vHopeful Conversations Podcast

Vanessa Hope

vHopeful Conversations is a video interview series where director Vanessa Hope sits down with bold, visionary filmmakers and authors whose work confronts conflict, power, and injustice while still making space for nuance, empathy, and hope. Each episode offers an intimate, craft‑focused conversation that goes beyond loglines, headlines, and blurbs, inviting listeners into the creative process and the ethical, political, and emotional questions behind urgent films and books. Expect thoughtful, unhurried dialogues that challenge easy narratives, foreground art’s potential to shift public imagination, and leave you with a deeper understanding of both the stories and the world they’re responding to. vanessahope.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    Wild Inside: “I get very philosophical when I talk about the film because it’s about really important things, but it’s mostly just really entertaining, fun & funny. A stranger‑in‑a‑strange land story"

    In this vHopeful Conversation, filmmaker and birder Penny Lane joins me to talk about Wild Inside, her HBO documentary about Flaco the Eurasian eagle‑owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo in New York City and became a worldwide symbol of freedom and urban wonder. Penny shares the origin story of that first surreal night outside Bergdorf Goodman, how she tried to imagine “what it is like to be an owl” by learning Flaco’s Umwelt and mirroring owl vision with camera movement and lenses, and why she deliberately walks a tightrope between anthropomorphism and genuine empathy. We dive into the crowdsourced nature of this New York City owl documentary, the chorus of besotted New Yorkers, the ethics of captivity versus the wild, and the philosophical questions Flaco’s odyssey raises about risk, freedom, safety, and what makes a life worth living. Along the way we celebrate Manhattan as Flaco’s beautiful wild kingdom and invite audiences to spend time with a true stranger in a strange land. Get full access to Dream of a Better World at vanessahope.substack.com/subscribe

  2. 6d ago

    Savage House: “The more truthful we made it, the more honest it was — the more grotesque, sure, but also the funnier it was and the more timely it became.”

