SXSW 2021 Interview: David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg Find New Frontiers with True Pioneers in 'We Are as Gods'

The documentary about the life of Stewart Brand and his legacy is currently premiering at the South by Southwest online film festival. Its title , We Are As Gods, comes from Stewart Brand's most famous work , Whole Earth Catalog , a multi-volume manual with various "tools" on its pages, From arts and crafts to ancient ways of having sex that comes naturally. ("We are like gods," Brand wrote in a 1969 mission statement, "and we can be good at it, too.")

In We Are As Gods, Brand is one of the icons of the technological age, appearing at some of the most important moments in history. Most of his followers will know his general trajectory. What they may not know is Brand's visionary tool. The first is drugs (psychedelics). And a talent for navigating boredom. Finally, there is the network of experts. Through the catalog, Brand reached out to Doug Engelbart , from whom he learned about the potential of web communications, which led him to think about the early days of social media and more. Some call him " the intellectual Johnny Appleseed of the counterculture " , sowing the seeds of intellectual currents in this land. Slightly in awe of their subjects, directors David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg portray Brand as a tech seer, a man who never looks back . A true, uncompromising futurist.

Personally, the documentary tells the story of his life for over eighty years, and it's an anti-futuristic project at heart. Professionally, he is now an advocate for the so-called de-extinction movement , a work that forms the narrative thread of the documentary. For more than a decade, Brand has battled environmentalists, bioethicists and others to try to revive long-dead species like passenger pigeons and woolly mammoths. If you keep going forward, you will eventually circle the earth and go back to where you started.

In this sense, there may be no contradiction at all. Both futurism and protectionism require what Brand calls " long-term thinking ." "The problem now," he says in "We Are As Gods," "is that civilization is accelerating to a sick short attention span." Brand is a weird and smart guy who's spent his life trying to get us out of the way Now, so that we can better understand how to solve this problem. Look at this picture of the entire Earth from space, he said. Imagine seeing the woolly mammoth again, he shouted. Brand may not always be future-oriented, but he lubricates the engine of progress with the determined and loving hands of a hippie mystic.

SXSW 2021 Interview

Q: How did this happen?

Jason Sussberg : I've been intrigued by Stewart Brand since I was growing up in California, which Stewart Brand helped build. I've been fascinated by him since college, flipping through the Whole Earth Catalog in bookstores, but what really piqued my interest was the de-extinction campaign he announced in 2013. movement) . I contacted David and he said: 'We want to make a movie about you and de-extinction. 'That was eight years ago. But eventually we found a friend of ours at Time magazine and recommended him the idea of doing a short video about de-extinction, and to our surprise Stewart said, 'Okay, I'll do it participated. ' We shot the film online for a short period of time and we didn't think much of it, but then we started working on our next film , Bill Nye: Science Guy, when we When we were done, we came back to Stewart and said, 'Hey, we want to make a documentary about you in 2013, what do you think?' To our great surprise, he agreed.

Q: Do you think it's hard for him to look back on the past when he's only looking forward?

David Alvarado : This was the most opportune time in Stewart's life because he never really wanted the media attention on his own life, which is probably why he turned us down in the first place. But he's in his 80s and John Markoff, a tech writer for The New York Times, is starting a book about him and his life , so I think he's just starting to think, 'Maybe it's time to start and The world shares my story'. John Markoff is actually going through his old diaries and photos, so [Stuart] is looking back at his life and trying to figure out how it all went, and I think we're lucky to have a place where he's willing to share and explore these things with us. time to talk to him. I think he's really trying to understand what he's been through, and we're grateful to be there.

Q: Did anything surprise you or change your mind?

Jason Sussberg : In the process of introspection, you look back at where you started and where you ended, and you can see what you've learned along the way. We set out to make a film about Stewart's past with Ken Kesey and the merry pranksters (Merry Pranksters), starting the environmental movement and the PC revolution, and his current "go to" Extinction" (De-extinction) tour. This is what we're going to do, but we were really surprised in a lot of ways, which is to say, we didn't expect Stewart's story to be so rich, personal, and insightful because he's always been so obsessed with his personal life. cautious. A lot of people who follow Stewart know about his professional life, whether it's his adventures in the '60s or something else, but not many people know that he suffered from depression at multiple stages in his life, and not many people know that he had personal struggles. It's something he was willing to share with us and we really wanted to capture because it's always fun to learn about the struggles that everyone feels. When depression happens, you can feel very lonely, so know that Stewart is struggling with it, and he is just like us.

Q: There are some hints in the film about the Whole Earth Catalog as a visual organizing tool, but I wonder if it's in your head when you're putting this massive story together structurally?

David Alvarado : I hadn't thought of that at all, but you're right. If you open the Whole Earth Catalog, you'll see on one page, like, "How to Have Safe Sex," and you open a page, "How to Make a Computer." Then you open up again, "If you build your own society in the forest, here's how to build your own septic tank". It's incredible, [themes] don't seem to be connected, but they are -- the use of tools and technology and the way to share information, so in the same way this documentary is. If you follow Stewart's life, all these seemingly disparate things are actually held together by a central idea , and that's one of the things we're always excited about in the film.

