SYNOPSIS:

Keith walks Hyde Park—with a detour into & across the Hancock Golf Course—with LA’s Gene Gallerano.  An East Dallas kid raised on the humanities and Poor David’s Pub, Gene’s an actor-turned-producer-turned-Emmy-winning director, fresh off multiple wins at the Waco FF for THANK YOU FOR LISTENING, his Texas Monthly short about country singer Joshua Ray Walker. The origin story is a rom-com: Gene boards a flight, spots Joshua Ray, and talks to him for seven hours straight—true love at 30,000 feet. Then… nothing. 3 ½ months later, the text: Joshua Ray was diagnosed with cancer, off the road for eight months—do you still want to make something? No money, no camera, no crew. But Gene is all in. He builds a set in the loft at his mom’s house, recruits Austin doc-maker Bob Ray to co-direct, and shoots the doc on his late friend Ross McDonnell’s camera gear—“just don’t change any of his settings, it’ll feel like we have him.”

From there we work the whole map: moving to the East Village at 19, studying theater under Austin Pendleton, and turning a rejected-everywhere $13,000 “thin feature” — featuring Meryl Streep & Philip Seymour Hoffman among others—into a 19-minute short that premiered at Tribeca: STARRING AUSTIN PENDLETON. Talking his way into hurricane zones with a camera. Producing AMERICAN SYMPHONY with Matt Heineman. And holding the boom for hours in COVID ICUs on THE FIRST WAVE, steadying himself on the repetition of his daughter’s favorite lyrics: “a tale as old as time, Beauty and the Beast.”.

Plus: a first-ever DocWalks golf swing on a borrowed club, the broads of the East Village, Reed Birney and the break that came at 57, and the advice that sticks—if you have time to worry, you have time to work.

DISCUSSION LINKS

THE YOGURT SHOP MURDERS (2025) | BE HERE TO LOVE ME (2004) | THE ORDER OF MYTHS (2008) | THE GREAT INVISIBLE (2014) | DESCENDANT (2022) | TOWER (2016) | SHADOWS (1959) | SLACKER (1990) | DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993) | TWIN PEAKS (1990) | DRIVE (2011)

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Meet Max Pickle
00:47 Ben’s Freaks and Geeks era
01:51 Keith’s fake film-student music videos
02:26 A stranger yells the episode title
04:15 Late July, and deep in publicity mode
05:36 Why she said no to true-crime podcasts
07:20 “I’m the filmmaker, not the detective”
07:53 Into Casa de Luz
08:01 Claire, the filmmaker who came first
10:35 Four episodes became five
10:53 The case gets solved
11:14 Flipping on the porch light
12:20 A cloud over four accused teenagers
13:38 Secret weapon, and the meta narrative
15:17 The Innocence Project scene
16:36 Justin Zweifach and shooting grief
17:28 Pam Colloff’s dare
18:15 TWIN PEAKS and the footage
19:24 Color theory and neon beer signs
22:08 Wiseman: it’s still 100% fake
23:22 The body of work, film by film
25:32 Why this one was different
26:32 A24 pays for crew therapy
26:59 “This is the last interview I have to do”
28:01 Celebrities on the trail
28:44 Recognized at the Impact Partners party
30:01 No separation from the work
31:10 When strangers bring you their grief
32:04 Pam Colloff and CATCH THE DEVIL
33:29 Brown, Emo’s, and moving to Austin
34:38 Quack’s, and old cheap Austin
35:10 The man who cleaned the yogurt shop
36:56 Keith’s very old tattoo
37:20 Texas Monthly, and 96 MINUTES
38:31 There would be no TOWER without you
40:13 Lee Daniel, and dating your cinematographer
42:46 Diane Weyermann and Participant
44:19 A weird moment for the industry
45:18 How a project starts now
47:44 Commercials, favors, and paying people
50:18 The BE HERE TO LOVE ME edit Ben walked away from
51:34 The haunted post-production office
52:30 BE HERE TO LOVE ME, re-released
53:17 NYU, her dad, and the animating question
55:41 Bergman, van Gogh, and the cost of an artful life
59:18 Is there a through line?
1:03:14 The guests we still can’t book
1:06:17 Improv, and deep listening
1:07:31 Gateway drug: Cassavetes’ SHADOWS
1:10:07 A dream collaborator, declined
1:12:00 Where to watch, and AFS on September 3
1:13:10 Next time: Doc Walks International