Interview with Documentarian and Investigative Journalist David Farrier

A few weeks before Christmas, I was lucky enough to sit down and interview documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist David Farrier. If you have never watched any of David’s material, or listened to his podcasts Flightless Bird or Webworm (which is also a newsletter and blog David writes,) I highly encourage you to take a deep dive into his work. I was first exposed to David’s work through his exceptional television series Dark Tourist which is available on Netflix. On the show, David travels the globe visiting numerous strange and interesting places including hermit kingdoms and radiation drenched wastelands. He breaks bread with Pablo Escobar’s hitman Popeye, and witnesses exorcisms in Mexico. My wife and I were completely blown away by the series, and were extremely disappointed to see that Netflix had not given the show a second season. Just after finishing Dark Tourist, I was excited to see that David had a new film coming out on Blu-ray called Mister Organ. I also realized that I had not seen his prior documentary Tickled, which I quickly remedied. When I reached out to interview David, he was kind enough to let me interview him for our small website in a long form interview. As you might expect from watching his films or listening to his podcasts, David is very cordial and kindhearted. I am always pleased when people that I admire turn out to be just as courteous when the cameras are not rolling, and David certainly is as nice as you would expect. We had a great conversation for an hour and a half that ranged from discussions of his filmmaking career and upbringing to wilder topics such as ghosts, conspiracy theories, and faith. Without further ado, here is that conversation:

Art House Cult: Hey, how’s it going? Hello.

David Farrier: Hello, how’s things going?

AC: Oh, it’s going great. How are you doing today?

DF: Yeah, good, good. All under control. It’s beautiful sunny day.

AC: I’m here in our beautiful flyover state in Little Rock, Arkansas.

DF: I still haven’t been to Arkansas, I want to sort of… There’s so much of America I need to get to. 

AC: I’ve lived most of my life here. I’m actually fairly similarly aged to you. You’re about 41?

DF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. About to turn 41 momentarily. (David’s birthday falls on Christmas, and we spoke a few weeks prior.)

AC: I’m 38, so we’re both sort of on the precipice of where Generation X meets the millennial gaze. Right in that meeting point there.

DF: Yeah, totally, totally.

AC: Well, first off, I want to thank you for taking the time. Like I mentioned, our website is incredibly small. When I’m not working on the website, my dad, my brother and I have numerous restaurants here in Arkansas and Oklahoma.

DF: Oh, amazing. Oh my God. Okay, well, I’ll eat well if I come there.

AC: Absolutely. Yeah, if you ever come through, I can give you a food tour, show you around to where you could actually leave Little Rock with a full belly.

DF: Cool. No, I looked around the site as well. That’s cool what you guys do and you’ve got to start somewhere. So I’m happy to help out.

AC: Much appreciated.

DF: Thanks for taking a look at the film.

AC: Oh, absolutely. I wrote out my questions and I tried to put some good thought into it. First off, kudos to you because I know how much of a pain in the ass it is to transcribe all this stuff after you record things. But I do find that text sort of lives on forever, whereas I always feel like those things are going into the ether otherwise. That’s why I’ve always transcribed every one of my interviews.

DF: I agree, reading text is such a good format. You don’t need to have audio for it, people can read or consume at their own pace. No, I’m a big fan.

AC: Absolutely. So I wanted to start by asking you a few questions regarding your background, going all the way back. So, you were born and raised in Bethlehem, New Zealand?

DF: That was close. I was born in Auckland, but very soon after that, as a kid I moved to Bethlehem. And I think somewhere along the way, ’cause I was born on Christmas Day, at some point the rumor mill in New Zealand kind of combined Bethlehem as my birthplace. But it’s good, so, maybe we should just stick with that reality and run with it.

AC: I like it. (laughs) Being raised in New Zealand, as you talked about a little bit in Mister Organ how it’s a small community in general out there. Does it feel like everybody sort of knows each other out there?

DF: Yeah, it does. I feel like growing up in New Zealand is a bit like growing up in a small New Zealand town. It’s like you can’t really leave the house without bumping into someone that you know. And that’s really charming and wonderful and I think it’s part of the joy of New Zealand, but I guess the downside is if you have people there that you don’t get on with or when you want some sort of anonymity, it becomes really difficult. And so it’s both like a big selling feature of New Zealand and, at times, I think it can feel a little bit claustrophobic.

AC: Yeah, understandably. That’s exactly what it’s like in Little Rock. I thought we would have a shared bond on that, because everybody knows everybody here, which works to your benefit and to your chagrin, depending on the day.

DF: 100%

AC: As a filmmaker, I imagine that growing up there were some formative experiences with the cinema that shaped your ideas or things that you ended up pursuing later. Growing up what films contributed to your love of cinema?

DF: Well, the first film I ever saw in a cinema was Jurassic Park in what would have been 1993, and that was my big Star Wars moment or Gone With the Wind moment. It really captivated me and I guess from that moment on, I became really interested in the movies. I’d watch stuff on television in New Zealand and grew up with Gremlins and that kind of stuff. But Jurassic Park really made me take an interest in filmmaking. From there, I tried to pursue directors I really liked and films I really liked. I guess from there, as I got later on in my interest in journalism I got more into being curious about documentaries and how you tell stories in a documentary in a way that’s as compelling as a narrative feature like Jurassic Park or whatever you wanna mention. I tend to get quite obsessive about things and I got very into more obscure films growing up that aren’t… that obscure, I suppose. But at the time, films like Magnolia felt incredibly transgressive and weird to me. I remember Donnie Darko had a big impact on me at a film festival when I was 16 or 17. And so, I just love the movies. I love the format of a 90-minute-esque story. I like the form and the art of telling a story in that confined space. I really love it.

AC: I’m right there with you. Jurassic Park was my big one too. My brother took me when I was 8.

DF: Oh, you were the same age. A lot of us 40 year olds I think find a lot of fun in that particular film.

AC: Absolutely. For some reason, the other one at that time for me was like The Client by the John Grisham.

DF: Oh my God. Great film. My God.

AC: I remember I read that book and doing a report I drew a poster for my class of cigarettes I was just like, “that kid smoked cigarettes,” and ran with that.

DF: Nice.

AC: You brought up documentaries as something that you eventually discovered and fell in love with. What specific documentarians really grabbed you? Was it Errol Morris or Werner Herzog? Who really spoke to you?

