a lot on the sort of Brand's more distant past. But let's bring us more up to the current tim, cause we couldn't even begin to touch on everything that Stewart Brand has had his hands in. But, as you said early on, there's sort of the, the especially as part of the story arc, it's, it's all about this de-extinction movement that Stewart is now part of. And, David, you know, maybe you could explain that and then maybe even why that was the focus of the film, besides the fact that it's, it's what Stewart's focusing on now.

David Alvarado 26:19
Yeah. So, if your viewers see the film, they'll know basically, it's essentially Jurassic Park, right? It comes with all the moral quandaries and arguments and interesting opportunities that Jurassic Park came with and why it's such a great story. Except for dinosaurs. You know, there's no DNA remaining from those animals. They've, they've deceased way too long ago. But there are, there is a lot of DNA for animals that we've killed off ourselves as humans, so woolly mammoth or the Tasmanian Tiger. There's actually museums around the world that have, you know, flesh specimens of these animals. Well, you know, I don't need to explain to your viewers, you know, that there's DNA in there, that we can collect that DNA, we can sequence it, we can figure out what it said. Well, if we can piece enough of those together and combine them with other proximate species, we could, in theory, given once you solve a bunch of bio engineering problems, that would come with giving birth to one of these animals, you could, in theory, create a population of animals that are big enough to support themselves and go back into the ecosystem that they once were. And so, when you think about an animal like the Tasmanian Tiger that was once an apex predator for its region. There's been no replacement for it, it's just, it's just become a less robust system since we humans have killed off that animal. So, what if we introduced the apex predator, the Tasmanian Tiger back to it? Wouldn't the ecosystem just start to go back to the way it was? It might be a little bit different, but the answer, some say is yes. You know, we'd basically be in the process of repairing those ecosystems. So, you know, it's essentially a conservation, an ecosystem repair effort. And it comes with all those delicious problems that Jurassic Park came with, which is like, well, you don't know the unintended consequences, what are gonna, what's gonna happen? You know, things have changed so much. Isn't the animal different enough from the original animal? And we don't know what will happen there. And there's all these questions that are worth asking, and how do you, how do politics work with this? Do we have to regulate this? Who's doing this, who's deciding which animals get de-extincted and into what ecosystems they are returned? So, we're entering a century of biotech and the world's gonna change as dramatically and probably more than the world changed with the Industrial Revolution. And so, you know, we're going to have to have conversations about these topics. And so Jason and I, our hope with this film is that the film kind of helps people start those conversations. Should we be doing this, should we not be doing this, what does it look like and so on?

Matthew 28:57
Well, I think that's a very good point. It brings me to the next question I wanted to ask you. Because, as we all know, any great documentary, you definitely have the main subject. But most great documentaries are about something else, really, when it comes down to it. And so, I wanted to ask both of you and we can start with Jason, since we haven't asked you a question a little while. What is, what do you see is this film really being all about? Is it about hubris? Is it about folly? What, I mean, you know, what do you think?

Jason Sussberg 29:27
Well, yeah, you know, in the film has, we hope the film has many meanings because it's, it's a mirror of Stewart Brand. He is a complicated character. Stewart is a guy that you can't easily easily pigeonhole and say - Oh, you do this one thing really well. He's living extraordinary life. And so, in keeping with Stewart Brand's, varied, extraordinary life, from counterculture to environmentalism, to hackers to biotech. We want this film to touch on many issues. But I think, in a way, every, the one common thread that every chapter of Stewart life touches goes back to that original title of the movie, which is We Are As Gods. I mean, as David's so eloquently put, when he gave his description of the title, but every element of Stewart's life from counterculture, taking acid and having a revolution of mind, that's acting as a God. And being environmentalist, knowing that you can control the fate of the oceans and the tides and the weather, that is being a God. Computers, you have the ability to actually take code and manifest, you know, computer technology that actually changes your physical reality that's acting like a God. And then biotech itself is playing with life. The code of life, the same way that the hackers played with the code, computer code. That is acting like a God. So, we think this is, it's sort of, you know, catching people up to the power that we currently have when we all feel so sort of neutered and aimless, that we actually have this ability to be gods. So, I think if the film had to be boiled down to its quintessence, it would have to go back to the, to the title.

Matthew 31:25
And, I was going to take it to David, Jason brought so eloquently you brought up some very good points that I think may lead to a bit of an odd question. But as you said, he's at the forefront of all these different movements. Mind expanding drugs, but you, you know, even have an element of the film you don't directly have a cause and effect, but it wasn't very soon after, it was soon after that he went through a bout of depression. He's big on technology, but yet you could argue technologies leading to the shortening attention spans that get mentioned in the film. He's leading the environmental movement, but it's an environmental movement. And it's not meant to, you know, spoiler alert, I guess, but which rejects technical intervention, which is what he's trying to do. So is he a happy man?