    In this episode of vHopeful Conversations, I sit down with writer-director Peter Glanz to talk about his bold new period satire Savage House, a 1715-set black comedy that uses wigs, corsets, and a pox-ridden elite household to mirror the madness of our own political moment. We dig into how January 6th and QAnon-era unrest pushed Peter toward a story of social climbers trapped at an opulent dinner, why he and his team pursued “beauty in the rot” through tactile production design and candlelit, Barry Lyndon-esque cinematography, and how paintings by Hogarth, gossip rags like Tatler and The Spectator, and films from Withnail and I to Culloden shaped the film’s tone. Peter shares the path to casting Richard E. Grant and Claire Foy, the psychological layers behind the film’s recurring pig imagery and nightmare sequences, and what Savage House has to say about class, patriarchy, and our endless urge to climb the social ladder even when it slowly kills us. Transcript lightly edited. Podcast available on Dream of a Better World, & Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen Vanessa Hope:I’m really excited to be joined by filmmaker Peter Glanz, whose movie Savage House Ted and I just saw in a special screening and totally enjoyed. Peter is a writer-director whose work blends sharp political observation with dark comedy and a distinctly feminist lens, which I really appreciate. With Savage House, he steps into period filmmaking while keeping one foot firmly in the present, using the rituals and excesses of an elite historical world to interrogate contemporary power, class, and leadership. Known for crafting precise tonal balances where satire, anger, and humor coexist, Glanz has quickly emerged as a filmmaker interested in how systems of privilege perpetuate themselves and how individuals within those systems either perform, resist, or unravel. Peter, welcome. Peter Glanz:That was a great intro. I mean, I couldn’t have written that better myself. That was amazing. Vanessa:Thank you. Okay, good. Yeah, your film is deep. I mean, there’s a lot in there, and it is not an easy film to make. So… in your intro when we saw the film, you shared that there’s some maybe familial or personal connection to this kind of a story, but that it’s also speaking more broadly to the times that we live in. Can you share how you started writing this one and where it came from and how you wove these ideas together? Peter:Sure. I would say that the familial side of it… you kind of never start, or at least I don’t, trying to write about yourself or your life. You try and write the thing farthest from it, and inevitably, it ends up being yourself. It’s just— you can’t help it. It’s just who we are. And you’re just watching this madness unfold on television. And I was just like, okay, this is such a mad world. I had to find some way to cathartically let it out. But you never want to do something set today because I think it’s very difficult to release the preconceived baggage. And so to somehow reflect this mad world, I just Wikipedia’d and went through history, just trying to find a year. And I stumbled on 1715, in which there was, in England, a disputed king. There was an uprising. There was complete political and economic unrest. There was a pox outbreak. There was even an eclipse, which, around that time, there was this big eclipse in L.A. And I was just like, okay, that’s amazing as a backdrop, and just tried to think of a story. And for whatever reason, I got locked on an image of a nobleman at the end of a really long table with his wig askew and his makeup running and just looking at a table of food he’ll never eat, at a portrait of a life he’ll never live. And I was just like, who is this man? And I began to reverse engineer this kind of, as you were saying, a family of social climbers who led to this dinner, this kind of Waiting for Godot kind of, you know, without giving away anything, to this moment. And hopefully in that stew, I was able to comment on all the political schemes of today. And just the more I researched that time, the more I fell in love with him, the more I saw the black mirror to today and just kept leaning into it more and more. And then strangely, you know, I think parts of myself, as in any script, start to come out. Vanessa:Super smart approach, actually. You made me immediately remember two excellent films that did directly look at whether January 6th or President Trump, neither of which got any distribution whatsoever, or very limited. There was a documentary about January 6th following those guys. And the Ali Abbasi film, The Apprentice, I thought was excellent. Peter:Incredible. Vanessa:Incredible. Sort of disappeared. Peter:I mean, that’s the beauty of period and even science fiction. Some of the most political films ever are science fiction films. It gives you distance and it allows you to see yourself. It allows you to laugh at it. And it allows you to really poke, I think, sometimes a searing kind of political lens at it without it being prescriptive. Because you’re like, oh, that’s not like me, they’re dressed in wigs and corsets. But… yeah, hopefully at the end you have a conversation with your partner and it becomes much deeper after all the laughs and corsets. Vanessa:That was a good way to put it, the black mirror effect. So, in a pragmatic logistical sense, or production process sense, how did you get this movie going? Because a lot of the listeners are filmmakers and they love to hear how people make extraordinary movies and get them out. Peter:Yeah, not for the faint of heart. Not easy. Not enough money or time — always the case. I had had a film that was about to go and it fell apart during COVID around this time. And then I was just kind of scrambling and then January 6th happened, and I’ve never written a script so fast in my life. Wrote it quick, got it into the hands of my intrepid, amazing producer, Oliver Roskill in England. If anyone needs one, he’s great. And he got it into the hands of Mike Runagall, who runs Altitude, which is a foreign sales company. We kind of talked about, okay, how can we actually make this crazy thing? And I just got so fortunate. Richard E. Grant is a legend. I’ve loved him in Withnail and I, you know, How to Get Ahead in Advertising. But even smaller, you know, The Player, L.A. Story. He just steals every scene. He’s amazing. I love this man. Vanessa:He’s incredible in your film. He’s outstanding. You got just a stellar performance from him. Peter:Yeah. I wrote a very larger-than-life character. Someone who’s absurd. And if he has anything, he has this superpower. He’s able to be so big and so crazy and so absurd and yet so human and so tragic and so heartbreaking. And he was just so perfect. And he— I mean, I’m sure some of your listeners know his story. He was going through a tragedy at the time. He’d just lost his wife. And my script, when he read it, he said was one of the first things that made him laugh after this tragedy. And it was just this kind of cosmic timing that he read this crazy thing, and I brought a smile to his face, and we had lunch at The Ivy and he was like, “Let’s do it.” And then it was Paramount UK — John Fletcher, who’s amazing — and Sage in here, Paramount Global, also great. John Fletcher loved Richard, loved Withnail and I, he immediately came on. And then it was a journey as a team to find who our Lady Savage was. And I can’t believe we thought of anyone other than Claire Foy. It was a journey. Vanessa:She’s so good. Peter:She’s so good. I think at first the instinct was to cast someone kind of Richard’s age. But the truth is, the more historically accurate thing to do — which became, I think, a North Star thread — was she would be much younger. And the moment we made that shift… Claire was our first person. I can’t even believe she said yes. I am so fortunate for it. And the moment she said yes, she fought for me to have more days and more time, and she was just such a partner, and so was Richard. And yeah, once the two of them were together, it was a sprint. And I’m so lucky that I had that journey up until that moment to storyboard my frames and to scout and kind of build it. So once the prep started, which was quite rushed, I had already done soft prep for like a year during that process. So yeah, that’s helpful. But yeah, I mean, Paramount came on super early in like a negative pickup to a small budget, which allowed me to have final cut, which is amazing. And I edited the film myself and it allowed me to kind of have— as long as I kept it a certain very small number, I won’t say how small, but very small— it afforded a lot of freedoms on casting, on crew hires, on our process, and it was an A-plus team. A-plus. Vanessa:I can’t imagine you had much of a budget considering that you were dealing with a period. It’s a period film, and you’ve got tremendous authenticity. I don’t know how you did achieve that, but I felt completely immersed in that world in ways that were almost too authentic for me. Like, you know, most period films look back in kind of a glossy way and they make a nice patina over everything. So you think, “Ooh, what pretty costumes they wore and what interesting makeup,” or something. But yours has the gritty reality — like the hygiene. So you have this tonal balance that’s like a combo of playful and comedic, but gritty, real, serious, deep. How did you do that? Peter:I find the two things are not antithetical. They’re actually intrinsically tied together. I think our North Star became just finding the beauty in the rot — the death and decay and decadence are all kind of intertwined. And just the more truthful we made it, the more honest it was, the more grotesque, sure, but also the funnier it was and the more timely it became. And it’s interesting, like, our whole concept of that

