Under influence
When Casey Neistat, along with his brother Wang, made Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces list in 2006, he had already made over 300 short films that were screened at film festivals, museums and online. Three years later, he launched the HBO series. But Google Neistat now and the 40-year-old director’s dashboard offers a single dumb identifier: “American YouTuber.” It wasn’t until 2010 that Neistat started posting his work on YouTube, and in 2015 these posts became daily, with an abundance of content (and 12 million subscribers) making him the progenitor of a new generation of social media stars who share Neistat’s ideas. viral flair, if not his penchant for sly social commentary.
All of the above makes Neistat’s choice of subject matter for his first feature documentary both expected and not. Under the Influence started out as a portrait of David Dobrik, a younger and more popular YouTuber whose platform took off in 2016 when Neistat slowed down. With his Vlog Squad group of friends, Illinois-raised Dobrik skyrocketed to social media stardom thanks to diary entries detailing the various stunts, pranks, and adventures that made him purely business-wise formidable, even if his wider impact on culture is highly debatable. (Google Dobrik and the first question a search engine will answer is: “Who is David Dobrik and why is he so rich?”)
But if Under the Influence began as a kind of baton passing exercise — equal parts curiosity, respect, and resentment in the style of Losing My Edge — the purpose of the document was redirected when members of the Vlog team were accused of sexual harassment, incidents that were associated with the filming of Dobrik’s videos. Insider reporter Kat Tunbarge told the story and became a kind of parallel subject in Neistat’s film, offering a moral counterpoint to Dobrik and, at least initially, his nonchalant, evasive attitude. From the perspective of an anthropologist, Neistat does an excellent job of explaining the Dobrik phenomenon — not just the Vlog Squad and their videos, but their fan communities and big brand sponsors — and when allegations of assault come up, he’s just as good at understanding the story. until its completion, allowing the viewer to rethink everything that came before in its light.
By email, I spoke with Neistat prior to his film’s debut at SXSW, asking him about the intergenerational dialogue in his film, working with documentary writer Mark Monroe, and the change in direction of his film after Tunbarge’s article was published.
Producer: Under the Influence has a generational dialogue that is acknowledged early on when you discuss how your cessation of daily posting coincided with the rise of the platform and Dobrik’s celebrity. Reveal this for me a little more, the motivation for you to make a film about a different – and younger – creator. Did it immediately seem to you that he was doing something fundamentally different from what you were doing? Obviously the David controversy shaped the film, but before that happened, what did you hope to discover about him and maybe yourself?
Neistat: Before I started working at YouTube, I had a pretty decent career in the more traditional film industry. My brother Wang and I have made short films at several festivals, shot TV commercials, produced feature films with Josh and Ben Safdie, and made a series on HBO. But Youtube was very different. The experience of being a standout creator on the platform was nothing short of extraordinary and I wanted to make a documentary showing this world, the world of the standout youtuber. Early in David Dobrik’s career, it was obvious that he was going to be great – his stature was beyond anything I had ever experienced. Also, there was something raw and raw about his video. My videos were all about creative expression and my desire to tell well crafted stories; David felt like snapshots, like looking out the window of what it means to be young and free from responsibility. This made David an interesting case study – an ideal topic for me to focus on. We decided to explore this generation’s obsession with social media fame. Today, more young people want to be YouTubers than astronauts, and David represented the pinnacle of that world, that aspiration.
Producer: In the film, you are mostly off-screen, although your off-screen presence is sometimes acknowledged. Tell me about this decision, as well as your decisions regarding the language of the film and the form of the document. And why was it important that this story, featuring the creator of YouTube, be told in the format of a feature-length documentary and not in some other form (series, web document, etc.)?
Neistat: When I first started filming three years ago, I had no idea where this endeavor would lead. I assumed that I would tell the story from my point of view, based on my own experience on YouTube. As the controversy came to the fore and history changed, my point of view became less relevant. The seriousness of the topic concerning the issues of sexual violence and victimization required journalistic objectivity. In the end, I wanted the subjects involved to speak for themselves. I didn’t want the filmmaking style to detract from the story. As to why this is a 95 minute document and not a series: I think it could have been shaped in a lot of ways, but it had to be long. The characters in David’s video, the characters in this documentary, are only known to the world as versions of themselves, which they portray in expertly edited four-minute YouTube videos. While I wasn’t 100% sure if it would end up being a series or a feature, I was sure I needed a longer format to really reveal the layers of who these people were and what drove them.
Producer: Mark Monroe, part of a small group of top documentary writers, is the film’s writer and executive producer. How did he get involved, what did he bring to the film and what was your working relationship like?
Neistat: To be completely honest, Mark’s accomplishments in this movie don’t do him justice – his brilliance and deep insight made this movie what it is. Years of making short videos for the web left me impatient, and Mark’s ability to see the forest for the trees helped me focus, gave me the confidence to let it breathe and let the story unfold. Christine Vachon produced my HBO series a few years ago and we have a great relationship (I’ve always been a big fan of hers). When this project started to take shape, I called her and she joined us as a producer and eventually introduced me to Mark. Mark and I talked before every interview and every shoot, he outlined our scenes, found structure where there wasn’t, and gave shape when all I could see was drive, full of randomness. There was something special about the look he brought to this film as he had never heard of David Dobrik. His ignorance of the YouTube creator industry was refreshing and made clear that this story was relevant to an audience outside of YouTube.
Producer: When allegations of sexual harassment arose around David and the Vlog Squad, how exactly did you rethink your project as a director? Aside from including Insider contributor Kat Tenbarge as a famous conversationalist, how else has this event affected the approach you’ve taken up to this point?
Neistat: David’s videos have always been controversial, questionable humor and exploration of the overall appropriateness of his content has been a theme throughout production, but the revelations of Kat’s reporting have crossed a thick line. Her article changed every aspect of the documentary. It was clear that the focus of the film should revolve around her article. If this documentary was to be a commentary on the pros and cons of the lack of distance between creator and audience, then what could be more relevant than what she discovered. As for the production itself, David agreed to appear in the frame only once after the publication of the article.
Producer: At the beginning of the documentary, you ask David to assess the issue of sensationalism equaling more views – this is not explicit in your conversation with him, but you are obviously asking him to answer the moral and ethical issues associated with producing content that exists to become viral or perhaps provoke some kind of spectacular voyeuristic reaction. David has one way of answering – or perhaps not answering – a question. After watching this documentary, how would you answer your question?
Neistat: My question to him was about the circular and disruptive nature of sensationalism in the unfiltered, uncontrolled, and largely uncontrolled world of social media. David’s story, in which the very things that led to his incredible rise ended up contributing to his extraordinary downfall, is not unique to YouTube. In a world with few checks and balances, the fastest way to get attention is a sensation, and more and more risks are taken to maintain that attention, and it ends up leading to something really terrible – in David’s case, several terrible things. When I asked him this question, I guess I thought it was the wrong approach to making videos and maybe looking back he can see how troublesome this recipe can be. This line of questions always leads to more thinking about “what should be done” and I don’t know if I have an answer to that question.