We walk with Margaret Brown, director of BE HERE TO LOVE ME, THE ORDER OF MYTHS, THE GREAT INVISIBLE, DESCENDANT, and THE YOGURT SHOP MURDERS, and winner of Peabody, Independent Spirit, SXSW and Sundance awards.
She brings along Max Pickle, her nine-year-old wire-haired dachshund, who sets the pace: shade, water, and a hard stop whenever he's done. Margaret's deep in publicity mode on THE YOGURT SHOP MURDERS, her HBO series about the 1991 killing of four teenage girls in North Austin. The series premiered on HBO in May, four episodes became five, and the case was solved just three weeks after the finale.
THE YOGURT SHOP MURDERS is screening all week at AFS Cinema, culminating in a special September 3rd screening of Episode 5 featuring a Q&A with detectives from the case, moderated by Richard Linklater. Austin friends, don't miss this one!
Margaret's blunt about the cost. She'd sworn off true-crime podcasts while making it. "Raise a toast to murder" felt like a cheap shot. She froze up in her first interview and holds one line firm: she's the filmmaker, not the detective. Ben has a better read. She flipped on a porch light, and everything came to it.
Then the craft. How she and DP Justin Zweifach built a neon color language out of TWIN PEAKS and DRIVE without letting style flatten the families' honesty. Nobody had asked her about that until now. How A24 paid for crew therapy, a first in her career. How Claire, the UT student who tried to tell this story twenty years earlier, became her secret weapon and the show's spine.
Ben traces the line from BE HERE TO LOVE ME through THE ORDER OF MYTHS, THE GREAT INVISIBLE and DESCENDANT, heavy places and buried histories, and Margaret resists the tidy version. This one was different, and she didn't know what she was signing up for.
Then the Austin part. She and Pamela Colloff met at Brown and moved here in the '90s because they knew everyone at Emo's and could eat for a dollar at Quack's. Pam's "96 MINUTES" became TOWER, and Margaret's push over a 2012 lunch is why Keith made it at all. Margaret also talks about learning to wait for the thing to happen, and finding her own way into filmmaking at a midnight screening of SHADOWS during a New York heat wave, thinking: I have friends. We could film that.
Plus: a stranger yells something unprintable, and it nearly becomes the episode title.
DISCUSSION LINKS:
THE YOGURT SHOP MURDERS (2025) | BE HERE TO LOVE ME (2004) | THE ORDER OF MYTHS (2008) | THE GREAT INVISIBLE (2014) | DESCENDANT (2022) | TOWER (2016) | SHADOWS (1959) | SLACKER (1990) | DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993) | TWIN PEAKS (1990) | DRIVE (2011)
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Meet Max Pickle
00:47 Ben's Freaks and Geeks era
01:51 Keith's fake film-student music videos
02:26 A stranger yells the episode title
04:15 Late July, and deep in publicity mode
05:36 Why she said no to true-crime podcasts
07:20 "I'm the filmmaker, not the detective"
07:53 Into Casa de Luz
08:01 Claire, the filmmaker who came first
10:35 Four episodes became five
10:53 The case gets solved
11:14 Flipping on the porch light
12:20 A cloud over four accused teenagers
13:38 Secret weapon, and the meta narrative
15:17 The Innocence Project scene
16:36 Justin Zweifach and shooting grief
17:28 Pam Colloff's dare
18:15 TWIN PEAKS and the footage
19:24 Color theory and neon beer signs
22:08 Wiseman: it's still 100% fake
23:22 The body of work, film by film
25:32 Why this one was different
26:32 A24 pays for crew therapy
26:59 "This is the last interview I have to do"
28:01 Celebrities on the trail
28:44 Recognized at the Impact Partners party
30:01 No separation from the work
31:10 When strangers bring you their grief
32:04 Pam Colloff and CATCH THE DEVIL
33:29 Brown, Emo's, and moving to Austin
34:38 Quack's, and old cheap Austin
35:10 The man who cleaned the yogurt shop
36:56 Keith's very old tattoo
37:20 Texas Monthly, and 96 MINUTES
38:31 There would be no TOWER without you
40:13 Lee Daniel, and dating your cinematographer
42:46 Diane Weyermann and Participant
44:19 A weird moment for the industry
45:18 How a project starts now
47:44 Commercials, favors, and paying people
50:18 The BE HERE TO LOVE ME edit Ben walked away from
51:34 The haunted post-production office
52:30 BE HERE TO LOVE ME, re-released
53:17 NYU, her dad, and the animating question
55:41 Bergman, van Gogh, and the cost of an artful life
59:18 Is there a through line?
1:03:14 The guests we still can't book
1:06:17 Improv, and deep listening
1:07:31 Gateway drug: Cassavetes' SHADOWS
1:10:07 A dream collaborator, declined
1:12:00 Where to watch, and AFS on September 3
1:13:10 Next time: Doc Walks International
