Award-winning filmmaker Quinnolyn Benson-Yates made her first feature documentary before film school—and its seven-year journey from short film concept to PBS distribution holds lessons every indie filmmaker needs to hear.

Epic Bill follows an endurance athlete who lost everything when his video rental empire collapsed (thanks, Netflix). Bill’s mantra—“show up and suffer”—became Quinn’s filmmaking philosophy as she navigated polar vortexes, battery failures in -50° weather, and the brutal realities of distribution. In this episode, she shares how she cut a 93-minute film down to 56 minutes for PBS, why credibility matters more than connections, and the uncomfortable truth about what distribution actually solves.

DocuView Déjà Vu:

Free Solo, 2018, 100 mins, Watch on on Disney + Package / Hulu, IMDB Link: Free Solo (2018) ⭐ 8.1 | Documentary, Adventure, Sport

Meru, 2015, 90 mins, Watch on Prime Video, IMDB Link: Meru (2015) ⭐ 7.7 | Documentary, Sport

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, 2020, 106 mins, Watch on Netflix, IMDB Link: Crip Camp (2020) ⭐ 7.7 | Documentary, History

What You’ll Learn:

• Why “fail early, fail often” should include “fail sustainably”
• How archival footage transformed a short film into a feature
• The PBS application process (NETA) and what it requires
• What intermediaries like Bitmax do for Apple TV/Amazon distribution
• Why distribution doesn’t make your career—you do

About Quinnolyn Benson-Yates

Quinnolyn Benson-Yates is an award-winning filmmaker with an MFA from USC School of Cinematic Arts. Her feature documentary Epic Bill gained nationwide PBS distribution with promotions on CNN and SiriusXM, and is now available on Amazon and Apple TV. She’s a two-time winner of Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s 10-10-10 competition, and her short film Miss River screened at Palm Springs LGBTQ Film Festival. Her most recent short, a Western comedy called Man, premiered at Austin Film Festival. She’s currently developing her first narrative feature about a middle school girl starting a punk band with her dad—inspired by her own childhood as an eight-year-old punk rock singer.

Website: QBY | Film: Epic Bill - The Film | Instagram: @‌quinnolyn

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00:00 Introduction

04:27 Quinn’s journey: punk rocker to USC film grad

06:44 Current projects: narrative feature development

08:02 Epic Bill origin: short film becomes seven-year feature

10:08 Why documentaries take so long

13:22 Bill’s philosophy: “Show up and suffer”

17:35 Applying endurance athlete lessons to filmmaking

21:59 Filming in extreme conditions as a new filmmaker

25:26 Fail early, fail often—fail sustainably

27:01 Hardest scenes: -50° battery failures and emotional breakthroughs

30:44 Bill’s financial story: millionaire to bankruptcy

33:57 What beliefs needed to die for Bill to succeed

38:52 Leslie Murphy: the stakes character (Free Solo comparison)

43:36 The PBS path: NETA application and cutting from 93 to 56 minutes

46:33 Bitmax and Apple TV/Amazon distribution

51:02 Deliverables that surprised her

54:13 CNN and SiriusXM promotion: cold emails and pitch packets

56:45 Industry Stress Test: Plan A, B, C when nobody’s buying

1:00:04 Uncomfortable truth: distribution doesn’t make your career

1:01:01 Practical tool: scene-by-scene film study method

1:03:49 DocuView Déjà Vu: Free Solo, Meru, Crip Camp

And I'm going to do my little intro and then we'll jump right in.

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Now, did they talk to you about bringing a documentary to recommend to our audience?

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They did.

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I have three.

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well, I'll let you use all three.

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Usually I bring one.

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I didn't today.

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So now I'll let you use my time to share your documentary.

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So that will be great.

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So we'll do that at the end.

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All right, you ready?

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All right.

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Yes.

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And once again, there we go.

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Hi everybody, welcome to Documentary First, an inside look at documentary filmmaking.

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I'm your host, Christian Taylor, and a documentary filmmaker myself.

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This is the podcast where we sit down with documentary filmmakers and we talk to them

about real life stories, where they're capturing these stories one frame at a time so we

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can all become better storytellers.

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Today, I'm super excited to have a new emerging filmmaker with us.

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Her name is Quinnolyn Bates.

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uh

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That is not her name.

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Her name is Quinnolyn Benson-Yates.

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He loved how I like put your name together.

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uh Anyway, Quinn, we are so happy to have you with us.

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I promise I will try to get your name right from here on out.

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And don't be surprised that it's not the first time I've heard that spelling of my name.

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Yeah, not at all.

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This is probably the fifth time.

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So you're not alone.

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Don't worry.

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Um, but yeah, I'm really happy to be here.

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uh

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All right.

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Well, we're here to talk about your film, Epic Bill.

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This is quite an interesting film.

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I was delighted to watch it today.

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I saw a lot of parallels between A, my own life.

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So there's a lot of lessons to be learned here, I think personally, but I also saw a lot

of lessons that we can learn sort of in our filmmaking uh industry.

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I sort of see this as uh

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you know, I don't know, just something that we can learn, uh you know, during this, while

everything is changing in our filmmaking industry.

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So before we dive into all of that, I do want to give your bio and let you talk a little

bit about who you are.

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So Quinn is an award-winning filmmaker with over a decade of experience.

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Now, what's interesting about her experience that we'll get into is she made this film

before she went to film school.

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which is pretty cool.

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Her feature documentary, Epic Bill, now available on Amazon and Apple TV, gained

nationwide distribution through PBS with promotions on CNN and SiriusXM.

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Quinn was the head writer and producer for the series Top Voices, where she produced and

co-wrote the pilot and completed production for the first season.

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She's a two-time winner of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival's 10-10-10

filmmaking competition.

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and her first winning film, Miss River, screened at the festival, including the Palm

Screen, screened at festivals, including the Palm Springs LGBTQ Film Festival.

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And it was distributed on the global streaming platform, Reverie.

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earned her MFA in film and television production from the prestigious USC School of

Cinematic Arts.

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She is a town and gown scholar and a recipient of the James Bridges Endowed Scholarship

and the Hobson Lucas Family Foundation Endowment.

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She graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with honors in psychology,

a distinction in film and media studies, and the film and media studies department

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outstanding graduation senior award.

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Her most recent short film, a Western Comedy Man, which sounds quite interesting, recently

premiered at the Austin Film Festival.

