# EP051 - Terrified Of Cheese w/ Bryan Storkel

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/doc-walks-7327673/ep051-terrified-of-cheese-w-bryan-storkel
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/doc-walks-7327673/ep051-terrified-of-cheese-w-bryan-storkel.md
Podcast: [Doc Walks](https://stenobird.com/podcast/doc-walks-7327673)
Published: 2026-04-30T12:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://docwalkspod.com/ep051-terrified-of-cheese-w-bryan-storkel
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/769d52a5-d399-4750-a0ce-f637076f16a6/DW_EP048_BRYANSTORKEL_Multicam-esv2-41p-bg-35p-music-45p.mp3?dest-id=4997995
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/doc-walks-7327673/episodes/ep051-terrified-of-cheese-w-bryan-storkel
Duration seconds: 2953

## Resource

We walk South by Southwest with director Bryan Storkel—HOLY ROLLERS, THE LEGEND OF COCAINE ISLAND, THE PEZ OUTLAW, ALABAMA SNAKE—in town to premiere I GOT BOMBED AT HARVEY'S, his new feature about the man who built a thousand-pound bomb and walked it into a Lake Tahoe casino in 1980. Keith's on vacation, so it's just Ben and Bryan, two directors aiming cameras at each other ("this is like a Beastie Boys video"). Ben's catcher finger is wrecked from yesterday's Sandlot game. Bryan's been on a pickleball tear in LA. We dig into how Bryan keeps making so many films—a Ken Griffey Jr. doc that fell apart the night before his first interview with Sir Mix-A-Lot, the AMC anthology TRUE CRIME STORY: SMUGSHOT (umbrella: "crimes of entitlement"), and a Hulk Hogan series now released to acclaim for Netflix. We trace his exodus from Oral Roberts University through HOLY ROLLERS (card-counting Christian pastors), FIGHT CHURCH (cage-fighting pastors), and ALABAMA SNAKE (the Pentecostal who tried to kill his wife with a rattlesnake)—each film quietly walking him further out of the faith he grew up in. The reenactment talk is the heart of it. Bryan walks us through the COCAINE ISLAND / PEZ OUTLAW method—cast the actual subject in their own reenactments, build a scripted-feeling rough cut from a documentary edit, then shoot the recreations like a narrative. The secret: be terrified the whole time it'll be cheesy. "That terror is the thing that makes it good." HARVEY'S, he tells us, snuck up on him as a father-son story underneath the heist. Plus: an annual dog-on-a-table photoshoot ambushes the walk, the empathy-machine theory of documentary, and why every prolific filmmaker should learn to edit first. DISCUSSION LINKS: AMERICAN MOVIE (1999) | OKIE NOODLING (2001) | HOME MOVIE (2001) | S…

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