DF: Probably the most influential documentarian in my world has been Louis Theroux who is a British documentary maker, who I echoed his style in a lot of ways. He had these really engaging conversations with people. He wasn’t confrontational. He was British and he’d often be meeting Americans or people that his British sensibilities would resonate with them in a different way than if an American was interviewing them. So I really grew up with Louis Theroux’s weird weekends, but, of course, Werner Herzog, his stuff… Grizzly Man is probably my favorite documentary of all time, I think it’s just perfect. Errol Morris, I came to much later. And then I think there’s other documentaries that ended up being hugely influential when it came to making my first doc Tickled. I think of The Imposter, and Capturing the Friedmans. There’s certain documentaries that just stand out as pieces of work that I just have so much admiration for. The original very long The Staircase documentary that is I think even longer than what Netflix ended up playing, that’s just heaven to me that particular series. So I think I get more obsessed with specific documentaries than documentary makers, I suppose, but…if we are gonna be naming names that I go to would always be Louis Theroux and Werner Herzog.

AC: I’m with you on Grizzly Man. It’s a fantastic piece of art. I bumped into Werner Herzog at a Hot Springs Documentary Festival and I was such a terrible fanboy. I brought my Blu-ray set of his films and I absolutely trapped him. He could not have been ready enough to get rid of me. I was like, “Please, just sign it, just sign it, just sign this thing.” But anyways, I love him. He’s something else.

DF: Yeah, he is, he is.

AC: Growing up in Auckland and Bethlehem, you later attended Bethlehem College before attending Auckland University of Technologies. What interests were you pursuing at that point?

DF: I didn’t ever really know what I wanted to do when I was at high school. I was a huge nerd. So I’d always try and get really good marks, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with them. I ended up settling. I thought I was gonna be a doctor. I was gonna get into med school and be a surgeon or something, I suppose. But in my first year of pre-Med, it was so stressful and I very quickly realized that I hated blood, and I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. I’d gone from this tiny little pond in Bethlehem to all the smartest people trying to get into medical school in Auckland. And very quickly I knew that wasn’t the life for me and that’s when I enrolled in journalism school. While I was trying to get into medicine, I started writing for a student magazine. I was writing movie reviews and music reviews, I honestly don’t know even how I got into doing that and got into wanting to write, but I just really liked the concept of being able to take something I was interested in and get it out to more people, I guess. That concept kind of stuck with me and I went and enrolled in journalism school and the next year just completely changed the course of my whole sort of reality.

AC: That’s neat. I know that you’re a big music buff as well.

DF: I love music so much. I think if I wasn’t doing what I do, I’d probably want to be a music journalist, although I don’t think there’s much of a career anymore. I love music, I love listening to it and going to shows. It’s like that’s my escapism from the fucking horribleness of life. (laughs)

AC: I’m very similar. Do you make it out to any of the festivals out there at all? Have you made it out to Coachella yet or any of that?

DF: I went to Coachella, maybe eight years ago, I went to Coachella it was when…

AC: When Blur played or?

DF: No, Blur wasn’t playing, it was the year of the Tupac hologram and Radiohead. And I was really excited to see Childish Gambino, who is Donald Glover, but he was performing as Childish Gambino. He’s now, God, as an artist he’s huge, but back then it felt like he was very small. He was almost just doing like comedy rapping. Yeah, I love music a lot. I default to a lot of loud kind of music. Some faves of mine Deafheaven are playing in LA in a couple of weeks. I like my stuff loud and aggressive.

AC: That comes across in the podcast – you allude to bands every now and then or your love of metal.

DF: It was not cool anymore, so I’ve got to stick up for it. (Laughter)

AC: Luckily there’s plenty of people still pushing for it, even My Morning Jacket has that song,”Holding On to Death Metal.” So, I think there are people that hide their interest in it, maybe more often than not. There’s more Mastodon fans out there than people recognize, probably.

DF: Yeah, fuck yeah, absolutely.

AC: After you got out of journalism school, there was a big jumping off point for your career, because you very quickly got into working as an entertainment reporter for Nightline. We don’t have that show here in the States, so what was the format of that?

DF: It was a late night news show. So it started at 10:30 PM at night. It was a little bit edgier and you could get away with a few more things. I guess it was more youth focused than the regular six o’clock news. I slipped into this really fun reporting position on that show where it was my job to do the final story in the show, which was something in arts and entertainment, something lighthearted to do. I often reported on various subcultures, and I just loved it. Everyday I got to fill three minutes of airtime with a story that I wanted to tell and I had a very loose remit on what I could do. It was a blast. I did that for probably six or seven years and it was like the best job of my life. It took me to L.A. quite a bit – I’d do like silly junkets… movie junkets they do here. So, Inception, the movie would come out, and so I’d come to L.A. for a weekend, a 12-hour flight from New Zealand, they’d put you up in a hotel, you’d interview Leonardo DiCaprio for three minutes, they’d hand you the cards, you’d take it back to New Zealand, and keep the story. It felt very glamorous and fascinating. So I was doing that kind of reporting, but then also doing weird little stories about subcultures in New Zealand, be it the furry subculture or metalheads or some weird new drug craze. It was really fun. I think most newsroom jobs are very sort of formulaic… you’ve got to tell a story in a certain way. I think this was the one place in that newsroom where I could creatively push in some weird directions, which was amazing.

AC: Did it feel stressful on a turnaround basis to create content daily?

DF: That’s the joy of a newsroom, it’s just sort of a content mill in a way and it was less intense when I was there. It wasn’t a 24 hour kind of news cycle.. I’m so old now. There were these shows you’d file for and so my job was just to fill this 3-minute story each day and it was stressful, but it’s also really fun. Sometimes coming into that newsroom at 2PM, when that shift started, not knowing what you’re going to put out that night and scrambling to shoot something, write something, and edit something, and have it ready for 10:30 PM. When I started on that show, we were cutting tape to tape. It wasn’t even digital editing. It was cutting from one tape to another tape, which is fucking exciting. I know I loved it. And I think anyone that’s worked in a newsroom knows that pressure and that fun and that constant liveliness that is just… you fuck up and the next day it’s a new day and you can do a new thing. In the same way, if you do something amazing, it’s forgotten about straight away. And it’s just that constant machine that I actually really, really loved.

AC: As a journalist what do you feel compels you to dig deeper into the subjects? Is there a specific feeling that you have or is it based on sort of web browsing and keeping your antennae up?