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That is a lot of honors, young lady.

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That's impressive, quite impressive.

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I am looking forward to learning more about you.

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So tell me, you must be a smart cookie to garner all of those awards.

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But I think I counted that this past year was my 10th year from the very first time I

walked onto a film set um in undergrad.

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That was my very first time.

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And if you just keep working step by step, which is a message that Bill is very familiar

with, you can climb some mountains.

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That's very true.

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Did you grow up wanting to be a filmmaker or did you just kind of happen upon a film set

and decide, huh, this looks fun?

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Filmmaking, I needed an invitation into that world.

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um For me, growing up, it never felt like a thing that I could do or people around me were

doing.

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And I think that uh what I had to find was people that it was for filmmaking to feel

accessible to me.

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I think the first time it did feel accessible was when I was in at UC Santa Barbara for my

undergrad.

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And I met my friend Nick Hornung and he was like, hey, we're looking for a script

supervisor on a film shoot that's happening next week.

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Are you interested?

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And I was like, wow, yes, yes, I'm totally interested.

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And that kind of just started my filmmaking career.

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But when I was younger, I didn't necessarily have a camera.

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didn't necessarily have, you know, I wasn't making YouTube videos.

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I was actually a...

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eight-year-old lead rock star punk singer in a band with my dad, but I wasn't like making

friends.

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So the artistic urge was there.

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But yeah, I definitely had to be invited into a filmmaking space.

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Well, what I love about that story is that you uh participated in the classic improv game

of yes and, which is, and soon as somebody, you know, offers you an idea, your first

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response is yes.

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And let me, you know, keep going.

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So that's pretty cool.

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It leads to all sorts of adventures.

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And, and now here you are pretty cool.

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That's just, that's just amazing.

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So now you have finished your first

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um you know, feature documentary, you've done a couple of shorts and what are you doing at

the moment?

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Right now, I just finished producing a few different short films through USC and I just

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development on my first narrative feature script, which is based on my past as a punk

rocker.

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It's about a middle school girl who starts a punk band with her best friend and her dad.

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It's a lot about creative collaborations.

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So I'm working on that passion project as I'm, you know, coming up to filming someone

else's short film and doing some documentary developments with a professor at USC.

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So I'm keeping busy, keeping busy.

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oh

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All right, now this film, Epic Build, it's not coming out.

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It has already released, like we said, it's on Amazon and Apple TV.

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When did it release?

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In 2025, correct?

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Yes, so it released on to Apple TV and Amazon in 2025.

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It also released on PBS in 2024 in September.

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And then we first took it to festivals in 2022.

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So it's been a very long rollout and as any filmmaker knows, distribution is its own

beast, its own marathon.

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And so, you know, we started...

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uh production of this film in November, 2018.

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And uh documentaries can be notoriously long.

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And I discovered that um the very first time we met with Leslie Murphy about this film, it

was actually going to be a short film.

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And it was me, Aaron Kessler and Kyle Murphy in her office.

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were like 23 years old.

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She was like, Hey, you know, I have a brother who does a lot of extreme events.

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Would you be interested in making a short film?

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about him.

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then, so we went out and filmed him training for the Arrowhead 135 race, which is a

extreme endurance 135 mile, bill does the foot race version of it in northern Minnesota,

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which is the coldest place in the continental US.

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And we went out and we filmed with him in 2019, where of course the polar vortex hits

that's part of the film.

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uh The temperatures were freezing.

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And we were figuring out a lot of things as we went along with this film.

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And then we filmed him in Arrowhead and then we filmed him uh only like a few days later

really going up Aconcagua, one of the tallest mountains in the Western hemisphere, which

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is 22,000 feet in altitude.

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uh And again, this was gonna be a short film concept.

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And what made it into a feature film was Bill shipped us a hard drive that had like a

decade's worth of archival footage of every, almost every race he'd ever done started in

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2008 to 2018, of course, when we were filming with him.

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And that opened up a whole conversation of, we could, we totally could make this into a

feature film.

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So, you know, it's, it's getting back to that concept of like step by step, you know,

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things little at a time.

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Yeah.

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Well, you know, I just want people to understand, yes, it takes a long time for a lot of

documentaries to come to fruition from, you know, ideas, m you know, as they germinate to,

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you know, just, you know, production and trying to figure out or even development before

that, you know, development, production, pre-production, you throw in there a polar vortex

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or a pandemic or, you know, funding and financing problems.

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And then you throw in there

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know, distribution things falling apart.

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uh So this, in my opinion, is not an old film.

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And we're not going to be talking about anything old.

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um What I feel about this whole project that you've done um gives us a survival blueprint,

not only in life, but also in our film industry.

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And that's what I love about this film is that it really gave me some good things to hold

on to in my own personal life.

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also as a filmmaker.

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There's several quotes that I wrote down here from Bill.

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One of the things that he said was, when you go after your dreams, it isn't easy.

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And you can see that over and over again with Bill.

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It wasn't easy.

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And there was not a lot of success in this film.

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It wasn't like he...

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climbed K2 or Aca-cagua, how do you say that?

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Aca-nagua?

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And there were lots of parties at Aca-nagua.

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entire film.

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Yeah.

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So, it started off, mean, Bill lost everything when his um video rental store collapsed.

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And it's sort of like today, know, filmmakers are watching this streaming economy totally

uh reset, know, like growth has slowed down for films.

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The platforms are pushing their ad tiers and buyers are being so much more selective with

what, you know, tiers they're going with.

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um Ad-based streaming is surging, um and there's just a lot of new realities happening for

filmmakers.

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um And it's not as lucrative as it used to be, and there's just not a lot of opportunities

for us as filmmakers.

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And so we're questioning our identity.

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We're questioning, is this even possible?

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We're questioning, I mean, I don't know how many times I've just sat and think I'm a

failure.

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And my identity as a filmmaker, you know, I mean, I just don't even know if that's who I

am anymore.

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And so again, we'll, as we talk more, some of the things that Bill said just keep, you

know, uh reverberating in my brain.

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uh One of them uh is that uh reinvention is not a moment, it's a system.

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So he didn't bounce back.

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uh He built a repeatable practice which was showing up, enduring and adapting.

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So talk to me about that, like what his process was.

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Yeah, Bill has a lot of great catchphrases.

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One of them is show up and suffer.

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And I think in one of his early interviews, he says, you know, I have two talents.

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I show up and I suffer.

