クリエイティブなキャリアの始まり
This is Reinamoto's podcast, The Creative Mindset. Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Creative Mindset,
a podcast about what the future holds at the intersection of creativity and technology.
I am Reinamoto, the founding partner of I&CO, a global innovation firm based in New York,
Tokyo, and Singapore. One of my favorite pastimes is to watch documentary films.
They are real authentic stories from various walks of life that can give us not just entertainment,
but also lessons. Today's guest, David Charles Rodriguez, is a Sundance ominous and Tribeca
award-winning documentary filmmaker. He has also maintained his other career as an advertising
creative director. In 2024, he premiered his latest feature, She is Still Here, at the Tribeca
Film Festival, as well as the new Apple TV series, Omnivore, featuring Nova chef René Redzepi.
Previously, he directed and produced the Netflix original series, Neymar,
The Perfect Chaos, which was selected as one of the top 10 documentaries of 2022 by Desquiette
magazine. It was also one of the most watched docuseries globally on Netflix, making it the
top 10 in over 50 countries. I've known David for close to 20 years when I was his manager at a
creative agency in San Francisco. We worked on various clients and projects, but the most notable
piece of work he created was an online documentary series for Nike football called Blood, Sweat &
Tears, years before Netflix and online streaming was the norm. David has been a creative director
and writer in advertising since 2001. He has worked at top creative agencies and Fortune 500
brands. I wanted to talk to him because he's someone who's maintained two creative careers
simultaneously, filmmaking and advertising. In part one of my conversation with David,
we dive into how writing became not just a way for him to discover himself,
but also build more than one career. So let's get started.
過去の作品と最近の活動
David Charles, good to see you. Good to see you too, man. Where does this podcast find you?
I'm in Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Yeah. My house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you, you said that you're
about to pack your bags for about 10 days to go to Brazil to attend a film festival.
Yeah, I'm about to go to the Sao Paulo International Film Festival with my new film.
She is still here. And then after Sao Paulo, I had to the UK for the UK tour of the film.
Yeah. Okay. Your creative journey has taken you from the advertising world as a writer.
And when you and I started working together, that was what, 2008, maybe?
2006. 2006.
18 years ago. 18 years. We were kids. We were kids. Yes, we were.
Oh, wow. We were really kids. So 2006, when David and I started working together, I was your boss.
Yeah. And one of the fond memories that I have working with you is web documentary series that
you came up with for Nike and specifically for Nike football.
Blood, sweat and tears. Yeah.
Blood, sweat and tears. Blood, sweat and tears. And at that time, you weren't yet producing and
shooting your own films yet, maybe as a hobby or as a side gig, but not as a means of making a living.
Yeah. And in the recent and fast forward 15 years
or 18 years, fast forward to 2024. And in the past couple of years, and the, one of the main
reasons why I reached out to you, we catch up once a year on average, once or twice a year on average,
virtually or in person. But you've been so prolific and so productive in producing amazing
documentary films. And just to name a few of the films that you have produced,
one is something that you mentioned, Gay Chorus Deep South, which was back in 2019.
Yep. And that was funded by Airbnb, correct?
Yes. Where you were working as a creative and creative director.
Exactly. For their marketing team and for the CEO,
for the team. Another one, which by the way, I went to the showing of the movie that you had
in New York a few years ago. Another one that you had was Name a Beautiful Chaos,
the documentary about his life and particularly the relationship between him and his father,
which is quite something, in some cases, quite surprising and somewhat sad as well to an extent.
And then more recently you had an episode where you directed a documentary called Omnivore,
the chef René Rezepi, right? Yep.
Yeah. And then the most recent one, and I'm not sure if I'm getting the timeline correctly,
She Slash He, She's Still Here, which is the last conversation or set of conversations that
you were able to film with this artist whose life itself was the...
The art. Was the art. Yeah, the art. Yeah.
And particularly when creating documentary films, you don't know exactly what the storyline is
going to be. How do you find that narrative when you are shooting a documentary?
Yeah, no, that's a good question. And I have my own process, which I can walk you through. I'm sure
every director has a different process. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And in terms of the documentary films, I come with a very strong point of view
and an idea of what I want to do, whether it's a theme or, for example, with Gate Chorus,
I knew that story was the perfect story to talk about the divisiveness of the country.