Speaker 14 32:14
I mean, yeah, it's an interesting question. Is any, are any of us happy? I think it's sort of an existential question. It's, he's complicated. It's a complicated, messy answer. In the movie, we discuss it in detail that Stewart had bouts of depression, sort of, you know, really catatonic sadness that I think we don't, you know, we could call it suicidal. His diaries indicated that it was suicidal. That's happened a couple times in his life. I think people who are firing on all cylinders, you know, tend to have that dark side. I know Elon Musk, while not a popular figure to bring up lately, he's admitted that he struggled with bipolar disorder. I think there's a lot of people out there who are so prolific in their public life, that they're, they're manic and in a way that's been rewarded by our, you know, capital system that requires people to function on firing on jet fuel. But there's a crash that happens at the end of it. And I think Stewart definitely had that crash and it was tied to drugs, but also just in being relentless in his pursuit of what he was trying to do. So yeah, I think, I think a lot of people who are public figures who do extraordinary things have that ability to deplete their resources and their reserves and they just crash into it. That's happened, I think he said a handful of times in his life, different sort of impetuses that brought on that depression. I do think that at the end of the day, Stewart is in this incredibly loving partnership with his wife who is also his business partner with their nonprofit to help bring back extinct species. So it has a really great group of friends, they're all, you know, they all are doing extraordinary things together. So, I think it's fair to say that Stewart is happy. He's also a relentless optimist in a way when there's not a lot to be optimistic about. You know, a lot of times, journalists will often go to Stewart to go get some pull-quote of, you know, sort of Steven Pinker ask. We're better than the world indicates or the data says or that things are actually on the right end of of the curve. Like even in this Coronavirus world, Stewart is relentlessly optimistic about how we get out of this. So yeah, I think, he, you know, his wife calls him America's last great optimist, which I think is accurate. So I think he's happy.

Matthew 35:06
That could have been another title for the film. But I think you've got a good one anyway. But speaking of going on all cylinders and then ultimately crashing, I think we need to give our listeners a break so they don't crash. And we will be back after that break here.

Factual America midroll 35:27
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter at Alamo pictures to keep up to date with new releases or upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.

Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg, directors and producers of We Are As Gods. We've been talking about Stewart Brand. But I wanted to now focus more on the project, the film itself, the making of it and some other issues and challenges you faced. David, maybe I can start with you. How did you all get involved with this project?

David Alvarado 36:11
Well, Jason and I have always been interested, as long as we've been working together for the last 10 years, we've been interested in making feature length or long form documentaries about science, health, technology and nature. Those are our sort of our areas of interest and expertise as filmmakers, but we always try to go through a human lens right like stories are about people. They're seldom about things or or information for example, so we love Nova. Nova is a great production. But you know, when you do have a nova documentary, it's more about the facts or the drama and you just learn throughout the whole hour long piece. For us, the people are what's interesting, the desire for a person to accomplish a task and then the antagonising forces that will try to prevent them. That's what excites us in the story. And so, we, Jason had known about Stewart Brand since he was in college. I had heard about him before, I thought he had something more to do with computers than, than anything else. But we, we had learned in 2014, about his effort to de-extinct animals. And so that caught our attention. And then when we dove into it, we learned, you know, that it's something he's trying to do right now. That there are these people who think he shouldn't be doing it. And we said this, there's got to be a documentary here somewhere, somewhere, somehow. And so we contacted him and for about three or four years, tried to convince him to let us into his life. And eventually he said yes. And, and that's how it began.

Matthew 37:49
And so you worked, I mean, once he said yes, then he was, he was on the project. You were working with him. Did he have any, does he have a credit beyond being the subject of the film?

David Alvarado 37:59
No credit. He also didn't see, like all of our subjects, they do not see the film until it's done. Sometimes we give the option to watch it before the release. But you know, our last film's about American science educator, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Bill didn't see the film about him until we were sitting in an audience in Austin, Texas at South by Southwest. It's the first time he saw it was with a 1000 other people and so yeah, we don't give credits to our subjects. But it is still collaborative. I mean, you know, we don't we don't film things that they don't want filmed. It's not a got you production or anything like that. And, of course, we can't, the way, the way that we do our films, you know, it's not like we're just looking at archival interviews, archival footage, and then we've in interviews with Stewart, we're actually following them around. So we were active participants in his life, as we filmed the doc.