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And that, you know, it's it's fun to hear, but it's there's a really important truth to it

and something that I had to learn making the film, because when you're, you know, when

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you're told, hey, you're going to you're going to go and

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film an athlete at an event, of course you're showing up and you're just kind of hoping

and there's a sort of expectation there of like, yeah, we're gonna show the suffering and

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then we're gonna show the success and we're gonna capture that.

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We're gonna capture crossing the finish line and that's what this story is gonna be.

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And that was not at all what the story was.

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And um I find that, you know, I found that pretty interesting that

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you were also going through a moment of like, you know, am I still a filmmaker?

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Is this what I want to do?

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And that's exactly what Bill went through when he started not crossing the finishing line.

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He had a lot of success in a lot of his races.

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He was completing the Badwater 135, which is 135 mile foot race through Death Valley, the

hottest place in...

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the US that you could really do that in earlier versions of his tendencies.

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I don't mean to interrupt, but I do want to give context.

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Was that when he was younger and did he start failing when he got older or was it a

mixture of the two?

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Another one of my favorite Bill's catchphrases is, am always 30 years old.

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So in Bill's mind, he is always 30 years old, but the reality like you just asked is yes,

he was getting older and you know, there's a certain point where he had to come to terms

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with that.

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ah And it's, I think it's a beautiful thing to renegotiate ah your reality, even if it can

be really, really hard and really tough.

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And so when Bill was younger, he was doing really well in the desert races.

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Um, I think he also does really well in the heat compared to the cold.

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The cold has a lot more of like equipment management.

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can, it's like more, much more of an unsupported race.

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So there's a lot of other factors, but you did point out, you know, one of the key factors

there.

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Um, and death Valley, he also had no like time checkpoints, um, to like disqualify him for

the race.

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Like he does an Arrowhead 135.

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And so Bill's.

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amazing talent is his great mental fortitude.

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His ability to keep going and keep going, you know, if you give him endless time, he'll

keep going.

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And so he did really well.

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He did a bad water, a double bad water, a quadruple bad water.

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He was the fourth oldest person ever to, he was the fourth person ever to do that.

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And the oldest person ever to complete a quadruple bad water.

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And that was, you know, really, really wonderful success.

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And then he stopped.

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finishing at Arrowhead.

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He could not finish Arrowhead.

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And when I went to film with him, was his, you know, we counted seventh and eighth and

ninth attempt with him that we were filming.

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And he didn't realize that when we were first filming with him.

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And he later told me, yeah, when I saw that you made a map for me of how far I went every

year, but the fact that I never finished every year.

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But the fact that I kept coming back and that this is my eighth attempt and that in of

itself is admirable.

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And so, you know, us filming with him at Arrowhead started that transition of perspective

for him, which I didn't know about at the time, but that was an interesting thing.

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And, you know, it starts, it's exactly kind of where you're at, where it's like, you start

questioning, you know, whether it's a identity thing or it's a, you know, is,

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Can I have a new perspective on what I've been experiencing?

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Yeah, and I think, you know, if we're applying that to filmmaking, which is what I said I

wanted to do in the beginning, a couple of things I think could be true.

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It is important, I think, to recognize who we are and how we perform best.

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And I think oftentimes we feel like we need to be everything and do everything.

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So in the film industry, we've got to be a writer, a director, a producer.

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We've got to do all of that.

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in order to be successful.

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And I think when you're starting out, we do need to learn all of those different

disciplines.

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And I think we need to test those to see where we do succeed, where we enjoy doing things

the most.

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And I think that is a key.

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What do we truly enjoy doing the most?

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And then where do we have the most success?

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So Bill in the heat was having more success.

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And then he would distinguish himself in different ways in that environment.

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And then when he would try the cold things, he wasn't having as much success.

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So in a sense, had he learned from that more quickly and reinvented himself, um he might

have been able to have more time doing the things where he was having more success.

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That could be one lesson.

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Another lesson is exactly what he did learn, which is,

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the reframing of perspective, which is I am not a failure.

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I am showing up to try.

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And that in itself is success.

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But I do think at some point, you need to apply that uh new perspective to other things

and not keep beating your head against that same wall, for sure.

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Would you agree?

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yeah, what's interesting with Bill though, is that he had success, right?

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But success wasn't fulfilling necessarily, validating certainly, but not necessarily

fulfilling for him.

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And so I, you know, I would spend seven hours at a time interviewing Bill, cause you know,

as an endurance athlete, he could go for seven hours and we would talk a lot, but.

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What was really interesting to me and what kept me so curious over the years of making

this film was that Bill wanted to challenge himself.

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He still wants to challenge himself.

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And it wasn't even when he was crossing the finishing, the finish lines that didn't signal

to him, okay, this is what I'm good at and I'll just get better at this one thing.

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It was let me come up with new and challenging ways

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for me to go out and see if I can do.

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And so Bill himself would be idea generating of like, what's a different way I could

challenge myself.

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Like he'd made up a whole new marathon in Tahoe, a triathlon in Tahoe.

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He went to Hawaii.

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He would do things that weren't even like official events and he would invent them and go

out and challenge himself to run 250 miles and.

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Sonoma County, like it was all these events that he was curious about how far he could

push his body.

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Um, that really inspired me.

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And when I, when my path intersected with him in 2019, he was then kind of confronting a

race that he wasn't able to succeed at, but that race became the Arrowhead race had a

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community of people that

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kept coming back, even if they did finish the race, they still wanted to come back because

it was always a different type of cold.

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It was a wet cold or a humid cold or a dry cold or in different levels of cold.

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so it was always a slightly different challenge every year.

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And, you know, I think that within whatever field that you are, if there's a creative

variable there, there's a creativity to this athleticism.

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And I

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drew a lot of parallels between what interested Bill and what interested me is ultimately

the passion and the curiosity that he had to push himself and keep trying even when things

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were hard, but then to then continue on and do greater things.

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Very interesting.

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Another thing that I found very curious, since you are and were a new filmmaker at the

time, you undertook something that was extremely arduous and just as crazy, in my opinion,

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as Bill was to undertake the things that he did at his age, because um I've watched a lot

of things on the Discovery Channel or the Nat Geo channel, where there have been

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filmmakers who have filmed in the Arctic.

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or on all sorts of mountains.

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And they are filmmakers that have trained for years to film in those kind of conditions.

