Richard Lett and Roy Tighe: “When I found alcohol and drugs, the terrifying part of that losing my shit was numbed away and the hilarious part emerged“

CLAPPER: How did you find out about Richard Lett and his stand-up work?

ROY TIGHE: I found out about Richard because years before I met him, when I was 18, I was doing stand up as well in Vancouver. Any club I went to Richard was there either headlining or the MC. When I would go he was always there and always funny, clearly one of the better and veteran comedians on the stage. I was looking up to those types of comics, how did they make a career? How did they get that far to where they were making a living? I would know of him because other comics would be talking about him or just at the time he had TV appearances. I didn’t hear of him before that, but when I entered the comedy scene Richard was a known figure at the time. I met him years later through our friend Danny Mendelow. Danny stuck with stand-up, I stopped after a year, not really my thing. I became pretty close with Danny because I’d started producing my own content for the web at that time. I was doing a lot of comedy sketches and producing a web series called The Back Shop show which I wrote, directed, produced and acted in. I always had a character I wanted Richard to play, but didn’t really know him, so in passing I asked Danny if he knew Richard. I said I had a role for him, I haven’t written or developed it but would you be open to introducing us and would he be the type of guy to do that? Danny said sure. So, time passed, and one day I got a Facebook message, Danny introduced me and Richard in a Facebook message about another project Danny was trying to help Richard produce but it wasn’t really working out and Danny passed him on to me because I had a camera and the ability to do this stuff. He was looking for someone to put his one man show on tape. 

CLAPPER: So Richard, what brought you into stand-up? What was your inspiration for getting into that?

RICHARD LETT: Well, you know I’m old. So, a lot of my perspectives on stand-up comes from historically important stand-up comedy. So, for me, fundamentally, stand-up comedy is Lenny Bruce. A sort of “rage against the machine” kind of comedian. Making a living was never really a thing growing up, like, whatever, that was what parents said was important. I was just looking for some sense of self and identity and purpose, and so I read a book called Ladies and Gentlemen Lenny Bruce, a thick book written by Albert Goldman. I just thought it was pretty cool that this guy could just be this social commentator and live this life. A sort of “rage against the machine” kind of comedian. Then, there of course were Richard Pryor and George Carlin who were really, in my mind the great granddaddy’s of stand-up. It explored the two major areas of stand-up I was interested in. Carlin being very literate and a real social political criticizer and Pryor who was a very gifted performer and clown and he dealt with more the humanity of the world and those two balanced each other out rather nicely. My friends and I loved Cheech and Chong and Monty Python, and that sort of irreverent, wry humour. I was no different from anyone else but I had my own way of being funny. In my show Sober But Never Clean it discussed these blackout rages I would have. I was quite a broken little boy and these rages - like I said in the show - I would lose my shit, and when people lose their shit they’re either terrifying or hilarious. When I found alcohol and drugs, the terrifying part of that losing my shit was numbed away and the hilarious part emerged. Without getting too sort of, Freudian, about the whole thing, it’s likely that stand-up comedy became the narrowed view that I found within my world where I could survive and not succumb to the harshness of my environment whilst growing up.  I got good fast. That maybe was part of the problem. 

CLAPPER: There were a lot of people on the circuit in interviews that said “Richard Lett, he’s a great comedian” and there’s a lot of respect for you, did they ever say that to your face at all?

RL: Yeah, but I probably said it to them. “Here’s what you’ll be saying about me.” I think the reality is that many people like Roy had their very first experience of live stand-up comedy with me doing it, because there were so few people doing it. If you thought “Hey I’m going to check out some stand-up comedy”, the chances of it being me were very good. They talked about me and with a certain degree of reverence and respect as well as frustration and disdain. It’s a very competitive market and, you know, I kept getting the best jobs. But yeah, it’s part of the legacy of being a road comic, you know, infamous not famous. 

CLAPPER: Your comedy is really good from what I’ve seen of it, and it’s always struck me as odd that you were sort of - you look at the state of comedy now where all the popular ones get Netflix specials and stuff like that - does it ever strike you as odd that you never got to that point? Or did you get to that point?

