Robert Irwin: A Desert of Pure Feeling, (2022, documentary, 93min), Written and Directed by Jennifer Lane, Premiering at DOC NYC Festival, SVA Theatre, New York, NY, November 12, 2022 [Pace Gallery, New York, NY]
Jaie Laplante (Artistic Director at DOC NYC) leads a Q&A with star Amy Goodman and directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin after a showing of Ste
Steal This Story, Please! intro and Q&A with Amy Goodman, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin
moderated by Jaie Laplante (DOC NYC Artistic Director)
11/13/2025
transcript:
INTRO
[audience clapping]
TIA LESSIN: Okay, wow. Hey! We are so excited to have our New York City premiere of Steal This Story, Please!
[audience cheering and clapping]
TIA: We’ve been showing this at festivals, and someone introduced the film as “Steal This Story, Please.” And we’re like, “No! It’s, ‘Please!’”
[audience laughs]
TIA: And you’ll find out why in a little while. We first I want to thank Jaie Laplante for programming this film as a Centerpiece Selection. It is quite the honor for us to be here. This is my third film at DOC NYC, and it just keeps getting better and better, and this is one of the reasons why. So thank you Jaie.
[audience clapping]
TIA: And thanks to Raphaela Neihausen and Thom Powers. I don’t know if you’re here tonight, but you guys had the leadership and the vision to create this extraordinary celebration of the nonfiction art form, and we’re grateful to you for everything you do for our community. Carl and I are New Yorkers, and we made this film in Brooklyn together with many of our collaborators, who are here in the audience tonight. So we’d like to recognize them right now. They’re behind the scenes, but right now they can stand up and be front and center. When I call your name, okay? First, producers Karen Ranucci and Caren Spruch.
KAREN RANUCCI: Do not throw your ticket away. There’s a number on here. You get to vote. [indistinct] vote.
[audience laughing]
TIA: Ever the producer. Did everybody hear that? We’re eligible for an audience award.
JAIE LAPLANTE: That’s right. It’s next in my script.
TIA: Excellent. Hey. [laughs] And executive producers Dominique Bravo and Julie Cohen.
Our extraordinary editor, Mona Davis. You want to stand up? And Marin Burga, who helped keep the edit room humming. Martin, who’s also associate producer.
Julia Dengel and the late Jonathan Oppenheim captured Amy and her team on camera 25 years ago as the US was invading Iraq. And you’ll see some of their beautiful footage in this film. I don’t know if Josie is here? But we want to thank you, Josie.
KAREN: [indistinct]
TIA: I did! Yes. Jake Ratner… And DPs Nausheen Dadabhoy, Cliff Charles, George Lerner, stand up.
Eliza Paley... Alexa Paley, our supervising sound editor. And our post-production guru, Ben Murray.
You’ll see their names in the credits, but just because this is a hometown crowd, we want to give them some love. There are many more things to be said, and they’ll be more meaningful after the film, but one in particular, Nermeen Shaikh, who you’ll see in the film.
Karen Shatzkin, our lawyer.
And a really, truly special, we– this film took a village of funders and supporters and one very special one, Roberta Grossman, who, with Caroline Libresco, founded Jewish Story Partners, and is here tonight with us.
And last, but not least… Amy Goodman.
[audience cheering and clapping]
CARL DEAL: Yes, thank you, Amy. I do want to add one other really special person who’s here, and it’s John Alpert. I just see him sitting in the front row here. With Denis Moynihan, the man behind the scenes who makes things happen.
So Tia and I think about documentary films as sort of the intersection of art and journalism, and, you know, you’ve got emotional truths combined with factual truths to create a story. And, these days, it’s pretty clear that art and journalism are both forms of really radical resistance right now. And we learned so much, Amy, from watching you over these last thirty years, and particularly over these last couple years making this film. Amy’s been ringing the alarm about the problems with… commercial media. And what we’re seeing right now with President Trump, with having not just a bully, but, well, we don’t have to get into Donald Trump, I guess.
[audience laughing]
CARL: You know, people are capitulating right and left in the corporate media, and even the BBC, public broadcaster overseas...
[audience booing]
CARL: ...just folded today because Donald Trump is a shake down artist, and he’s creating the truth that he wants. But Amy’s been giving us an example of how to not get shaken down by the people in power.
[audience cheering and clapping]
CARL: We hope everybody here will stick around afterwards. We hope you enjoy the film that Amy will be here to talk with us [indistinct]. Thank you Jaie, and thank you everybody.