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it's people who have been adventurers in themselves and who already know how to do those

climbs and who have all the equipment and the gear.

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I mean, they prep as um much as the athletes themselves to do those things.

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But you're...

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a young college student or at least that age and I can't, did you have all the equipment?

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Did you have all of that training?

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I mean, how the heck did all that happen?

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That's a very good question.

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um You know, it comes back to the the improv yes and concept, right?

268

It's getting that first invitation, the first opportunity and saying yes to it, even if

you're not like fully prepared.

269

um I did go to a more media studies inclined undergraduate school that where I did some

student filmmaking at UC Santa Barbara.

270

And that was a wonderful, everyone is kind of figuring it out together type of experience.

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So when I got the opportunity to start developing Epic Bill, I was, just bought my very

first camera.

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It was a C100 Mark II with the external recorder to get me a slightly better color

profile, color bit depth recording.

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And I was really like researching and looking at what different types of lenses were.

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so it was really...

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very, very hands-on.

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um And I recently watched our very, very first rough cut to prove that this could become a

feature film.

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And it was a mess.

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It was a total mess.

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We were really into like inner cutting, but it just kind of snarled up and didn't really

make any sense.

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And there was a lot of um scenes that were a lot of interviews from a lot of people that,

but it wasn't necessarily focused around Bill's personal story.

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um

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And, you know, it was a very important lesson of sometimes you need to ask for help.

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Sometimes you need to research on your own.

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Sometimes you need to fail so then you could learn that you have to find a new way of

doing things.

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letting yourself, like giving yourself the allowance to be bad is a huge grace, right?

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It's a grace because

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eventually slower and slower, you're gonna more and more quickly realize what is good,

what is to your taste.

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And there's always that taste gap, right?

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Of like, what you like is something that's really, really good, but it's not gonna be

something that you can immediately do at the first step.

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It's gonna be something that you do have to build your own way towards.

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ah And so that was a really...

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principle called fail early, fail often.

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Yes, you know, it's not, it's, but fails sustainably too.

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I was really lucky in this project because Leslie Murphy provided the, she was providing

the funding.

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She really believed in us young filmmakers.

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She wanted to have us and her sons, Kyle and Sean along to learn.

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And I think it's really important to have that sort of mentor figure.

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who believes in you through that process, whether it's in the context of school, whether

it's in the context of, you know, being like living at your parents and making it

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yourself, it's important to recognize that you're in a space where you can do it

sustainably and comfortably.

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And that has a lot to do with like kind of where we are now in the filmmaking.

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industry at large, it's getting harder and harder to find that sustainable practice, m

which is a big, you know, it's a big bummer.

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And it's a has real impact on what kind of stories are going to be able to be made here.

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um So yeah, it's it's tricky.

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It's a tricky time.

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It is a tricky time, that is absolutely for sure.

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uh While we're talking about how difficult it was to kind of film in the elements, what

was the hardest scene to capture and why?

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That's a good question.

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um There's the emotional answer to that question, and then there's the logistical answer.

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I will do logistical first.

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um Logistically, batteries, camera batteries in the cold do not last.

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We had a drone, it lasted for maybe five minutes in the air.

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We would tape hand warmers to it to try to keep it going.

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uh

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And when we would go from outside to inside, all the lenses would get condensation and fog

up.

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So we had, you know, we had to figure out our systems of filming in the cold.

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uh At one point it was negative 50 degrees with wind chill when we were filming outside.

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could, we got out of the car to film a bit and we would start shivering and shaking and

run back in.

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So, you know, there was this huge learning curve of just technology and how to work with

it.

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ah But then there was a, you know,

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I think emotionally, Bill had his message of, you know, don't quit, never give up and just

keep going at it.

321

But I think it was interesting to try to get at it from, you know, from the why sense of

why keep going after it, why keep what happened in your past to start this cycle of, you

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know, extremity.

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There uh is a sequence that's not in the shorter version of the film.

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This is the 56 minute version of the film that's distributed.

325

The longer version of the film, we have a sequence where Bill returns to his old video

store buildings and you see him reckon with the past.

326

um that was a really great sequence where he's realizing he has a line in that sequence

where he's talking about um

327

how you don't have to look on the past as just focusing on the failures.

328

You can look at the past as focusing on the successes too, because they had a good time.

329

They had a explosively wonderful community.

330

And it is about letting yourself reframe that concept of, you know, letting yourself

remember the good times is sometimes hard and sometimes really necessary in order to have

331

the courage to believe that

332

You could have good times again.

333

You could work for having a good time and that they can happen again.

334

And sometimes that's hard to remember.

335

It is.

336

mean, you know, and apparently, I mean, his success in the video industry, it sounded like

he was a multimillionaire and then he lost it all thanks to Netflix.

337

And he was bankrupt.

338

Now that that's interesting to me because I didn't hear him talk about anything that he

did professionally after that, other than all of this extreme sports, which he talked

339

about.

340

I think taking out loan or diving into his 401k.

341

Maybe he invested all of the money that he had and so he had enough to live on for the

rest of his life.

342

And maybe that's what he did.

343

Maybe he financed this whole film.

344

But I am curious about the finances of it because um this is costly.

345

What he was doing is costly.

346

All of the training, all of the travel, all of the years that it took of him doing all of

those sports.

347

of funding this film could not have been uh cheap.

348

So can you talk a little bit about that?

349

Yeah, so Bill didn't fund the film.

350

His sister Leslie, she took over the family business, which is an electrical contractor,

W.

351

Bradley Electric, um from their father.

352

Bill wanted to uh start his own business.

353

And so he took out a bunch of credit cards and uh started the Bradley video chain with his

other sister, Karen.

354

And he did become a multimillionaire.

355

And it was really like a self-starter experience.

356

So, know, he'd...

357

you know, it was literally on credit on his own 15 credit cards type of deal.

358

And he had immense pride.

359

He felt like a community leader and they were extremely successful.

360

And then he was on that front line of Netflix coming in and the the suddenly the industry,

the video industry, it quit on him.

361

He never quit on it, but it quit on him.

362

And it just completely he completely went bankrupt.

363

As his profits were going down, he was still opening up new buildings and because he just,

wanted it to succeed so badly.

364

But what's interesting is that Bill didn't come out of that experience.

365

He came out of that experience with, you know, absolutely no money.

366

uh And, and he went through a divorce at the same time.

367

So his, his self-confidence was completely devastated.