RL: Well, you know, it was always that way. By the time they started discovering comedians and having these “Best Comedian with a day job” or “Canada’s Up and Rising Comedian'', I was already out there doing it. When I said it’s probably to my disadvantage that I got as good as quickly as I did, it’s because there was no opportunity to discover me. I was already established. Part of the cache of stand-up is being able to find some kid and go “I like this guy, put him up there” and form him. I was already formed so the opportunity for the “new faces at festivals” or - I always tell myself that I’m somewhat burned by being too funny to open for the celebrity comedian, but I wasn’t a celebrity comedian myself so I couldn’t have that spot. They’re far more likely to grab Roy and his hot seven minutes and put him up in front of some celebrity comedian than to get someone who is arguably as funny as the celebrity comedian and going “Yeah we know who that comedian is, but that opener, he was great!”, that wasn’t a dynamic useful for them. In a certain way I felt a victim of my own status.

CLAPPER: That’s touched upon in the documentary where you’ve made a career for yourself but then that popularity didn’t let you get to the next level. When you were getting banned from the comedy clubs, it’s weird because you’re clearly very good at what you do but, to get banned from the clubs it didn’t make sense to me.

RT: Those clubs were also bars, you know, in Canada, in the states there are actual comedy clubs, like the Laugh Factory. All these places right on Hollywood Boulevard. In Canada there’s Yuk-Yuks and then, whatever, Richard’s pub or something. I don’t think it was so much Richard’s material that was getting him kicked out. I think it was the relationships with the other comedians or the people.

CLAPPER: How did getting kicked out of the clubs make you feel at the time?

RL: I felt validated, that these people were so- my ego was kind of through the roof, so the reason they were kicking me out is because they were jealous of how funny I was and they couldn’t handle the truth. “You can’t handle the truth!”, the truth being that I was exceptional and that their shitty bar was beneath me, and that paying my tab was beneath me. Obeying their rules or treating their customers with gentleness was beneath me, like “don’t you know who I am?”, and that’s not a good look for anyone. Regardless of whether or not you’re talented, arrogance is distasteful, and I almost challenged people to kick me out. Certainly that night as the documentary begins when I got kicked out of Yuk-Yuks, I really gave that guy no choice by making fun of his purple shirt. He was the boss and I was the worker and I was not caring at all, not giving him any kind of credit for his status, and so when ego meets ego, that’s what happens. It’s frustrating, to this day I have the ability to make people laugh without much effort, and yet, I find myself not on the top of the list as far as people they want to put in their clubs for whatever reason. Is it ageism? Is it being a straight white male, the whole diversity question? There are all sorts of reasons not to book me. That’s something I’ve had to accept. A big part of my growth as a human is to accept that being funny and being able to entertain people is only part of what my value in the world is. If I can write a poem that I find has a quality to it then the success model is something I can be at peace with, which is something I was not at peace with at all. I was like “Where is my HBO special? Why is this opening act of mine getting these opportunities”. That’s where alcohol and drugs sort of really got hold of me. 

CLAPPER: So I assume you’ve watched the documentary yourself, is it hard to look back on that now?

RL: It is. I’ve seen the film. The very first time I saw it was at the World Premiere at the Whistler Film Festival. The deal Roy and I had from the very beginning was that he would be the filmmaker, and I would be Richard Lett, he didn’t show me one frame of the film. There was never a moment where it was “this is what we’re shooting” or anything like that, or “here’s the dailies'' there was never any of that. I think there has been a useful, I mean that was a smart idea on Roy’s behalf - the relevancy and legitimacy of the documentary is in the fact that I wasn’t involved in the filmmaking. Any attempt or temptation I had to see what was going on, was removed very early in the process, and so I think the authenticity of the documentary has a lot to do with the fact that Roy was gonna do what he did and I was gonna try not to die. As you can see, I was very close to not succeeding.

CLAPPER: Roy, was there ever a point in that period where you felt like you should step in and help?

