Hazaa to the lords and ladies listening verily I say unto ye welcome to a

bonus chopler trap house episode for all the serfs and peasants who listen to

the show you are hearing this transmission from Castle

Trap House and we are joined by the filmmaker Lance Oppenheim to talk about his

extremely funny new HBO narrative non-fiction documentary series Renfair, Lance, I say

unto ye, welcome. Wow I like that. Narrative non-fiction that's a nice

HBO should have used that when they talked

about the show. I steal it from you. Well let's start there so I mean what I want

to get at is just a broad question about you as a filmmaker and to paraphrase

Verner Herzog when he was talking about making documentaries or yelling at people at a documentary film festival for the documentaries they made.

Do you see your work as a documentary filmmaker,

are you the fly on the wall or the bee that stings?

I'm like the mosquito that stings? I'm like the mosquito that sucks the blood I guess of the people

that allow me to be there and then we paint together with the bloods and no I don't know no I'm definitely not a fly on the wall but you know there I feel like sometimes it's it's sort of like

It's interesting. I don't, I don't know, I don't consider myself this, but I was one of the subjects of the documentary was interviewed in like Vanity Fair yesterday, and she compared us to like nature documentarians that would kind of move out of the way for our own

safety and we will help the creatures out of the way of the cheetah but if the cheetah

is in the line of you you know, a fucking, I don't know, a mountain lion can a

mountain line take a cheetah? That's my analogy working, then you know we're not going to

deviate from reality either and we will be there to soak up whatever happens.

It's a dance at the end of the day, you know?

Sometimes a gazelle is going to get taken down and eaten on film.

But for those who haven't seen the film,

...