Matt Walsh is a comedian, writer, director, actor, and social critic. He s also the force behind two of the most successful documentaries in the last few decades: What is a woman? That s a question he actually answers, and am I racist?
00:22:56.060I mean, all the words have to work and not too many.
00:22:59.860And so, yeah, well, and you say there's something interesting about in terms of assessing the creative process there too.
00:23:06.600It's like one of the things that was striking about your documentaries is that you were inspired, in my estimation,
00:23:14.160by an important question in both cases, right?
00:23:17.300And you actually put them as questions.
00:23:19.560And the root word of question is quest, you know?
00:23:24.560And when I'm lecturing in public on my tour, I always have the question in mind before I step on the stage, right?
00:23:33.120And so, you served as like a sponge on the cultural side, as far as I'm concerned, sort of soaking up the zeitgeist and distilling down the central political concerns.
00:23:47.580And you landed deep down in those concerns in both cases.
00:23:52.800The first concern was, well, to what degree is the notion of sex itself something that's only culturally created?
00:24:40.160People have their own in-group preferences.
00:24:42.260We're somewhat novelty-averse, but also curious.
00:24:46.940Precisely what it means to be a racist is a complicated issue.
00:24:50.000And so, you had those questions in mind.
00:24:53.020It might be useful for everybody watching and listening to think hard about what your comments about the first draft meant.
00:25:00.480Because one of the things I do when I'm teaching people to write, we've built this into some new software that we've developed on called Essay,
00:25:08.560is encourage people to start with a question and then to write way more than they need, right?
00:25:15.620And that gives you some creative space to lay out the exploration.
00:25:20.240And I suspect that's what you saw when you saw the first draft of the movie, the first version.
00:25:26.180It's like, it's kind of all over the place.
00:25:28.720But that doesn't matter if you can edit it down.
00:25:32.320Like, it's so, you know, there's a different, the part of your brain that produces and the part that edits are separate.
00:25:39.780And if you get them both operating at once, like you try to write the perfect sentence, let's say, then they interfere with each other.
00:26:12.800And in particular with Am I Racist, that was a major question.
00:26:18.660I mean, we had the question, as you point out, for the title that determines what we're exploring.
00:26:23.680But then there was the creative question of what kind of movie is this exactly?
00:26:29.060And I think with the first cut, we had something that was sort of straddling the line between a more traditional documentary and something that was a bit more sort of gonzo and borat and performative and comedic.
00:26:46.340And that was the problem with the first cut is it just was, it wasn't one thing, but it wasn't the other.
00:26:51.280And so it didn't have the best elements of either of those things.
00:26:59.380And so we thought, well, how do we, we can't, we need the best elements of one of them.
00:27:05.520And what we decided ultimately was that we can kind of pull this back a little bit and make it more of a traditional doc,
00:27:11.820or we could go farther and make it more of the, of a, of a comedy, make it more of a, of a, of a film.
00:27:21.220And we even went out and we went out and filmed more stuff.
00:27:25.380We had a couple of other ideas for scenes that we said, okay, that's what this is going to be.
00:27:29.640If this is going to be not a traditional documentary, we got to go all the way.
00:27:34.420And we went out and filmed a couple other scenes just to build out that, that aspect of the film.
00:27:40.660Yeah, so, so this, this character that you are in the movie is someone who's, who's like an, who's every man naive in a way, right?
00:27:52.340I mean, what you're doing, at least to some degree, is asking stupid questions.
00:27:57.460And I used to encourage my students, by the way, in my seminars to ask stupid questions, assuming they were paying attention, right?
00:28:04.480Because if you have a question, and it's a genuine question, the probability that 80% of the people around you have the same question is very high.
00:28:14.560You know, assuming you're paying a certain amount of attention.
00:28:16.840And so you, you have this character, and correct me if I have any of this wrong in your estimation,
00:28:21.580who's butting his head up against what a very large number of people seem to be, seem to presume is self-evident,
00:29:26.520And is that, did you think that was a reasonable characterization of what you've been doing?
00:29:31.600I think it's a reasonable characterization.
00:29:33.560Yeah, well, it's the first time I've gotten a comparison of Bugs Bunny, so that's a, that's a new one, but I'll, I'll, I'll take it.
