EP069 - GOOD COP, BAD COP w/ Sam Wainwright Douglas & David Hartstein

We walk Hyde Park with longtime friends Sam Wainwright Douglas and David Hartstein — the co-directing team behind Blue Suitcase — and it is not a short story. Turns out it started at Slamdance 2006: David was editing ALONG CAME KINKY: TEXAS JEWBOY FOR GOVERNOR and needed an editor who actually knew Texas; Sam had THE HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS: BOUND TO LOSE playing the same festival. One carpetbagger recognizing another, basically.

Before teaming up, David quietly built a run as a go-to producer — THE HAPPY POET, a Venice Biennale College Cinema slot for BARRACUDA — while Sam directed and edited on his own path, making CITIZEN ARCHITECT, HONKY TONK HEAVEN: THE LEGEND OF THE BROKEN SPOKE and NONO A DOCUMENTARY, among many others. 

Then they finally co-directed together: FADERS UP: THE JOHN AIELLI EXPERIENCE, a loving portrait of the KUT radio legend that started as a short film, went viral off his estate-sale footage, and ended in a standing ovation and an Audience Award at the Paramount during SXSW.

From there the pattern holds — a work-for-hire deep dive into Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips (LUV YA BUM!) and a gorgeous, prescient border-art doc, THROUGH THE REPELLENT FENCE, about Postcommodity's two-mile art installation stitching the US and Mexico together. Sam and David break down their "good cop, bad cop" creative rapport, the philosophy of "building consensus" instead of dictating on set, and why work-for-hire gigs can be exactly the thing that funds the passion projects.

We close on a lightning round — 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and STOP MAKING SENSE as gateway drugs, fatherhood and AI as the things they can't stop thinking about. Two decades of friendship, a dozen-plus films between them, and they're still bickering like it's day one.