  3. Jul 10

    Peter Asher: Everywhere Man: "I love to be slightly terrified when we start a new project. I want it to be so new in terms of topic and approach that I’m not comfortable. That makes it more fun."

    In this vHopeful Conversations episode, I sit down with legendary San Francisco–based documentary duo Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine to talk about their new film, PETER ASHER: EVERYWHERE MAN. They trace the project’s unlikely origin—from a Linda Ronstadt–invited cabaret night at Bimbo’s to deciding to build their own documentary loosely around Peter Asher’s memoir show. The conversation explores how they used the cabaret as a backbone while expanding outward through interviews with James Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Kate Taylor, and others, and how editor Darren Lund helped shape a sprightly, archival-rich portrait of a producer-manager whose taste and loyalty transformed modern music. Along the way, they discuss Apple Records, Paul McCartney’s friendship and support of Peter, and the ’60s–’70s cultural milieu, the ethics of handling painful chapters in Peter’s life, what it means to resist repeating oneself as artists, and the challenges of getting a film about a “behind-the-scenes” figure into theaters when gatekeepers underestimate audiences’ curiosity. Transcript lightly edited. Podcast available on Dream of a Better World, & Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen Vanessa Hope: I’m very excited to be joined by our friends from San Francisco, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, who are a San Francisco–based co-directing and producing couple known for formally inventive, deeply researched documentaries that braid cultural history and intimate character portraits. Over more than 30 years of collaborating, they’ve made films including BALLETS RUSSES, SOMETHING VENTURED, THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR: SATAN CAME TO EDEN—so, so good, everyone must see this film—and HALLELUJAH: LEONARD COHEN, A JOURNEY, A SONG. Their latest feature, PETER ASHER: EVERYWHERE MAN, is in theaters now; it world-premiered at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival and extends their work to the life and career of producer, manager, and performer Peter Asher. Dan Geller: Hi Vanessa, it’s really fun to see you again. Dayna Goldfine: I know, it’s so fun to be here. It was great to get your invite. Vanessa: It was so fun to see San Francisco at the beginning of this fantastic documentary. You’re kind of panning down from Bimbo’s sign. Dayna: It’s an old speakeasy-slash-nightclub-slash-performance space that’s been going since before Prohibition. Vanessa: When we lived in San Francisco, we went, and I was so, so happy to see that and then to be taken into this incredible venue for this performance by Peter Asher, which I understand your friend Linda Ronstadt invited you to. And in the middle of watching, you turned to each other and thought, “This has to be a documentary.” Dan: That happened in December 2019, but backing up to 2011—and actually Dayna would have turned to me, I suspect, but in 2011 Dayna was invited on a plus-one ticket by her high school boyfriend, who’s a friend of ours. So she couldn’t turn to me in 2011. It took eight years to turn to me. Dayna: Mostly I just thought, “Oh man, I wish Dan was here.” So what happened is, in 2011, Peter was just starting out with doing his show, and he came to San Francisco. My lovely still-friends-with-high-school boyfriend, who’s really close friends with Linda Ronstadt, called out of the blue and said, “You know, Linda’s got a spare ticket to see Peter Asher.” At the time, he was performing at Hotel Nikko in the Rrazz Room. And I said, “I have no idea who this guy is, but if I get to sit at Linda Ronstadt’s table, I am so there.” I walked in, it started to unfold, and I was like, “Oh, I thought I was here to meet Linda, but I’m really here because this is an amazing show—and if Dan were here, I think he’d agree.” Mostly I was frustrated that there had only been one ticket, because I knew that Dan would feel the way I felt. Dan: Well, frustrated also because there was someone filming right then and there at that actual performance, and filming in the lobby afterward. Dayna: Right. As I was thinking, “Oh man, I wish Dan was here, this would be a great documentary,” I looked across the room and there was a woman with a camera, and I was like, “Oh my god, someone’s gotten here first.” So I walked over to her, introduced myself, and said, “Are you by chance making a documentary about Peter?” And she said, “I am.” And I said something which I very rarely say because I really don’t feel this about many projects, but I was like, “Wow. I’m very envious. I’m jealous of you. I think you’ve got a great project on your hands, and I wish you well and I can’t wait to see it.” Dan: So we actually then, over the intervening years, got to be friends with Linda. At a certain point, because we heard nothing bubbling up about a Peter Asher movie, we asked her to