Jason Sussberg : Strictly speaking, this documentary probably lacks focus because his life is so storytelling, and when we show it to Stewart's friends, they're like, 'Oh , you left out this, that and other chapters'. But when people outside look at it, they're like, 'Wow, this is so messy. ' That's the nature of Stewart. He started one project, and a few years later, he moved on to the next project , you're right, it actually has a decentralized web feel and you can find different chapters from the table of contents. Stewart lives that kind of life, and aesthetically, we want to live in the world of catalogs. That's why all the graphics look like a catalog, even with new ideas, we put it on old paper because we wanted it to fit the catalog's aesthetic.

Q: There's something impressive about your films, not just this one, when there's a strong interest in science, you're not afraid to have dissenting voices that challenge your central idea or themes . Is this difficult?

David Alvarado : Yeah, our last one was Bill Nighy: The Science Guy, and we told him from the beginning that if we thought there was something to be questioned, we will question you. For us, we want to be as honest as possible about what we see. There are some voices who are very opposed to what Stewart Brand is doing and have some good questions about some of his efforts. From the beginning, we told him we wanted this to be a conversation. We want to show your worldview, but how that worldview interacts with the world. There will always be people who disagree, which is actually a good thing. Stewart was very gracious, he understood it was our workflow and he wasn't involved. He didn't see the movie until it was done, and he probably hated it because of all the backlash, but it turns out he really loved it, so it was really cool.

Q: In the movie, you seem to travel a lot - in this case, do you have to be on a plane to go somewhere soon when you're told?

Jason Sussberg : Stewart was a reclusive person. He's read a lot and he's a big thinker and a philosopher so when we started making this movie I was really drawn to it because I live in San Francisco and just had a baby and Stewart was on the cable in my backyard Saleito, so I thought: 'Fantastic, an 80-year-old who doesn't like to travel a lot. This would be the perfect story, 'We just finished 'Bill Nighy: The Science Guy' and went to Greenland and around the world. So I was really excited to not travel, just ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. But as an 82-year-old, Stewart's life is extraordinarily active.

He is a great collaborator because he involves us in his life. Every time he had something he wanted to do, he would say to us, 'Hey, I was invited to speak at a blockchain conference in Prague. Do you guys want to come and shoot?' We planned our trip to Siberia to shoot 'Clock of the Long Now' and it took a lot of effort because there has never been a documentary crew to record this clock, so I'm honored can go. But Stewart was a great collaborator, and while it might have said 'Director: David & Jason', there were traces of Stewart all over that movie, not only because he allowed others to tell his life story, but he He is also very happy to share his thoughts. Like 'Would you like to go back to the cabin and look at this, look at my life, where I grew up? ' He likes to say, 'Okay, let's book a flight. Let's go. '

Q: Another curiosity of mine is, before the interview with Brian Eno, did you actually know he was going to compose the music for the film, or did you sneak a request during the interview? Because it seems like an impossible dream.

David Alvarado : We knew from the start that Stewart and Brian Eno were friends, so from the beginning we thought, 'If Brian Eno does the music for us Isn't it cool? ' But did we ask him after the interview, Jason?

Jason Sussberg : We planned a lot. In fact, when we were doing demos to raise money, we used Brian Eno's music, I think any filmmaker would use Brian Eno's music as temp music for anything because he's an ambient film God of music. So that's always been our plan, but we went and interviewed him and it was a crazy experience because he only gave us 30 minutes and you could play the whole interview and it would be fun. This is just perfect. But we didn't ask him (about the soundtrack) until after the fact. Stewart was actually asking on our behalf because they were good friends and at first he just said, 'Not really, but I can give you a catalog of music that I haven't used and you can pick and choose. 'To our surprise, he did much more than that. He thought deeply about the role of Stewart, thinking about what kind of music would evoke, and it was a collaborative process. Originally, he wasn't going to work like he used to, maybe David and I were charismatic, or Stewart convinced him, we don't know what happened, but he definitely gave a lot.

David Alvarado : Brian released his latest album "Film Music: 1976 to 2020" a month or two ago, and Jason and I were lucky, a tune from our movie It's on that album, so it's unbelievable that an album like that has our name on the back.

Question: This is eternal life. Actually, you guys did an amazing thing even before the movie premiered, the movie that was originally scheduled to premiere at SXSW has been delayed by a year. What was it like to finally see it resurface?

David Alvarado : I would say that we finished the film a year ago and today is the first time we've talked about it publicly, so we're really excited to share it with you all it. The film has been frozen, and now it's ready to come back to life. We want to 'de-extinction' our own films. [laughs] So, it feels like a success, but we're just getting started. We are very excited.

Original: The Backward-Looking Futurism of Stewart Brand

SXSW 2021 Interview: David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg on Searching for New Frontiers with a True Pioneer in “We Are as Gods”