JAIE: So as Karen preempted me a little bit, the next part of my speech was that, yes, we do want you to vote for the Audience Award, this film is eligible. And there’s a QR code that you can scan on your ticket, and if you forget in the excitement of tonight, don’t worry. Do it tomorrow morning, you can wake up, you can vote all the way up until November 22nd. The last thing is that I want to thank our staff crew and venue teams for their hard work at putting DOC NYC together once again this year. The festival’s running in person all the way to November 20th, and online until November 30th, so lots more to see. But for now, enjoy Steal This Story, Please!
JAIE: Carl Deal. Tia Lessin. And Zazu, who could forget. Come on and [indistinct] over there. Truly one of the more unforgettable nights at DOC NYC in sixteen years. Amy! Thank you so much for joining us and sharing with us. Carl, Tia. I’m, you know, you’re not here to listen to me, so I’m only gonna ask a couple of questions in the beginning, and then I’d love to hear, you know, you in conversation with Amy. I do ask that if you would like to raise your hand and ask a question that you make it a quick question so that everyone can, you know, participate, who wants to. So my first question is gonna be: Amy, so, you know, [laughs] I think someone’s gonna be a show stealer here. Maybe my first question is for you. [laughs] Okay.
[audience “aww”s at Zazu]
AMY GOODMAN: She’s learning English, but she’s not quite there yet.
JAIE: She’s, you know, it’s a big night. There’s a lot of emotion here. Okay. Tell me about the process of getting to know Carl and Tia, and trusting them with your story, and how did that come to be.
AMY: Well, first of all, I would like to give Carl and Tia a little gift of flowers.
JAIE: Aww.
[audience “aww”-ing and clapping]
AMY: For making this film.
JAIE: Aww.
CARL: Thank you.
AMY: I also wanted to give the flowers to the producers, to Karen Ranucci and to Caren Spruch.
JAIE: Come on up K/Caren!
AMY: K/Caren. Thank you, thank you. And also I wanted to give a bouquet of flowers to the woman at democracy now who has run the organization for– well she’s been there for now nineteen years. Julie Crosby, would you come [indistinct].
[audience cheering and clapping]
AMY: Where are you, Julie? She might have had to go home to take care of her kids. There she is. She does not like the spotlight.
JAIE: Congratulations. Wonderful.
AMY: And then I would like to ask everyone who works at Democracy Now, right now, if you would stand up.
Thank you so, so much. And if you’ve worked at Democracy Now before, join us in standing up. And if you listen to or watch Democracy Now, if you would stand up. Thank you! So this is the community that is Democracy Now. And Nermeen Shaikh is here, who cohosts Democracy Now.
Your question is, “What was it like working with Tia and Carl?” Well it really goes back before the making of the film, though it’s part of the making of the film because I would like to, you know, there’s that scene in the film where I was questioning President George H. W. Bush. So that was how many years ago?
TIA: 2000, it was at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia in 2000.
AMY: Okay. And it was Tia Lessin who actually filmed that sequence with me when we went over. If you want to get some of the big political figures, you go and you stand next to Fox News.
[audience laughs]
AMY: Their little carrol where they’re interviewing people, and then when the people come out, like a former President, you get to ask them a question. And Tia was there with her great deal of TV experience or video experience. Why don’t you explain what happened?
TIA: Oh my god. Well I was just finished producing I think the second series of The Awful Truth with Michael Moore. We’re on Bravo, we’re on ABC. And Jeremy Scahill was one of the associate producers. He recruited me to come down to Philadelphia to volunteer because it was when Democracy Now was piloting a television form of the show, and they wanted people with TV experience. I came down, and I went chasing Amy.
[audience laughs]
TIA: They put a camera in one hand and a press pass over my neck, and off we went. And Amy, as you can see from the beginning of the film, you know, does journalism like an athletic event.
[audience laughing]
AMY: If only we would accept corporate sponsorships. We might get a lot of money from Hoka. I don’t know.
[audience laughing]
AMY: We don’t do it, so forget it.
CARL: But if anybody from Hoka is here…
[audience laughing]
TIA: I was a TV producer. I was not a DP. I was not a camera person. And so, you know, I had a one man band, I had a rig, and I was following Amy. And she buttonholed Newt Gingrich, we got that. We got George Bush coming down the stairs, but I looked after she asked him this searing question, which was what one would ask a former President, “What do you say to people that call you a war criminal?”
[audience laughing]
TIA: And I got the whole thing except I looked at the camera mic and it was off.
[audience: oh no…]
TIA: Meaning no audio whatsoever. And I turned to Amy, who had really not worked with me ever before, and likely would not work with me ever again...