ストーリーテリングの力
And it was about these two worlds coming together and finding different ways for those worlds to
come together. And in the case of the chorus, there's 300 characters. And how do you find...
And we had very little resources. Airbnb funded it, but it was a very low budget endeavor.
And so what I did is I wrote up my dream characters. These are the types of characters
that would be amazing to film because they would represent that idea of these two worlds coming
together, whether it's a chorus member who was from the South and his family. That's an example.
And I went to the president of the chorus and the artistic director and I showed them, hey,
these are my dream characters. And they had every single story in the chorus. And that's how we did
the casting session. And then we did a scouting trip in the South. And through that scouting trip,
we found the other side. We found the Southern side. And then I created a very strict outline
of what we were going to do and what we were going to shoot. But with enough room for the
surprises and with enough room to... I write a documentary in three phases. There's the before,
where you create a structure so you know what you're doing. You're not just filming everything
at random. You have a point of view, you know what you're doing. And then every day you shoot,
you have to adapt and write on the spot and figure out how the story is changing. And then
when you're in edit, then that's the last version of writing where you figure out if that initial
outline that you created, how it needs to be reshaped and reformatted and how it's best
represented in that. In the case of Namar, that's a great story because I was still making my deal
with Netflix and with Spring Hill, LeBron's company. We hadn't locked the deal yet. And I
get a call saying, hey, can you go to Paris tomorrow because Namar is signing with Barcelona
and we're going to make the whole show about Namar going back to Barcelona.
So I fly. I literally jump on a flight the next day. When I land, I get a text from the producer
saying, hey, the deal got pushed two days. You'll start shooting in two days. So two days later,
I start filming and I literally film the deal falling apart and the deal never happens.
Oh, wow.
And while I'm experiencing that and it couldn't be, it was literally the most stressful thing
ever. And I'm like there and with cameras and they let me film most of it luckily,
but not all of it. It's in the series. But what I realized then was the relationship
between the dad and Namar. And the moment in time where that relationship was, it was a very
vulnerable and volatile moment in both of their lives and both of their careers as well. The dad
as the manager and the son as this athlete. And I literally came back from that shoot and told
Netflix, this is the story. It's a father and son story. And quite honestly, we're all upset that
the deal didn't go through. I personally wanted to hang out in Barcelona and film,
but at the same time, there was something quite beautiful about capturing one of the greatest
players of his time at the lowest point of his career and having to figure out that comeback,
not just the comeback as an athlete, but the comeback in his relationship with his father
that was broken at that point. And that's an example of having to adapt. But once that was
realized and figure it out, then the whole rest of the shoot was really centered around
that relationship and building the story. Why do you think you are drawn to storytelling?
Because you've had different hats and different jobs, so to speak, but creating a narrative,
creating a story and telling a story has been the common theme, very consistent common theme.
Why do you think you were drawn to that? I think we can figure out the why now because I don't know,
but I remember the when, and it's potentially linked to the why. I was around nine when I just
moved to Brazil and I started writing in these, I had a little typewriter and I started writing
short stories. When I was nine, I was really young, nine. And then when I was 14, when my
mother was diagnosed with cancer, I started writing poetry and that poetry became a way to cope,
but it also became a creative outlet. And I ended up winning an award and it got published into a
book. And it was through that book that a cousin of mine who opened a comic book company was like,
Oh, you know how to write, let me teach you how to write comics. And, but I guess because
storytelling has always been there for me to get me through hard times, but maybe a slightly deeper
answer to that question. In 2011, it was the only time in my whole career that I had a horrible
experience. I was working as a creative director at 72 and Sunny, and I did not like working there.
And I was unjustly let go despite having done great work and kind of everything that I worked
up until then got shattered. And I took a step back and I really wanted to figure out why I do
what I do and what I love to do instead of condensing it to, Oh, I want to go to this agency
or work for this brand, which would be where my normal mindset would have gone at that time.
ドキュメンタリー制作の情熱
I was 29, 30. I try to go back to a deeper level, to an emotional level. And I realized
what I really love to do and what I'm good at doing is when I'm in a situation where what I
create draws a lot of emotion, whether it's out of me or out of other people through documentary work.