DF: I’m just curious about things and I if I see something a bit odd, instead of like carrying on browsing on the internet or physically walking by on my walk, I’ll just kind of stop and look and think and kind of poke a little bit and see what’s there. That can happen in real life or online. And all my documentaries so far, they’ve always started as writing. I write a newsletter called Webworm. I’m writing kind of two weird kind of rabbit hole stories each week, and I’ve no doubt that some of those will turn into another documentary at some point. Tickled began as three blogs for that news station I worked for. Mister Organ started as eight articles I wrote for this New Zealand outlet. And so I’m always kind of poking my nose in and what those things turn into I think can be different things. Whether they’re an episode of Flightless Bird or a Webworm newsletter or a documentary, it just depends what I find out.

AC: My first question regarding Tickled – how long were you pursuing the story before you knew it would be a film?

DF: Oh, it happened pretty quickly. I’d say about a month after discovering the first sort of strange tickling video, I knew that I wanted to create a Kickstarter and get some funding for some kind of documentary that I would make outside of the newsroom. It just had all these layers that were so much. You could tell it as a 3-minute news story or even a current affairs 20-minute piece, but it would be wasting so many layers and elements of what I could see was there. Growing up watching documentaries, I knew the kind of stuff I wanted to make if I ever did make anything and suddenly this thing was in front of me. Three blogs in, I was like “oh, I need to start shooting this journey because it’s so outrageous.” And it escalated so quickly. There was no way not to make a documentary. At one point these ticklers suddenly said, “we’re flying from New York to Auckland to meet you to try to tell you to stop making the documentary.” That’s like catnip, right? Of course you want to make a documentary.

AC: Yeah, nefarious ticklers.

DF: Nefarious ticklers. So yeah, it’s about a month in. I knew that it was gonna be my first documentary attempt.

AC: You worked on that with Dylan Reeve. Have you all stayed close after the filming of that and working through all that?

DF: You know we chat most days on… probably showing my age here.. on Facebook Messenger. We’re always sort of flicking various things we find interesting around. He helped as a researcher on Mr. Organ, my new thing.

AC: Oh, great, yeah.

DF: He’s written guest pieces for Webworm, my newsletter. So, we’re always flinging stuff around. I love his brain. And he’s so smart. I always want to work with him on stuff.

AC: In Tickled, you’re tracking down the owner of several websites devoted to competitive tickling and a person with heavy purse strings who’s funding tickling torture videos while also using those videos to hold dominance over the people filmed. I’m trying not to reveal too much because it’s such a bizarre story and has so many twists and turns. During the course of your investigation, at what point were you and Dylan most intimidated by the ghost in the machine you were up against?

DF: I think there were two main things that happened. We got quite intimidated when some cease and desist letters started coming from American attorneys and New Zealand attorneys. Because we knew then that… it was this online harassment that we’d experienced, but when you start getting letters from lawyers in two countries you know there’s sort of real money behind it so it becomes a reality. So that was really scary and, you know, we had just started our Kickstarter. It was like, “do we now figure out how to pay lawyers on our side to sort of push back or do we just back out of the whole thing because we can’t deal with this stuff?” That was one really intimidating moment. Then the other thing, I think, was when they came to New Zealand. These odd men who we’d been told were lawyers flew business class from New York to Auckland. That’s a really expensive ticket. Each of those tickets was like $10,000. Holy shit, there’s money there. Meeting them on our own… meeting these men we didn’t know and me spending more time with one of them walking around the docks at the waterfront. In my mind, I was like “is this guy going to pull out a knife and stab me? Is he recording me and using what I say as evidence to try and sue me?” It was just this fear of the unknown and knowing that the people we’re meeting with had money and not quite knowing what their purpose was… that was really unsettling.

AC: Understandably. The antagonist of the picture is an internet troll who hurls insults at you regarding your sexuality. I personally found this so strange because I had watched both Dark Tourist and Mr. Organ without any curiosity over your orientation, because, like most journalists, this probably would not be a focal point of what you were covering. Given that entire situation where the videos themselves seemed homoerotic, it was extremely bizarre. Was this one of the more extreme examples where your sexuality was actually thrown at you by somebody? Or has this been an issue once you became famous in general dealing with something along those lines?

DF: Yeah, this was definitely the more bizarre examples of having sexuality sort of rolled back in your face. I mean this is part of why I got so intrigued in what was going on with the story because he had this company which was making clearly homoerotic videos and the reason they didn’t want to be interviewed by me was because I had dated a man. It was such a unusual reaction. I knew something really fucked up was going on, so I’m really glad that this tickling kingpin Googled me, found out that I’d been in a relationship with a guy and then suddenly got up in arms about it. Because, maybe if he hadn’t done that, there would have been no pushback and there would have been no documentary. It was so unusual that… it was funny, I would say. There’s always going to be people that disagree with same-sex relationships and so that comes at you in various ways. I’m also a tall kind-of white man. I have a pretty easy life. So, if people will ever give me shit, it’s very minimal. This particular, I guess, homophobia or whatever you want to call it was so bizarre that it was almost entertaining.

AC: It looked like it was just zero to one hundred. (laughter)

DF: (Laughter) Yeah, it was. It was. It was.

AC: Right off the bat, I was like, “Good Lord.”

DF: There was no in between. Yeah, it was, as you say, zero to one hundred. It was like the most insane thoughts coming in. And it’s like, “whoa, what’s happening here?”

AC: As an interviewer, you really have a knack for getting people to speak out whom in general have good reason not to. How do you encourage these people to find their voice and how do you engender the trust to where they’re willing to share their stories with you, such as TJ the football player who was the first person that you interviewed who was tickled?

DF: I think it’s just approaching people gently and with a certain openness and not making them feel pressured. With TJ, we talked to him over email and then over the phone for a period of months, and he was still nervous because of what had happened to him, meeting a stranger on the internet the last time it happened. He was still nervous when he met with us and that was just this long process of gaining trust and it’s just talking… not rushing in. It’s being open and honest and explaining what we’re doing, why we wanted to make this film, why we wanted to interview him. It’s just gently explaining things, I think, and I think sometimes the New Zealand demeanor can help with that because we’re a very sort of mellow, un-aggressive, sort of passive people. I think when it comes to talking to people about going on camera or telling a story that can sometimes help.

AC: (Spoiler Alerts- If you have not seen Tickled, watch it and its coda before reading the next few paragraphs) By the way, I thought the coda to Tickled, The Tickle King, if you’ve seen the film, it’s a must watch. You have to watch the coda because it’s really important. It really completes the circle of the film. I was curious if you had any more contact with the antagonist of the film after those moments where he attended a screening.