Matthew 38:53
You had to travel the globe, didn't you?

David Alvarado 38:55
Yeah, yeah. Went to Siberia. You know, there's this place called Pleistocene park. So you think Jurassic Park, this is Pleistocene Park. And, you know, these Russian scientists are trying to rebuild the ecosystem so that when George Church, the scientist at Harvard trying to create this mammoth, can release the mammoth, it has a place to live. And so we went there with Stewart and George and it was quite an adventure.

Matthew 39:20
And Jason. I mean, Brian Eno, how did you manage? How did you all manage that? That's incredible.

Speaker 14 39:25
Yeah, that was one of the delights of the project to be honest. I've been a Brian, you know, fan since I can remember. Yeah, I just think he's, his work is is so made for documentary. I think every film student in the world uses Brian Eno as temp music to like, cheat their emotion or to like evoke a film score. And I was certainly guilty of that decades ago when I first started getting into filmmaking. And as it happens, Stewart and Brian Eno are collaborators, of course, because Stewart has always touched just random individuals since the beginning of time. And so those two are, were friends from The Whole Earth Catalog days. And, they actually are working together on this, sort of the last chapter of the movie is this, this clock that's in West Texas, called The Clock of the Long Now, which is a monumental engineered artifact that is meant to make us meditate on long term thinking. It's a it's sort of like a philosophical art piece. And to get humans to not only think about their lives, their kids lives, their grandkids lives, but to think in these 10,000 year increments, which is how long civilization has been together. And so Brian, you know, and Stewart started cooking up this idea along with engineer Danny Hillis, on what this clock is going to look and feel like and Brian is the the soundscape, I guess you could call him a soundscape artist or engineer of what the clock will sound like. And so they're on the board of this, this non this foundation called The Long Now Foundation, which is, in effect building the clock and is maintaining, they hope to be maintaining civilization for 10,000 years or getting humans to think that we need to maintain civilization for 10,000 years. So we interviewed Brian as a subject in the documentary because they're just very good friends, Stewart and Brian. But also, Brian Eno, he's, he's a an erudite guy. He's not just a punk rocker who wears, you know, silly outfits and, and performs in amazing bands. He's actually, he's a very scholarly guy. Going to his studio, he just has books and books on his wall, this library of, of just varied interests. And so he's, uh, he kind of acts as a de facto historian in Stewart's life. So we bring him in, in the interviews, to explain the environmental movement, to explain hackers, to explain The Clock of Long Now, Brian's fingerprints are all over the movie. And so when it came time to come up with a score, we asked him and his initial answer, Stewart actually did the asking for us was, I don't have time, I've retired from music. Here, well, I'll let you play with my library and if you come up with something great. But then that changed. He got intom he got really invested in the movie, and so ended up coming up with 25 original pieces of music, that he found inspiration from the movie to build and shared them with us. That, that was that was a really great turn of events.

Matthew 42:54
And since you brought it up, I hadn't mentioned it, but the the the 10,000 year clock. I mean, it is, I think it's in near Van Horn, Texas. I mean. Is anyone ever going to see this? This thing's built into the side of a mountain. How is it, do they plan to have visitors? What's, how is that gonna work? Do you know?

Speaker 14 43:11
Yeah, it's meant to be a public project. So obviously, it's not ready for the public quite yet. But the idea is that it is going to be a pilgrimage site that people have to go to and get to go to. So, I think it was, it was proposed to be originally in the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Nevada. But they, they ended up building it on, actually on Jeff Bezos land in Texas. They got it as sort of a donation from Jeff Bezos, and it's funded by Jeff Bezos. We don't bring this up in the movie. But that is sort of a just an accident that it happens to be in this area that not a lot of people can access. But they will eventually have roads out there and a system for transport. But it was, it was really kind of, it really was a pilgrimage site in America, you could pretty much get anywhere within a day. But that was, that was, we had to fly in to West Texas, drive or yeah, I don't even recall where it was, it was actually...

David Alvarado 44:19
...flew into El Paso and then drove a couple hours to Van Horn.

Matthew 44:23
Wow.

Jason Sussberg 44:25
And then from Van Horn... Yeah. So it's like, it was like, it was... We had to wake up at like three o'clock in the morning to get there by sunrise. It was, it was, it was a pilgrimage.

Matthew 44:34
Hey, um, last point I wanted to raise sort of on the, on the film itself is and I'll direct this to David. I mean, how did you come about with the, the story arc, the way you were talking about earlier about weaving this the story on this tapestry that you you made? Was that a joint collaborative effort that you guys came up with? Or was that, whose idea was that?