368

His identity as a successful businessman was completely erased in such a

369

very public and embarrassing way for him.

370

And there was a lot of people in that community who had a hard time alongside Bill.

371

And um he didn't come out of it wanting to be a successful businessman again.

372

He ran that 50-miler, that very first 50-miler that he did on an absolute whim.

373

And he had a little bit of that like Forrest Gump experience where it's like, oh, I just

want to keep running.

374

You know, it became a very physical thing for him to build up his self confidence again

through like physical challenges.

375

wasn't like a, it wasn't a money thing.

376

So today, even today he's living in like, you know, a small apartment and he lives cheaply

and he works um with the family company, but he's putting all of his money, his uh 401k

377

into doing these events.

378

He's absolutely committed to it.

379

Wow.

380

he just, changed his lifestyle.

381

changed his priorities.

382

Yeah.

383

So he's had several, I guess, reinventions, know, identity um changes.

384

um know, initially his identity was in being this successful businessman that was ripped

away from him.

385

um And so then his identity becomes this extreme successful athlete.

386

um And then it seems like

387

There were things he had to believe about himself actually that had to die in order for

him to be a little bit more successful.

388

Can you talk a little bit about what needed to die?

389

Things he believed about himself that weren't helping him?

390

It's a really good question because, and it's a bit of a sad answer because he did have to

let go of, he never let go of his belief in himself, but he did have to let go of the

391

concept of he will always be successful in these races and that failure is an

embarrassment and to hide that, you know, and not to talk about failure.

392

And instead he had to embrace failure.

393

And that was the big change.

394

that we discovered while filming with Bill together and that good things can come out of

failure and that the realization that valuing the courage to try again is a radical

395

concept.

396

It is something that keeps you walking forwards in life.

397

And that was something that he had to let go of and then embrace.

398

Yeah, and this is the line that he said that I thought was very encouraging to me.

399

Courage is a muscle.

400

Courage is a muscle.

401

And basically what he meant is that we must keep building that muscle.

402

So we must keep challenging ourselves with difficult things.

403

must, um and having courage, I think personally, is not...

404

um

405

It's actually moving to do something hard before we believe we can.

406

It is trying in spite of the fear that we may fail.

407

I think Leslie, sister says the only, and I'm not quoting her specifically correctly, but

she says that really the only failure is failing to do anything, failing to try at all.

408

um

409

you know, trying, you are succeeding.

410

Yeah, that's actually pretty close to what she says.

411

ah she, cause Leslie was with Bill for his early races.

412

She was his crew chief for the very early marathons.

413

And she, it's really a wonderful thing to be in Bill's presence because he's so positive.

414

ah It's like, he's very, very positive.

415

He dreams up big dreams, not just for himself, but everyone around him.

416

And so when, you know, I was

417

in my early 20s making a film that was like outside of the scope of anything I had ever

made, he would, you know, kind of yell at me, Academy Award winning director.

418

And it's hard to not believe in yourself when you have someone who's doing all these great

feats, just so happy that you're there and um excited to embrace your potential and put

419

forth goals that you don't even have for yourself that he wants to dream up for you

because he's so excited to see passion in anybody.

420

And that, you know, Leslie saw that she was the, she was right there on the front lines

with him and she saw him keeping on going and being like, this is a story that's worth

421

worthy of telling.

422

And it's, kind of goes back to my concept of like having a mentor and having that

invitation into filmmaking is being around people who can see that in you and your work

423

ethic and can see that.

424

um

425

can help you achieve that.

426

um So yeah, mean, if I could describe filmmaking, I would describe it as one long

conversation with yourself and many conversations with other people.

427

That's a great way to put it.

428

I've experienced that in my own life.

429

I started off as an actress and uh there's been definite invitations into filmmaking as

well where people deeper into the industry who've been there longer than I had um just

430

extended a hand.

431

Can you help me do this?

432

I think you can do this.

433

Particularly with my own film, The Girl Who Wore Freedom, people believed in me far more

than I did.

434

Everyone did.

435

People still do believe in me far.

436

far more than I do.

437

And I do think it's important to surround yourself with people like that and also be

incredibly grateful uh for them.

438

m And then be those people for others um as you start out in the industry.

439

One thing that I found interesting as you talk about Bill's sister, I found her

fascinating because on the one hand, like, I mean, it's very interesting to hear that she

440

supported the film uh because

441

You see her sort of being supportive in the beginning and thinking that it's really cool.

442

But there's also part of her that seems like she thinks he's a little over the top and a

little crazy and okay, this is too much.

443

think he's risking his life and I don't like this so much.

444

Is that, am I reading it right?

445

Yeah, that is the other side of it too.

446

And I do want to speak a little towards something that I was noticing, something that I

learned over the course of making this film is who you are talking to, who you are

447

interviewing and what they should speak on in the context of the film, right?

448

And Leslie is this amazing, almost voice of reason uh in contrast to Bill's uh huge goals.

449

And there's this wonderful scene where

450

We're in Bill's apartment with Leslie and Bill's pointing out all of his big goals for

451

you know, it's like biking to South America and it's all, all of these really intense

extremes.

452

His, the Bill wall of dreams, which is very famous in my mind.

453

Um, and it's a great wall to have, uh, for anyone to have, you know, just put up something

to visualize.

454

That's part of Bill's process is visualize, look.

455

Um, it is a bit of like brainwashing as he calls it himself into, into positivity, into

believing into these big dreams, because you do have to say something in order to work

456

towards it.

457

You have to say something to believe in it.

458

And that's, know, really a big part of his process is that kind of visualization.

459

And Leslie's there just, and you just see her face like, what?

460

No, like, no, don't do that.

461

just rein it in just a bit, Bill, you know?

462

Um, and so.

463

And she says something, she's like, these are the things that you want to do.

464

And he's like, no, these are the things I am doing.

465

will do.

466

I will do them.

467

And that's something important to pay attention to in yourself too, is are you using

active tense?

468

Are you going to commit yourself to it?

469

Or are you still talking in the maybes and someday?

470

And that's a little trick too that you can change with how you speak about your own

dreams.

471

um so, so oh Leslie was a wonderful character because she was the stakes, right?

472

Bill, you know, I talked with Bill about, you know, kind of the cost of these events.

473

It's the cost of health.

474

It's the cost of danger.

475

It's the cost of risk.

476

But who is going to carry that cost?

477

Who's going to be most affected?

