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[0:09] Robert Bannon: Well, welcome to the round table, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon. You're listening to this on Broadway World over here on the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeart, and Spotify. I had the chance to check out a documentary. This is so fascinating. I am someone who knows nothing about what we're about to talk about. I'm lucky I have an ATM card. So my family, though, is all about watching stock markets and things, and I don't know what they're talking about and buying bitcoins and all that. So I watched this documentary and I found out so much that I've never known that you are going to be fascinated all about. We just so happen to have with us today co-directors, people that have put this little baby together. Welcome, please, MATTHEW and TUCKER to the show. FINDING SATOSHI is the movie, and you need to check it out. Well, TUCKER, who came up with this idea?

[1:02] TUCKER TOOLEY: Well, um, this idea was out there in terms of who, you know, the mystery of who SATOSHI Nakamoto was was sort of undeniable and has been for such a long time. And in 2020, uh, just kind of right in the throes of COVID, um, I called MATTHEW and said, uh, hey, I uh I really want to do a movie, a documentary about SATOSHI. I'd like to try to find who SATOSHI is. Um, I think it's hands down the biggest financial mystery of our times. You know, SATOSHI is is uh has you know a million Bitcoin, you know, 80 billion dollars of net worth somewhere around there today. Never moved or sold a bitcoin. Um, and no one knows who SATOSHI is. So so the mystery, you know, I'm a I'm a storyteller and a filmmaker like MATTHEW, and and when you have an incredible mystery like that, um, you know, to me, it's a it's a great, it's a great story to tell.

And so we set out um, you know, somewhere, you know, mid late 2020 to uh to start telling the story. And it took us on almost a five year journey um to get the answer right and to thank you for saying that you that you learned a lot about Bitcoin and and and crypto and the space because the the goal was A to solve the mystery and B to have people walk away from seeing this movie and have an understanding about something that is really complex, but to do it in a way that was entertaining. So we appreciate that response from you.

[2:29] Robert Bannon: Absolutely. Matthew, I'm just gonna let you know that if I have billions of dollars in Bitcoin, I am not gonna be anonymous. I'm gonna tell I'm gonna be out in that mall throwing Bitcoin around. Matthew, you're known for a lot of interview-driven documentary. You've done a lot of documentaries. It is kind of your thing about people. Why does this interest you? I mean, you don't have you have a subject, but not really. Like you don't, it's not like you can call up the the person and say, hey, can I get you on camera? We don't know who it is. You're doing a documentary about a mystery.

[2:59] MATTHEW MIELE: Yeah, it was pretty wild, and I was really happy TUCKER approached me because I am kind of known for like celebrity-driven documentaries and you know, institutions like the Carlisle and Bergdorfs. And I wanted to, I guess deviate from what I've been known for. And I really wanted to excite myself about a new topic and what's better than an international mystery that's confounded people, you know, for the last, you know, 17 years. So I was I was all in. I called a journalist friend of mine, and you know, I was excited to get him involved because he's been talking to me about a film possibly, and this one fit. And then we got private investigators involved, and what Bill Cohan, who's my colleague in this has said is, you know, the dark arts of uh investigations.

So I was really excited to like say, hey, this is an exciting film. It's exciting to go down this road and international investigation. What better way to you know deviate from what I'm known for? And you know, this has been a great success. We found out who did it, we found out how it was all constructed. I learned a lot along the way.

[4:01] TUCKER TOOLEY: I'm glad you did, and I'm hoping a lot of people will engage on this because it's certainly something that satisfies in the end. So once you start it, it takes you on quite a ride, and I'm really proud of the work.

[4:12] Robert Bannon: Me well, I I'm fascinated by it. And I I have I don't know. I only I have 20 minutes. I have a I had to go to work last night. I have the end of the movie to watch, so I gotta go home. So I gotta get out of this interview and go figure this out because I'm left with a cliff hanger for real. Tucker, for you, the people don't know you, they know your work, okay? Because where you you worked somewhere that made a lot of movies that won a lot of little gold statues. You started your own business that has made a lot of movies that have made a lot of money, and we've all seen them if it's where the millers, if it's United States vs. Billy Holiday, which my students in seventh grade were quoting that movie because we're doing Harlem Renaissance, and that movie has educated the youth of especially youth of color in this country where I am to about what's going on. So thank you for what you do. Very different than this movie. There's no Jennifer Aniston in this movie.

[5:02] TUCKER TOOLEY: No, true, true, but you know, not so different. Um different on the face of it, but but every movie that I approach and the stories that I love to tell are at the end of the day, human stories, and whether it's were the millers, which is, you know, a dysfunctional family coming together, that's at the heart of that movie, and that's why I think that movie works so well. Obviously, brilliant comedians, brilliant actors, brilliant script, brilliant director. But at the heart of it, it's a it's a dysfunctional family coming together, and everybody can kind of relate to that. And I think that goes to across the movies that I make. Certainly, Billy Holliday is an example of that. Um, but I'd say that the reason that I I gravitated towards this is, you know, there's there's a temptation to say to call SATOSHI's, you know, this myth.

