This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:31] Robert Bannon: And I've read poetry and I've read, and I have my favorite line of Mary Oliver is everyone's line. Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild, precious life. And it is inspiring to me because it's like a call to action, but also open and beautiful. And she's beautiful. Her words are beautiful. She's a trailblazer in the queer community, in the written community, in every aspect of what it means to be an artist in the world.

[0:56] Robert Bannon: Absolutely. And are incredible. Sasha Waters has done, I don't know, everything. She's documented Chekhov to Dominatrix. She is a filmmaker. She has done it all. I want to know what makes her tick and why she picks what she picks to make movies about. Welcome to the show.

[1:13] Sasha Waters: Thank you so much, Robert. I'm really happy to be here. I have made a lot of different films. I'd like to say that I, you know, I love documentaries. I watch documentaries all the time. My first jobs in film were working in documentaries. But in some ways, I don't really consider myself a documentary filmmaker. I consider myself an artist who works in film. I work with 16 millimeters with a hand-cranked Bolex.

[1:37] Robert Bannon: I heard.

[1:39] Sasha Waters: So I make a lot of short films, kind of essay films, short personal films. But every now and then I stumble into a story that feels like it needs to be, it's just sort of a broader tapestry. It needs to be longer. It needs to be a documentary. And I think especially for those stories that we, you know, that I hope to reach a larger audience so that people find these artists, like a poet like Mary Oliver, like a photographer like Gary Winogrand, who made a film about a number of years ago. The documentary format is really the way to go. So those films take a little longer, but they're really rewarding in the end because I think it's a way for people to find those artists and enjoy them.

[2:17] Robert Bannon: How do you feel as an artist who works in film, who sometimes makes documentary films, about the kind of rise of the documentary? Sometimes the new documentary is a little, sometimes they're a little salacious and soap opery and gossipy. You know, people will, it's a holiday. I'll put Netflix on, I'll hear some outrageous story, but it's a documentary. Then there are, you know, the famous tried and true documentaries. How do you feel about the art form in 2026?

[2:46] Sasha Waters: I love that question. I love that it's a big tent. You know, I love that there is something for everybody. I mean, I do worry, obviously, about the fate of public television because it's such a vital and important resource. And, you know, there are parts of the country where people don't have Netflix or they don't have HBO, but everybody has PBS. And so keeping that and protecting it as a space and a resource for audiences and for filmmakers as well, I think is so important. But yeah, I think that the documentary form has really expanded in the last 10 to 20 years and there's room for even for it to keep growing. So I'm excited. I'm also excited. I mean, so I shoot a lot in 16 millimeter and there's a 16 millimeter film a lot in the Mary Oliver story.

But I see that return to analog media in other story forms and other documentaries as well. So I'm very excited about that because I think and I see it in my students too. We were talking about teaching before we started recording and I think that students are really interested in these older formats like darkroom photography and cyanotypes and that material reality of working with media.

[3:55] Robert Bannon: It's like going back to vinyl. It's like the rise of the record. You know, there's something about it that is true and real and gets to the heart. Something about it makes it feel real to me, especially when everything AI world is so fake. It's nice to go back to something real. So for you, you are a teacher and you are a New Yorker like through and through, but you went to the University of Michigan.

[4:17] Sasha Waters: I did.

[4:48] Robert Bannon: Love the Midwest. Can't stay away. And then I lived in Iowa also for 12 years because that was where I started my teaching career before going to VCU in Richmond.

[4:55] Robert Bannon: Richmond. Well, if you come to Ann Arbor, I'm going to take you out to a cup of coffee because I've never been there.

[5:01] Sasha Waters: Oh, yeah, it's great. It's totally great. The city's great and it's a great film festival and it's a cool college town. And I mean, I love Detroit too. So.

[5:10] Robert Bannon: Come on over. I got a spare room. So for you, for you, when you when you teach and you how do you manage teaching and make like a real document? I'm not saying it's not a real a big old movie with it and the responsibilities of both of those things.

[5:27] Sasha Waters: It takes time. You know, it depends on whether or not I'm on a deadline. So on this film, I was. So it was hard. I mean, last summer was just particularly as soon as the semester ended in May, it was just really just working around the clock with and I also work with a team, particularly on a film like this. It's a kind of a little bit of a for me a little bit of a bigger film. It's not like a big, glossy Hollywood production, but there's a whole team. So I had a co-editor on this film who's just completely brilliant. Megan Sims, we she is based in Chicago right now. So we worked remotely most of the time. We had our composers who were in Kingston, New York, our animators. So so it's sort of a whole team effort, especially in those last few months to make it to the finish line.

But yeah, then other than that, just trying to balance it with the teaching is an ongoing effort. But I also am really inspired by my students. I share work in progress with them. I will often show them things and then give them like paper forms to give written feedback so they can do it anonymously because nobody wants to look at their professor and be like, I was pretty boring or, you know, I kind of suck.

