Sup Doc: A Documentary Podcast

This episode we watched Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich a four-part Netflix docuseries directed by Lisa Bryant. Based on James Patterson’s 2016 book, Filthy Rich takes a look at the stories of Epstein’s abuse survivors, so - Trigger Warning!  Our guest is Haley Hoffmeister an actor and comic from Eugene, Oregon currently living in Los Angeles. She can be seen on Amazon Prime’s “My First Comedy S...

To conclude our Munchie May series on food documentaries we watched FAT: A Documentary by Peter Curtis Pardini (2019). Trainer-to-the-stars Vinnie Tortorich exposes the history behind widespread myths regarding healthy eating, fat, and weight loss. Is the American Obesity epidemic a product of culture, government intervention, corporate greed, or lack of will? And helping us pick through the layer...

We roll on with our fifth anniversary and Munchie May, our food documentary theme month. Our guest is the director of one of our favorite ever food documentaries, City of Gold. Filmmaker Laura Gabbert joins the show to talk about the film and the legacy of the late Jonathan Gold. Jonathan Gold was the Pulitzer Prize winning food critic who came up through The LA Weekly, music journalism, and being...

This is our Munchie May series on food documentaries.  We watched Les Blank’s 1980 classic film Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers . Blank celebrates the virtues of garlic from Berkeley's Chez Panisse to the Gilroy Garlic festival. It’s a short but thorough look at the cultural stereotypes and medicinal qualities of the stinking rose, down the supply chain of farm workers.  You can wa...

May 2020 is the five-year anniversary of Sup Doc. To celebrate we’re talking food documentaries all month long for Munchie May , our brand new theme series. We talk to comedian Derek Sheen about his pick, NOMA: MY PERFECT STORM (Pierre Deschamps 2015).  For three years running, Noma in Copenhagen was voted the " Best restaurant in the world ." This puts an immense amount of pressure on René R...

What were you doing in 2007? Mike Ott was starting his first teaching job as a film professor at a community college in Southern California. There he meets a bafflingly confident 18 year old Leigh Harkrider, who thinks his student film, “Enslavence” is going to send him to stardom. What feels like a fictional sitcom is filled with unforgettable characters and youthful hubris, but there is some red...

In this TIGER KING aftershow, Joel McHale talks with Jeff, Saff, Erik and more to get their reactions to the series, their portrayals and their new fame. Did we need this 8th episode? Did Joel McHale need this? Paco and George are joined by super-producer and Oklahoma native Will Scovill. Plus doc pitches, what we've been watching, and next episode info on Kid Icarus (George interviews director Mi...

George Chen spoke with directors Puloma Basu and Rob Hatch-Miller about their 2019 film,  Other Music. Other Music was a record store in New York for twenty years and a played a central role in the life of the city’s music scene. The store  closed in 2016 and this documentary captures the last month and a half of the store’s activity, with former employees, fans, and musicians all showin...

TIGER KING: Murder, Mayhem and Madness . This is the show that is getting us through quarantine. Director Eric Goode stumbles on a story that is well-known in weirdo Americana true crime circles, but there are more than 7 hours worth of conflicting stories in this feud between big cat lovers. So many mysteries remain. Who do you trust, and who can play Joe Exotic in the eventual biopic version? Ho...

Like most great capers this one also started with a Post-it note. The note simply read: “McDonald’s Monopoly Fraud?" This is when we are introduced to the breakout “star” of the series, FBI agent Doug Mathews. He was bored and snatched the Post-it off a senior agent’s desk, an investigation began that would eventually lead to greed, deceit and the theft of millions of dollars from McDonalds....

How did the innocuous indie comics character Pepe the Frog turn into a meme of the alt-right and join the Anti-Defamation League's list of hate symbols? Chilled out artist Matt Furie learns the hard way how a meme can run out of control and along the way we learn about the culture of 4chan and the evolution of trolling in Arthur Jones' debut feature documentary that was a cause celebre at Sundance...

On Ep 136 host Paco Romane sits down with comedian Brooke Heinichen to recap and discuss the Netflix documentary Miss Americana. Brooke guides Paco thru the life and albums (seriously, Brooke made a album to album synopsis) of Taylor Swift. They also talked about being a woman in entertainment, technology, ageism, Brooke’s pet peeve and you get to hear Paco do a horrible British acc...

Paco and George watched Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez on Netflix, directed by Geno McDermott. This three-part series really speculates on the motivations of the fallen sports star, but since he committed suicide in prison, there is no definitive interview to explain what happened. Nonetheless it's a twisting tale that touches on NFL culture, special treatment for athletes, toxic mascu...