And the result of that creates emotion and a large group of people. And for me,
the that's how I got into documentary filmmaking, partly that. And then, and I say this a lot when
I'm asked that question, it was that you called it out. I can't even believe you remember it,
but the blood, sweat and tears series was, was the starting point and was a blueprint
and working with the great editor, Mike Murray, who's both of our friends. Yes. I learned a lot
from him. And that taught me one that I was good at doing that and two that I really enjoyed it.
But you're right. The essence of everything is storytelling and I don't have any for good or
for bad. I have no boundaries of what format I tell these stories. I love to actually work in
every single medium I possibly can. Yeah. Yeah. But initially you started writing,
you mentioned typewriter first. And then when you are 14, when your mother was diagnosed with
cancer as a way of coping emotionally with that situation, do you remember what kind of poetry you
were writing back then? Yeah, I do. Oh, okay. I couldn't, I don't remember enough to recite it,
but first of all, they were all in notebooks because I couldn't, we didn't, we couldn't
afford to have a computer. Yeah. So I would write them in a notebook and then I had a friend who
had a computer and I would go to his house and he would type them for me, which was very sweet.
And half of the book was romanticizing death, obviously because of what my mother was going
through. And the other half were about girls I had a crush on. Of course, teenage boys. Yeah.
And every, and the way it was built, and I think that's why it ended up being published,
every one was about death and one was about girls. So they would interchange. And it's
always about that duality of life about the positive and the negative. I think it,
I was not conscious of that back then. It's just more looking back.
Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. That got published. And then somebody who saw that asked you to,
Hey, these comic book stories. Yeah. So my, my older cousin, who was my best friend at the time,
him and this group of guys who are still my best friends. We've been friends for 28 years now.
They opened a comic book company. They were 10 years older than me. I see. And there was already
a senior writer. So a person who had a lot of experience writing screenplays and comic books,
and he and the other guys really helped me hone in the craft. Yeah. And there were two,
and it's funny because you can literally deconstruct it into advertising and into
filmmaking because part of what I did is I had a comic book strip that was published in the local
newspaper. So we had to create 30 of those every month and you have to do it in a five day period.
So that's literally the same process of brainstorming concepts for an ad campaign
and it's in telling stories in a very short, it's just three frames. You have to tell a full story
in three frames. Okay. And that really trained my brain to doing advertising. I see. And then on the
other side, writing graphic novels, which were longer form stories, I ended up reading all these
books on screenwriting because there weren't any books about comic book writing. So I just deep
dived into screenwriting films and that's what taught me how to write longer form screenplays.
But then the guy who owned the company or the editor of the company, he was art director in
advertising. And that's when I realized, wow, you can be creative and make a living. That's amazing.
And that's when I left pre-med and went into communications and then worked hard to get my
first internship in advertising. Excellent. Excellent. Writing different mediums and
different formats and different shapes of writing that you've done, whether it's poetry
to comic book strips, to graphic novels, to then advertising, and then eventually documentary
films. These are very different forms of writing, but the act of writing sounds almost like your
meditation, like your way of dealing with life and emotions. 100%. Yeah, it definitely is. Yeah.
And the sentences that I write as art pieces, that's truly therapy for me. Well, writing as
therapy, that's a very simple takeaway. And I'm going to use that as another topic to cover in
the second part of the conversation, especially in the age of AI and chat GPT. Because writing is
something that I also try to do, not as prolifically and as successfully as you do, but it is something
that helps me think about my work, my life, and other things. What is creativity to you?
I have two answers to that. Creativity to me, from a rational standpoint, is the interconnection
of disparate thoughts that form something greater. Yeah. From a more spiritual point of view,
I think creativity to me is the human expression of magic. Human expression of magic.
創造性と魔法の表現
It's how we're able to create magic in this world and inspire other people to create magic.
I worked, I shot a music video a million years ago, like a long, long, I don't know, 15 years ago.
In the actor, in the music video, we were talking after the shoot and he shared that his mother was
Jim Henson's assistant. Jim Henson? Who is he? Oh, so Jim Henson is the guy who created the Muppets.
Oh, Jim Henson. Okay, that Jim Henson. Okay. Yeah. I highly recommend, there's a doc about him
on Disney Plus right now called Idea Man. Oh, yes. I've heard of it. Yes. Yeah. Particularly,
you would really appreciate it. Yeah. Jim Henson is a hero of mine. He's someone I admire greatly.
