Captain Kirk to Brother JED

Ted Balaker: Hi, I’m Ted Balaker with Reason.TV. Today, I’ll be speaking
Roger Nygard who has directed television shows such as The
Office and The Bernie Mac Show. Roger is the director of the
celebrated documentary Trekkies and his new project, the nature of
existence promises to explain the mysteries of the universe in 90
minutes.

Stick around and hear Roger take on directing the rise of fan
culture, religion and why people get so angry when they’re beliefs
get challenged.

How do you first get into filmmaking?

Roger Nygard: I’ve --just been making films ever since I can remember. It was
something I’ve always been interested in and I’ve just kept doing
it. And luckily I’ve been able to get paid to do it since I think 1991,
it was when I turned pro. Starred Julie Brown, Kevin Neal and then
David Spade for David Spade gone SNL.

Ted Balakher: So how did you move from something like the monsters level to
the -- to The Office, the Bernie Mac Show level.

Roger Nygard: You just keep building, somebody once told me and I think it’s
true. It takes five years to make every big step in the film business.
So you start out with your little amateur productions and then you
finally maybe write a script and you make a short film which leads
to somebody seeing it hopefully and then getting an offer to direct
something and really low budget and maybe that leads to
something. And if it doesn’t you just start all over again and try it
again.

Ted Balaker: Get something like The Office which started, it’s a British version
and become widely successful here in the States as well. How
much of it was sort of ready made just the style of the humor for an
American audience versus you had to tweak it for an American
audience.

Roger Nygard: The American version of the office certainly found its own group
and I think that’s why it became a success. You can’t just copy
something directly. You got to reinvent it because every culture is
a little bit different. The American culture is a little different from
the British culture, you know they got a German Office -- they’re
franchising the Office to other countries and in each one they get’s
tweaked a little bit because humor doesn’t always travel.

Ted Balaker: For the folks who may have not seen it yet what’s the 02:26 in
Trekkies?

Roger Nygard: It’s a documentary about some of the more exceptional fans of Star
Trek.

Ted Balaker: And one of the most exceptional was the young man named
Gabriel.

Roger Nygard: Everything that came out of his mouth was gold.

Ted Balaker: Here at Reason.TV of course, Drew Carey’s a big deal for us and
he’s a big fan of Trekkies, can you tell me about him hooking up
with Gabriel.

Roger Nygard: Drew Carey saw Trekkies and we heard about it because we got a
phone call at the production office from Drew Carey’s office
saying “Hey, we want to find that kid, Gabriel.” And they ended
up casting Gabriel on the Drew Carey Show for two episodes to
play a Start Trek fan of some kind. It was kind of flattering that
“Oh, Drew Carey saw the movie and liked it.”

Ted Balaker: Ca you talk about the rise of fan culture, I mean certainly it’s
epitomized in something like Trekkies. It sort of what every
television show would dream of having this bottom of the
grassroots fan culture. What accounts for that?

Roger Nygard: The thing about Star Trek is that people like to lose themselves in a
TV show and Star Trek was the one science fiction show or
literature that portrait a positive future where human beings are
progressing and people are equal. Man and woman, minorities,
everyone has an equal chance. Science fiction tends to the place
where we project our doomsday scenarios. And Star Trek was the
opposite of that and it drew people to that positive portrayal.

My new film is called The Nature of Existence. And the subtitle
that I like is “All the mysteries of the universe explained why are
we here.” Is there an after life? Where is it? What is the soul?
What is sin? Does prayer work? If so where was God during the
holocaust? And now 04:42 hundreds of people all over the world
asking the same questions. They interviewed Baba lovers, Myrh
Baba from Hindu gurus to genets, talk to atheist, Satanists and
Native Americans, rabbi in Israel, archbishop in Rome,
confusionists, the Taoists in China. China is held to be an atheistic
country. Confucianism and Taoism are not truly deistic religions.
But they are really superstitious. I think every human nature has
superstition built into it in some way. I was interviewing a woman
in Beijing. I asked her about religion which religion did she prefer
then she said “I don’t believe in any sort of religion.” And then in
the next sentence she’s telling me how she believes that if you find
a snake on the roof of your snake you should leave it because it
brings good luck. If you shoo it away it will bring disaster. So
that’s still a belief in some unknown force that you can influence
through your actions.

Ted Balaker: Why do people get so angry when their beliefs are challenged?

Roger Nygard: Everyone had the same answer that if you truly believe whatever it
is that you profess to believe you have no doubt in your mind, you
don’t get angry when someone questions it. You discuss it. You
have an answer for why. If you have doubts you get angry at
someone for shining the light on your own doubts. If someone is
very angry because you’re challenging them it’s because they’re
trying to keep themselves convinced of whatever the doctrine is
that they profess to believe.

Ted Balaker: The very rarely say well. Well, thank you friend for setting this
06:30

Roger Nygard: Oh, yeah. You can never change someone’s mind. I mean rarely.

Ted Balaker: If you had to say drive cross country with one of the folks that you
interviewed who comes to mind?

Roger Nygard: Oh, I’ve done it. I did it with a preacher, an evangelical. What did
he call himself, a confrontational evangelist. I drove cross country
with Brother Jed. He goes from college to college preaching Fire
and Brimstone, the type of get old fashioned you know you all
going to go to hell if you don’t stop listening to rock and roll and
drinking beer and all the other bad things. And he was -- he is
something else. He’s very entertaining. He stayed in my house
because he goes from place to place. He doesn’t have money. So I
said you know you’re free to use the guest room.

Ted Balaker: Open invitation. He might see this online.

Roger Nygard: He’s been there once, come back anytime Brother Jed, anytime.