David Alvarado 44:58
Yeah, well, you know, it's, we have a very collaborative process, which at the center of it is our longtime collaborator Annukka Lilja. She's an editor here in New York who's just a fantastically talented person and has a real eye for what's the emotional curvature of stories and how characters can be developed in a documentary. And, and we work very closely. I mean, some, some directors do just sort of hand it to the editor and, and show up for reviews. We are in that room with her. And our other edit team, we have a, we had a large post production team. And you know, even our producers, we're all like sitting around in a room in our, in our New York office trying to figure out how to bring the story together. And so it's a very organic process where we allow the footage to tell us how this can be arranged. And so given the immensity of Stewart's life, his biography, you know, is a process of figuring out well, we have 90 minutes here. That's, that's the bucket this thing needs to fit in to. What are the storylines that matter most to us? And then, so what do we need to eliminate? And then once we have that figured out, how do we combine those in a way that makes sense. And some of it is, based on experience, like we know how stories come together, and that's a process. But also, a lot of it is in intuition, honestly, just trying one version of an edit of a 90 minute film that we think could work and then seeing what doesn't work about that and then rearranging, you know, whole scenes and what's inside those scenes and, you know, how does the scene go to this scene? It does, but not if we go to this scene, so why don't I do this? It's an, it's a, it's a process that just always takes us a year or so to finish. And it's definitely a large part of the cost, but it's also part of, I think, what makes our films so special, you know, the amount of love and blood and sweat and tears poured into it until the film speaks to us and tell us, tells us like how it best fits together.

Matthew 47:01
Well, I mean, I think that brings a nice segue to the what I want to talk to you about next, which is speaking of finishing your film in blood, sweat and tears. Is it right? You finished? Jason? I'll throw this one to you. You finished the film the day South by Southwest (SXSW) was canceled. Is that right? Where you were gonna, you guys are going to premiere this film?

Speaker 14 47:20
Yeah, well, that was a, you know, every film is very difficult to finish. And you never know where it's gonna go or what the future holds or how audiences are going to react with it. But you always get to take it to a public audience to test it. And so this film was particularly, you know, difficult to finish just because it took so much time and and the story was difficult and Stewart's life was so complex. We just wanted to do it justice. But we ended up literally we were sitting in Skywalker sound and we're in California, where we were working with this legendary sound mixer named, no sorry. Yeah, sound mixer named Pete Horner, who's done Jurassic Park and just amazing titles and he's working on our little boutique indie movie. And it was lunchtime of the last day of the sound mix after a nearly three year journey where we're about to print the movie to send it to South by Southwest weeks after it was actually due. I should mention that, everyone else turned their movie in in February. We are turning our film in on March 6, and we get a news alert. Actually, David got a news alert on this phone from a friend who just sent condolences. Sorry about South by Southwest being canceled, and we kind of dismissed it. We're like hahaha, he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's not canceled. And we went to lunch. And this is where we have four hours left in the sound sound studio before we print. And we learned it was canceled. And so we then spent the, put the time that we should have been spending, lavishing attention on the last bit of the mix of the movie, just in the hallway, frantically fielding phone calls from our investors, our producers, Stewart himself, the other subjects, everyone was sort of wondering what the hell happened. So yeah, we finished it the day. The day it was canceled.

Matthew 49:28
I mean, it's, it's not nearly the same but there's a generation out there that says they know where they were when they heard the news that JFK have been shot. I know exactly where I was when I heard that South by had been canceled. I was just down the other side of this this house actually, because we were, I was supposed to be doing this interview with you face to face. We had arranged to meet in Austin. And I still ended up going to Texas but scrambled to get back here to the UK, I will say in the end. But one thing, David, I know there's the article in Variety, and you talked about the importance of festivals, especially for indie filmmakers. I mean, do you have any further thoughts on that? Or I mean, the landscape is constantly changing, and we don't know how it's going to end. But any views on how it's looking like on that front?