478

It's going to be Bill's loved ones.

479

If something tragic happens out there, ah it's going to be Leslie, who really, really

suffers that cost and everyone who knows and loves Bill.

480

And that is a sad thing.

481

And that's something

482

important to portray.

483

you um know, when you talk about mentors, I can also talk about models in filmmaking.

484

So a big model for me was the film Free Solo.

485

um So that I, you know, I hadn't gone to USC yet when I was making this film.

486

And in post, I was really trying to figure out how to make it compelling, how

487

what scenes to use, who should be speaking about what part of Bill's really long and

complex history of all these different races and the business and different like arenas

488

and all these different things that he did, how to tie that all together.

489

And it was really looking at the psychology of Bill and at who had the most emotion, who

had the most intense perspective of any particular subject that I was talking about with

490

any particular scene.

491

And Leslie was, know, in Free Solo, it was um Alex Honnold's girlfriend at the time.

492

Sunny, she's the one who would carry the cost.

493

She's the one who's wondering, should I commit to someone who's then just so committed to

my passion, which is dangerous, you know?

494

And can I let myself be a part of that?

495

you know, that was, Leslie was the right one to speak on that.

496

Yeah, pretty amazing.

497

I love how you bring your psychology degree to your filmmaking.

498

I can see it.

499

All right.

500

I want to move into it is actually so, and so it was acting, you know, I mean, I think

that's a psychology degree is incredibly useful in our industry for sure.

501

Okay, I want to move into our last little section here.

502

I'm calling it the filmmakers reality and we're going to talk about distribution and the

money.

503

uh And I want to talk about your actual path because people are going to be really

interested in that.

504

It's changing all the time and it'll have even changed um from the time that you started

this process.

505

uh But let's talk about you started off with PBS.

506

And so I wanna know how PBS changed the film's credibility and what did it not solve?

507

Yeah, that's a good question.

508

um So we got into PBS through the NITA application, which is really, really wonderful.

509

It's like the National Education of Television or Telecommunications Association,

something like that.

510

um

511

Yeah, so yeah, what's really, really heartbreaking about what's happening now is that, you

know, hopefully you have funding and oh distribution opportunities for, for films.

512

And the more that shrinks, the more disheartening it is because we made this film with

Leslie and RedRap productions.

513

And this was, you know, the first film to be made with a production company who was

started for this project, but we didn't have

514

connections.

515

We didn't make it through a fellowship or a mentorship.

516

We didn't have a brand.

517

I wasn't an established director.

518

So we had no like huge like branding or names necessarily.

519

Yeah, and I learned that credibility is a huge part of documentary distribution.

520

um If we had like, Bill has had success and you know, he has

521

followings on YouTube and Instagram, but not necessarily, he's not necessarily like a

household name.

522

And so that was something that I had to learn is, um you know, fame, fame can go a long

way and open doors.

523

And when you don't have that, it's, it's tough.

524

So PBS was a really wonderful way to uh send our film out.

525

And whenever we would send it out and we would screen it to family and friends, people

really resonated with

526

the never giving up, the messages of the film, the reinvention, the passion, the

landscapes, the races, the excitement of it, and found it really inspiring.

527

uh And that was the most gratifying, was hearing directly from audiences who watched the

film, how much they loved it, and we had a lot of wonderful reviews.

528

But distribution is an art.

529

It's an art that I'm still figuring out.

530

So we went to PBS.

531

It did not solve the great, we're successful and have a bunch of money off this film.

532

No, not at all.

533

um But it did at least give credibility of, look, this film can make it onto PBS.

534

This is a distributive film.

535

And so when we approached Bitmax, who um got us onto Apple TV and Amazon, that was a great

way of

536

saying it's gone to PBS and that's important.

537

Yeah.

538

oh Can you tell us who Bit Mac says?

539

I've never heard of them.

540

Um, so there's different kinds of, um, kind of intermediaries between a distributor like

Apple TV and the filmmaker and Bitmax, kind of does the quality checks and, can basically

541

is like, you know, they kind of help with distribution by

542

kind of validating the film and saying the film is up to technical specs, the film is, the

rating is, you know, um good for us and they kind of walk you through then getting in

543

touch with Apple TV and Amazon.

544

So there's people that will, there's companies that will help with being kind of brokers

for that process.

545

Do you pay them or do they get a percentage?

546

it like a typical distributor?

547

They're more of an intermediary.

548

So we pay them for the quality check process.

549

And then I don't believe they get a distribution.

550

It depends on the different deals, but I don't believe they have a percentage of the

distribution that is split between Apple TV and Amazon.

551

um When someone buys it off of their platforms, the Apple TV or Amazon gets half of it and

we would get the other half.

552

ah But I think Bitmax is more of like that.

553

or do they pay Bitmax?

554

They pay us directly.

555

Interesting.

556

Are you able to get any uh stats or anything like that from Amazon or Apple TV?

557

Yeah, yeah, you have like a kind of whenever someone purchases the film, it does like log

it.

558

So we have like an account and then it kind of says like, hey, know, 15 people have gotten

your film.

559

You've made $5 or less.

560

And are you able to, uh I know that my distributor, Virgil Films, ding, ding, a proud

sponsor of our podcast, we thank them very much.

561

Virgil Films uh is able to pitch our film for uh advertising, know, specials that they

have, whether it's Veterans Day or, um you know, they don't do D-Day, they do Veterans Day

562

or they do 4th of July.

563

and they'll have you know, specials during that time.

564

Do you pitch your film the same way?

565

um to like other distributors or to like, cause generally the film.

566

and Apple, Amazon and Apple TV don't really let you advertise.

567

The only way they let you advertise is they will let you pitch them for their advertising,

like promotions.

568

And so they have advertising promotions for each holiday, Mother's Day, Father's Day,

Veterans Day.

569

You'll see them when you turn on, you know, Amazon em and distributors are allowed to

pitch them for their films.

570

okay.

571

Yeah.

572

Um, I wasn't hugely a part of that conversation, but I think we would have had to pay for

more advertising through their platforms.

573

Um, but I'm not totally sure.

574

I think that we definitely have had a pitch packet go out and, materials and upload, you

know, all that kind of press stuff.

575

Um, but I don't, I, I wasn't a part of like pitching.

576

I think you should look into that because I think that if your film is, you know, if your

film, let's say it's about mothers and em you think it would be a good fit for Mother's

577

Day, you are able to, I think, and I'll have Virgil films back on to talk about this.

