The Doug Stanhope Podcast - Ep.#409: Director Chris Charles Scott III - "Class Action Park"
Episode Date: September 9, 2020Director Chris Charles Scott III is in Bisbee to shoot a documentary about NoWhereMan and Whisky Girl and premieres his new documentary, "Class Action Park" (HBOMax) at the compound. Want more Stanhop...e? Subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/stanhopepodcast to get an extra BONUS podcast for as little as a $1 a month. Plus, video, insider communication with the podcast and more.Doug's new book, "No Encore For The Donkey" available exclusively at Audible.com - https://amzn.to/31uwvO0 Check Out Doug's Weekly eBay Yard Sale listing - https://www.ebay.com/usr/stanhope_podcast?_trksid=p2047675.l2559Doug's latest comedy special, "Dying of a Last Breed", is now available on Amazon Prime - https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08CY4XDMC/ref=atv_dp_cnc_1_5Recorded Sep. 3rd, 2020 at the New FunHouse in Bisbee, AZ with Doug Stanhope (@dougstanhope), Director Chris Charles Scott III, Chad Shank (@hdfatty), Tracey (@egglester), and Ggreg Chaille (@gregchaille). Produced and Edited by Chaille.We have no idea what the future holds so get on the Mailing List at https://www.dougstanhope.com/. When we know, we'll let you know.LINKS - Visit the Stanhope Store - http://www.dougstanhope.com/store/Check out "Class Action Park" on HBOMax or where ever you find stuff to watch. https://www.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GX0P9SwLUP4vDIQEAAAAeCheck out the classic Whisky Girl and NoWhere Man Cliffhanger Podcasts THE DOUG STANHOPE PODCAST: A BISBEE CLIFFHANGER (Part 1) - https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/the-doug-stanhope-podcast-a-bisbee-cliffhangerTHE BISBEE CLIFFHANGER PT.2: NOWHERE MAN AND A WHISKEY GIRL - https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/the-bisbee-cliffhanger-pt.2-nowhere-man-and-a-whiskey-girlISSUES WITH ANDY Podcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xKdSjAXFP0Closing song, “The Stanhope Rag”, written and performed by Scotty Conant for Doug Stanhope and used with permission – Available on Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/scottyconantPhoto Credit - Brian HenniganSupport the show: http://www.Patreon.com/stanhopepodcast
Transcript
Discussion (0)
you're listening to the Doug Stanhope podcast
hello welcome out hope you're uh hope you're doing well sitting there wherever you're sitting
we have with us Chad Shag is back Greg Chaley's here, and our guest is Chris Charles Scott, a documentarian.
He's filming a documentary down here.
Just released a class action suit that we talked about.
Class action park.
Class action park.
Yeah.
We've already talked about it.
Which HBO Max tweeted this morning that we are the number one
uh ranked movie in the nation number one on their platform as well fantastic it was good we
he screened it here for us uh that was dope it was because you uh you set up an actual screen
with a projector we were to settle for 55 inches
on the patio, but no.
The neighbors were watching that
two streets away.
No, we wanted the big screen.
55 inches is not enough to get the job done.
We'll get back to
the movies, but
you just started with a question, and I said
save it, we'll open with it.
So, I just want to present this to my crew here.
So there's this girl who I met on a job.
She was a client.
And we kind of hit it off.
But she's so mean.
She's so mean.
She says the meanest things to me.
And so the other day she was like, you over-promise and under-deliver.
I said, do you mean that professionally or personally? And she said, dealer's choice.
About five minutes before this podcast, her boss, who we did the production of videos for,
was like, you did a fantastic job. We loved what you did. I just wanted to call you personally.
So can I text this girl,
your boss just called me and,
and,
and,
and she thinks differently than what you thought.
So fuck you.
Can I say,
absolutely.
I would,
there's a million ways to say,
fuck you.
Take,
take a second and write it in a very backhanded.
Fuck you. I want to, I want to write it in a very backhanded fuck you i want to i want
to write it as we sit here tonight i want this to go down in real time wait doug we've got the
answer it's your your celebrity phone call bad news from a celebrity that was a segment we were
gonna do in this pilot we were shooting where if you have to fire someone or dump someone, hey, wouldn't they take the news better if they got it from...
It was probably so hilarious.
Drew Barrymore.
Oh, my God.
Let's get drunk and do that tonight.
I will do that.
I will do that.
Yeah, I'll prank all of them, but I'm not a celebrity to her.
Oh, I didn't mean you, Doug.
We might find someone.
We could probably do a...
He's got phone numbers.
Nickelback will do it.
Nickelback.
Nickelback Mike.
And this girl is so mean, she would be a Nickelback fan.
We're Nickelback fans.
We know the bass player.
We're also pretty mean, so I think that was pretty apt.
That was apt.
Yeah, actually, he's too nice to do something like that.
Shaley cooked for us the other night, and it was delicious.
Yeah, I think we were so faded the night before.
I think everyone assumed someone else was cooking, but I, in hindsight,
I do think I did say Chaley will cook.
I did by chance get a huge bag of that mesquite charcoal,
not knowing that it was going to take a lot of that to,
to get it going.
Yeah.
So it was,
it just ended up where we had everything here and it was good to go.
I,
I pride myself on my hosting skills, but I didn't know that I was going to be on camera first at 10 30 in the
morning.
I don't do anything without drinking.
So if I'm up first,
all right,
I'm drinking at 10 30 in the morning.
Answer the door.
So are we getting into this?