[6:37] Robert Bannon: Right. So it's like they can they can be anonymous and tell me like where things are working, where they're not working. So that's always great. And I learn things from them, too. There's there's a way in which, like you'll see in the Mary Oliver film, sometimes I use photos over video with a video background. You'll see a still photo of a video background. And that's something I noticed my students doing. So. So, yeah, I learned from them and kind of their aesthetics as well.

[7:14] Robert Bannon: Yeah. And I think that's a really big thing when you went into this and had the idea was the idea for it to be a big film. How did it come about that you wanted to make this and then how did it grow into what it's become?

[7:36] Sasha Waters: So it was really through their excitement and enthusiasm that we all got on board initially. And it really is primarily a film for PBS, for American Masters. We didn't know if we would do a theatrical release, but the response at the festival premiere at True False. We showed there on the first night of the festival at the Missouri Theater. It was sold out with eleven hundred people. We were like, OK, this is like this. This is amazing. We were so thrilled that so many people responded and then even more thrilled when Kino Lorber said they wanted to partner with us, get on board and do this theatrical release in advance of the broadcast. So it all just came together and aligned.

[8:29] Sasha Waters: And I think it's like the spirit of Mary giving everyone. Yeah, it sounds a little woo, giving us all the good vibes, giving us all the good Mary vibes that, you know, to try and bring as many people not to the film, but I mean, really to her work. So like the main goal of the film is like when you finish watching it, ideally you want to read a Mary Oliver poem, pick up a Mary Oliver book and go for a walk in the woods with it and just spend time with her work. You know, that's what's so beautiful about it. And I think when I read about her, I was researching her to talk to you. She is an anomaly in the sense of the fact that you would not think a film about a poet would get eleven hundred tickets sold.

You would not think that a poet would be like a rock star, would have a following, a very famous following, a very every regular person following, someone whose words resonated through the academia. Like a lot of times when we think of poetry, you think of academia and you think of like, it's not casual. It's a very specific audience. But she broke through to pop culture, to mainstream. Her words resonate to people who are not just poet laureates and followers. They're everybody. It's amazing.

[9:45] Sasha Waters: Yes. I mean, she is she is someone who exists in all of these different spaces. She exists in. So even even before she was hugely popular, you know, maybe when she was still kind of ignored a little bit by the critics, you know, she was still someone who was, you know, paid attention to by hospice workers or caretakers or ministers, you know, people reading a poem at a wedding. So she was someone who was always there for people to find. And so now it's just easier, a little easier, hopefully, for people to find her poems because they mean so much to people.

[10:20] Sasha Waters: I mean, I think part of it is that she was so prolific. I mean, she published more than 30 books in her lifetime. And also, I should say that in addition to the poems, there are other poems that she has written. I mean, I think part of it is that she was so prolific. I mean, she published more than 30 books in her lifetime. And also, I should say that in addition to the poems, there are essays, there are two books on the craft of writing poetry that, you know, I had to read those craft books because I was like, hey, that's part of my research, my whatever. But I mean, they were fascinating. I learned so much from reading those books. So she's prolific. And I think what that means is that there's so much work for people to respond to. So anyone can find what they need in a Mary Oliver poem, like within the body of work.

[11:13] Sasha Waters: But the flip side of that is also that I think that it makes her a little more open to criticism because if you want to be critical, you just like it. It makes sense, you know, someone could look at some of Mary Oliver's work and say, oh, you know, she's only writing about sunshine and poppies, she's not writing about thunderstorms and the dark shadows. If you only read some of the work, you would think that, right? Because there is so much that you really have to dive in and read a lot of it, I think, to understand the breadth and the complexity of the whole body of work. But I think people can dip in and really take what they need. And that's what's so wonderful about it.

[11:56] Robert Bannon: Absolutely. And sometimes we need poppies and sunshine. More than ever now these days. So there's another aspect of her life and her work that I'm sure you deal with. I mean, in the 1950s, it was not easy to have a partner and be a part of the LGBTQIA plus community. And that is why she's such an icon in the queer community as well. So how do you handle her personal story in the documentary?

[12:26] Sasha Waters: I mean, we really wanted to lean into that in terms of celebrating her partnership with Molly Cook, who was her partner for 40 years. It's really truly a love story. And so we wanted to keep Molly's story kind of front, I don't know if I would say it's front and center, but we wanted to really foreground it throughout the film, not just like, oh, here's Molly and Molly was important, and then we go away and we never hear about her again. We come back to Molly a few times in the film, because Molly was an artist in her own right. Molly provided this incredible sense of care and protection for Mary in terms of really they built a life together that allowed Mary to become the writer that she would become and that she wanted to become.

And then later, Molly was her literary agent. So she really protected Mary from people who, you know, were trying to get her to publish here, they want to do an interview, or they just want to show up on her front porch and have a cup of tea with her, because that happened as well. So I think, yeah, giving that space to Molly's story was super important. And I just, I loved Molly, Mary's archive is in the Library of Congress, but Molly Cook's archive is actually at Smith College Special Collections. And I just loved, I spent a whole week up there in Northampton going through those boxes and, you know, getting to spend time with Molly. I mean, Molly was a wonderful photographer.