DF: I’m really glad we got to release The Tickle King because it did sort of… In Tickled you kind of get glimpses of the main bad guy, I guess, and then when The Tickle King came out suddenly, he bought a ticket to the film and came along and he has popcorn and a Coke. We scrambled and got a camera to the cinema and filmed these really bizarre interactions where he was still very much in denial about everything. But no, we never heard from him directly after that. He had filed two lawsuits in two different states, and this wasn’t cease and desist. These were real lawsuits that we would have to go and defend ourselves in front of a judge. So that was super intimidating. I mean, he had millions of dollars at that point, so that was a stressful thing. We knew we were right, but just getting sued in the first place is a very expensive thing to go through as an American. You would know this. But no, he had a heart attack and died.

AC: Oh, I didn’t realize that.

DF: Yeah, so he died. The lawsuits went away when he died. His estate didn’t pursue those two lawsuits. And so that kind of put an end to the whole thing. A lot of people sort of rumored that, is he dead? Did he fake his death? But I’ve seen the death certificate. David D’Amato did pass away and with him, the lawsuits disappeared and I didn’t interact with them again.

AC: I guess that begs the question of, what type of a legacy does a man want to leave behind, right? Unbelievable. [laughter]

DF: Yeah, of all the things, he chose to spend that money and influence on, he chose the creation of hundreds of tickling videos and the harassment of a lot of young men. It’s a super unusual way to spend your time. But in fact, we’ve all got our passion projects. And I guess that was his right?

AC: [chuckle] Yeah, it’s all in what you leave behind. On Tickled, what was your shooting budget?

DF: With Tickled we were… I’m trying to think what our exact budget was, I think we were about… It was under a million. It was about $800…maybe $700,000 New Zealand dollars. I’m not sure what that is in American dollars. (This is roughly $500,000 American dollars.) So it sounds like a lot of money, but when it comes to retaining lawyers and the various places that money goes to, it probably wasn’t enough. We really tried to be smart in how we shot the thing. It was a really short shoot time. We planned ahead a lot. We really pulled our resources as best we could. And so, the budget was about $700,000.

AC: How I first became familiar with your work was through the Netflix series, Dark Tourist. My wife and I, we actually feel bad because we didn’t discover it back in 2018, but we discovered it in the last year and we just blew through it. We watched every single episode pretty much back to back. I loved it because it reminded me of two things: do you all have Ripley’s Believe It or Not in New Zealand?

DF: Yeah, I think we had that in our school library growing up.

AC: When I was growing up, you would open up the newspaper and it would contain a strange fact presented by Ripley’s like… “this woman had a 100 rings in her neck” or things like that. It also reminded me of some of Vice’s early televised reporting here in the States. So, it was really a fun show. I would encourage everyone to check it out. In the filming of that, you got to really experience a lot. What were some of your favorite experiences while you were making that series?

DF: I mean the whole thing was a really crazy year of my life because it was such an intense schedule of travel and then writing and editing. It was chaotic. But I think standouts for me were probably spending time with Pablo Escobar’s hitman Popeye. We spent a couple of days with him. He’s probably, I don’t know, it’s hard to get sort of to the the root of truth with him, but the general sort of consensus is he’s on the cards for killing three hundred people roughly over his sort of reign of terror. I’ve never hung out with someone that’s killed that many people. And the thing that was so interesting about him is that he was just so fucking likable. I trusted him. I felt safe with him. And that was just a really interesting thing to sit with. It was one of the weirdest experiences I’ve had, just in how I related to another human. I thought that was just really fascinating to me. Turkmenistan as a place was just the most… It was a hermit kingdom. It’s like North Korea. It’s pretty cut off from the outside world. We went in as sports journalists because they had this Olympic event there, an official Olympic event, like the Winter Olympics. It was called the Indoor Martial Arts Games. Basically they just paid, obviously, a shit ton of money to have this event hosted in Turkmenistan. They built everything you need for the Olympics. They built huge stadiums and buildings. It was just like being spat into a video game because it was all just so unreal and brand new and glistening and the wealth and the money and sitting at that Olympic opening ceremony with barely any people because no one fucking knew about it was just… and I was on ketamine. I was coming off ketamine because I’d cut my hand on a mirror and I’d been stitched up and that sent me down a K-hole. So I was also high as fuck. It was just the most, I almost can’t believe it happened. Turkmenistan, Google it if you don’t know about Turkmenistan and watch the episode. It’s just such…

AC: Oh, I really enjoyed that one. Is that the one where you stood in the… Was it like a 16 lane?

DF: Yeah.

AC: 16 lanes across? Yeah, that was nuts. I mean like…

DF: It was the strangest experience of my life, and I sort of loved it.

AC: Did you feel like you were in some sort of a strange sci-fi novel?

DF: Oh, yeah, I did. It felt otherworldly. I sort of couldn’t believe it. It was so, it was mad. Although, actually, you mentioned that particular episode, I think the one you’re thinking of there was the one in Myanmar, which is another episode. But both these places had these giant roading systems that just weren’t needed. [laughter]

AC: One of the things that, as Americans. we fail to remember every now and then is that our interstates were essentially created so that we could move tanks [laughter] I mean, so I don’t know if they just planned to move sixteen lanes worth of tanks at some point?

DF: Well, in Myanmar, that is the reason sort of, so they could use it as like another airfield essentially. I think that’s one of the reasons for having these giant twenty lane empty highways.

AC: It’s crazy.

DF: But I think Turkmenistan -those road systems- it’s just purely for ego. “Let’s just build the biggest, craziest things we can and the world will respect us.” I think that was their concept.

AC: Working on the show, after seeing all the things that you saw, did you feel like you walked away with a more fully realized worldview from those travels?

DF: I think so. I think travel, if you’re lucky enough to travel, I think one of the joys of it is that it does give you a much bigger appreciation of other people and other cultures and other things. You realize that you do things your way in New Zealand or America, wherever you are, but then there’s just so many other ways of living life and thinking about the universe and our place in it. And I think that’s the most rewarding thing. I think it’s why a lot of people travel, right? It’s to experience those things And I just felt very lucky to have experienced a lot of different people and customs and traditions. Obviously this was a series about sort of darker stuff, so I think we got into some pretty odd territory. I think just seeing the world through different people’s eyes was incredibly enlightening and just reminds you that none of us have any fucking clue what’s going on. We’ve got different interpretations of the same thing. (laughs)

AC: During the series, was there any specific time where you felt most frightened or when things felt out of your control in a memorable way?