Because I,
so after we finished filming any project,
we have like a, like a debrief with the crew.
And three of my four crewmen loved your interview the best.
Oh, thanks.
Yeah.
Bingo was the breakout.
I thought Bingo was the breakout star.
Will be the breakout star.
The audience will love Bingo.
I did not know. This The audience will love Bingo. I did not know.
This is not knock on Bingo. I did not know that she
was capable of that type
of emotion and that type of storytelling.
I mean, she just absolutely nailed it.
Yeah. If you didn't
hear the last podcast, this is the
podcast about
Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl.
The people from the
famous Cliffhanger podcast that died and then committed suicide in short order.
So I know the videos I saw, Chad and Joby, Bingo, and after that, anyone really interesting?
Anyone really interesting?
Yes.
And I want to fact check something that Derek's mom said.
Okay.
Not Jimmy G, but Derek's mom.
Nowhere Man.
Nowhere Man.
Yeah.
Nowhere Man.
Nowhere Man's mom said that Derek committed suicide in the same room where your mother's assisted suicide took place. No, different houses.
Okay.
That was in this main house where you were filming Bingo.
That's where Mother's bed was, and you saw where Nowhere Man was.
Okay.
I was like, how did I miss that?
There's no way I missed that.
But she said that that's what happened.
I was like, hmm.
I can see where...
We weren't close to her.
She wasn't hanging around here.
So she might have heard
that it happened.
I mean, they're different houses,
but in the same compound, basically.
Yeah, it's connected.
I can see where that mistake would be made, for sure.
But she is convinced that it was in the same actual room.
Not so much.
Yeah.
Different house.
Okay.
I just want to get my facts straight.
Yeah, Bingo was the only one that was there for both, so maybe we should come on in.
Is she here?
Is she around?
No, she's got a friend that's just coming into town
so i like bingo yeah there's a so so go ahead so that was one um jimmy g cried um and that was
a powerful moment i did not think that he would do that. But there's going to be
a lot of fact-checking in this documentary. But the story
that we've discovered about Nowhere Man and
Whiskey Girl, I cannot believe no one
has done a documentary about this before.
And we talked to a couple
of the Breams.
Jessica and Mark Bream,
they live over in Vail, Arizona.
They were in a band
called The Briefcase. The Briefcases
or Briefcase with
Nowhere Men and a Whiskey Girl.
Derek and Amy Ross before they were
Nowhere Men and Whiskey Girl.
And they,
that couple were very intimate
with Nowhere
Men and Whiskey Girl.
And
they were almost the first people we
interviewed that took
not an anti-
Amy side, but most of the people
we spoke with, they were very
Saint Amy.
Amy was amazing.
Amy was awesome. She could do no wrong.
But they gave us a very pragmatic
viewpoint
on it. They said this is not a Romeo and
Juliet story. They said
if the roles were reversed
and if it was Derek who was
dying of lupus and had
died of lupus, Amy was not going to come
home and kill herself. No.
She'd be playing right now. Yeah.
They said Derek loved Amy
way more than
Amy loved him and so that
was the first
perspective
with that angle
and I thought that was very interesting
that it was no longer St.
Amy,
but I spoke with Jimmy G in our pre-interview and he said,
don't make them angels.
They were real people and flawed people.
I don't want to give away my whole movie,
but there's infidelity.
There's illness,
there's death and more death.
And so I cannot believe that I'm the first documentarian
that's ever thought about doing a documentary about these two people.
I know, well, I want you to tell a story about how you found out about it,
but I was also curious, you're an East Texas guy.
So how did you know about uh class action
park i was born in east texas like on the louisiana border like 533 people were in my
town like my dad is a slave still uh and that's still legal apparently there like i told them
about eight years ago there was a black guy as president and i was run out of town um so it's it's a very isolated place and so i found out
about action park the same way i found out about nowhere man and whiskey girl like when people hear
that you make documentaries they have two responses a i have a story for you that you won't believe and B, you should do a documentary about me
and both of those concepts are incredibly shitty concepts
everyone thinks that they dress better than they do
everyone thinks that they're funnier than what they are and people think that they're
more interesting than what they are and so I've never done a
documentary on someone going,
you should do a documentary on me, like 0%.
But we get that in comedy all the time.
If you hung around with me and my friends at the office,
you'd have a whole new skin.
Yeah, you'd get a reality show out of that.
My bowling team is so funny.
We are a bunch of live wires, right?
Like, no, no. My coworker has a coffee of live wires, right? Like, no, no.
My coworker has the coffee mug that says,
it's so hard to soar with the eagles when you work with the turkeys.
You'd love her.
Oh, I have a friend.
I'm not going to call his name.
But he thinks he's funny simply because he says the word fuck in a story. It's like,
so I went down to the fucking
Walmart and there's this fucking person
with the fucking, right?
I'm funny, right? I'm like,
no, no, you're not funny
or interesting. And so,
but I have done
documentaries based on people and friends
telling me, hey, would this make a great
documentary? And my good friend, Seth Porges, he's a
journalist. He was in Vegas, where I live.
And we just got together for drinks one night at a steakhouse called SDK
in the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. And we were just
sitting at the bar. And he goes, man, I have a wild story
that I did an article on a few years ago. And he told me the bar. He goes, man, I have a wild story that I did an article on a few years ago. He told me the story.
I was like, yes, we can make this a documentary.
That was around April 27th and
Memorial Day. We were on the ground that same year. It was a few
weeks later. We were on the ground in New Jersey filming.