00:29:40.660And I think Emperor Has No Clothes, certainly, that's, I think that's very much what we're trying to do, especially with the first one, but with both movies.
00:29:49.020I think that's a lot of my, that's just a lot of what I do in general, is pointing out the obvious.
00:30:01.180I wonder if that's a conservative function, pointing out the obvious.
00:30:04.260I think it is, and if we lived in a, in a culture that was not hopelessly, perhaps not hopelessly, but was not deeply confused about so many basic things, then I might be out of a job entirely, which is, which is, which is fine.
00:30:18.140I'll go do something else, even though I'm not qualified for anything else.
00:30:22.120So I think that's an accurate characterization.
00:30:23.420I was, I did not expect, if you'd asked me five years ago, six years ago, I didn't think that I'd be out making documentary films.
00:30:33.060Being, being involved in things, doing something comedic, doing comedy, doesn't surprise me.
00:30:38.460I think that probably surprised other people who had been watching me more than it surprised me.
00:30:44.100Because I know I have a sense of humor, and that's how I like to approach things.
00:30:49.640But the problem is that when you're doing, in particular for me, when I first started out podcasting, there's always the risk of, with political commentary, whether it's podcasting or cable news or anything, with political commentary, there's always the risk of it being entirely humorless.
00:31:06.160It's hard to, it's hard to, it's hard to involve humor in daily political commentary.
00:31:11.800And so it gets very dry, very kind of scolding and, and, and, and boring, frankly, after a while.
00:31:19.640And so I think especially early in my kind of commentary podcasting career, I think I was falling into that.
00:31:26.720It just wasn't, it wasn't funny, it wasn't fun.
00:31:30.100And, and, uh, so I was looking for ways, like, what, what are some more interesting ways to get these same ideas across, uh, instead of just staring into a camera and saying it.
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00:32:59.120You know, when I was lecturing at Harvard, I lectured about very serious topics, you know, I mean, the most serious topics I could, I could, that I had encountered, you know, political catastrophe, atrocity, authoritarianism, brutality.
00:33:19.560You know, and I had this little voice in the back of my head all the time that told me that if I was a real master of that, I would be able to do it with a light touch.
00:33:28.180And I thought that was pretty preposterous when talking about things like the Soviet atrocities, you know.
00:33:33.180But what I came to realize over a very long period of time was that if you're a master of something, you do it in a spirit of play.
00:33:41.620And that play gives you some leeway because that's partly what play means, but it also means that you have that leaven of wit that stops you from being a scold.
00:33:51.260You know, when I first encountered Rush Limbaugh, this is quite a while ago, 30 years ago probably, I went down to California and that's where I first heard him.
00:34:00.220And I knew a little bit, I knew about the fact that he was a conservative commentator and that he was causing the progressive types a fair bit of misery and grief.
00:34:12.800But, you know, when I first heard him, I thought that he was essentially a comedian.
00:34:18.780And there isn't a more effective mode of social commentary, I don't think, than comedy.
00:34:25.240That's partly what makes Rogan so effective.
00:34:27.760And it's also so surprising, you know, if you think about it, how many of the top-rated podcasters were stand-up comics.
00:34:46.900So, there is a real art to bringing in the right amount of wit and play.
00:34:54.040And that seems to be one of the reasons that your documentaries were so successful.
00:35:00.420I mean, you're a funny kind of comedian because you're kind of poker-faced like Buster Keaton, you know?
00:35:07.540You're not tremendously animated and extroverted.
00:35:11.740And Buster Keaton was absolutely remarkable at that.
00:35:14.240I mean, he kept a straight face no matter what he was doing.
00:35:16.460And that's also a funny part of the character that you play because your facial expression is generally pretty flat.
00:35:24.900And I think that amplifies the absurdity of the situations that you put yourself in.
00:35:30.460And I'm kind of also curious with regards to the absurdity of those situations.
00:35:34.220I tried to put myself in your place when I was watching your movies, and I thought, Jesus, I don't think I could have done that.
00:35:41.260I don't think I could have stood the social pressure and the, what would you say, the contempt, yeah, that was directed towards you by these ideologically addled neo-Marxist postmodern progressive types.
00:35:59.920But you seem to be able to withstand that with no problem, and I'm not sure exactly why.
00:36:48.160And so I know generally what we got to get out of it.