[audience laughs]
TIA: ...and I said, “Amy, I’m sorry, we didn’t get the audio.”
AMY: [laughs]
TIA: She said, “What!?”
[audience laughs]
TIA: And then she said, “Well, we’re gonna do it again!” And so she just followed George Bush down the hall. Barbara didn’t know what was coming. And then she asked the very same question. He gave the very same answer.
[audience laughs]
TIA: And that’s what you see in the film.
[audience clapping]
AMY: So we go way back. But Carl and Tia are amazing filmmakers, have been nominated for an Oscar for Trouble the Water, did amazing films like Citizen Koch, were Michael Moore’s producers for a number of films, and working with them was a dream. You know, it’s very painful to be at the, what do you call it? The lens end? I mean, yeah, at Democracy Now every day we’re in front of cameras, but this was different. Follow me everywhere. A bit painful, but...
[audience laughs]
AMY: You know, we live in community at Democracy Now. And to be able to document that, and for you to see what that work is about, especially now, when we have a President who calls the media the enemy of the people. That even after there’s an attempted assassination of him, he points to the media at a rally, and he says, “Look, you could aim right there and get them.” These are very dangerous times. It takes everyone of every political persuasion, and hue, and religion, or not religion to say it is critical that in order to survive we have to stand up together. And that’s what we’re doing, leaving– Some of my colleagues aren’t here right now because they just left for Belém, Brazil. We’re gonna cover the UN Climate Summit. I will be heading there with my colleague Denis Moynihan after we go to Amsterdam for the International Film Festival with Carl and Tia, in Amsterdam. The largest doc festival in the world. It’s critical to spread the word that we need independent media. We need a media that covers the majority of people, right? Those who care about war and peace, those who care about racial economic social justice, those who care about LGBTQ issues, those who care about the climate catastrophe, about the fate of the planet are not a fringe minority. Not even a silent majority, but the silenced majority. Silenced by the corporate media. So we’ve gotta all take it back.
[audience cheering and clapping]
JAIE: Well, thank you for that. Thank you for that. So one more question before I come out to you all, and kind of putting the shoe on the other foot with Carl and Tia. How did you approach the, you know, the awesome responsibility of, you know, capturing who Amy is and telling her story? How did you lower yourself into that?
TIA: I mean, I’ll just start with, you know, this is a woman who centers other people’s voices, as Nermeen so beautifully and eloquently said. That’s what [indistinct] does. So she, the idea, I think, of being at the center of a film, she was allergic to that.
[audience laughs]
TIA: Because she, you know, her practice is uplifting other people’s voices. So we really had to take her from the margins to the center of the frame. And we had thirty years of archive to do that. Amy entrusted us with this extraordinary wealth of footage. We have this footage that Julie Dengel and Johnathan Oppenheim, you know, filmed. We had Amy’s personal archive. So we were immersed in the day to day, you know, historical record. And so for me, I love archives, but in this moment, when we have a regime trying to erase the historical record actively, it felt really meaningful to be immersed in that, you know, in the history. Each of these segments, each of these episodes, everything that Amy’s covered has this resonance right now.
CARL: The only thing I can add to that is to say that it was also incredible not just to work with the footage, and the stories, and Amy, but, you know, she– the people around Amy are incredible. We knew a lot of her crew from just bumping into them wherever we were working at the time. Whether it was in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, or in Baghdad before the war in Iraq, right before ‘shock and awe’. I mean, it just felt like they were everywhere that we wanted to be. And so we had, also, their material. and their brains, and their hearts all over this film. So it was an even more awesome responsibility for us.
TIA: And I want to give a shoutout, actually, to one of those people behind the camera, Hany Massoud.
CARL: Hany, come on.
TIA: Who’s behind the camera right now.
AMY: His was the first voice you heard in the film. Also to my family, I think the editor in chief of Dave’s Press is here. He grew up a bit since then.
[audience cheering and clapping]
AMY: Jasper and Ariel, both journalists. And Anna Escuder and Scott Hadas and Eli Whitman as well. It’s so wonderful to have you all here. It’s such an honor to be all together.
JAIE: Oh, great. So, okay. I’m coming out to you. I’m gonna remind you of my request if you want to participate to just please keep it to a succinct one question, so that we can get as many people to participate. Just raise your hand if you have a question for Amy or Carl or Tia. We’re gonna go right here. I saw you first. Yeah, go ahead. And I’ll repeat the question in case anyone in the back can’t hear it.