I said, tell me a story. He's like, when I was a kid, they were doing a dark crystal exhibit at
LACMA and Jim Henson was still alive. The mom said, go up to Jim and ask him a question.
I went up and he said, Jim, how do you make this? He pointed to maybe one of the dark crystal
characters. Jim said, first, you have an idea that's big and beautiful enough that you can
share with many people. Those many people will take that idea and feel like it's their own.
When it comes back to you, it will be way more magical and amazing than you would ever think
you could ever do yourself. That's how you make large scale art. That's how you turn creativity
into magic to inspire a lot of people. And that's something I've taken to heart in everything
I do now. Human expression of magic is the words that you use. I never said that before, by the
way. That's the first time I said. Really? Yeah, I just came. That's such a beautiful articulation
of creativity. Like I said at the beginning, I ask this question to everybody and different people
give me different answers. Connecting the dots, I've heard similar, not exactly the same way that
you said, but I've heard similar ways of descriptions of or definitions of creativity.
But human expression of magic is the first time that I've heard that particular definition and
the first time that you said, which is quite beautiful. So that was part one of my conversation
with David Charles Rodriguez, an award winning documentary filmmaker and an advertising creative
director. As I mentioned at the beginning, I was his manager almost 20 years ago and he's one of
the people I've been able to maintain a good relationship with over so many years. Well, to
be fair, he's way better at keeping in touch with people than I am. So here are three key takeaways
自分探しとしての執筆
from my conversation with David. Key takeaway number one, writing is an act of self-discovery.
Number two, the ability to write, tell and believe story is our superpower. Number three, creativity
is a human expression of magic. So key takeaway number one, writing is an act of self-discovery.
When I asked him the question about his turning point in his life and career, I was surprised to
hear such a personal story from him, which was the passing of his mother when he was still a
teenager. And even though I've known David close to 20 years, for whatever reason, we never talked
about it. I never asked him about it and he never told me about it. And this was a really, really
touching, heartfelt story that he shared. He said that when he encountered this death of somebody
who was so close to him at a relatively young age, he didn't quite know how to cope with it
emotionally and mentally. And he started writing poetry. He mentioned that that became such a
critical part of him feeling, coping with such an emotional, devastating event in his life. And later
on, that became a calling for his life. When he started writing poetry, he may not have intended
to make that a career, certainly, but the fact that he started writing initially as a way to heal
from such a humongous loss in his life, but the fact that it became a vehicle and an activity
and even a method for him to discover himself, to discover how he was feeling at the time, but also
to discover stories that he can uncover in others. Number two, the ability to write, tell, and believe
story is our superpower. This point actually comes from a recent book that I read, which is by
Yuval Noah Harari, a famous historian slash philosopher, whose latest book called Nexus is a
recent reading. And in it, he explains that what makes humans different from animals, which is a
development of our brain function that improved about 70,000 years ago in history. He explains
in the book that way back then, our brains became advanced enough to be able to create, write,
tell stories, and in addition, we learned how to feel from stories. He says that that's a crucial
difference between humans and animals because by telling stories, we are able to connect to other
people, not just the people who are in the same room or who are in the same community directly,
but also with people that are not geographically or physically in the same place.
So storytelling became a way to create this human-to-story chain. That differentiates
human society because that's something that animals couldn't do. Animals were able to
ストーリーテリングの力
create communities, but as long as they were in the same place. On the other hand, humans, our
ability and superpower to create a large community beyond the physical limitations of
where we are. So that's key takeaway number two, the ability to write, tell, and believe stories
is our superpower. Key takeaway number three, creativity is a human expression of magic.
As part of my lightning questions that I ask everybody, the last question that I ask my
guests is, what is creativity to you? Different people give obviously different answers,
but this articulation of creativity is something that I hadn't heard from anybody.
And it was a very refreshing take on creativity. And there's also poetry in it. Creativity is a
human expression of magic. So to summarize, key takeaway number one, writing is an act of
self-discovery. Key takeaway number two, the ability to write, tell, and believe stories
is our superpower. And key takeaway number three, creativity is a human expression of magic.
If you're listening to this on Spotify, there's a Q&A field. So please do send us your questions
and comments. And if you like our podcast, please give us a five-star rating. We'll be so grateful.
In the next episode, we get into how we as creatives can stay relevant as professionals.
So stay tuned. I'm Ray Nomoto, and this is The Creative Mindset. See you next time.