DF: That’s a good question. I think we spent some time with Russ McKamey in one of the southern states, and he runs sort of a torture house.

AC: That looked hard.

DF: Yeah. He was just very unhinged… He felt like an unhinged sort of a person. And obviously his whole mythology around what he does is that it’s this haunt that no one gets through, right? You’re broken by the end of it. And so, that felt super scary. That felt really unusual. And then there was a moment when we were in Northern Cyprus and we were detained and our whole team was separated. All our gear was taken off us. They removed our passports. And that was a particularly unsettling moment. We ended up being fine, but it was not a fun moment. Famagusta was basically this disputed territory. And we’d been told, on no uncertain terms to not film, not even point out cameras towards that direction, which has since opened up, I believe. We got into a huge amount of trouble for daring to point our cameras in that direction. And that’s when we were detained and…

AC: That’s where you swam out around towards the disputed territory and they called you back, right?

DF: Yeah. I did some dumb stuff in that show. [laughter] Just trying to make it entertaining for the people.

AC: Selfless act, for sure. One of my favorite episodes of the series was when you visited an extremely radioactive area in Japan after the tsunami. It was really mesmerizing just the way that everything looked because entire areas had been abandoned to the elements. Seeing those types of places when they’re literally emptied out of humans completely – what types of takeaways occur when you see those things?

DF: It feels sort of privileged to have visited there because it does give you a certain, I guess,… the impact of the devastation there. You don’t really feel that unless you kind of see it, right?

AC: Right.

DF: And so it’s just very chilling. I think seeing the impact from the water that came through, but then also seeing how these homes are still abandoned because of the ongoing radiation as they are cleaning that up. That was just very surreal. Essentially you’re in these ghost towns. The other thing that made an impact was they were desperately trying to get people to move back because they had an Olympic event coming up and they wanted people to populate these places again, and from what I heard from locals it wasn’t safe to go back. There were still issues with background radiation and seeing the pressure that people or seeing the pressure from the government sort of saying, “Hey, this is all safe.” When that, I don’t believe that was the case. [laughter] That was a pretty surreal thing to see firsthand. When you’re seeing a radiation readout in front of you of these hotspots and that the government is saying, “No, this is safe.” It doesn’t quite line up.

AC: Absolutely. That episode spoke to me because growing up, I had a foreign exchange student from Japan for nine months. He lives in Nagoya now. Just a good guy.

DF: Oh, right. It’s an amazing place to shoot. I mean Japan, everything there is pretty special. Oh my God. Yeah. I’ve never eaten or like drunk so well when I was on that for the shoot.

AC: I’ve gotta get out there. Sadly Dark Tourist wasn’t renewed by Netflix. Was this a victim of 2020? 

DF: No, I honestly don’t know. I think Netflix at the time told us that they weren’t gonna do any more travel shows, but then Nick Jonas came out with a travel show, so I don’t think that was true.

[laughter] But I don’t know, I think it was probably that it was an expensive show to make. There was so much travel involved. It wasn’t cheap to make. But obviously Netflix gets the numbers and they decided that, in a cost benefit analysis, they decided they weren’t gonna do it again. My conspiracy theory is that Netflix Japan was launching at that time, and we were critical of Japan in that episode. We essentially kind of said that the Japanese government was being slightly dicey and wanting people to move back to a radiated zone. [laughter] So, I like to think it was pressure from Japanese Netflix onto the rest of Netflix. But look, I have no idea why it wasn’t renewed, but that’s entirely Netflix’s call. I just feel super lucky to have got to make the show. Netflix fully funded us. I got to work with my friends. I got to make something I felt really proud of. It was one of the most fun creative processes I’ve ever had. I just feel really grateful we even got one season to be honest.

AC: Hopefully one day, I’ve seen this happen with shows by Zane Lamprey, the guy that does the show where he drinks around the world basically. His show’s been named three different things.

DF: I didn’t see that one.

AC: Oh man, it’s funny. On his show Three Sheets, he just goes across the world essentially getting wasted…

DF: Oh, amazing.

AC: But he talks about specific alcohols while he is visiting those locales. I was a big fan of this show when my wife and I had just got married. I’ve got a newborn so I’m just watching it like, “oh man, I want a beer.” So, it was a fun show to watch.

DF: Oh, cool. I’ll check it out.

AC: One of the next steps in your career was that you teamed up with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, on the podcast Flightless Bird. How did that come across your desk?

DF: I was in New Zealand as the pandemic was kind of kicking off, and I was writing on Webworm, my newsletter. I was writing a lot about conspiracy theory culture, and I was writing a lot about Covid Conspiracies at the time. And Dax, I think stumbled on Tickled and Dark Tourist like you did. He started reading my newsletter, which is kind of surreal, reading my writing and about conspiracy theories. So he had me on Armchair Expert as an expert guest to talk about conspiracies and documentary. I did that episode and we really got on, and I loved the format and I felt it was a really fun interview. Then after that he said, “yeah, why don’t you come and make something else for us?” And so when I ended up being in America for another documentary project after Mister Organ, that didn’t go anywhere, I got stuck here because I couldn’t get back to New Zealand because Covid hadn’t hit New Zealand yet, and they’re trying to keep Covid out. And so I was in America and New Zealand wouldn’t let me back lest I bring Covid back. Dax said then, particularly, he was like, “Look, fuck, come and work for us full time. I have a weekly show.” I pitched Flightless Bird to him as an idea: I’m stranded in America, and the podcast is about me learning about American culture. He said, “Yeah, come and work with me. Do it.” And that’s where I’ve been ever since.

AC: One of the things I’ve noticed is your shows, regardless of what the show is, they’re interested in investigating theologies of different cultures. I know that you were raised Christian and at some point left the church. Do you find yourself identifying more as an agnostic, an atheist, or a mystical?

DF: I’d say agnostic. I’d say I’d like to be brave enough to be an atheist, but I think you’ve gotta leave room open [laughter] for an entity out there. The simple fact is I have no fucking clue. And so I think for me, agnostic seems to be the most accurate kind of way that I see the world. I don’t know. I don’t know what is going on. And I’m very happy to find out at some point if I ever do.

AC: That’s sort of in line with what I figured, partially because, in your podcast – where you are currently, are you at the apartment currently where the ghost resides? (This interview was via Zoom and he was calling in from his apartment)

DF: Yeah, this is where the ghost resides at 3:00 AM in my bedroom, which is another room I’ll be woken up by the ghost.