Um, and not and not sort of humanize the story. Like it's just it could be the CIA, it's someone behind a mask, it's a shadowy figure. You know, and at the end of the day, we all knew that whoever SATOSHI was as a family, you know, had had real problems, you know, real world problems, things they were stressing about, you know, brilliance in terms of what they did, passion. And I wanted to tell the human story behind the mask story, really, without it being a gotcha documentary where you're you're exposing someone who doesn't want to be exposed. We wanted to honor that person, those people that led up to Bitcoin. And I think that's you know, I think that's what we set out to do, and I think we accomplished it.

[6:31] Robert Bannon: It's incredible. Matthew, I I can only imagine how hard it was to get this kind of project. What how long did you work on this? What was it like? What kind of crew did you have? How did you plan? You don't know the ending, you don't have a story of a documentary. You're making it as a goal. So, what was the process like?

[6:48] MATTHEW MIELE: Yeah, it was challenging because it was having a crew on standby for when developments would happen. And then we would literally go to you know, ground zero of our investigation where we are around a table. We were trying to figure out okay, how are we gonna film what's happening in real time when these guys are putting you know pictures on a board, you know, the investigation is happening right in front of us. How do we make that engaging? How do we keep cameras out of other camera shots? It's like something that was, as I said, challenging and something I welcomed because I'm not used to working that way. And when we were saying, okay, we gotta go down to you know Mexico, we gotta go to the Netherlands, we have to, you know, really travel the world.

So we gotta get people on airplanes through airports and just have this, you know, suspenseful thrill ride. But it's a documentary too. So it's not like you have all the bells and whistles that you can on a feature. So you're literally relying on people who've never really been on camera, like authors, investigators, people who are you know, tech guys who go down these dark paths on the internet, and you're like, how are we gonna film that? How are we gonna make that exciting? I think we achieved it, and what I'm really proud of is the fact that I think we bring a lot of emotion in the third act. I'm really excited about people to see, you know, the spouses and the families, et cetera, of some of the people that we investigated because you really get the sense, like TUCKER was saying, about family and who these people were as humans and you know, all the things that they were inspired by.

Yes, it's in the tech world, but it also has real world consequence, and they were after a certain you know agenda, and I think our respecting that agenda and bringing it out, and also showing the fact that this wasn't born of nefarious means, the fact that it was innocently started, I think that goes a long way in uh how people will appreciate this film and how people will take it.

[8:36] Robert Bannon: And it certainly is different from what's happened in the past on certain SATOSHI films, certain investigations. So that's really where I think, you know, my pride for being a part of this comes from. So I'm really excited for it. Uh TUCKER, how did you thank you? How did you handle this? Were you there's a fear to me just hearing about it because it's a mystery? So you don't know where it's gonna lead you, you. You don't know what kind of people you're dealing with. Was there a fear about even opening this kind of snake pit up and trying to figure it out? And how did you not make this a political opinionated movie? Because people feel very strongly about this stuff.

[9:12] TUCKER TOOLEY: They do. And you know, initially, um, we met with a lot of resistance. You see it in the movie. You know, no one really wanted to talk about SATOSHI, and for good reason, because in the past, you know, people with bad intentions have gone after suspects that they their families that they may think are SATOSHI and done really kind of unfortunate and mean things. And we and the last thing we wanted to do in this movie was to encourage that kind of behavior. Um, and so you know, we understood why people were resistant to sort of uncovering SATOSHI, right? But in every, you know that over time, this story will unravel and someone will come up with it, right? And we felt like we had both responsibility and our job was to tell this story in a way that honored people that honored what the process was honored, and that honored crypto and Bitcoin, really Bitcoin and families and the people involved.

And so there's a great deference and respect um behind it. And you know, I think people can tell when they watch a movie, you know, that the tone of it, the intention of it wasn't like, oh, we're gonna expose this person. It was really kind of um, you know, honorable, I think. And so um that was important.

[10:39] TUCKER TOOLEY: The scary part for me, honestly, was we got about two years into this investigation and we spent quite a bit of money, and we were down a path thinking we had the answer already. And um, and something came up in the investigation which showed us that we couldn't, that it couldn't be the complete answer. The one that we thought, the person that we thought was SATOSHI could not be SATOSHI, or at least could not be the only person that was SATOSHI. So we um, you know, we had to decide at that point do we keep going? Do we sort of write this down and give up? And fortunately, we, you know, MATTHEW and and Bill and Tyler were all game to keep going, and we did, and and we got to it. It took us another two years after that.

