'Nobody Speak' documentary; Benjamin Booker; Vice and Snap make scripted push

The move was sparked by just a need to push forward ... move to a different place, see some new things. I think that, especially if you're somebody who's writing songs, you're constantly looking for a stimuli. And I think that I just got a little claustrophobic in the south and I was like, Let's try something else.



The reason I went to Mexico was because I was just feeling very overwhelmed in New Orleans. I'd gotten back from touring for a couple years and was just feeling very strange. My life was so busy and regulated, and I was by myself.

When I was on the plane, I just took out a piece of paper and started writing down things ... that I always had a problem with. For once, just, like, Let's be real ... and be honest with yourself. And I think that bullet-pointed list ended up being what the songs in the album are about. The things in my life that I was reluctant to touch.

The last album ... I was younger and I think that it was more about my relation to other people and the problems I had with other people. As time went on, I think I had to look and say, Okay, well, maybe we should talk about your problems too. I think it was just kind of like realizing my own faults. I'm growing up — I'm becoming a real boy!

I think it's a hopeful album. I think that I came out of it on the other side a lot better, more at peace with myself. Sometimes you just have to really look at yourself and ask yourself the things that you want to change and things that you need to do to be the person that you want to be. And I maybe it will just spark some of those kind of questions with people listening to the album.

In the last few months, we've seen quite an uptick in aggravation against the press. And I think essentially what Trump has created is a kind of wave of hostility in some ways. And that has panned out in all sort of things. I mean, we saw Dan Heyman, the West Virginia reporter who was arrested for asking a question of the Health and Human Services secretary, Director Tom Price. We had John Donnelly, the reporter who was pinned against the wall of the FCC for trying to ask a question there.



We had this incredible scenario with Greg Gianforte, when he body-slammed a reporter for doing what, really, a reporter should be doing -- asking a question about the new healthcare law to a then-congressional candidate, now member of congress. And so that was a really, really disturbing act of aggression not just against the press but against the public, really, who has a right to know what their positions are.

I think the short answer is, they were all things I was thinking about simultaneously. But really, I thought about making the film just about Peter Thiel for a while. I was kind of, in parallel, captivated by this trial that was simmering in this courtroom in Florida between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media. I thought it was a really interesting back-and-forth. I thought there were some pretty big ideas about the First Amendment and privacy under foot. Part of it was salacious, part of it was highly principled. You never quite really knew when it would be either. So at the end of that trial, the verdict was a real shocker for me — $140 million dollars. That was staggering. Really it was like the axe coming down on Gawker's head. It forced their bankruptcy and they ended up going out of business.

The idea of funding litigation is not new. Sometimes people do it for financial benefits. Sometimes even entities like the ACLU funds a particular case, even for a political purpose. But what happened here is this series of behind-the-scenes chess moves, which was really the result of a nine-year grudge on the part of Peter Thiel. The secretive way in which he did it really did create a frightening blueprint. This doesn't have to apply to a website that you hate. It doesn't have to be on the right or the left. There's no reason that somebody couldn't use this same technique to go after Breitbart News or the New York Times. 

Even following the Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker case, you understood that some similar things were at work in the landscape that was happening all around — this bizarre contentious political landscape. When you look at the rise of Donald Trump, it is based in some part on an assault on the press — an all out war on the press. When you look at candidate Trump, we understood it was probably going to be part of the movie right away, the way he was treating the press. The way he was berating them and calling them scum. He was blacklisting some, saying to the Washington Post, BuzzFeed and others, You can't get press credentials in the normal way. He was actively encouraging his supporters to turn on the press. And yes, some of the reporters did feel physically threatened. Some of the news organizations had to beef up their security actually. 

One of the weirdest things for me, as a filmmaker, was we understood that this thin-skinned, highly litigious billionaire was fitting perfectly into our theme. The day after the election I went into the office and screened the film, and I realized this is a radically different film than I thought I was making 24 hours [prior]. It used to be cautionary or something. But this was different. He's now in charge of the executive branch, which is the most powerful institution in the world. 

First of all, I'm slightly optimistic right now in the sense that I do think that there's legitimate criticisms of the press - that it's gotten too corporatized, that it's gotten too cozy with power, that for too long it maybe traded softball stories for access to power and celebrity.



And that's made the media -- quote, unquote “the media,” very broad term -- not particularly well liked. I mean, they don't poll well, people say they hate [the media]. They love the media that they listen to but they don't like the media in general. So I think there's genuine hatred for the media and I'm slightly optimistic that now there's a reason to stand up for it. There's nothing like a common enemy to understand what you were there for in the first place. And there does seem to be a kind of push back and an understanding about what the role is of a media -- to speak truth to power, to really question abuses of power.