RT: No, there was never - I mean it crossed my mind, but there’s a few things from my perspective that -- I’d never stepped in. The only thing I ever did was that period where Richard was homeless I bought him a pack of smokes that day and then I took him and some other guys that were at the homeless shelter out for pizza. That was the only time, it was Richard’s first day being homeless pretty much - that’s how far it had to get before I intervened and gave him some love. I look back on it now and learning about recovery myself, is that, that’s what Al-anon and these other programmes teach is that when you’re dealing with an addict you’re not to buy cigarettes or things, like you know, give them another night to sleep at your house or gas for his car - it sounds harsh but that’s what sad about recovery, there’s the addict, like Richard, who is clearly in the first 40 minutes (of the documentary) someone who is in clear, full-blown addiction - masked in a human persona. That’s the addict. They’re really good at tricking and manipulating, you have people when they watch the doc that don’t get it and I laughed like “you think that’s a normal, walking human being?”, it’s a human being but a sick one. We’re not talking about this person being well at the time. For the first forty minutes you’re watching full blown addiction and how people behave in full blown addiction. Your job as a documentarian is to follow the footage, follow where it goes, like a detective. A detective follows the evidence, and that’s all that I knew about documentaries. I was never planning on making a documentary in my career, I still find it bizarre that my first feature was one, so for me it was just that it was my own rule that I was just gonna follow the footage and see what happens. The footage just happened to be Richard. I’m just following and riding that wave, if you step in and start altering things then you’re not really making a documentary. I had a little bit of understanding about recovery at the time. I believe the 12 steps do work but this is where it was odd for me because if I was me now I’d really be considering what the hell I was making here. This person doesn’t need me filming them, this person needs to go to rehab and I need to step away. I think this is where God came in, I was naive in thinking “this guy is not gonna die”, that’s where God steps in and is going “well you guys can have your fun and do your thing, but I’m gonna step in and make sure everyone’s taken care of”, because how sick am I to be filming that and not taking it as seriously as I did? Me being so naive and not taking addiction as seriously as I should have, caused me to be able to film Richard. There was a higher presence there keeping us both safe, that’s what I believe. In that process, me following the rules of being a documentarian, by not helping, actually in a way, was me not enabling Ricahrd. I was really the last one around, the only one who came around and gave a shit was me and Graham. We’re not giving him anything, right, other than just showing up, he can’t use us for money or get anything out of us. In a way it did help drive that rock bottom, and I believe there’s a decision to be made for Richard, “Okay do I die in front of this camera or do I get sober?” I’m not saying it’s all about the camera, but if I was in his position, I can’t imagine what was going through his head at the time, “What am I doing here, I’m homeless, my life is falling apart but then there’s this documentary filming me, like what the fuck?”. There’s this weird perfect storm happening there that was interesting to be apart of and, I don’t believe Richard is putting this on for the camera, I didn’t think Richard was that dumb enough to do die. But you never know, life can just happen like that. When I look back and watch it it’s like this is a slippery slide to go on, and then that was always why when I got into post production and years later when we did the recap with Richard and he was sober, and how the movie ends, I look back on it now and I look at it and I go “I’m actually you know, grateful for how it went down”. I look back on that time and think “we were really playing with fire there”, and that’s how I knew I needed to tell the documentary. I want to give the audience a first hand perspective of how it is to deal with an addict. There’s a lot of documentaries out there where they're showing you the footage and they’re in it and they’re talking just like I was doing in mine, but they’re only telling it from their perspective. My goal wasn’t to be a subject in it just like Richard, but it's just being told through me. I want the audience to feel what it’s actually like to deal with people with addiction, and hopefully it helps and spreads that message. I have Richard there who won’t move out of his apartment, and there’s a reason why I made that sequence so punishing, because that is what it’s like dealing with an addict. When people watch this documentary, some people to this day don’t get it - and there are even film reviewers who are going “Oh yeah, Richard was a piece of shit” and then they miss out the line that was like “However, he was an addict at the time, he was a sick human being who wasn’t well” he had the facade of “I’m a healthy guy, this is my persona, a rough guy and this is normal” when it’s like, “No, Richard is a full blown addict for the first 40 minutes of the documentary, I’m not asking you to give him a pass I’m just saying, I’m giving you the experience of what it’s like to deal with addiction”, and the people who have dealt with addiction before themselves or with a family member understand the first 40 minutes and find Richard hilarious. The way I constructed it was for that purpose, and hopefully I show the audience, this is what addiction really looks like. It’s not this intervention, sit down, and everything’s all well, like Richard was closer to death than I was, I was just close to witnessing death. We were really playing with fire.

RL: One of the things I like is the poster that Comedy Dynamic shows. Which is that shot of us on a beach. The shot where I’m sitting on a log - none of the footage from that shoot made it to the documentary, but I’m sitting on a log, and there’s the camera and then Roy standing beside it. It’s me that is the sort of emblematic of it, was that, yeah it’s the Richard Glen Lett story but there’s also this kid, this young man who is following along, it’s pretty interesting to watch in the film, and even the first time I saw it, it’s kinda like a handicam and it’s quite gritty and the techniques and technology is not that great, but as time goes on it just gets better and better shot, better and better told, so by the end of the film you go “wow that was a good movie”. Even for me, experiencing and seeing myself as rough as I was in that very first viewing, by the end of it I, like the rest of the audience, was taken into what was actually a good movie. Then I saw it again the following day, and then as part of the Just for Laughs thing, and then Q&A’s after that. But I don’t sit at home and put it on *laughs*. 