So, as you say, these are you know, docs are scary propositions when you don't when you know, when you're sitting down with an historical figure who's done has a great body of work and you're having them tell their story, there's a beginning, middle, and end to that. When you're when you're trying to solve a mystery, there potentially is no end. There's a beginning, there's a middle, but there's potentially no end, and you have to reconcile, you know, that your movie might not have that at the end of the day. And we felt like we had enough to go on at that point, and we felt like um we were close, um, that it gave us, you know, energy and inspiration to keep going, and we did, and I'm really thankful we did.

[11:58] Robert Bannon: I'm really thankful you did. If you are someone out here who doesn't know about Bitcoin, doesn't have Bitcoin, doesn't have never heard of SATOSHI, you may be living in your own way, just trying to pay your bills and live your life. This is gonna be a movie for you because it's like the greatest episode of MTV's catfish of all time. Like, you are gonna try to find who is this? What is going on? And will they find out this information? Matthew, what about people who are gonna say to you, like, I don't have Bitcoin, I'm out here, I'm a plumber in Cincinnati, Ohio. Why am I watching this movie?

[12:31] MATTHEW MIELE: Well, because it's become something that I think a lot of people need to pay attention to because I don't think it has any, you know, shortage of attention being, you know, continuing to be on it. It's something that I think is the future. I personally think that Bitcoin is revolutionary. It's obviously taken over a whole segment of the financial industry. And, you know, it's uh it it could obviously can go up or down, you know, day to day, but I think people should pay attention to just conceptually what it's about. And the way we explain it in the film, you can see how, you know, electronically money is going to transform a lot of industries, similar to how AI is starting to, you know, transform things.

So it's educational and people should really, you know, lean in if you haven't leaned in yet on Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. This is the kind of film that you really need to engage on because it'll take you on that journey. It took me on that journey because I didn't know that much, but now I'm, you know, I would say I'm a pretty good uh, you know, knowledgeable person, almost an expert on certain aspects, certainly on you know, who started all this. So yeah, this is the one for you to watch.

[13:39] Robert Bannon: It's right. So TUCKER, tell us April 22nd. Where can we see it? How can we see it? What what can we do to make sure we can check it out?

[13:47] TUCKER TOOLEY: So you can go to finding SATOSHI.com and and buy the film um starting April 22nd. If you have a Coinbase wallet, we have a partnership with Coinbase, and on the 21st, Coinbase is offering a link to the movie at a reduced price for that 24 hour period leading up to the 22nd. So either of those spots you can um you can go get the movie. And um, we're really excited for everybody to see it.

[14:08] Robert Bannon: That makes sense. That's brilliant. I think you can go like there's Bitcoin machines in a gas station now. It's gonna take over so you better.

[14:17] TUCKER TOOLEY: It is. And and just to because you said it, I think that it's important for people to understand you don't need to be wealthy to buy Bitcoin. You know, you um a Bitcoin is divided into what we call sats, and you can buy five dollars of Bitcoin, $2 a Bitcoin, $50 a Bitcoin. And we think um over the long period, and based on our research and based on sort of, you know, really kind of the knowledge of the space that it, you know, Bitcoin as a savings tool outpaces inflation and the dollar and a lot of other currencies. And we think it's a great place to um over over a long period of time um to store some money.

[14:56] Robert Bannon: I was gonna ask you, would you buy it? I guess the answer is yes.

[14:59] TUCKER TOOLEY: I guess I do own a little bitcoin, you know. I'm um I'm not deep into it, but I but I own it. And um, you know, I I love it and um I'm I'm really kind of uh inspired by by how it became to be and and what the invention is and the fact that I could, if I wanted to send you money in Bitcoin with nothing in between us, no bank, no where I'm not waiting for a call from my bank to say, why are you sending this money to Robert? Um it's instantaneous. I can send you, you know, 20 bucks, 2,000 bucks, it doesn't matter. I press a button and you have it immediately. And if you're in London or if you're in Africa or if you're in Iceland, it doesn't matter. Same speed, same same thing. And I think there's a real virtue to that.

And I like frankly, an alternative to traditional banking. I love traditional banking as well. We all have to have it. It's it's what makes the world what makes the world go round. But having an alternative and having the ability in emergency off hours after hours to get some value to somebody else far away is really important.

[16:00] Robert Bannon: Absolutely check out this film everybody. You're you're gonna it's gonna it's it's really entertaining. And look TUCKER I'm offer only so when you make a movie with Jennifer Aniston and you call me comment we're comedy buddy we're coming and I'll take bitcoin I'll take bitcoin okay okay we'll pay your Bitcoin and yeah per per TUCKER and MATTHEW they spoiler alert they're not SATOSHI but you gotta find out and watch the rest of this film find out who is all right thank you for being here so great to meet you all thank you guys.