check out what was happening, and she said that Peter told her the project just went nowhere. We kept following up as we got to be better and better friends with Linda, and eventually, seven years later, Linda said, “By the way, that’s not happening.” And then she said Peter’s coming back to town in a couple months, maybe Dan should come see the show as well. I did, and you see it in the movie: as soon as Peter starts to talk on stage, he’s so charming and such a fun storyteller. He’s telling this wild tale but also sort of amazed at his own good fortune—or luck, although he doesn’t believe in luck, whatever you want to call it. We have to invent a new word for what Peter considers this thing that keeps happening to him. Dayna: I think sometimes he uses the word “happenstance,” and I think if you really press him, he has to acknowledge there’s a certain degree of good fortune, if he doesn’t want to call it luck. Dan: But anyway, he does end up in the right place at the right time. It’s what he does with that opportunity that makes him so unique. Vanessa: That’s a great way to think about it. And how did you figure out the way in, if it wasn’t going to simply be filming this one show? You expand our understanding of him, and the world of the film expands too. How did you put it all together? Dan: We knew that, in fact, when we approached Peter after the show—he came over to Linda’s table, we went over to Linda’s table—we said we wanted to do something loosely based on his show. The show is really entertaining, but it’s limiting at the same time, because you only get Peter’s perspective. This way, we could—with any good fortune on our part—get Carole King, get James Taylor, get Linda Ronstadt, get Natalie Merchant, get all these people into the movie and have their perspectives, not only on Peter, but on what Peter did for their own lives and careers. And then really begin to roll in a lot of archival material that we went on the hunt for: great stuff from the ’60s and ’70s, even before, when he was a child actor. We knew from the beginning that was the aesthetic and the challenge we were throwing down for ourselves. Dayna: And then it was a lot of trial and error to find the balance: how long do we hang with the show, when do we move away from it, when does it feel like we need to get back to it? We had seen things like Spalding Gray’s SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA—there are amazing documentaries that are truly based only around a one-person performance—but that never really occurred to us. It was always: what kind of challenge would it be, and can we actually achieve it, if we use the show as a backbone but also as a springboard? It was interesting in the editing room to figure out how to weave in and out. A lot of trial and error before we got the mix to work, and then a lot of it depended on: is Peter a reliable narrator? What if we go talk to these people and find out he’s just making up stories? It was really fun to get their perspective, but mostly he was a pretty reliable narrator. Dan: Exactly. Mostly, we thought: take this stage performance, shoot it multi-camera, and then figure out where and how and when to weave it in and out of interviews and archival material. Vanessa: You do it so well, though. You truly bring his whole life arc into our view and understanding. I have many memories now from your film—this cute family of redheaded siblings who get discovered and cast in movies; then he meets this friend Gordon in school and suddenly is part of a duo, Peter and Gordon, and they’re performing everywhere. Then his sister starts dating Jane Asher, who sticks with acting, and dating Paul McCartney when the Beatles are kind of in London and he needs a room. It’s in their family home, so then he’s kind of next door to Peter making music. So Paul gives him some songs. It’s wacky. It’s crazy. How did you figure this out, and how did it come together to illuminate everything about this person? Dan: I definitely want to give credit to Darren Lund, who is the prime editor on the project—so good and so collaborative. He and Jason Reid started editing together just to try to get as many things going as quickly as possible. They’re based up in Seattle, and we met them because Jason was a producer and editor on a documentary called SAM NOW, which we were supportive of when it was doing its Academy run. We really admired the editing in that, asked if he’d want to come on and do this, and he said yes—and that he had this partner, Darren Lund, who ultimately became the lead editor. Jason stepped off to produce something else, so Darren really did an incredible job. Dayna: Dan and I, as we always tend to, jumped in later in the editing process to start reworking scenes and trading scenes back and forth with Darren. Bay Area legendary filmmaker, director, and editor Bill Weber came on board for a while toward the very end, really worked some of the scenes with us, and helped build a beginning and an ending. They deserve an enormous amount of credit, especially Darren. Dan: Some of