AC: My question regarding the ghost was this – dealing with this persistent ghost at your place currently, how does that impact your spiritual view from dealing with it?

DF: Honestly, I don’t think about it too much. Obviously, something wakes me up at 3:00 AM every morning, right? So I don’t know what that is. I got this sort of weird witch from Beverly Hills to come in for one of my podcast episodes – a Halloween episode – to read the room and see what was going on. She told me it’s this old man that drifts into the window. He’s annoyed that I live at his house. He wakes me up. He’s not malicious. He just wants to annoy me, wakes me up and she said, I just need to tell him hello and to go back to sleep and ignore him. And that’s what I do. I wake up at 3:00 AM every morning I say, “hello,” [laughter], and I go back to sleep. I haven’t thought about it too much beyond that. Maybe it’s just my agnosticism coming in, but I don’t know what was going on. I don’t know whether it’s a ghost or not. I’ve been told it’s a ghost [laughter] It’s unusual. It doesn’t happen when I am not sleeping in this apartment, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed the way I see the universe. I think there’s a lot of stuff out there we don’t know about. I’ve listened to enough stories and had enough tales of like weird shit happening. Would be arrogant to say that there is not some unknown spiritual things going on in the universe. Who am I to shoot all that down? So, yeah, it hasn’t really changed the perspective I already had. I’m very agnostic, very open to things. And, yeah, it’s just another interesting thing, another interesting aspect of life.

AC: And I’m sorry to harp on so much stuff like faith-based stuff. This will be my last faith-based question

DF: No, it’s all good.

AC: I’ll start with a defense [laughter] that I had written out. I find it somewhat interesting that in some of the things that you’ve recently done, you’ve been been accused by the occasional internet troll or some person or other for attacking Christianity. From my perspective, I’ve always felt like you’ve attacked Christian institutions and the actions of men much more so than any type of attack on religion. I also know that this probably is because you come from a place where you inherently know the culture having grown up in it, and therefore are careful in how you address these type of things. From your perspective, does it feel strange to have people make such big leaps in how they accuse you of these type of…

DF: Of course. Yeah. Often people, for Webworm, I write a lot of pieces that are fairly in depth and they’re a long read. I think a lot of people just read a headline and they go, “oh, that guy is just bashing Christianity” when… I make it painfully clear that it is about the people and the institution. That’s the problem. I make that really clear in everything I write. But I think when you have a belief system, I think some Christians are very defensive. They’re probably used to hearing bad things being said about them, and they leap to conclusions at times. I think some people maybe haven’t read the whole piece. Some people are part of those institutions and they’re just really fucked off you’re criticizing the shitty awful things they’re doing. So, I think it comes from a variety of places. But yeah, thanks for observing that ’cause I definitely, I know a lot of wonderful Christians who are doing amazing work in the community and care. And then they’re not about becoming rich and they’re not about prosperity gospel and all that rubbish. They actually care about people. So I think those parts of our society can be really positive.

AC: Yeah. I agree. As a Christian myself, I find it’s very difficult for me to really deal with any of the prosperity gospel stuff. It just freaks me out.

DF: Well, I think if you’re a Christian it’s annoying to you, right?

AC: Yeah, it makes my skin crawl.

DF: Because the trouble is, if you go out there in public now and say, “I’m a Christian,” the annoying thing for you is you’ll have people that will assume you are one of those Christians, [laughter] There’s Christians that aren’t that, that are the complete opposite to that. And I think it’s a bummer for you having to have to deal with that kind of assumption, you know?

AC: Well, even just in general, trying to explain to folks how much Jesus fixated on helping the poor or things like that.

DF: Yeah. The same thing.

AC: It’s sort of the crucible of what he was trying to do. Like if you read the text, and so it’s like…

DF: I know, I know what you mean. I wish people would read what Jesus actually said as opposed to what mega church pastors are telling you. [laughter]

AC: I think that’s an incredibly fair statement. I’m right there with you on that. It’s rough. So, getting to Mister Organ – first off, congratulations on distribution through Drafthouse films. I was a big collector of their films when they first had a run of Blu-rays.

DF: Oh, cool. Alright.

AC: I had Miami Connection back then and I have all of their movies essentially, so I was happy to see that you landed on that label. That’s pretty awesome.

DF: Thank you.

AC: In Mister Organ, you begin an investigation of a series of car parking extortions that occur, but you uncover a con man who seemingly preys on weaker individuals, and who’s obsessive in harassing those who come up against him. On this film, you said you were about eight pieces in when you knew that would become a film?

DF: I’d written a lot and learned a lot about this kind of vengeful man who loved booting cars and then charging $700 to take the boot off. [laughter] By then I’d heard rumors, other rumors about him and his behavior. I suddenly realized I wanted to make a documentary more about the psychological kind of torment that this individual would cause people. And I knew he’d caused incredible psychological harm to people by then. So at that point, I knew I wanted to talk to people on camera and kind of find out more about Mr. Organ via his victims, I suppose. I didn’t account on kind of becoming a victim myself. That was something that was sort of unplanned, but ended up being a big part of the documentary.

AC: Absolutely. What I’ve got written here is “once again, you put yourself directly in the crosshairs of a very disreputable person.”

DF: It did. It was kind of incredible how similar it was to aspects of Tickled?

AC: Absolutely..

DF: And part of that is probably my… what I’m attracted to as well, but also I think it was so similar it was kind of luck as well. [laughter]

AC: My question I had was “what drives you towards taking on such sociopathic people?”

DF: I’m so curious, you know… I’m curious what makes people tick and I’m curious. Just curiosity. I want to know why Michael was doing the things he did. I want to know why this tickler was doing what he was doing. It’s just born from curiosity. I love telling stories and I think a mystery is really the best kind of story to tell. It’s something that is very fulfilling to do and that’s why I do it.

AC: With Mister Organ in particular, whereas the threat that you faced in Tickled revolves around legalistic issues and online harassment, in the case of Mister Organ you find yourself in a position where somebody actually makes a key to your place where you stay. Is it frightening dealing with a situation like that?

DF: Yeah. Michael Organ was incredibly frightening and unsettling. When he suddenly comes out with the fact that he’s had a key to your house for the last year, and this is someone you know who tends to stalk and harass people, it’s super intimidating. And, as we talked about when we first started chatting, New Zealand’s such a small place. It’s tiny. It’s a village, so it becomes even more claustrophobic and intimidating. The walls felt at times like they were closing in a bit. I was obviously filming for some of it, some of it I wasn’t. What I did film ends up in the movie. And I like to think I kind of got across what a destabilizing kind of fucked up world it turned into.