Same with Nowhere Man and Whiskey Girl. I was doing weeks later we were on the ground in new jersey filming and so same with nowhere man and whiskey
girl i was doing the blackest thing i'm black by the way for your podcast audience um i was doing
the blackest thing ever when i found out about nowhere man and a whiskey girl i was golfing at
a country club and the person who i was golfing with was like, I have
a story for you.
It's around the 8th hole.
Around the
10th hole, I was like, I'm doing this story.
I said, if what you're telling me
is absolutely
true, then this would make a
great documentary. I went
home. I rushed home after
that. Like, literally rushed home.
Because I was Googling on my phone
Nowhere Man
with your documentary just to make sure.
I said, this story is that good.
Someone's done it.
And no one had done it.
His facts were wrong.
The story that my buddy told me,
he said that Amy
went into the hospital, died.
No man, Derek, called Amy's parents and said that she's just fine.
And he went to a hotel and killed himself in Tucson.
That's the story that I got.
And I found that interesting.
But the actual story is far more interesting than that.
So the story that hooked me to this story was not even the best part of this story.
The actual truth is the best part of this story.
And I cannot believe that I scored.
This is like winning a lottery or being white.
Like, this is like the greatest thing ever.
And so, yeah, here we are.
That happened in July.
And here we are.
Wow.
The idea, not the event.
Yeah.
Just for people who are just catching up on the podcast.
The event was years ago.
It seems to me that when you find it, when you're doing a little bit of beginning research,
that everyone has it wrong or different would make it like, oh, this is going to be good.
Because if no one's got it right, there's a lot to go around.
There's myth and all this other stuff.
It seems like it would be perfect.
Yeah, did you run into any of that?
Cause I was surprised when you said that bingo's story lined up with the
mother's story.
Yes.
Bingo's story lined up with Darius.
Two eyewitnesses,
right?
Well,
bingo's since had a traumatic brain injury and her facts are all wrong.
And I heard the mother's goofy.
So I figured her facts might be wrong.
It might be two goofy people.
They might have both got it wrong the same way.
It just might be two goofy people, but these two goofy people, if they were being interrogated and about to go to prison, they would be let go.
Because they're like, both stories check out.
You both couldn't have made up
this story.
Bingo story checked out. But also
the myths.
You gotta keep some of these myths in there.
Because
there's some parts of the story
that contradict other parts of the story.
Like Jimmy G thought that he, Jimmy G gave us a story that Derek Nowhere Man was not in the room when Amy had died.
He was in Bisbee and he had to drive from Bisbee to Tucson by himself.
over to drive from Bisbee to Tucson by himself.
And he could imagine the pain and the worry that was going through his mind when a family member was like, that's not what happened.
Like, Derek was in the room.
No man was in the room.
And which made this, we had an on-staff fact checker
because Amy's Whiskey Girl's brother-in-law
Jeremy
is a film professor in
Wyoming and he
graduated from the Sundance Institute
won an award for
his screenwriting
I was like I gotta bring this guy on my
crew and so
a lot of people didn't know that
that a
family member of Amy,
Whiskey Girl, was actually on our crew.
And so they're just telling stories
and blah, blah, blah. And so
after every interview, Jeremy
had a list that was like,
bullshit, bullshit,
bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
But I started to get
annoyed by that because my better stories were all bullshit.
I was like, you know, we're going to let this one slide, right?
Yes.
Derek did have a four-foot penis, right?
So I have to keep that in there.
I have to keep that in there.
So, but Jeremy was our on-staff bullshit detector.
Yeah, Jimmy G is a guy that you will never hear.
I don't really remember, or I'm not sure.
He'll just make something up. But Jimmy G, oh, brother.
He's a storyteller.
Can he tell a story?
Can he tell a story? Can he tell a story?
He was worried about, he goes, man, I used to be skinny and in shape and very good looking.
Now I'm big.
And what angle are you going to shoot me from?
And I said, you can show up early and we can put you at the angle that you want.
But he showed up, sat down. I guess can put you at the angle that you want uh but he showed up sat down i guess
he was okay with the angle and man did he open up oh he was he was he was good he was good jimmy
for the for the listener jimmy g picture of a big bloated and i've heard he's gotten way bigger
colonel parker with kind of a long,
too long hair for his age.
That's the reference you're going with?
Elvis' manager?
Like a cowboy hat,
big and slovenly,
and an answer for everything.
But, but.
With a 22-year-old girlfriend
that seems like she's been drugged.
Exactly.
So Jimmy G,
Jimmy G might be a yarn spinner, colloquial Southern phrase there.
And he might be slightly overweight-ish.
But man, that guy, he has to have a mouthpiece.
I've met at least one of the girls he's dated that's like 20 years his junior that I would shoot my shot at.
And when I met this girl, and this is no offense to both Jimmy or the girl, I was like, if she slept with Jimmy, I need to throw in a hard bid.
I need to throw in a hard bid. I need to throw in a hard bid.
But,
but yeah,
Jimmy,
I can,
I can definitely see the appeal of, of Jimmy.
Very,
very charismatic storyteller.
He reminds me of all the,
the men from my little small town. We didn't have
electricity or
decency.
these guys would just spin these tails
on the porch. And I just remember
he reminded, he gave me
that same sort of vibe there.
We met
Floyd.
Floyd, I hope Floyd's listening to this. Floyd. I hope
Floyd's listening to this. Floyd, you were my
least impressive interview.
Floyd,
you gave us nothing.
And I thought, and
Doug said that, oh, this guy's funny.