  4. Jul 3

    Ghost in the Machine: "I think the bravery and boldness to think outside the box, to create outside the box, and to trust that you’ll find your audience...that is what resonates right now."

    In this vHopeful Conversation, I speak with filmmaker Valerie Veatch about her Sundance 2026 documentary Ghost in the Machine. We dive into the dirty wiring behind today’s AI boom—its roots in eugenics and race science, its extraction‑driven infrastructures, and the white male techno‑fantasies shaping it. Veatch unpacks how a “secret” artist program around OpenAI’s Sora jolted her from curiosity to resistance, why she chose a scrappy, Zoom‑based, self‑funded film over platform‑friendly series formats, and how archival discoveries (from Norbert Wiener to Claude Shannon) reveal an unbroken line between so‑called neutral data and explicitly racist projects. She connects Kenyan data‑labeling sweatshops, water‑hungry data centers, and venture‑funded rationalists in Silicon Valley into a single story about power, misogyny, and the abandonment of the earth. Above all, she makes a bracing case for refusal—arguing that saying no to AI in our workflows, schools, and cultural institutions is not Luddite panic but a necessary act of care, clarity, and democratic self‑defense. Get full access to Dream of a Better World at vanessahope.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Jun 25

    We Are Pat: "This needed to be funny, to show nuanced perspectives of trans people where we could be flawed, messy, idiotic, funny—all the things."