PERSON 1: Hi, I’m a high school social ethics teacher, and recently me and my students have been talking about how we relate to the media in a time of hyper visibility and maybe discussing why it even matters to capture these things, because they feel very pessimistic about– well everyone seen what’s happening in Palestine every day for years, you know, and people see videos of these things, the protests, it doesn’t matter. Why does it matter? So I guess my question to you is what would you say especially to young people that feel like… it doesn’t matter if we capture or witness the truth because it doesn’t do anything.
AMY: Oh, it does.
JAIE: She’s a high school teacher and she’s just saying that she would like to know what Amy would say to her students who feel pessimistic about–
AMY: I would say watch Democracy Now, and...
[audience laughing]
JAIE: Yes!
AMY: You will see the majority of people in every walk of life rising up or challenging or resisting in one way or another. And it really does make a difference. I mean, what is the alternative? I mean, the fact that millions of people have taken to the streets, yes, now, and you see back in 2003 in Iraq. I mean, the protest movements in every country rock the world for peace. Now, yes, the US did invade, but when you talk to people in Gaza, when you talk to people in Iraq, when you talk to people who are at the target end, how often they talk about what it means when people in other countries, especially at the trigger end, say, “No,” to their governments. I think the movements are the story of the past and the future, and when all of the media echoes those movements, you know, interview people at every level, but interview them. Don’t just show a picture of a protest and then interview those in power. You gotta bring them into those hallowed studios or get out there and broadcast from the streets.
JAIE: Amen. Alright, right here.
PERSON 2: Thank you for everything that you’ve done. Sometime in the next couple years Palestine will be free and [indistinct]
AUDIENCE: Yeah! Woo! [clapping]
PERSON 2: What do you want to do for your third act?
[audience laughing]
JAIE: “What do you want to do for your third act?”
AMY: Well, tomorrow we gotta do the show, so…
[audience laughs]
AMY: And I thank all of my colleagues at Democracy Now who’ve been working through the day and then will work through the night tonight to make sure that we bring you the latest. Whether it is what’s happening in Sudan or what’s happening in Gaza or what’s happening right here in New York City. And for the high school teacher, I bet your kids, a number of them got excited about seeing young people organizing, young people knocking on doors, and you see what happens when young people get involved. Just covering what’s going to happen next. It’s the same as everything I’ve done for all of these years.
[audience laughs]
JAIE: Can’t wait for that. Alright, gonna look over here. This side of the room. Okay, right here. Yeah. Go ahead.
PERSON 3: Thank you so much for everything you do. As a journalist, how do you not succumb to, like, apathy after all these years? What keeps you going?
JAIE: “What keeps you going?”
AMY: Well, I think that that’s a privilege. That’s a luxury we cannot indulge in, and that is apathy. From the beginning of Democracy Now, you know, I got the call to do Democracy Now from Pacifica Radio, and I was covering an underground house in Haiti. And there were elections at the time. People announced they were running for office, would be gunned down. People would go to the polls, would be gunned down. But still the vast majority of people voted.
And they asked me to come back to the United States to cover the elections. It would be the only daily election show on public broadcasting, where most people didn’t vote. And yet we had such an impact on the entire world, but I never thought it was apathy. I thought people were involved. I thought we could use the primary system to look state by state at how people are involved at the local level. See what their struggles were. And so that’s how Democracy Now started. And as for, you know, what inspires me? All the people that we cover. All of my colleagues at Democracy Now and in the independent media movement. That’s what inspires me every day. Working with a phenomenal group of people, and talking way beyond that to people all over the world who care about the fate of the planet.
[audience clapping]
JAIE: Thank you. Good question, good question. Lets try over there in the back. Yeah. Go ahead.
PERSON 4: Hi, Amy. I’m editor in chief of an independent media company. You've been a guide to so many of us.
AMY: What company?
PERSON 4: It’s called Eastern Standard Times, it covers Asia and the Asian diaspora. Question for all of you, Tia, Carl and Amy: You packed so much into that brilliant documentary, all the highs, the lows, the humor, the devastation, the brutality, the empathy, I wonder what didn’t make it into the final edit [indistinct]
[audience laughs]
JAIE: Let me check with the theater manager. Go ahead, go ahead.
TIA: Yeah, I mean, I would say so many, so many scenes. Mona Davis, our editor, you know, had this extraordinary wealth of footage, and we just couldn’t stop. You know, we didn’t want to stop. We had this, you know, Amy broke the story of the kidnapping of Aristide, the president Aristide from Haiti back in 1991? 199...4?
AMY: There were two kidnappings and coups against…
TIA: Two kidnappings. Two coups. The second one, and she actually went down with the congresswoman Maxine Waters and Randal Robertson, Robinson to the Democratic–
AMY: The Central African Republic.