He's a comedian. The
funniest thing he said was his
stage name
was Phil DeVoy.
Phil DeVoy.
He's performed in this room.
Really? I thought that was hilarious.
And he had this sort of drunkish look to him. I was like,
this is about to be a great interview.
And then I was like, Floyd,
say something funny.
He's like,
I'm like,
tell us what you know about Bisbee.
I should have been there to lead him a bit.
You should have, man.
You should have.
I don't think he's going to make the cut.
Floyd, you're not going to make the cut.
Just preliminary.
I don't think Floyd's going to make the cut.
But, I mean, people who are listening to this,
like across the country,
Bisbee is full of characters.
And what makes
great documentaries, you gotta have a good
baseline story, right? But you gotta
have like these fantastic,
colorful,
outspoken characters that are both
insane, but insane to
the point where people will relate to them and fall in
love with them. Chad here
was one of our better interviews. Very, I don't know if we want to go into it but very listeners of this
podcast probably know the story that chad and joey had to clean up after the uh the suicide
and and and discussing your own demise uh by way of suicide.
And as you guys all know, my family currently is dealing with the suicide of my nephew very recently.
I mean, we're just completely devastated still.
And you were the last one to talk to him.
Yeah.
And we're just completely devastated. And that also gives me perspective into this story about how the people that we have talked with, it seems like we are, I won't say we're healing wounds here, but there's
a lot of people whose feelings are still hurt. There are a lot of people who still don't understand,
who don't get this. And just by us coming down here and connecting dots and really getting the whole story,
because there's a lot of people, Doug, people were talking,
there were people talking shit about you that don't know the whole story,
that don't know that Derek asked you to write that Facebook post.
They just thought Doug is an asshole.
He doesn't know how else to do it. And so he's going to go on Facebook
and be an asshole
and announce Amy's death.
People are raw about that.
I didn't correct them on the spot because
I want them to see the documentary
and be like, you're wrong.
I was wrong.
Doug did not do that
on his own.
Yeah, people were saying, like, I hacked her account.
I don't even know how to get into my own Facebook on my new computer, much less someone else's.
Somehow crack her code to get her password.
But among this story, the most misunderstood villain of this story is Stanhope.
Yeah.
That's our brand, actually.
None of us look shocked in the room right now. from my psychoanalysis they're also jealous
that Doug and
Bingo had such
proprietary access
to them
right before this happened
people were like if that was me
with him that day I could have
saved him or
if that was me who had
had the chance to sit with him before he went.
I tried to call him, but he wouldn't answer his phone.
And a lot of people's feelings are hurt.
People who are like who like closely connected with these two individuals who thought that, oh, I'm their best friend.
Right. And so they had a knack for making everyone feel like, you're the only person
in my world. You're the only person
in my world. And then after
their untimely deaths,
so close together,
people were so hurt that they
weren't involved
in the death story.
And they need a villain to blame why they weren't involved.
Yes. Oh, I get it. Amy had that
quality as a performer, like
a titty dancer quality of making
eye contact with you, making
you think she's singing that song just
for you in just a few
seconds of eye contact. You go,
oh shit, this is all about me.
And she carried that
into her regular life with people.
Yeah, there was a story that came
out that
they would tell people they were brothers
and sisters because so many of the guys
at the shows wanted to fuck
Amy and
it was good business. And so they
were like, hey, we're brothers and sisters. And dudes were
like, oh, okay. Yes, I
will buy your t-shirt.
Yeah.
I was like, clever. Don't hate was like clever don't hate the game don't hate the game did you
did you get uh jimmy world or yeah we we spoke with jim akins and robin viding uh in um what
about courtney courtney andrews is going to be the narrator of this documentary. Who's that? She came up with
them, and now she's a big Nashville
star,
I guess you'd say. Whiskey's family
has a connection to not
only being very talented, but
a connection in the music industry.
There's a brother who's
a Grammy Award winning
writer, correct? Yes.
In Nashville, I believe.
But as musically talented as Amy's family was,
Derek did not come from much.
Yeah.
We'll be with Amy's
Whiskey Girls family in Wyoming in a couple
of weeks, but
I'm not
going to cry here.
But Derek's
family, they were
the nicest people.
And they
invited us into their home,
which was probably no bigger than this room that we're in.
And they were the most generous
and they were the most nicest people ever.
And listening to them tell their story
and how they got over Derek's suicide
and the ways they've not gotten over Derek's suicide
sort of laid a blueprint
for me and my family
of how do we move on from this.
But I'm telling
you, man, these people are
living in Douglas,
Arizona,
which is not scenic.
Not scenic. Not scenic.
Not prosperous.
Not prosperous. 30 minutes from here
about.
It's the southeast
corner of Arizona on the Mexican border
and it's bleak.
The port of entry there is the only reason why
that's still a town.
Yeah.
They said,
we have Derek here.
And they pulled out Derek's ashes.
And it was still in the same box
that you get when the funeral home
delivers it to you,
when the crematorium delivers it to you.
And I said, Ken,
I said, I would love
to buy him an urn.
And her face lit up.
And she looked at the box and she goes, Derek, we're finally going to get you in peace.
I said, do you want a traditional urn?
And she goes, no.
He was a kooky person.
Let's make this as kooky as possible. But man, the earnestness of those people, the audience of this documentary, they're going to fall in love with Derek's family.
This has nothing to do with my relationship, but I was holding Mr. Squishles and he leaned into a kiss and I didn't lean away.
Hey, everybody.
It's me, Brett Erickson from the Issues with Andy podcast.