00:36:50.940I don't know exactly what they're going to do.
00:36:52.340So I don't know, we don't know precisely what the scene is going to be, but we know what we, where we want to put this in the film and what we want to get out of it.
00:36:59.600And so knowing that allows me to endure these really intensely uncomfortable situations because all in my mind, I'm only thinking this is going to be great for the movie.
00:37:12.260Oh, that was a, that was a trailer moment.
00:37:14.240You know, in the moment while we're doing it, I'm thinking like we could, that'll go in the trailer maybe.
00:37:18.940And I don't know, it just helps me kind of psychologically get through it.
00:37:21.500If I was, the point is, if there was no camera there and it was not a performance and I'm sitting in a room, for example, with 10 people, I'm not going to stand up and call attention to myself and make the situation awkward intentionally.
00:37:35.980I would, I would not do that, but for the purpose of a film, yeah.
00:37:41.040And so these people also know that it's being filmed.
00:37:43.720And so what you're doing, okay, that explains it to some degree to me because it, it means that you're sort of straddling the line between real life and dramatic performance, right?
00:37:54.640Because it's an investigation, but it is also an act.
00:37:58.480And then because the people who are being filmed know they're being filmed, they're also straddling that same line.
00:38:04.760And I guess that's also helping me understand, like, to what degree, what was your attitude towards the people in the moment and then later who revealed themselves so unpleasantly and awkwardly on camera?
00:38:21.540I mean, I'm thinking particularly maybe of the scene with Robin D'Angelo, where she was enticed or tempted into making a reparation offer in cash on the spot.
00:38:39.520And I had real mixed feelings when I was watching it.
00:38:42.240I mean, part of my feeling, I'm not a Robin D'Angelo fan, to put it mildly.
00:38:47.040I think she's done an unbelievable amount of damage.
00:38:50.220But the agreeable part of me, which is pretty characterological, nonetheless felt bad for her watching her make a mockery of herself in that manner and having that captured.
00:39:05.880And so I'm wondering, like, this isn't a criticism.
00:39:12.160I'm wondering what you thought about the moral propriety of doing that.
00:39:20.080Let me preface that with a brief story.
00:39:23.660I had to dispense with some people in my lab at one point when I was a professor, and I was having a hard time stealing myself to fire them.
00:39:32.700And I talked to one of my friends who's kind of a professional at that about how he dealt with the emotional consequences of having to fire people.
00:39:40.360And he gave me a pretty good five-minute spiel about why he actually enjoyed it.
00:39:45.360And his attitude was that he was sent into corporations to find people who kissed up and kicked down and who took all the credit and did none of the work and did nothing but cause trouble and backbite and bicker and gossip and pretend to be working and sabotage.
00:40:00.280And he'd find out who they were and tell them and send them on their way.
00:40:06.000You know, and that was a very different attitude than the one I would have taken because I tend to be, you know, overly sympathetic to people, arguably.
00:40:16.460And so, but I felt that same tension, you know, watching your movies.
00:40:19.920And so I'm wondering, you explain that to some degree because you're playing a part and there's a movie being made.
00:40:25.260And so there's a sense of fiction about it.
00:40:28.980But personally, like, what, I mean, you could, you obviously didn't do Robin DiAngelo any good on the reputational side.
00:40:36.400And I'd say that was the case with many of the people that put themselves in your films.
00:41:06.780I'm playing a character, which is actually why I'll get to the second part of it.
00:41:10.400But the hardest part for me making these movies is the part before the cameras turn on.
00:41:18.640Because in real time, I'm obviously in the room with these people before the cameras turn on, sometimes after the cameras are off.
00:41:27.300Because that's just the way it goes into making it.
00:41:29.660And I have to be in the character the whole time, obviously.
00:41:33.780So the hardest part for me is actually the part you don't see.
00:41:37.140It's where the camera's not even on yet, and yet I have to kind of stay in this, in this performance.
00:41:44.080And there's, but it's not being watched.
00:41:45.740And that makes the performance harder.
00:41:48.020For example, one of the, one of the more difficult things that I've done in either movie was when we went to the, in what is the woman we went to the Maasai tribe in Kenya.
00:41:59.120And, and, and the whole idea was just to present anyone who's seen the movie or seen that scene, you know, that the idea is we're presenting these insane left-wing, very Western, modern, liberal ideas to someone far outside of that bubble to get, see how they react to it.