AC: Absolutely. That draws me to my next question. In the film, there’s a moment, it’s probably about like four minutes of the film where you’re actually sort of saying, “is this a movie? Is this something that I still need to pursue?” That was interesting to me because I’ve watched a lot of documentaries, but I hadn’t seen one where the creator literally was questioning it. It felt like a really honest moment to me that I’m sure other filmmakers face, especially documentarian filmmakers. The decision to include that in the film – what informed your allowing that type of vulnerability on screen?

DF: It’s never great watching yourself kind of blubbering away and crying or about to cry on camera. [laughter] But it was important. It was part of the story, and I think the fact that I’d mentally gotten to that kind of place where I was upset that I was in this world with Michael and that I was sort of on a mental level stuck with him because of the film I’m making. It had to go in. It would be dishonest not to use it. I think it showed an audience the whole film is about how Michael psychologically gets to people and I think me being gotten to was a really good way to help illustrate that, because you’ve been with me on the journey the whole time. [laughter] So to see me get to that point, I think, helped explain how he got to people so readily. I don’t love seeing myself crying, but also I like to think I’m honest in my work, so it kind of just had to go in anyway.

AC: With Mr. Organ, has he continued to pursue you since the events in the film or is he off the radar at this point?

DF: Yeah. He much like David D’amato in Tickled he took some legal action against me, which I’ve written about quite extensively over at Webworm if anyone’s curious. I’ll send you the link so it’s all there to read but he basically to get to me he manipulated the courts in New Zealand and dragged me in some court cases which ended up costing me I think $20,000-ish to defend myself, which is frustrating because I’d much rather put that money into another documentary. So, he did continue to do Mister Organ things after the film was out. I like to think that stuff is dying down now… knock on wood.

AC: When you were talking in the film about just the trial of having to hear him rattle off nonsense ad nauseam…

DF: Totally, totally.

AC: That’s the type of shit that drives me crazy. That would have gotten to me pretty bad. Within your couple films that you’ve made, are there any moments where you try to put any cinematic Easter eggs or try to allude to other things that you’ve seen?

DF: No, not really. I mean bits of my own kind of personal life come into things on Tickled. I had a pet parrot at the time and he featured scenes in there. Mister Organ is pretty Easter egg free. It’s just really, imagery wise, I just really wanted to get across this sort of murky, horrible world that I was in. [laughter] In Dark Tourist there’s elements of that in the opening, some of the opening scenes of Dark Tourist where I’m sort of in my house in New Zealand typing away. There’s different things that I love, band posters on the wall things that I post. The parrot again in Dark Tourist in those opening kind of scenes. So, little moments of things that come in, but mostly I always like to put little cats and cats will creep in because I love cats. But mostly they’re Easter egg free.

AC: We’ll start wrapping it up. First off, I wanted to say thank you so much for your time again. Like I said, our site’s crazy small. So thank you for taking the time to meet with me.

DF: Thanks for doing the research and stuff. You’ve been like one of the most informed people I’ve spoken to. So I really appreciate you taking the time. That means a lot from my end.

AC: Oh, thank you. It’s truly my pleasure. Like I said, we’re fans, so that part was easy. This question’s a little left field in fair warning… In your work, you discuss a number of conspiracy theories. Now that you’ve been enmeshed in America, there’s one conspiracy that is the most prevalent conspiracy theory and I wanted to sort of see where do you find yourself landing on it. Is JFK off the table? Is it okay to ask?

DF: No, JFK, look, JFK, look. I think there was more than one shooter. There had to have been. Look, I’m not an expert, but I’ve spent a bit of time on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas and thereabouts. And yeah, the single shooter theory one…

AC: Magic bullet.

DF: Crazy, yeah. I don’t buy it. There’s more going on there. You know.. of all the conspiracy theories with what’s going around the world now, that feels like one of the much more light-hearted less damaging ones. It feels okay to kinda theorize on this shit just like the moon landing.. that’s like a fun one to think about. So I would say there’s more than one shooter. That’s where I sit right now.

AC: Same. At the very end of the interviews I always like to do what I call my rapid fire section.

DF: Okay – hit me.

AC: But you can take your time. So here we go… Favorite directors?

DF: Man, this staff is hard actually. Look, Ridley Scott is someone who I will forever, who I will love for all time. Obviously, Werner Herzog is up there. Everything he makes is amazing. I still need to watch more of his films, to be honest. Paul Thomas Anderson, I love his work a lot. Those three I’m going with to answer that question.

AC: What film do you consider your guiltiest pleasure?

DF: That would indicate that I feel a level of guilt for watching it, which sort of means that maybe it’s not loved by other people.

AC: I get a lot of pushback on this question. [laughter]

DF: No, it’s really guilty pleasures. I definitely have them my God I just need to…

AC: For myself, for example, I love De Palma’s film Body Double and…

DF: I know of it, but I haven’t seen it.

AC: Yeah, it’s ridiculous, but it’s just really fun to watch. 

DF: This is maybe cheating but it’s TV shows like the ones I’m guilty are like I’m obsessed with Bosch and Reacher.

AC: I love Reacher.

DF: I just finished season one of Reacher. I just couldn’t think about anything else but watching Reacher.

AC: Have you read the books yet?

DF: No, I haven’t read any of the books. I haven’t read Bosch and Reacher. Are they good?

AC: Oh, if you like season one of Reacher. Yeah. Lee Child is big here in the States.

DF: Yeah, I get it. He’d be a great partner for Lee Child, actually.

AC: I think I’ve only read five of his. My brother has read every single one of his, but…

DF: Yeah, there are hundreds of Jack Reacher novels, probably.

AC: I think, he’s semi-retired now, but he got up to like 23.

DF: He’s not quite Stephen King, but he’s a lot.

AC: Some are better than others. But overall, I mean, they’re..

DF: Why did I love Reacher? It was like, it’s unreal. Like, “he what?” He rolls into town. I can’t remember how it happened, and suddenly he’s in the police station assisting the police. He’s along at all the murder scenes. He’s a drifter. I honestly, it’s like what dulls your brain down so much? The logical jumps make no sense. You just accept it. And I love “Reacher.” And “Bosch,” I have a similar relationship with. So they’re not films, but those are like two things that objectively they’re terrible, but I love them. [laughter]

AC: Actors that you love, favorites in that genre.