We love you, Killer Termites, and we hope you'll tune in and check us, Issues with Andy, on YouTube.
Yeah, it's not a podcast, right?
Isn't it a vodcast?
You're right. For once, Andy, you're right. It's a vodcast, which means it's not a podcast, right? Isn't it a vodcast? You're right.
For once, Andy, you're right.
It's a vodcast,
which means it's a podcast
fueled by vodka.
If you love the shit you're getting here
on the Doug Stanhope Podcast,
get more shit with us
on Issues with Andy
on YouTube every Friday.
And yeah,
you keep listening and watching
or however you do it,
and we'll keep shitting.
Do you have a title yet?
Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl.
All right.
Yeah.
I want to honor their...
People knew them by that.
Yes.
That was their brand.
And we were talking to their former band, The Briefcase,
Sizz, Sigh, Briefcase Sigh, Briefcasins.
So they were, they said it was just time for us to break up because nowhere men in a whiskey are.
They had to go do their own thing.
They wanted to live that gypsy life.
They wanted to go and just make money off of these gigs here and gigs here.
They just wanted a gig.
They just wanted a gig.
And that was them.
That was them.
I kept trying to find sort of this, why didn't they make it?
And I'm telling my whole documentary
here uh how many people listen to this i don't know less and less okay
um no man and whiskey girl people know them by that brand and one of the things that we want to
do the art that was on their nowhere man and and Whiskey Girl, that album's cover.
My animator, who's brilliant, Richard Landberg in Las Vegas, he's going to, there are parts where we're going to have to animate.
And we're going to use that sort of Southwest motif art to do that.
And so we just love to call it Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl. But for a lot of the
nation, they will be discovering this dynamic duo for the very first time. You're going to be
clicking on HBO or Netflix or whatnot. You see Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl, you're going to be like, what?
Who?
I'm telling you.
When I was leaving Bisbee after we finished filming last week, it's dark.
It's a Saturday night. I'm driving from Bisbee to Tucson, and you go to that magical tunnel
outside of town, I just put on
tumbleweed and they gave me
my story. They gave me my ending.
They gave me my story.
I didn't know them.
I'm discovering them
through this documentary and through
the people who knew them and hung out with them.
Derek sat
at this very
bar
before he killed himself.
And
just the spirit. They're all
around this place.
And so I feel
this kindredness with them.
And I'm not
one to talk like this.
But I think that they are helping me tell their story.
This documentary, I have gotten every fucking break that I've needed.
Every break.
Charlotte and Barbara down in Douglas, Noah Mann's mother and sister.
I kept trying to call them, and they would not respond.
And then Charlotte finally picks up last week.
Charlotte is stage four colon cancer.
They stopped therapeutic treatment, and they've just- Palliative care?
Not quite palliative care, but they're just trying to shrink the tumor.
All right.
Palliative care is-
That's pain management.
It's next.
Yeah.
It's next.
Hospice.
I don't want to-
Jinx it.
I asked her, I said, Charlotte, how long do you have?
She goes, they're not giving me
a time period, but she goes,
I'm going to try to fight this thing and beat
this thing. I said, but they're not trying
to treat the tumor. She goes, I know.
She is
not,
I don't want to say this, but
just basic science.
Her prognosis is grim.
And she told me, she goes, I've been going through cancer treatments.
Apologies for not answering your call.
And then we talked on the phone.
I said, I would love to come to your house and interview you.
She gave me the address.
We made a time.
And I was so nervous that they were not going to, they were going to, I hear they've been very difficult in this whole process.
That in the death, in the funeral, that Amy Stanley wasn't invited to the wedding or the funeral.
Amy Stanley, they warned me like they might be difficult.
Yeah.
And so on the eve of their interview, I call them and call them and call them and call them.
And I was like, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
This is about to turn into an Amy Ross documentary.
Because I had no one to speak for Derek.
And we drove down to Douglas on a hunch and a prayer.
And we knocked on the door.
They're like, hey, we've been expecting you guys.
I'm like, wow.
Every break that we have needed every person from courtney andrews to jim atkins of jimmy world to doug doug i emailed you
from an email i found on the internet and two hours later you and i were on the telephone
that's because you did the smart thing and included a link to a New York Times article about your last documentary that was just coming out.
A million people say, I want to write an autobiography of them or a biography of them.
Who are you?
Have you ever written a book before?
No, but you were inspired.
So, yeah um every break um and i'm not saying you get uh papa joe i did not do papa joe was that a was that a he has footage he filmed the uh when they
played the wall for bingo when we first had him well i will contact him and get the footage he
was a super fan okay i guess i met him when I met Courtney Marie Andrews.
She was Whiskey Girl's opening act up at Pino Salto's.
Oh.
At the cabins.
We go to the cabins.
Yeah, which is the Longhorn restaurant.
It's the only restaurant.
It's the only restaurant.
And we were up there just on vacation, and they happened to be playing at the only bar i think when i met
courtney marie andrews i was boiling the skull of something i'd found dead on that hiking trail
when i was walking the dogs oh so here's another thing about this documentary and and and this whole
bismuth world that nowhere man andkey Girl not only existed in,
they, I think they
fucking ruled here. Here's another
aspect that we found here in Bisbee.
So,
Derek's funeral
was
at the Episcopal Church here.