578

I think that you are able to make a pitch to Amazon for, let's say,

579

to have your film included in their Mother's Day promotion packet.

580

So it would run for 99 cents, let's say, and the hope would be that your film would, a

bunch of people would watch your film for 99 cents and you would want them to uh so that

581

they would tell their friends, hey, you should watch this film.

582

It's on special right now, sort of to get the ball rolling for your film.

583

And that's the point of including your film.

584

And I don't think it costs you anything when you do that, uh but anyway, look into that.

585

uh

586

Okay, next question I have for you um is what deliverables surprised you the most?

587

Closed caption, QC, art specs, E &O, music cues, et cetera.

588

Anything surprise you?

589

We worked with really wonderful finishing.

590

So we had a really, really wonderful collaboration with Laura Cartman and Nora Krull

Rosenbaum as the composers.

591

They gave us all the stems and Laura went away to work on a Marvel TV show.

592

And so I was kind of music editing while editing for this film.

593

And so I had stems, I had an idea of like, okay, we're gonna have different exports.

594

I did short films before, so I knew the process of

595

going, making a DCP, deliverables for, you know, PBS and Bitmax.

596

Like PBS was really specific on the time cut.

597

So the reason why Epic bill became 56 minutes is it was originally 93 and then it was 86

and PBS wanted 56 because that would be the most programmed slot that we could share the

598

film out to as many as, as much as we could.

599

So we actually had to cut down the film and we have like four different versions of it.

600

But the 56 minute version is like, you it was painful to cut and leave darlings on the

cutting room floor, but it was, you know, the tightest and most snappy version of the

601

film.

602

And um that was interesting.

603

That process was really interesting to me.

604

um I finished the 93 minute version before I went to USC to get my master's in film.

605

And I cut it down to 56 minutes in my first year of being at USC.

606

and I was learning so much about storytelling and I was like, oh, this is, know, this, can

see how quickly I'm growing as a storyteller by doing this process.

607

So we cut the film down to deliver it to PBS's standards.

608

And um then we then of course had the different exports that Luke Cahill uh gave for our

different sound stems, the different, you know, dialogue track versus the.

609

sound design versus the backgrounds and the music, of course.

610

um And then we had different interlaced for television.

611

It was just different formats of the film.

612

So was a lot of technical stuff that we learned and went through.

613

um But yeah, was definitely the cutting it down to fit a TV format was what was the

biggest hurdle.

614

found that same thing to be true.

615

We had an entree to PBS ourselves.

616

They wanted us to cut down our film the same way.

617

There was just no way we felt like we could do it with the keeping the integrity of the

film.

618

So we didn't do it.

619

um Yeah.

620

I don't know if that was a mistake, but we had to pass.

621

All right.

622

Question.

623

How did you learn about promotion from CNN and Sirius XM?

624

And can other filmmakers uh take advantage of that?

625

And then did you feel like that was helpful or worth it?

626

So we had a wonderful uh marketing head called Pat Simmons.

627

He did a wonderful job outreaching.

628

He did a lot of cold emails.

629

um We also worked with New Heights as a marketing team and they did a lot of cold emails.

630

um So I wasn't directly in touch with setting that up, but uh it literally is creating a

press kit, creating a one pager, selling the film.

631

You make the film many, many times and distribution is another way of making your film and

presenting your film and pitching your film.

632

um I, know, Bill had done interviews with people before and it was about creating a whole

spreadsheet of contacts and who you want to send it out to and sending the film out to

633

journalists.

634

So I'm not totally sure how we landed the CNN and SiriusXM.

635

was in the middle of doing my USC degree at the time.

636

But I do know that it takes a lot of really good emails and a good pitch packet, gathering

quotes from people who have seen the film and honestly doing research of how other people

637

have presented their film, have marketed their film.

638

It's a of, it's a grind and it sucks.

639

It totally sucks because as a filmmaker, you want to move on to your next project, right?

640

And the reality is, that, you know, the project to survive and be seen, you have to keep

putting it out there yourself.

641

ah So if you can find a creative way to be excited about that process, great, but you

know, it is, it is part of it.

642

It is part of

643

Yep, I am still doing it today in 2026 with my film, which came out in 2022.

644

uh so endurance is the motto, endurance is the motto.

645

Okay, so, um you know, we talked about, you we talked about a lot of things in this

episode.

646

um you know, want you to think, I'm gonna give you a stress test.

647

This is what I'm calling sort of a new little segment at the end, uh the industry stress

test.

648

industry stress test.

649

Pretend that you are finishing a doc now in 2026.

650

Nobody's buying it outright.

651

So you're taking it to Netflix or Amazon or Apple TV and nobody, everybody's rejecting

you.

652

What is your plan A, B and C?

653

What do you do next?

654

Three things.

655

Good question.

656

uh Well, I've been there.

657

Face rejection, just like Bill.

658

uh And, you know, I would say that you have a list, you keep applying, you keep looking at

who is your audience, right?

659

Who wants to see the film?

660

You...

661

keep screening it.

662

So we're going to screen Epic Bill at USC on January 28th, for example.

663

And you definitely, like, I would kind of go down my list on who would be interested.

664

Like what are, there's different paths of distribution out there.

665

There's, you know, everyone is like, no, there's YouTube and they could just release on

YouTube.

666

But if you're making a film, the point is to have people watch it.

667

Right.

668

And there's an ego check of where it's being screened, but, you know, hopefully

ultimately.

669

And sustainably is the other concept is if it's a money question of you want to have your

film make a lot of money, that's one thing.

670

But then there's also the who, how many people do you want to see your film and what

platform can you put it on to be seen in the most ways?

671

Like PBS, it was screened across the nation and they were, it was one of the top

performing.

672

um films out there at a lot of times for PBS.

673

So we had tremendous success of getting it out there and getting it seen.

674

And that was really, really wonderful to hear and have people excited about.

675

And that was important to me, right?

676

It was in a place that people would watch it.

677

And I think that at the end of the day, it's about what your priorities are.

678

Is it a money thing?

679

Is it a, are people looking at it?

680

And I think that, you know, I've had a lot of short films that

681

I sealed up away onto my private Vimeo link and have not seen the live day because I was

just waiting for them to come out and be accepted by film festivals and then be screened.

682

But then I would go to the film festivals and they would have, it would be a wonderful

screening.