00:42:14.340And the scene only works if they think that I really am confused about this.
00:42:19.820We're asking these basic questions about, what is a woman, you know, can a, can a man, can a woman have a penis?
00:54:10.360And Trump was elected, and there's a conservative sweep, at least in the United States.
00:54:16.080And, you know, in the UK, the Reform Party just did extremely well at the level of council elections.
00:54:22.980And so, and I don't know what you think about the AFD in Germany, but, you know, and I presume they have their problems.
00:54:30.880But there's certainly conservative voices being heard in Germany and in France, and in Sweden, and in Italy, and in Hungary, and in Poland.
00:54:41.480And so, the question is now, like, what do you think the crucial issues are for conservative commentators like yourself,
00:54:49.960and maybe even more broadly for the Daily Wire?
00:54:52.360Aaron, like, where is your interest gravitating with regards to what kind of issues you want to focus on and comment on?
00:54:59.960I think that there are some issues that we've been intensely focused on that, to your point, will become a little bit less relevant.
00:55:09.900Because maybe the left is slowly backing away from them a little bit, at least for now.
00:55:14.600And maybe they'll rear their ugly heads again in the future in some other form.
00:57:59.620We still have millions of babies being killed by abortion every year.
00:58:04.400So, what are the, you know, that's a battlefield.
00:58:07.580Now, it's always been a battlefield, but I think that there's an even greater focus on that.
00:58:11.660What are the forces that are driving that?
00:58:13.320I think one of the big forces, if we were to put a label on it, is feminism.
00:58:19.240And I think that, if I were to, you know, put on my Nostradamus hat and try to predict, I think kind of the latter half of the 2020s, that feminism and the war of the sexes and these sorts of things, I think that becomes a focus in the way that LGBT and trans were, say, two or three years ago.
00:58:41.080Yeah, well, the fact that men and women are so split, especially when they're young, in their political affiliation worldwide, and that that split seems to be growing is evidence for exactly that claim.
00:58:54.580Like, there's a real reckoning that needs to be had with regard to the resentful feminists, because it is an ethos of resentment like Marxism.
00:59:03.760Also, Matt, I think that wokeness, per se, won't ever go away, because I think it's the political expression of immaturity.
00:59:13.700I think the reason that Marxism and its enviousness and its resentment and its preposterous naivety is so difficult to eradicate, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, is because immaturity has its political expression.
00:59:32.000Like, one of the things psychologists knew, by the way, is that this is how it's been phrased.
00:59:37.760People become more conservative as they get older.
00:59:42.000It's like, that's one way of looking at it, and there is plenty of evidence for that.
00:59:46.380But another way of looking at it is that conservatism is the expression of maturity.
00:59:52.540And conservatism is something you have to learn.
00:59:55.500You know, whereas that notion of equitable distribution and something that's for everyone, that's like native to a family ethos, right?
01:00:04.400Even Ben Shapiro told me that he was a communist with regard to his own children.
01:00:09.300You know, so I think one of the ways to understand what's happening is that there's always a war against immature political movements, you know,
01:00:18.360with their insistence on immediate self-gratification and sexual identity.
01:00:22.420It's the golden calf worship, you know, orgiastic golden calf worship.
01:01:03.060The more you look into feminism as an intellectual movement and into the historians of feminism, for that matter,
01:01:09.980who haven't done their job at all, the more pathological you see it is.
01:01:13.280It's really the expression of resentment.
01:01:18.360You could see that in Betty Friedan's book, you know, that famous 1960s work where she complained about the boring lot of suburban housewives.
01:01:27.620You know, I mean, really, those people had time on their hands and wealth.
01:01:33.660And all they could do is complain about how bored they were and how that was oppressive.
01:01:38.380You know, that's pretty bloody pathetic, you know, when you're putting a book like that out in a world of people who are struggling to make ends meet.
01:01:44.660I have too much free time and I don't know what to do with myself.
01:01:48.860It's like, that's because the whole patriarchal structure is corrupt.
01:01:52.780It's like, yeah, maybe you could have a little gratitude.
01:01:55.420And then look what it's done on the family side.
01:03:48.940Right, as a patriarchal, oppressive structure, inherently destructive.