CLAPPER: It’s like what you said about - if you had gotten involved Roy then it wouldn’t be observational, it would’ve undermined that. Those first 40 minutes of the documentary I think are definitely integral to building the last part of it up, showing how addiction works, it gets that across really well. Is there anything in those moments that was sort of left out? Is there anything more you would’ve wanted to add to that?

RT: No, I think it was enough. I’m sure that maybe other film critics or makers would have their two cents. But that’s the beauty of filmmakers, they have their own taste and style. I have the project here, and then my job as the artist with everyone on board is to fuel the engine of whatever it is you’re creating.  What comes after that is that looking at it going “what is the story?” What's the truth of the story? My job is to tell that. After that “what is the story that I would like to tell?”, and then I see if those two things align. Okay now, how do I have my interpretation and essentially my style? I’ve been lucky enough to absorb the knowledge of my mentors and what they teach me and push me, in a way, in how to enhance something and make it of quality. For me on my end I’m looking at it and going “part of that is developing a style”, and part of developing a style is to let people have an opinion of your work. When I was constructing the edit and doing screenings, that section where Richard is moving out, a lot of people kept saying “you should cut it down, we got it after the first one, he doesn’t wanna move out”, I would listen to the note and say thank you, but I didn’t take it out. Because this is the part of if you’re dealing with an addict - yes we’re just using the example of the move-out but, there are millions of stories like that that addicts can relate to. There were just things I had to shift around, you can shift a scene from here to maybe here in your timeline, back to the first 10 minutes like that story beat, you can shift it over here and all of a sudden it feels like the movie is whizzing. There were a couple of things he did that I had in the original trailer that I didn’t put in the documentary that Richard was talking about, only because it just didn’t make sense. Some of the little things. There was an interesting period where I was interviewing Richard as he was being kicked out and he’d be almost kind of loopy, I do believe that’s where mental illness comes into addiction. It’s sometimes a drug itself. It’s sometimes a drug itself. You don’t have the drug, and now you’re detoxing and that becomes a drug itself. You’re going through this interesting period where he’s not drinking, can’t afford alcohol and he’s getting kicked out of his place, and there’d be times where he was very loopy and 20 minutes later I’d be interviewing him and getting this insightful look into reality. I’d be like, “oh damn that’s different to the guy that I was just talking to”. Sometimes in the interview he’d be talking about things and it’d be insightful, but in the construct of the film it’d confuse the audience. They don’t understand that it was the same day because we’re setting the interview up in a different part of the apartment, Richard would change his clothes randomly throughout the day. There wasn’t anything I left out that was of relevance. I think the stuff I left in there is as harsh and raw and close to life and to reality in addiction as I could get. I’m trying to show everyone what addiction looks like and Richard just happens to be the guinea pig. That is the confusion that audiences are finding right now, and definitely film reviewers. They sometimes think that Richard was some normal human being that would be able to go babysit your kids at that time, like, no! This is a guy full blown in addiction. The only scene I cut out was that scene Richard was talking about at the beach, he had a couple great lines that we didn’t wanna see go, but again I’m telling a story as quickly and concisely and efficiently as possible and that seemed to make the ending clunky and took away from Richard and the most powerful part, which I think is when we took Richard back to the underground and he tells us that all he wanted to was die. We needed to go “lets reign in the true methods here”, he wanted to die and fuck him he was someone’s problem, and that’s extremely powerful for someone that has struggled with addiction or had someone you know that has struggled with it because that is the raw fact of how those people are thinking. “I’ll just burn this into the ground and if I die then fuck it”. It’s “AA or fuck it”. 

CLAPPER: It’s like what you said about the scenes where he’s moving out, I read a few reviews of the film that said “you should take that out”, and it’s just-- no, because that shows that sort of state of addiction and it’s paced really well and it shows the rock bottom if that’s the right thing to say. It shows that really well. A lot of documentaries that I’ve watched recently have sort of felt like the subject of the documentary plays it up for the camera. With Richard it never feels like that. How did you feel having a documentary crew follow you around for so long? Because, having cameras in your face all the time it’s not something I’d like.