[13:47] Sasha Waters: With this film, once we filmed the Stephen Colbert interview, which was pretty late in production, we knew that we wanted to open and close the film with the pieces that we used of him. You know, that was just sort of those bookends. But there are other narrative bookends, like the story that her friend the poet David Keplinger tells about when Mary graduated from high school, before she went off to live her life, and the first stop on that journey was being at Steeple Top at Missy Vincent Millay's home. She lived in the woods for a week. And so we hear this almost fairy tale-like revelation from David Keplinger early in the film about Mary living in the woods, but then we come back to that at the very end of the film as well, to, I think, really reinforce this idea of her incredibly unique story and life that really is sort of like a fairy tale, in good ways and not so good ways.

Incredible. You talk about – I can't wait for people to see it, if you haven't seen it. Before I wrap this up with you and I have another question about just you and being a filmmaker, how can we support the film? Where can we see it?

[22:00] Sasha Waters: So it will be on PBS, American Masters, on August 25th. I will say that because of the time slot for broadcast, the broadcast version is shorter. So the broadcast version is great, it's 81 minutes, but the fuller, richer story is 91 minutes, and that's in theaters between now and the end of August. And so seeing it in theaters is super important, especially in these next few weeks. It's open this weekend in New York Provincetown, Pleasantville, the Jacob Burns Film Center up there, and also Miami. And then it expands wider next week. We go to L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago. So yes, seeing it in theaters, also it's good because it's air-conditioned. I'm here in New York, where it's very hot in New York right now.

Boy, but the IFC has some great air conditioning. Good air conditioning, a good cold drink, a nice little salty popcorn. There's nothing like – I went to the movies last weekend, and I try to go often, and I just had this revelation of there's nothing like a movie. There's nothing like the darkness of a movie theater and that moment where you have – when I'm home trying to watch, I watch PBS and I'll watch the documentary, but when you're home, the dog barks, the doorbell rings, your phone is sitting there staring at you. But in the movie theater, it's just you and that movie. It's a special – so go see the film.

[25:01] Sasha Waters: Are you able – again, my husband teases me all the time because we do a show, and I do this show, and I daily talk to amazing people. Sometimes I can't turn that brain off, so I'm always watching a movie, watching a TV show, and, oh, I wish I had that person. I got to text that – I got to email that person. I want to find that person. Are you able to watch a film or meet a subject and turn the director brain off? Do you ever just watch something for just joy? Can you turn it off?

[25:30] Sasha Waters: Oh, yeah. I mean, I watch a lot of – I mean, I watch a lot of documentaries, obviously, but I also watch a lot of narrative fiction films, and I've never had the desire to work with actors or write and direct fiction, so I think that's probably a place where I can just really turn it off and enjoy without thinking about – I think with documentaries, it's more like, yeah, I tend to think about the craft a little more, like if I can see certain things, but I also borrow things. I mean, in the Mary Oliver film, you'll notice that a lot of the people who are reading poems are standing up in some of the interviews. People are standing up, and that's because a year and a half ago, I was teaching Grizzly Man, the Werner Herzog film, to my film juniors at VCU, and I was like, oh, man, Herzog interviews people standing up a lot.

That is really cool. Like that's – hmm, I'm going to do that because there's a different energy and kind of like almost mobility. They're not really mobile because they're still in the frame, but, yeah, it's really different to interview people standing up. So I think there's that too, like what can I learn from other filmmakers?

[26:46] Sasha Waters: I think that's beautiful. I think that you're incredible. I love this conversation. I love – this is great. Thank you. People discovering the one and only Mary Oliver. I think that it's incredible. People discovering the incredible work that you've done. Shout out to, as we said, PBS and public broadcasting, and it's so important as they literally try to destroy anything that speaks truth and art and culture into this world. It's so important we stand up, and that one way you can do that is, A, watching it in August on PBS, but also going to the movie theater and supporting it because money talks, and going to theaters and buying tickets will create the opportunity for more of these stories to be told, and we need that more than ever in this world.

[27:00] Sasha Waters: Yes, for sure. What a joy. Enjoy your summer. Don't work hard. Look, you are a professor. You need to rest and take a nap.

[27:07] Sasha Waters: We'll see. We'll see. Maybe in a couple weeks. I have time. I don't have to go back to teaching until mid-August. For now, I'm just sort of enjoying the energy around Mary and excited that people are finding her and reading her books and reading her films.

[27:13] Sasha Waters: Well, break legs. Have an incredible run with this film, and I can't wait for the next one. When you have the next one, come on back.

[27:15] Sasha Waters: All right. Thank you so much.

[27:16] Sasha Waters: Thank you so much for being here.

[27:18] Sasha Waters: Yes. Take care.

[27:28] Sasha Waters: Take care.