I
called the
rector of the church
and I was like hey can we
film inside
your church he was like
I'm gonna have to take this to my bishop
and it has to go before a committee
we want to maintain
and protect our sacred space
what is this for I said we're doing
a documentary on Nowhere Man and Whiskey Girl
oh yeah come on now yeah
dude lead with that yo
yo he goes do this
almost nunchucked you
like
the funeral
home where
his body
was cremated and prepared
for cremation is
it sounds like a one man
operation
and we called him
and he was like
and this also goes
to show you where this gives you perspective
of where we are in the country
he's like I can't meet
you at the funeral home today
I'm out in the desert picking
up the body of
someone who was trying to cross the
border that just
died in the middle of the desert.
That's a whole nother story.
That didn't freak me out, but it
gave me like, fuck.
This shit is real.
Like, y'all, I'm not gonna get
into politics, but this shit, people
are losing their lives trying to get into this country.
That's a tangent.
Funeral director.
Hey, can we come film the chapel where the family viewed his body right after he died?
And the coroner and the funeral director advised the family, you don't want to open that bag.
You don't want to open that bag.
So when they got to the funeral home, the funeral director just had his arm out so they could just hold his arm and whatnot. moving, very intimate time with the family and Derek's body, that both Barbara and Charlotte in their interviews,
they let me know that that happened.
And I said, oh, I would really love to get to film the inside of that funeral chapel.
And we're like, can we film?
We know you're out collecting the body of Mexicans in the desert,
but could you could we see
can you let us in? He's like,
man, I live all the way in Douglas.
I ain't trying to come up to Bisbee.
We're like, alright.
So, we just needed to
shoot the chapel because that's where Derek Ross's
body was and his
family spoke of that
being an intimate moment. He goes, what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hit me tomorrow. I'll meet you guys
after tomorrow. Like, we were
eating lunch
at the High Desert Market
and our crew was just talking about how
B-roll went, how interviews went,
and a guy is eating
slowly.
And I can tell he's listening.
I can tell he's listening. I can tell he's listening.
And then he walks up to us.
He goes, I would like
to recite to you a lyric that
someone wrote about them. It was like
something about rain
and pain and whatnot.
Arms and charms.
Arms, charms.
Hippity hop.
And
this guy, he stood at our table
and recited this lyric like with tears in his eyes i was like they really meant a lot to
this town um and whenever i needed something done here I just drop
hey I'm doing a documentary on
man and whiskey girl they're like well there's a table
right here for you
the Frank Sinatra
of Bisbee yeah also I thought
I was like I'm about to
drive into a small
racist ass
Joe
Arapa or whatever his name is
Joe Apio type of town.
And I drive up and like every bit,
I've seen no black person.
I've seen more Black Lives Matter signs
than actual black people.
Yeah.
You're not going to see it either.
I can tell you that.
But where are the black lives?
I got Shawnee on the phone and he promised to come
and he didn't show up for the screening.
So Doug and I, first night I'm at Doug's house,
I was like, where are the black lives?
And he's like, I know a black life.
I was like, present this black life.
And he calls up his buddy.
What was his name?
Sean Hicks.
Sean Hicks, Shawnee.
He was like, can you come over to
my house? There's a black documentary
here. He doesn't believe you
exist. And the guy was like, yeah, I'll come.
And so we're here the next day.
He doesn't come on time. Typical,
right? No, he didn't come at all.
No, I remember
he didn't show. I said, at least our
black people don't show up at all, not
just late. Yeah, they don't even all not just ladies they don't even show up
so
this shawty
guy might exist
he might not exist
but I tell you I have counted
like 8 black lives matter
signed and like 0
black lives
right across the street is my neighbor Bruce
he's black and I went over
there. You keep telling me about these people like it's
unicorns. I haven't seen them the whole time you were here.
You're a unicorn.
Oh, you know what I gave him is the cake
because he's got kids.
That was my fucking cake.
Yeah, well it would have been
spoiled by now.
No one touched it that night.
Valentina brought it. So I brought it over No one touched it that night. Valentina brought it.
So I brought it over to him because I heard him talking over there.
And he comes out on crutches all fucked up.
I'm like, that's why I haven't seen him.
It's all fucked up.
So the one black person here is maimed.
Yes.
Yes.
You guys like your black people down here, in theory.
In theory.
We're not recruiting.
There's no scholarship here.
What's a black person have to come for?
Disney needs to openly recruit black people.
black people here.
But the white people are here.
They're pretty good.
The first night I was here, the first day I was here,
the first morning, we're at the Bisbee
Coffee Company. Is that the name of it?
And I'm sitting up sending emails off
and a lady behind me is like,
Donald Trump is the nicest man in the world.
And the government is using radio waves.
I'm like, what?
I'm like, where am I?
Where am I?
It's a mixture of Black Lives Matter people.
I assume you guys are woke.
And the people who believe that Trump is a great father and cares about people.
Bisbee is pretty neutral, balanced, I would say, for Arizona.
But if you just accidentally venture into Tombstone, that's a different story.
Tombstone sounds racist.
Sometimes I forget that I'm in Arizona because I don't go places.
And then you stop at a bar in Tombstone and you sit there and it's just,
Coronavirus is a hoax!
You're like, oh,
fuck, that's cool, man.
And Sierra Vista
is a different kind of conservative.
That's military conservative.
And Tombstone
is every fucking idiot
you see at Sturgis in a Trump shirt.
Ooh.
I was gonna peruse that town
by myself Saturday.
Oh, you should do it.
Really?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's
one block off Highway 80.
In my Antifa shirt?
I wouldn't do that.
My Antifa tank top?
They won't give you shit about the mask
because they know your type's prone to it.
Yeah.