RL:  It’s interesting, because that has sort of been my life. I was the son of a principal of a high school in a small city, the only high school. People knowing me and observing me has always been the case. Ironically one of the most comfortable places I know is under the watchful eye of strangers. As far as the crew itself, there had been other attempts to do documentaries about me. I think that it was kind of epic that Roy managed to get the camera running as the car hit the wall. Wave patterns change when someone is watching them. It’s possible that that’s what happened with Roy and Graham. It’s interesting because Graham is a very kind and gentle person, the director of photography, and when you see in the film when I turn on the crew, Roy’s not even there. It’s the kind and gentle Graham that’s getting the vitriol. If ever there was evidence of striking out at an innocent, it was that moment. You can feel it where you’re going “dude these are the only people left to you and you are pushing them away”, that was such a powerful piece of footage, because it shows that the addict, by the end of it the people that are trying their hardest to help them are the ones that inevitably have to push away. For the self destruction to be complete. There’s some of the moments in this documentary where I see that playing itself out. There had to be a higher power filmmaker going on to keep that camera pointed in the right direction, or the lighting to be - there’s a powerful moment where I stamp on the chord that opens the garage and I walk into the white and disappear into the sunlight. That could be from a textbook filmmaking point of view, that’s what filmmakers do where they create those moments where there’s either rage or something happens on the screen. One side is death and the other side is light, so am I walking from death to light or am I walking from life into the white light of the end of it all. That sort of filmmaking that went on there still astounds me, that it was able to be captured.Not only did Roy capture the car slamming into the wall, the car kept slamming and he kept rolling. I love the subtle moments. Like when I return his phone call going “Roy, Roy, sometimes you just gotta listen”, and Roy’s just like “Yeah, I have been dude”. From that little moment you can almost hear the determination in my voice, that I almost died, but I didn’t. The train gets back on track, we start to feel the momentum of the spirit, the human spirit enduring and re-emerging and it’s hard not to get drawn into that last part of the film. Just this little twinkling of “something’s going on here”, it’s interesting because of the time break. Roy has moved to LA, met with world class filmmakers and become an experienced and accomplished filmmaker himself. The actual medium has also gained some momentum, suddenly we find ourselves in that strange power that film has that the moving picture can pull us in.

CLAPPER: That’s the thing, yeah, because the first forty minutes they feel really intimate we get to know you, Roy and about your addiction, Then after that with that break we start to figure out how you’re doing and follow your progression. It’s really well paced in that regard, it’s well-rounded. We get to see rock bottom and then see the progression up from that. It's the right place, right time. 

RL: It’s interesting as the film continues, as it gets positive reviews. We’ve not had anything but 4 or 5 star reviews, and the legs that this particular story has, and the fact that I continue to be sober. I’ve expressed before that there’s been a lot of documentaries that end prematurely, and it’s really hard to talk about the Whitney Houston documentary, where from the very beginning all you can see is her dead in a bathtub. You know, we know that she can sing and all that stuff, but there was something that was never going to end well. The interesting thing about me being not well known is that we don’t know that in this documentary. We don’t know how it ends. It’s such an honest journey because I think that’s -- the fact that I’m not a celebrity gives this film its credibility. It’s not about being rich and famous, never was. 

CLAPPER: Yeah, it shows addiction as something that can happen to anyone, you don’t have the same lifestyle as Whitney Houston.

RL: An addiction of course is a progressive thing, you can not have a problem with substances for a long time, and then suddenly you do. There’s an ethical thing that’s like “oh you’re a bad man” and again, again again, addicts are bad people, when in reality we say it all the time in recovery that we’re not bad people trying to be good, we’re sick people trying to get well. Unfortunately the sickness presents as racists, homophobes, bullying, violence, all these anti-social qualities. It makes people not want us to get better. So many early reviews said “well the guy had it coming!”

CLAPPER: I think what you said there about “bad people trying to be good” the documentary shows that really well where other documentaries don’t show that. The Resurrection of Jake the Snake Roberts or The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, they show addiction but not the recovery, and don’t show how it’s a humane issue. It just shows celebrities with problems and that’s it, there’s no development or progression, that’s what your documentary here does really well, it shows that people can get better.

RL: That documentary talks about feeling sorry for these people, and it’s not about that. 

