Why Documentaries Are Better and Worse Than Ever With Sheila Nevins

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 847 Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Sheila Nevins, producer and former president of HBO Documentary Films, to discuss why she isn't bothered by the complicated state of documentaries. Thanks to streaming, documentaries are more popular than ever, reaching more households and finding consistent relevance in pop culture like never before. Sheila gives her take on the perception that quality filmmaking has ceded its path to quantity in the streaming age, our cultural obsession with murder and crime, and whether we need to change the way we think about documentary films. Matt finishes the show with a box office opening weekend prediction for ‘The First Omen’ and ‘Monkey Man’. For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! [email protected] Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Sheila Nevins Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There are a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL draft this year.
0:04.0	My name is Ben Solac and I host the Ringer NFL Draft Show with Danny Kelly, Danny Hypatts, and Craig Horleck.
0:08.8	We cover trades, free agency, and the draft, which is, yeah, obviously.
0:12.2	We'll tell you about everything, which includes which quarterbacks are good, which quarterbacks are bad,
0:15.6	and which quarterbacks are just Kirk Cousins.
0:17.2	That is the Ringer NFL draft show. Search the bringer NFL draft show on Spotify.
0:24.2	It is Thursday, April 4th. Last night, I went to the documentary section on Max, the service
0:30.5	formerly known as HBO Max. There was some great stuff like the Alex Jones doc, the Albert
0:35.7	Brooks doc. There was also a lot of less great stuff,
0:39.1	some cults and crime and something about the cast of glee. Apparently 90-day fiance is a
0:45.1	documentary now. That's not just Max, of course. The streaming wars have been a mixed bag for the
0:50.8	documentary film business. Thanks to Netflix and the others, there's never been more
0:54.5	docs released and reaching more people than there is today. But most filmmakers would agree
0:59.7	that the overall quality has really suffered. True crime, journalistically questionable productions,
1:06.6	participatory sports docs where these subjects are paid and credited as producers.
1:11.4	We've talked about the tradeoffs there on the show before.
1:14.2	You'd think that would really bother my guest today, but surprisingly it doesn't.
1:18.2	She's probably the most influential person in the history of the documentary media.
1:22.6	In 1979, Sheila Nevins was hired by HBO as director of documentary programming.
1:28.3	That was a 13-week contract, but she stayed and left for a bit, then returned in 1986 and
1:34.3	reigned all the way until 2018, a truly incredible run, making hundreds of documentary films and shows,
1:42.3	turning HBO into the most impactful and interesting
	...

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