He's high risk on two levels.
Yeah, on two levels.
I wish that wasn't an accurate description of that place.
They're like, hide your wives.
He might rape them or give them corona.
Or in some cases, I've read both.
It's a tourist town.
He's going to smoke that wacky weed with them and teach them jazz music.
They're part of reports in Tombstone that there's a colored over there who can read.
Making movies and such.
We know what kind of movies you're making. We know what kind of movies you're making.
We know what kind of movies you're making.
I mean, people here,
I think a lot of them
have opinions just as
a form of entertainment.
Or a cause
that lady that would write into the Bisbee Observer
letter to the editor every
week just complaining about something
Susan Blackford
where's the lady who was
who was your villain
in the
bag prohibition
that's her
plastic bag
that was hilarious.
Yeah, she was all pro-plastic bags and anti-civil unions and just a constant complainer.
And that was her thing.
That was her watching soap operas.
Everyone has a thing.
So people here have an uneducated opinion.
Well, in addition to people moving to, you know, when I was in the Army, the first time I said I was from Arizona, somebody's like, people are from Arizona?
I thought people only moved to Arizona.
And I realized, oh, that's kind of true.
But the people that are from here are usually in these little pocket mining towns, and they've never left that town or read a book or you know I want to befriend
someone who was
born and raised in
Tombstone that might be
a documentary within itself
so
like Richard Pryor the toy
like I can be
like their black
friend and we can do
fun events
together. And speaking of
fun events in Bisbee, here's the two things I've
done. Right now in
Doug's fun house is
Bisbee in a nutshell.
You have us doing this podcast
drinking, having a great
time, and there's
Tracy, Chaley's wife
knitting.
Crocheting. Crocheting
like a foot away from me.
While bartendering.
While bartendering.
We call him Officer Bob Friendly now
and we don't give away his new appointed
position, but he would come in
in uniform and just to have
Chad Shank and a cop
in uniform just
offering security,
but trading ideas about,
you know,
from different sides of the law and agreeing on a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
This is bingo.
You are listening to the Doug Stanhope Podcast.
So this, I must say, I've done a lot of documentaries.
And those documentaries have sent me to very strange places.
And I met a lot of strange people.
And this is not hyperbolic at all.
And for those who don't know what hyperbolic is.
I was just going to do that for my white listeners.
Yeah, for your white listeners.
My listeners need help with big words.
Yeah.
Don't you hate when people are condescending?
That means when people talk down to you.
I was about to explain it to you.
I didn't know.
So,
what were we
talking about?
Hyperbole.
Hyperbole. A lot of documentaries.
The people
that I've met here on this shoot, this town, this is driving through that tunnel.
Something really magical happens.
I've been here two fucking weeks and I just extended my hotel tonight.
Will I leave? I don't
know. Has Bisbee finally
got a black person?
Tune in next week.
Bingo's
friend Tark just bought
a house down at the end of the street
up one that is a house
I fucking love. Did you get the one?
Yeah, and he actually had to go
$11,000 higher than their asking
price to get it.
And that's since you've been here.
So he's a person of
Middle Eastern color. Property
values have gone up since you've been here.
Where
in the world is this happening that a
person of Middle Eastern culture moves in and the property values?
I'm just saying, you just being around town with a camera that you own.
Yeah.
I bet if I move back in, the home prices will stabilize.
We sort of cancel each other.
We cancel each other out.
I'm starting Bisbee NAACP.
You've been asking, where are the black people?
Maybe you should be asking what happened to all the black people.
I'm like, where do the black people hang out?
I'm like, you see that tree?
hang out like you see that tree I'll give you a two-parter
because I hate interviews with
fucking superlative questions
was there a documentary
that
motivated you into going
fuck I want to do that or
has there been a documentary
since you've been doing them that made you go,
fuck, I still need to step up my game?
When I first started, so I'm what you call a genius.
My first documentary that I ever did.
We call it Book Smarts.
Book Smarts.
That boy got some learning.
We call it Book Smarts.
Book Smarts.
That boy got some learning.
My first documentary I ever did was a four-part series called The Shape of Shreveport.
It's about a little town where I grew up near that had this crazy, brilliant, wacky, and eclectic history.
And I said, I'm going to make a documentary. It was just floating.
I quit my job.
I'm about as broke as the Ten Commandments.
I need money.
And OnlyFans did not exist then.
And so, Tina was a buddy of mine, Will Broyles, down in Shreveport.
And we did this four-part documentary series on the history of Shreveport.
This was my first documentary ever.
And I won the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Documentary of the Year for my
first documentary.
And so it's just been an escalating career.
I've had weird stories.
I've had stories where I'm like, I'm really ready for this to be over.
But in terms of making shitty and sucky documentaries
but is there a documentary
that you've seen since you've been
doing them where you go that blew your
mind like oh fuck
if you have Netflix
I think a few people do now
it's catching up to Quibi
if you have
and we can talk about Quibi.
What a mess.
If your ex-girlfriend still has not changed her password on her Netflix account, go and watch The Last Chance U by director Greg Whitley.
Is that a 30 for 30?
It's not.
It's a documentary series.
I think there are like five seasons now that he, it's an episodic series about he goes
into these small ass towns that have like these major junior college football programs.
And it's the kid who got caught smoking weed at Auburn.
The kid who beat up his girlfriend at Texas Tech.
caught smoking weed at Auburn.
The kid who beat up his girlfriend at Texas Tech. They all have to go to these smaller colleges to rebuild their worth and rebuild their Division I status.