683

um But sometimes it'd be a very small audience.

684

And I would be like, you maybe it's not the right thing to just hold onto a film for a

year or two or three, just hoping it gets chosen by somebody else.

685

How can you approach this in an empowering way?

686

And that is being clear on what you want out of the process.

687

And that is about choosing what your priorities are.

688

So the best way to reframe kind of getting rejected is saying, okay, this project is not

right for this distributor, but how is it right for what I want?

689

And how can I get there?

690

Perfect, great answers, great answers.

691

Okay, two more questions.

692

Two more questions.

693

uh One uncomfortable truth, one practical tool.

694

All right, the uncomfortable truth.

695

What do filmmakers need to stop believing about distribution?

696

Distribution does not solve or make your career by itself.

697

You do that.

698

You figure out your process, you stick to it, you find joy and curiosity that makes you

keep creating.

699

And the trick is how to keep going.

700

It's not the finish.

701

This film, Epic Build, does not end at the finish line, if you watch to the end.

702

the film ends with the starting line.

703

And that is a key part of how I made this film is figuring out that you can, you just

start again.

704

So figure out that.

705

love, yeah, totally love that great answer.

706

And practical tool, what is one spreadsheet, document, template or online tool that you

would encourage every filmmaker to have?

707

um I used something called Snapple, which is a little software where I could, know, it

kind of does a visualization digital board, like cork board a little bit, to group my

708

ideas around in little boxes.

709

So Snapple's a good one.

710

um But there's this exercise I do that I did with Free Solo, that I did with any films

that I enjoy that are similar to the project I'm doing next.

711

And I...

712

sit down and I watch that film and I go scene by scene.

713

I write down what each scene accomplishes, who's speaking in it, how it arrows into the

next scene, how the character is, what they're choosing, what they're faced with.

714

And I really break it down scene by scene.

715

And that just gets me into the rhythm of what a feature film feels like and the pace of it

and how it's all working together.

716

And it's a cheat, you You're looking at what...

717

someone has arrived to, their conclusion of a film, what works for a film.

718

So go out there and see what works and learn.

719

And that's how I did it.

720

You know, just go out and observe.

721

That's a great study tool.

722

And I think that's particularly useful because films change every year.

723

And so, you know, as a voiceover actor, a coach told me one time, go and listen to the

commercials that are out right now.

724

And that will tell you what uh ad agencies are using and buying, and then train yourself

to do that sound or whatever sound that is that's in your range.

725

And

726

that will make you more marketable or more sellable to the buyers.

727

It's true, I think, with films.

728

When you're watching those, if you're studying what is out right now, what distributors

are buying, like you said, the pace or uh look at what films are on the market.

729

Of course, we know the most sellable are horror or uh crime dramas or things like that.

730

uh But there are other things out there.

731

There are a lot of...

732

uh

733

You know, things like you're talking about this, you know, that you've done.

734

There's a lot of epic journey stories out there, endurance sport things out there as well.

735

So um I think that is, those are really good suggestions to, to watch that and emulate

that.

736

Great.

737

Great, great stuff.

738

Great, great stuff.

739

Thank you so much for all of your advice, sharing your experiences.

740

And now we are going to move into everybody's favorite section so that you can share some

more ideas with us.

741

We are now going to move into DocuVue Deja Vu.

742

All right, here we are and you are going to share not one, but I hear three favorite

documentaries with us.

743

Yes, so in light of Epic Bill, I definitely of course have to say Free Solo.

744

The other one that I studied was Maru um by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Vasirati.

745

It was really, really um similar in structure and kind of showed me the path that they

made into making a more ambitious film with Free Solo.

746

um And then the last one is just a personal favorite of mine.

747

It's Crip Camp.

748

Um, that I really, loved crying during it.

749

And it's, largely about this, the heart of community and in my opinion, and, um, yeah,

definitely Crip Camp.

750

I would definitely recommend getting that to watch.

751

Yeah, Crip Camp was um at the Sundance Film Festival the year I went, I think 2019.

752

And it's a really good one um just about people that are, know, what is the right word?

753

um

754

Folks with various physical disabilities go to a summer camp.

755

It's about the disability revolution and just the beginnings of that kind of stuff.

756

It's great.

757

Watch it.

758

Yeah, very touching and heartwarming.

759

Okay, how can people get a hold of you or where can they follow you?

760

Tell us a little bit about what we can do to learn more.

761

Yeah, there's a Epic Bill the film website.

762

You can Google it Epic Bill film and you'll find it.

763

um We have an Instagram and Epic Bill film.

764

we also, you could find me at Quinnolyn.com is my website and my Instagram handle is at

Quinnolyn Q-U-I-N-N-O-L-Y-N.

765

You'll find me there.

766

All right, and we're going to put all that in our show notes as well.

767

uh We uh really appreciate you being here.

768

Before I go, everybody, I just want to remind you that we too have social media on

Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, uh and Twitter.

769

Well, I guess we have to call it X now, although I don't like that.

770

I still think of it as Twitter.

771

uh We are on all of those social medias.

772

We've been sort of hanging back, not posting a lot, but we are going to start sharing more

little snippets of

773

our podcast guests on our platform.

774

So make sure to follow those.

775

We have some really interesting guests coming up this year and we are gonna start a

Substack.

776

I'm gonna start writing and sharing some things I'm learning about the industry.

777

So uh take a look on Substack or keep watching our social media.

778

We'll put more out about that.

779

If you'd like to support us, follow us on Patreon, patreon.com slash documentary first.

780

We really would love to have your support.

781

for you to be part of our community.

782

m One of the things that we've talked about in this episode is actually, um you know, a

lot about that.

783

I wanna just reiterate sort of our three takeaways.

784

um Reinvention is a system.

785

You know, show up and just, you know, suffer, uh iterate, endure, and then don't let

distribution be your identity.

786

Don't let any one thing be your identity.

787

Build purpose and have a process.

788

Three, packaging, audience, and endurance are the new modes.

789

You need to make sure that you are packaged beautifully for your product, that you know

who your audience is, and never give up.

790

So those are the three points for our little podcast today that you filmmakers need to

take away and remember.

791

Hope you've learned a lot from Quintalyn today.

792

I know that I have.

793

Thank you so much for joining us here on Documentary First, where we believe everybody has

a story to tell, and you can be the one to tell it.

794

Bye, everybody.

795

Thank you so much for having me.