01:03:52.600We want to destroy this thing that human society is based on and founded in.
01:03:57.160We want to destroy this thing that human civilization itself has been based on this thing, which is the family, since the beginning of civilization.
01:04:09.100Based on monogamy, yeah, well, the idea that monogamy is intrinsically oppressive to women is as backward as the idea that a man can become a woman.
01:29:30.740I mean, I've, because I've been in the thick of so many political arguments, I've had moments of pretty severe dislocation, even with friends.
01:29:40.640You know, and one of the things I've learned is that, and I'm not, I'm not trying to lecture you at all.
01:29:46.120But one of the things I've learned is that, you know, a month of reconsideration and then the, what would you say, taking the opportunity to actually talk,
01:29:59.560that, that's pretty useful to take a longer view, you know, because people can be stupid.
01:30:04.460People are stupid in the moment and the things that James said about you obviously don't seem to be productive, but it would be good, you know, if the conservative side of things could model a bit more wise, sober second thought, you know.
01:30:21.480And so, and I like James and I've had productive conversations with him and he's a force for good, all things considered.
01:30:28.980And I would say the same thing about you and it's, it'd be unfortunate to see unnecessary fractures in a side that's already pushed pretty hard to the wall, you know.
01:30:40.620So anyways, that's my two cents on it.
01:30:43.700Yeah, I, I'm not, I'm not opposed to having a conversation.
01:30:47.320I'll have a conversation with anybody.
01:30:48.680I think that, and it's not, it's, you know, my feelings aren't hurt.
01:30:52.720People say worse things about me every single day.
01:30:54.500Like many of us in this space, we hear it all the time.
01:30:57.680It's just that it's not, and you can think that I'm a fool and a dimwit.
01:31:04.260But if that's your view of it, then it's, it's hard to have a productive conversation because you're going into it saying, well, I don't take your ideas seriously.
01:31:10.840Um, so then, okay, well, I don't know how I can offer my ideas to you if you don't take them seriously.
01:31:15.960I'm not sure how we can have a conversation.
01:31:17.960Uh, so, but if you were to, you know, it doesn't mean that a conversation is not possible.
01:31:22.000And I do think that there's a, certainly a conversation here worth having, not just about the Shiloh Hendricks case itself.
01:31:28.240But I know that, you know, with, that, uh, James Lindsay has been, and others have been on kind of this crusade recently about what they call the woke right.
01:31:37.180And, uh, and, uh, I think that there's a discussion to be had there too, because I think that, you know, my take on it is, uh, I think the label is, is at a minimum not useful at all.
01:31:48.300Nobody can really even explain what it is exactly.
01:31:50.780There are, you know, I've asked people over the last week, what does this even mean?
01:31:53.800I've gotten 10 different answers, which, which tells you, that's, that's what tells you that you've, you've come up with a term or a label that's not useful is when no one is very clear on what it actually is.
01:32:01.260Well, you know what I, I think we should do, I think we should, let's, let's talk about this woke right issue on the Daily Wire side.
01:32:11.420We could do two things on the Daily Wire side.
01:32:13.380I'd like to talk to you a little bit about where you see the future of the kind of critical political commentary that you've been doing and that I've been doing, especially in the light of the Trump victory.
01:32:24.300We fleshed that out a little bit and you talked about some concerns that you think are part and parcel of the broader culture war that still need to be rectified in a major way.
01:32:35.940And I think we should talk a little bit more about this issue of gatekeeping versus unfettered, this issue of gatekeeping on the conservative side and what that might mean and how that's related to issues, profound issues of free speech.
01:32:51.980So for everybody who's watching and listening, you can join us on the Daily Wire side and we'll continue this.
01:32:59.120And Matt, I think we'll bring this to a close.
01:33:01.560Is there anything you want to say in conclusion before we move to the Daily Wire side?
01:33:06.540I guess, well, I mean, we started talking about the different projects and things we have in the works and I wish I could have said more, but, you know, everyone should stay tuned because we've got a couple of things that we're, that we're working on that, you know, kind of tie in some of the stuff we've talked about.
01:33:32.500And thank you to the film crew here in Scottsdale and to the Daily Wire for making this possible.
01:33:37.860And we'll spend another 20 minutes to half an hour on the Daily Wire side talking about the woke right and about the future of conservative political commentary.