And so you have these world-class athletes with just shitty work ethics and drinking problems.
I like you motion to me.
Yeah.
They moved into these small
scuba Mississippi
and I watched documentaries
and I'm like,
yo, they could have done way better.
If I had that documentary,
I would have done this.
That's the next question.
Give me an example
of one where you're like, come on, you had a great story
and you fucking ruined it.
I've watched a lot of those.
What's a great story but you
fucking ruined it?
There's a documentary called
The Bridge.
Oh, yeah.
We're a big documentary.
Everybody comes alive on the suicide documentary. The Bridge. Oh, yeah. Yeah, man. We're a big documentary. Everybody comes alive
on the suicide documentary.
So The Bridge,
for the white listeners, The Bridge,
and for black listeners as well,
and for the one Middle Eastern guy
in Bisbee,
The Bridge is a documentary about
so the Golden Gate Bridge
is the number one
destination on the planet where people commit suicide.
So much so that the bridge authority, they've had to put up suicide nets.
And before they put up suicide nets, they had.
It's like they do for pigeons.
Like to try to keep pigeons off.
Yeah, to try to keep pigeons from shitting on the bridge.
Pigeons from shitting on the bridge.
These nets keep people from jumping off the bridge and pigeons from shitting on it, which are both very virtuous things.
Windshield.
If you don't get to it right away.
And so this documentarian, I don't know his name, he documented, he convinced the Bridge Authority that he was doing
a documentary about the aesthetics
of the bridge, and he set up
cameras alongside,
along the bridge. For a full year.
And he just, it's
almost like daily.
He's catching people jumping off the bridge.
You see people trying to catch them.
And San Francisco, when it came out, flipped the fucking biscuit.
Flipped the biscuit.
You said it was about the Golden Gate Bridge.
Yeah, and the people jumping off it.
And the people jumping off of it.
The director's Eric Steele.
Eric Steele.
Is that a porn star?
That does sound like it.
Some Steele.
Probably Dick Steele. Dick Steele. Is that a porn star? That does sound like it. Some steel. Probably dick steel.
Dick steel.
That documentary, I felt like toward the end, it sort of spirals into like a eh.
But the very beginning of that film, Jesus Christ.
Also about that film, that was based on an article in the new yorker called the jumpers
and they interviewed a guy the only guy who survived that jump and that's what we were
talking about the day about suicide the one guy who jumped off that bridge and survived. He said that the second my feet left
that bridge, he knew he
had fucked up. Like, he knew
that there was nothing in my
life that calls for
this sort of, this was a
disproportional response to
everything that was going on in my life
to jump off a fucking bridge.
What a shitty time to have a moment
of clarity. What a shitty time to be like, you know what?
Maybe I want to commit suicide in a unique way, not go to like, that's the equivalent
of having your honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
I'm going to kill myself on the Golden Gate Bridge.
That's what everybody does.
So what's the other?
We have some Oakland people.
What's the other bridge?
The Oakland Bay Bridge?
Is that what it's called? The Bay Bridge.
There's also Coronado in San Diego. So Shady's
right. The Coronado Bridge in San Diego is
also a suicide
destination. And the signs all
the way up. Yes. It's like the slam
dance. Someone cares for you.
Call this number.
But
the Golden Gate Bridge at its heyday was having what one
or two suicides a week the oakland bay bridge had as a zero it's when they came up with groupons
hey let's all kill ourselves because it's cheaper it's cheaper here It's cheaper here. It's this sort of
mystical thing.
There was a psychiatrist that was like,
people think that they're jumping off the bridge
into this other dimension.
Oh, and all the fog
too. Very
cinematic.
It's a belly flop of death.
It's the belly flop of death.
And then you see the guys, they have the, I think it's the Coast Guard or the Bay Patrol or whatnot.
They have people just stationed in hazmat suits just waiting for someone to fucking jump off this bridge.
And they go, when we pull up these bodies that have jumped off this bridge, there's nothing graceful.
It's like hitting cement.
Yes.
It's like hitting cement.
The thing I remember, because I've never thought about this in years, watching it, it was when they were tracking a guy walking back and forth and like, he's going to jump.
He's going to jump.
And they just kept watching him and
we can't do anything. He could probably
sue them if they
tried to stop him but he's going to jump
and then eventually I think that was one of the things
where he just kind of like leaned over.
Oh that's the guy in the all black.
He had the most graceful leap
of all of them.
I was looking at it differently than style.
The style. I mean, he did a
beautiful Greg Louganis.
Is Louganis still alive? Speak of a
death.
It seems like he died.
On a TV show. Oh, no, it's
Mark Spitz that died.
Okay. All right.
So, yeah, The Bridge.
The Bridge was one of the first documentaries that were
just absolutely compelling to me. And it was one of the first documentaries that were just absolutely compelling to me.
And it was one of the first documentaries that it was, I don't know if it was inspired by that article, The Jumpers.
But I read articles every day and I'm like, I want to do a documentary with this journalist.
And I got to do it on Action Park. And I don't know why
not more film directors are teaming up with
journalists to tell these amazing stories.
But yeah, I thought
I could have made the bridge a lot more intriguing toward the end.
Okay, so could have made the bridge a lot more intriguing toward the end okay so uh this podcast uh went long and fantastically so we're cutting it there and you can pick up part two with chris charles
scott in his uh his new documentary check that out class action park on hbo max uh part two
coming your way on patreon. Thanks for listening.
Bingo, take us out of here.
Okay, bye-bye now. Thank you.