DF: Tom Cruise is my guilty pleasure. He is a cult member. [laughter] He’s probably not a great guy for that reason, but he’s one of our biggest action stars. I think he’s an incredible actor. He’s an incredible comedic performer. And when you get into the Mission: Impossible stuff. I mean, I’ve watched Mission: Impossible.”..

AC: Yeah. It’s amazing.

DF: Which was shot in New Zealand. I’ve watched that probably 10 times now. I love him.

AC: I’m in the same boat. He’s in my top five.

DF: And, you watch “Magnolia” and his performance in something like that, and he’s an incredible actor. I think the Mission: Impossible films, which I think a lot of people did kind of sleep on, he’s so charismatic and funny. He’s funny in those films. He’s a movie star and it’s a guilty pleasure because I am supporting a very higher member of a cult and I think a cult that does very bad things. So that’s why the guilt comes in.

AC: Well, I will at least make you feel good about one thing regarding Tom Cruise. My brother, he was in Telluride and met Tom Cruise’s former dietician/chef.

DF: Oh, wow.

AC: The guy was up there. The chef was working on Hateful Eight at the time. My brother and him just had a great time. They got in a conversation for about an hour or something like that. He was like “I used to work for Tom Cruise for about three or four years. I would prep all of his meals for him.” My brother Tommy is like, “how is he as a guy?” And he said, “I’m not kidding… nicest guy in the world.”

DF: Oh yeah. So good to hear.

AC: I know. Isn’t that great? Yeah. It made me so happy.

DF: I’ve heard similar. I had a friend that met him in New Zealand, and not in a famous way, just in the past, he said he was just a gentleman. A good human, you know? So, that’s encouraging. Maybe it’s okay if you’re a member of a cult, if you’re a nice guy, you know.

AC: Hey, maybe he pulls it off [laughter.] Favorite films – you had already sort of mentioned Magnolia, but what are some of the other ones that you love?

DF: Now, I’m gonna pull up, are you on letterboxd, by the way?

AC: I’m guilty of not ever using that.

DF: Get on there because look, it’s a New Zealand invention and I want to use it more because I fucking adore it.

AC: Every time I’ve ever pulled up somebody’s list, I’m like, “oh, this is so good.”

DF: No, I’m just, pulling up my list now because I made my top one hundred on letterboxd.

I’m just gonna pull out a few from here that really do stick with me or I feel like they stick with me today. Annihilation. I love Sci-fi. Annihilation is a film that I adore. The score to Annihilation is one of my favorite film scores in recent memory. Stand by Me is probably like my favorite Stephen King adaptation of all time. Coming of age. Watched it last time I flew over to America from New Zealand on the plane. So good. Collateral, – Tom Cruise again.

AC: I love Collateral.

DF: And I think it’s one of his best performance. Also, living in L.A. now, recognizing certain aspects of Collateral as L.A. – it has that different kind of meaning. Now I’m like, “oh my God, this is the city I live in downtown.” Seeing coyotes like padding through streets…that feels very special.

AC: Michael Mann filming in L.A. is really hard to beat in general.

DF: Michael Mann is… I’m, not a Michael Mann like expert, but.. fuck me..he is incredible.

AC: Yeah. Heat and Collateral. Basically my little sister lives in L.A. and she has said that those two films in general sort of form everybody’s basis of what they think L.A. is [laughter]. She was like, if I was to reduce it to two movies that inform what people think Los Angeles is, it’s gonna be Heat and Collateral. I was like, “that makes sense.”

DF: Totally. David Lynch. Obviously Mulholland Drive is a very special film to me. Just that mood sits in my brain. Nonstop. There’s this guy I’ve met a few times, Riley Stearns. I really like his films. He made a film called The Art of Self-Defense, which I love. Another film called Faults, which I love. I think Riley Stearns does some really special stuff… And Darren Aronofsky, his shit. I remember watching Pi as a kid in New Zealand and just being like “what am I watching? What is this world?” And I remember going to a 9 AM session of The Wrestler and emerging from the cinema just kind of blown away by that film.

AC: The Wrestler is so good.

DF: Yeah. Yeah, probably the stuff that all kind of like white men in their forties would name all these directors. I love David Fincher. Gone Girl is the film I just watch eternally. I just think Gone Girl is such a perfect movie. I love that stuff. I like The Killer. I think his new one on Netflix is like really fucking fascinating.

AC: Yeah, I enjoyed it. I always drift back to if I’m going to watch Fincher, I love Se7en and I love Fight Club. Now Fight Club, I know it’s sort of problematic with people, but I love the book. I love the movie.

DF: Oh, totally. Yeah. “Fight Club” is problematic when people watch it and think, oh, I love Tyler Durden.

AC: I’m going to be that guy. (Laughter)

DF: No, that wasn’t the point. I think one director who I adore that I feel like doesn’t get enough love is Jeff Nichols. He did Take Shelter.

AC: I’ve met Jeff a few times.

DF: Oh, please tell me he’s a good guy.

AC: Oh, yeah. Great guy. Yeah, really good.

DF: I love him.

AC: You’ll be happy to know he’s a really good guy. He started the Arkansas Cinema Society here where I live. So, he comes back every now and then and does that. I’ve only really hung out with him for a few minutes in passing or whatever, but he’s an extremely nice guy. Now… his brother Ben (of the band Lucero) – that dude is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. He’s awesome.

DF: Look, this is good to hear. Take Shelter and Midnight Special. I love those films so much. He’s a director that I just want to tell everyone about.

AC: You’re gonna love The Bike Riders. I got to see it when they did a premiere here in Little Rock. It’s really rad. It’s really cool. I think you’ll like it a lot. It’s really good. In closing, if you’re ever out in Little Rock, you’ve got a friend in me! I’ll show you all around.

DF: Yeah, I see it. So that’s a kind of and I’ve no doubt I will end up there at some point because Flightless Bird kind of just takes me all around the place. So it’s really nice to have just a friendly person in town that can like go eat with or something.

AC: Hey, thank you so much for your time, David. It was a real pleasure getting to know you.

DF: I appreciate it.

Once again – I just want to thank David Farrier for being so generous with his time. If you have not seen his work, I would once again encourage you to take a deep dive into his films and journalism. Mister Organ has been released by Drafthouse Films on Blu-ray and it is also currently streaming on Netflix. David’s excellent travel journalism series Dark Tourist can also be streamed on Netflix. Tickled can be purchased on DVD or can be purchased on Prime Video and other digital retailers. If you watch Tickled, it is imperative that you watch its coda The Tickle King which is an amazing finale to the documentary.