RT: You can’t, because what I noticed with addiction, us feeling sorry and feeling sorry for Richard, that’s why Richard would have died. This is all part of the addict's mind. The addict is a master manipulator. I love that word where you talk to an addict and they say “you can’t con a con”, that’s why AA works. It’s one alcoholic talking to another, it’s one con talking to another con. They understand each other. When that other con sees that this person has recovered, now all of a sudden hope is there. Nobody likes being that person. Judging Richard and saying he’s a bad guy, it’s lazy and a simple way of putting someone in a box and puts them off to the side and out of your mind and life. Richard of all people never wanted to admit he’s sick, it’s easier for them to say they’re bad people. They’re saying “I’m a badass, watch me drink”, they’re not saying “I’m a sick motherfucker watch me drink”. It’s easier to digest and to justify in your mind to continue to be a con. As soon as you start saying you’re sick, that means you have to get well. And if people around you can see you as sick then that person goes “holy shit, maybe that’s why it’s worse”. If you look at the Big Book by Bill, who was sicker, Bill or his wife? She’s the one staying with and saving the addict, whereas Bill is the addict. It’s like the chicken or the egg. It requires both people to get well, addiction is bigger than just the person who has the problem, it goes into the family and then the world. The family has to accept that they have a sick person and then get a chance to look at where they’ve been wrong or where they’ve been sick. If I’ve been enabling this sick person then am I sick for enabling them? Then they’ve got to look at themselves, and nobody wants to do that because it’s hard. Nobody wants to look at their own pain, that’s why there’s more people dying of addiction and more AA rooms are increasing every day because nobody really wants to look and live in their own pain, and that’s why I say Richard is the guinea pig in this documentary, he had to fight his way through - - literally I’m putting this guy on stage so you can decide “he’s an asshole, a bad guy”, put it out of your mind and move on with your day, so you don’t want to face the hard truths of the world that guys like him still exist to this day, and that aren't gonna get well. They’re either going to die or live the rest of their days being assholes, or you can actually look at that and go “what is that”, it’s a complex issue. There are 64 different variations of the 12 step process, why is that? It’s because no-one really wants to look at their pain and accept it. Richard had to go through the process of looking at those hard truths. This is an extremely rough path, it’s not an overnight thing and that’s why there’s a lull in the documentary, and it takes ten years to complete. All these other documentaries, I for sure was talking about them, I don’t buy it. I’ve seen addiction first-hand, I’m dealing with someone that is currently in it, Richard. I’m going, “this isn’t what addiction is”, it’s nice, it’s fluffy. I’m going, “that’s not it”. That’s it to a degree, a portion of it, but it’s not the whole show. The whole show keeps going on. 

RL: One of the things I really appreciate about Roy not putting in my profound wisdom at the end of it all is that there was an opportunity to really drop the ball at that point and pander. He continued to ask the audience to answer the questions themselves. Lots of times we’ll see in a documentary where we feel a question arises in our viewing, and then the next frame answers that question. Roy did not do that. He let the experience speak for itself and not have me going at the end “Well the thing is…”

RT: That came from my mentor Scott Smith, he’s the one who initially saw that in Richard when I showed him that 40 minutes. I had 40-45 minutes edited years ago before Adam came on as editor. When he watched that he came back to my room he said “I like it, and I like Richard.” He got it, and he started cutting these ten minute segments together to show me, and we’d screen them for friends. At this time my career as a director was starting to take off, so random people would drop by to the studio and he’d go “oh come see this” and you’d see a ten minute clip of Richard, he wouldn't leave an ending, people would go “well what’re you going to do with that” and he’d go “Oh I dunno, I just wanted to show you that”. He was proving to me the point that, let people have an opinion of your work and their own conclusion of Richard, and I kept that philosophy when Adam came on board and he did a brilliant job cutting it together. It was just the way it needed to be done, people needed to come to their own conclusion. It’s a risky move, the reason why I make movies is that I want everyone to like them, I want people to see them. It’s hard to hear in reviews everyone say “Richard was an asshole, got what he deserved”, but then they’ll be praising me “Wow did the documentarian really stick with it, didn’t he really -- make it come together”, and it’s an inaccurate assessment. It’s easy to say “Richard was an asshole”, dismiss him, he got what he deserved. Like, no, nobody deserves that, nobody deserves to die.