David Alvarado 50:16
Well, you know, it's what's funny is we we take personal conferences with other filmmakers in our community all the time during the course of this pandemic, to ask each other, what's going on, what are you guys doing? What are people saying? What are your sales reps and so on. And it just seems even today, everybody's just as confused as before. And the source of confusion is, is that festivals have traditionally, for independent filmmakers, have traditionally been, you know, the only path to getting the amount of attention needed to leverage that against a sale and try to get the sale, you know, to be a higher number and so without the film festivals because there is no other real system, it's been very hard to get back to it. So the question has now become, well, do we show these films online and hope that that'll gain the same amount of interest? Or do we wait until the pandemic is over, essentially waiting on science to create a vaccine? That's your new distribution plan to wait on a vaccine. So some people, it turns out, you know, they need to get the film out, they'll take any number. It'll take a smaller number from smaller distributor, and worry about when that could actually be shown later. And others, I think Jason and I are fortunate in that this film isn't very tied to our times. I mean, I think it's a large film that can, that could be very interesting to somebody in 2021 or 2022, as much as it is in 2020. So we're actually taking the stance of well, let's just wait until the world's back to normal and maybe release the film into that world. But who knows? I mean, people are talking and it could very well be true that, you know, the entire film industry might be changed from this. I mean, why are we so tied to film festivals? Why aren't we working with buyers sooner instead of selling after we're done? They're all good questions.

Matthew 52:19
Only thing I would say is, I guess Stewart would tell you to take the 10,000 year horizon, basically, if we think in terms of 2021 or 22. But so, so this, so just, so our listeners know that is, is this, is there a place where people can watch the film?

David Alvarado 52:34
Yeah. Right now no, unfortunately. There, you know, we, we're not showing it in film festivals we were applying to new ones in 2021. So you know, essentially, if you go to our website, weareasgods.film, you'll be able to keep up with the latest information about the film.

Matthew 52:53
Okay, well, that's how we usually end the podcast, but thanks for sharing that because I think that's a, we do like to know how we can can follow you guys. I mean, it's the same Variety article, you talked about the, you know, we've talked about distributors. How do your investors feel? How does Stewart feel about all this? Jason, you want to take that one?

Jason Sussberg 53:13
Yeah. I think everybody is crestfallen that we put all this time and had this plan. And we weren't able to get the film out. So everybody has, feels, we're just rotten about how this film has met the world, which is it hasn't met the world. You know, just for a minute talk hyperbolically, but we call it a stillborn movie, because it's here, it's just not available. So it feels, it's just, it's just, there's a ton of emotion wrapped up into this. But everybody's been really understanding. The investors are fully on board. They take our lead on this. Our partner on this Drake films has just been nothing but supportive and understanding. You know, we can't really, we were only one, we're but a cog in a larger system. The system of the, in fact, the film industry is, is just a similar cog in a larger system. So, we can't really dictate the terms, we can't really speed things along personally. So there's no culpability. They've just been very understanding. Stewart is, I think, he's really, Stewart loves the movie and loves participating in virtual Q&As with private screening groups that we've, we've shared the film with, including his foundation and a few others, but I think he's, he's impatient. He wants to get the film out there. But he understands that this is a, it's gonna take its own time getting out into the world. But you know, he's, he's going to be 83 this year. There's a biography being made about his life by the journalist John Markoff. And so I think he's just ready to, to share this chapter of his life and he loves these virtual screenings where you can watch the film and then rewatch it and pause it if you didn't hear it and think, you know, contemplate of thoughts and make notes. And so he actually loves the streaming of the movie and thinks that it should be available to people and we agree with him. We should, we have to got this film out there so that people can enjoy it, but it has to take its own time and you have to share it in the theater.

Matthew 55:39
And so I think we, it's it's hard to believe, but we've already come to the, close to coming to the end of our time. One last question for you. What are any next projects? You guys have collaborated on some great films so far, is there, is there another one in the works now?

David Alvarado 55:55
Yeah, we're working on a few. We're developing two series. We're not sure if they'll take off. And then we're also researching to other potential feature docs, all science, health, technology and so. Yeah, we're really excited to figure out how to begin a project in a pandemic world as such, so that we can take advantage of our time locked away in our apartments and do the research. But then when the world is ready, we can just rush out the gate, you know, running.

Matthew 56:28
Well, that's, what we'll be watching watching this space. And we'll certainly have links to your websites and other, maybe social media accounts in the show notes. I just wanted to thank you, David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg for coming on the Factual America podcast. It's been, it's been a lovely, very enjoyable hour spent with you. I also want to highly recommend, I'm one of the privileged few, beyond Stewart Brand and his few mates to have actually seen this film and thanks for sharing that with me. It, it is excellent. I don't just say that, I really really enjoyed it. And I'm sure when it comes out you've got a, you've got a winner on your hands. So, I wish you the best of luck with that. Again, just remind people to films with the film we have been talking about it as We Are As Gods and David and Jason are the directors and producers. I also want to remind you to remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen or watch podcast. And this is Factual America, signing off.

Factual America Outro 57:33
You've been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo pictures specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Head on down to the show notes for more information about today's episode, our guests and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Alamo pictures to be the first to hear about new productions, festivals showing our films and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk.

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