TIA: The Central African Republic. Which is where they, which is where the US marines flew him and hid him, and so she had the first live interview with him. That was a very hard scene to cut because that is a history that so few know about, and Amy was right there. What else would you say?
CARL: Well, I mean, I’ll take this as a little bit of a segue because we cut so much material here. They snuck into Western Sahara, last African colony, and they filmed with the resistance there, the underground resistance who were incredibly generous at great risk to themselves. And Amy and Denis and their team did an incredible series of reports.
AMY: And John Hamilton and Mike Burke. Mike, are you here?
CARL: And Mike. Yes, Mike is…
AUDIENCE: Yeah! Woo!
CARL: And, you know, Mike shot one of the best shots in the film that’s not in the film.
[audience laughs]
CARL: But that’s a different story. So, because we have all this incredible material to tell different parts of our collective history, really, we have a website called StealThisStory.org. And we also have a new minted, newly launched Instagram @StealThisStoryPlease, and we’re going to be periodically releasing little bits, some of those cut scenes and also some other excerpts from the film on that. So anybody who does social media, you know, check us out on Instagram, look for us there. These materials will be coming out. But it’s always painful. This was extra painful because, you know, we had thorough documentation, video and audio, with an incredible voice leading us through it, of the last 30 years of global history.
JAIE: Well that’s a great segue. I’m sorry, that’s all the time that we have.
PERSON 5: What!
JAIE: Amy, Tia, Carl, thank you so much for being with us
AMY: We want to thank you so much [indistinct] right? Can you talk about the showing.
TIA: Yeah, just quickly.
JAIE: Yeah, of course.
TIA: Well, actually, we’re screening tomorrow morning at 11:15 at IFC Center, but then we are going to be taking this film directly out to the theaters March, April, Spring of next year.
JAIE: Fantastic.
[audience clapping]
TIA: And we will be at the IFC Center, so please spread the word. We’re building a war chest to be able to do that, so if you know anyone who can help, if you can help StealThisStoryPlease.org is the website. Donate. StealThisStory.org
AMY: They dropped the “Please,” they’re not gonna be…
TIA: No polite. And it’s a non-profit that is actually distributing this film, so any contributions are tax deductible.
AMY: And we’re gonna, in all these cinematic releases around the country, with the cinematic release coming in the next months, we’ll be doing fundraisers with local public media. With radio and television. You know the Corporation for Public Broadcast has been eviscerated, stations are gonna be going under, so we’re gonna use this opportunity to shore up independent media, and help, we hope, to build new media. And what happens tonight, and if you guys decide you like this film that Tia and Carl made it will send a signal to theaters all over the country if there’s gonna be an audience for it.
JAIE: Alright, we’ll be there, we’ll be there.
[audience clapping]
JAIE: One last thing I want to remind you, you’re at a film festival and we have another screening right after this. We’re going to have to get 450 people in here, so please make your way outside. and you can continue talking from there.
Took advantage of my day off from work to check out this year’s online edition of DOC NYC. As expected, the festival is offering a wide variety of socially/politically relevant documentaries (including I Am Greta, 76 Days, and MLK/FBI), but I was in the mood for something a bit more... frivolous. I decided to go with Tiny Tim: King for a Day, which examines the rise and fall of an unlikely—and, tragically, largely forgotten—musical icon.
These days, Tiny Tim is probably best known for his contributions to the soundtracks of SpongeBob SquarePants (“Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight”) and James Wan’s Insidious (“Tiptoe Through the Tulips”), but at the height of his career, he was considered an equal by such esteemed artists as Bob Dylan and John Lennon. Indeed, his long hair, effeminate demeanor, and falsetto singing voice practically epitomized the counterculture of the 1960s; one of the film’s talking heads even argues that his androgynous persona paved the way for David Bowie and Prince.
Director Johan von Sydow’s cinematic style is just as charmingly unconventional as his subject; he utilizes rough, expressionistic animation and excerpts from Tiny Tim’s own personal journals (most of which are addressed to God and Jesus) to fill in the gaps between the available archival footage, creating a thoroughly captivating, warts-and-all portrait of a tortured genius. We experience Tiny’s struggles with mental illness, gender identity, and sexuality; we learn about how the very quirkiness that made him famous also contributed to his eventual downfall—"circus freaks," after all, have relatively short shelf lives.
The result is every bit as thematically compelling and emotionally gripping as any fictionalized celebrity biopic you care to name (Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, et cetera). Whether you’re a longtime fan or a total neophyte, Tiny Tim: King for a Day is well worth discovering.
