Phil Leirness: Telling the Truth

Californian independent filmmaker Phil Leirness has worked across many genres as well as in different roles within the film industry, including creative executive and distribution. For more than four years he has been co-hosting the weekly podcast Chillpak Hollywood Hour with actor-comedian Dean Haglund, where they discuss cinema and other issues of cultural interest. Phil is also a Certified Violence Prevention Specialist. Film & Festivals spoke with the always eloquent, and elegant, Phil about his approach to making and distributing his latest film, the documentary The Truth is Out There, after its world premiere at SCI-FI-LONDON 10 in May.

Do you come from a documentary filmmaking background?

I come from a filmmaking background, and this is my sixth feature film, and I never anticipated making a documentary feature, although my last feature was what I refer to as a fictional documentary (Karl Rove I Love You) because although it was eventually scripted – so too are most documentaries, usually from the point of view of the people putting up the money – in the unique case of Karl Rove I Love You, it was fiction. However, it was real people doing real things, saying real things, playing themselves for the most part; only our premise was a lie. As the director I never even read the script so that it was really a case of me having to find the shots while we were doing it. It wasn’t a mockumentary; we weren’t mocking documentary conventions, or faking it, really. We were using the documentary approach to a fictional subject and I felt so liberated by it that I was open to the idea of doing a documentary feature. I had directed more than 40 documentary short subjects ten years ago when I made behind-the-scenes, making-of featurettes of different motion pictures, and as a creative executive at a production company I had developed and ushered through production a feature documentary for public broadcasting in the US.

Read all of the interview with Phil Leirness in Issue 28 of Film & Festivals

www.truth-is-out-there.com