RL: It seems to me that if I’m worthy of love at the end of the documentary, then I’m worthy of it at the beginning. That’s the challenge that we have as humans, is to care about people and not just when they’re shiny and bright. I think the challenge or the place that people come to that people watch this documentary is that “I have misjudged this person, and maybe I shouldn’t be judging at all, maybe I should just care about people”.

CLAPPER: When I first watched it, there was never a point where I thought “oh he’s an arsehole”, it was more just upsetting, than anything else. Your philosophy where people are missing the point where they think he’s an arsehole, I agree with that. There’s never a point where Richard deserves it, it’s nice to see that there’s a somewhat happy ending. There is somewhat closure to the journey we have in your documentary.  

RT: Patience is a virtue, it all came together. It was exactly what I had to learn in myself. It’s not like I’m making a fantasy movie, I was taking someone’s life and debuting it to the world. We had to “think it through”, like they say in AA. Now that it’s done and out there I’m satisfied, I feel confident that it’s out there. If there’s anything anyone wanted to talk about I’d be willing to open up discussion, that’s really what the whole thing was with the doc. I hope I contributed something to the glaring issue in our society. I love what Richard says, “nobody really knows how many die from alcohol”. You can’t actually track it. From my end I’ve been living in this for so long that, you know, I’m done. Onto the next thing. I’m just glad to see people wanna have the discussion and that’s important.

CLAPPER: I think what you’ve done with the documentary and your dedication to explaining that, that’s the best thing you can do for that. Obviously it's been a weird year so far film-wise, has distributing the film because of COVID been an issue?

RT: I dunno, actually, because I’ve never distributed a film before. I don’t have anything to compare it with. I independently paid for this myself. It’s funny people will think “Roy and his crew”, no, it’s really “Roy and Graham”, it’s like Graham was working a full-time job and so was I. I financed it all myself, I’ve never made a movie where I have to go off and find distribution. It’s hard to find the right distributor, I just believe this was the time it was supposed to be released and out there. Danny, who’s helping a lot with promoting it says that it’s a slow burn. This thing is a slow burn. I’ve been trusting that process. Like I have done with this entire time, I’m gonna trust the process and see where it goes. If it's meant to be all over the place where Richard is doing Jimmy Kimmel Live then that’s awesome, but if not that’s awesome too, because I know it’s in God's hands. If it’s in God’s hands it’s in the right place. That’s where I’m at with it. I would be blown away if I made my money back, I don’t see that. It’s not a knock to Comedy Dynamics, they’re not MGM or Lionsgate, they’re a large independent company and doing a great job, but even then they have their limits. It’s one of those things where, I dunno if the COVId thing has helped it, but it's helped me. If we released the film in any other year I’d be really overwhelmed with work, and it’d be hard to find the time to do these interviews. Since it's been kind of a lull, it's given me something to do during this downtime, take the time to talk to people like you and check in with Ricahrd. We’re doing it all ourselves, the reason we have the interview is Danny set it up, there’s nobody out there helping us. 

RL: Every time it seems like it's, you know, plateaued, I get an email from Danny with another interview and some new reviews. He’s really doing the ground-swell thing, all these independent bloggers and reviewers and film-watchers. For me, recovery is in no small part the opportunity to carry that message. That it’s possible. There is hope. Just to know that just because you’re funny doesn’t mean you won’t die. We’ve lost so many to addiction and we don’t want to accept that might be the reason. We come up with the Mitch Hedburgs all the way to Robin Williams, all these wonderful people who were not able to find recovery. If nothing else, then remaining in recovery, if that is the point of me, then that’s good enough as far as I’m concerned. I don’t need to be rich and famous, but if one person goes “I think I can do this if I just”-- the key is to ask for help, and then to take it. That is the gift of recovery for me, I asked for help, and I took it.  

RT: I know Richard is heavily involved in the recovery community, guys reach out and look for that sponsorship. He’s got the manly persona about him, and a lot of people who stop drinking think like “oh I’m some sort of pussy now I can’t drink with my buddies how can I go to a football game if I can’t get hammered”, these are all things that as a male I struggle with as well, “how can I pick up chicks and be that badass guy”, it’s all just a facade anyway, Richard has crossed into that area where he can be that guy of service, where he’ll be there, he has the experience now of 11 year sober to be there and say you can also get sober for the rest of your life and have all these things you’ve wanted to have and more. I love that the doc finished with Richard saying he found love for himself.