When a Comedy Documentary Turns Tragic

NICKSAV Film & Music SHOW

What's Eating Ralphie May won Best of the Fest at Nashville Film Festival and Documentary of the Year at Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival. The film was initially intended to be a weight-loss documentary that followed beloved comedian Ralphie May and his family, but it turned into a raw and intimate portrait of a family dealing with addiction during the last years of Ralphie’s troubled life.

At Nashville Film Festival I had the chance to interview comedian and wife of Ralphie, Lahna Turner, and director Cat Rhinehart.

Some of the things we discuss include

• What to do when shooting a documentary that takes an unexpected turn
• How to earn trust to explore the raw and intimate aspects of someone's story
• What to do when loved ones are wrestling with addiction
• If and when it is appropriate to stop filming
• How comedy can help get past anguish

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Related Episodes

For more on shooting documentaries, check out this episode with Peabody-winning documentary filmmaker Craig Renaud. He's done projects for likes of HBO, NBC, Discovery, PBS, The New York Times, and VICE News. On this episode he discusses how to survive dangerous conflict zones, ways to explore hot-button issues in an in-depth way, and more.

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Steve Kaplan has taught comedy workshops around the world and companies like Dreamworks, Disney, HBO, Paramount, and Touchstone hire him as a comedy consultant. He shares some of his comedy insights on this episode.

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Related Things

• Nashville Film Festival
• What's Eating Ralphie May
  • Facebook, IMDb
• Lahna Turner
  • Twitter, YouTube
• Cat Rhinehart
  • Facebook, Instagram
• More of my podcast coverage of Nashville Film Festival

• Shortcut for the podcast: nicksav.show

Additional music for the show provided by Rob Costlow.

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Films Mentioned

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• The First 48 Hours
• Marriage Story
• One Hour Photo
• What's Eating Ralphie May

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