On Ep 134 Hosts Paco Romane and George Chen recapped the twisty and terrifying Netflix documentary Don’t F**K With Cats (like we don't know what "F**k" means) with the hilarious and insightful Tara Jepsen. We had no idea that there was such a thing as “ Rule Zero ” of the Internet. It makes sense, especially because cute cat videos have been the best thing the Internet has brou...

George is joined by Brian Miller of Deathbomb Arc, Foot Village, Rose for Bohdan, etc to discuss the only doc he taped off of PBS, Frederick Wiseman 's 1968 classic High School . High School took a look at a a month of footage from a Philadelphia high school that was miles removed from the Summer of Love and splays open the ongoing generational conflict between the Greatest Generation and The Boom...

Paco and George look back at a year in documentaries as Sup Doc entered its 4th year. We also reveal the secrets of the pee tape, Disney Plus True Crime, Casey Kasem, Christopher Walken, and E-40. Docs we are looking forward to covering: The Confession Killer Don’t F*ck With Cats The Devil Next Door Frankie G (nee Peterson)'s show at The Pack is Nightchurch - https://www.youtube.com/nightchurchcom...

On this episode of Sup Doc host Paco Romane sits down with comedian and musician Phil Johnson to rcap the 2019 Netflix documentary ReMastered: The Lion's Share . To put it bluntly the music business is brutal. From royalties and demanding record labels to artists being sued for copyright infringement, it’s sometimes difficult to remember a time when these things weren’t the norm. The Lion Sleeps T...

On episode 130 hosts Paco and George recap the new Eddie Murphy biopic Dolomite Is My Name about Rudy Ray Moore currently streaming on Netflix. It has been quite awhile since Eddie Murphy has been cast in a R-rated movie with so much swearing as he frequently employs in “Dolemite Is My Name,” and it’s a welcome sight. It’s not just the triumphant return to cussin’ that fans have been craving,...

We’re recapping THE GREAT HACK (2019). Wish there was a simple way to understand what Cambridge Analytica did that will take less than two hours? It turns out they experimented on a bunch of countries before bringing their psychographic meme warfare to the Trump and Brexit campaigns. Directors Karim Amer and Jehane Noujiam do their best following CA insider Brittany Kaiser, as well as journalists...

Did you watch Jawline ? Liza Mandelup's 2019 Hulu documentary was a Sundance hit, capturing a scene of teenage influencers and influencer kingmakers, and to a lesser extent the girls that pay to interact with them. Without a heavy-handed narration it's all shot in a gauzy dream-like way. Protagonist Austyn Tester is from a small Tennessee town and plays the naive foil to media shark Michael Weist....

Paco and George are joined by magician Andy Deemer to discuss both of the Amazing Johnathan documentaries out now: Always Amazing (Steve Byrne 2018) from All Things Comedy and The Amazing Johnathan Documentary (Ben Berman 2019) on Hulu. Whether sawing into his arm with a butcher’s knife or pulling pranks with audience members, The Amazing Johnathan was a reliable source of manic energy at many a ’...

Dropping Monday Oct 14th! There are two documentaries out about The Amazing Johnathan, the magician/comedian who rose to drug-fueled heights throughout the '80s-'00s. The Ben Berman-helmed The Amazing Johnathan Documentary was on the scene before comedian Steve Byrne's Always Amazing but the saga gets twisted when both film crews start running into each other at the extremely-ill Johnathan's comeb...

On episode 126 Paco is joined by comedian Jesse Hett to recap the 2019 Netflix documentary Westside vs The World. This documentary tells the history of the Westside Barbell Powerlifting Club and its founder Louie Simmons. The doc is narrated by  Ron Perlman and focuses on Louie’s youth, his discovery of the Culver City Westside Barbell club, his journey into powerlifting and his accomplishmen...

Paco talks with Bay Area comedian and baseball coach Ben Kolina about the 2018 Netflix documentary Screwball. Screwball Recounts the high-profile doping scandal that rocked Major League Baseball. This entertaining doc takes us into the surreal Miami underworld that provided performance-enhancing drugs to Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and other star players. They say South Florida is a sunny p...

George welcomes back three-time guest Wayne Federman (comedian, author, adjunct professor at USC, comedy writer, musician) to talk about his History of Standup podcast. Straight comedy nerd talk! We talk about music documentaries on David Crosby ( Remember My Name ), Dylan ( Rolling Thunder Revue ), and Laurel Canyon ( Echoes In the Canyon ). Also Hannah Gadsby, Gary Gulman, Bob Newhart, The Holy...