    This vHopeful Conversation features director–producer Rowan Haber and Emmy‑winning producer Caryn Capotosto discussing their documentary We Are Pat, which revisits SNL’s 1990s “It’s Pat” sketches through a contemporary trans and non‑binary lens. We talk about why this is the right cultural moment to unearth Pat again, how Ro’s realization that “the punchline wasn’t about me, it was me” became the emotional engine of the film, and what it meant to bring Julia Sweeney into a room with younger trans and non‑binary comics to rewrite and restage the sketches. We explore the tension between humor that harms and humor that connects, who gets to tell which jokes, how power and perspective shape comedy, and why We Are Pat is designed less as a political treatise than a joyful, community‑building conversation starter about gender, art, and the possibility of talking across difference. Get full access to Dream of a Better World at vanessahope.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Jun 23

    Gaslit: "Even though the film is U.S.‑focused, these are the same fights people are experiencing everywhere!"

    In this vHopeful Conversations episode, filmmaker Katie Camosy joins me to talk about her new Greenpeace‑backed documentary GASLIT, which follows Jane Fonda, Connie Britton, and Maggie Rogers through Texas and the Gulf South as they bear witness to LNG export terminals, petrochemical corridors, and the communities living in their shadow. Katie traces how a shocking first encounter with the Permian Basin’s fracking fields grew into a feature‑length film about liquefied “natural” gas, export‑driven extraction, and the human cost of America’s fossil fuel build‑out. We dive into GASLIT’s balance of grief and hope—devastating stories of illness, loss, and dispossession alongside shrimpers, ranchers, faith leaders, and organizers who are fighting back with thermal cameras, citizen lawsuits, historic‑preservation tactics, and cross‑political alliances. We also unpack the ways GASLIT counters the narrative promoted by hit series like LANDMAN, explore the global reach of companies like Formosa Plastics and the international struggle against LNG and single‑use plastics, and highlight concrete pathways for viewers to plug into the movement—from GaslitDoc.com resources to voting out fossil‑funded politicians and joining local campaigns. Get full access to Dream of a Better World at vanessahope.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Jun 19

    Get Away with Janet Hsieh: "If you’re curious about people, you’ll ask questions. You’ll be more accepting. You’ll want to learn about them and their culture. Same with food, places, knowledge."

    This vHopeful Conversation features creator, producer, and host Janet Hsieh whose journey runs from MIT pre‑med and the long‑running Discovery travel series Fun Taiwan to funding and creating her new YouTube travel show GET AWAY with Janet Hsieh. We talk through the “drought” Janet faced moving back to the U.S., how a chance reunion with high‑school friend and Emmy‑winning producer Joe Litzinger led to their three‑person production model, and why YouTube’s flexible runtimes and small‑crew freedom let them chase eruptions in Hawaii, 24‑hour love letters to Taipei, and spontaneous, music‑infused moments like playing violin atop Mauna Kea. Along the way, Janet opens up about brutal beauty standards in Asian entertainment, eating disorders, IVF, pregnancy, perimenopause, and aging on camera, and how honesty, vulnerability, and “Janet of all trades” curiosity have turned her travel work into a coming‑of‑age series for midlife—one that invites everyone to embrace imperfection, adventure, and bridge‑building across cultures. Get full access to Dream of a Better World at vanessahope.substack.com/subscribe

    Get Away with Janet Hsieh: "If you’re curious about people, you’ll ask questions. You’ll be more accepting. You’ll want to learn about them and their culture. Same with food, places, knowledge."

  8. Jun 12

    Ask E. Jean: "You will see yourself. You will see your sisters. You will see your mother. You will recognize so much of what we all experience... Men too."

    In this vHopeful Conversation, filmmaker Vanessa Hope speaks with Emmy‑nominated documentarian Ivy Meeropol about her new film Ask E. Jean, a portrait of advice columnist and writer E. Jean Carroll that goes far beyond the courtroom headlines to explore her Miss Cheerleader USA past, gonzo magazine career, TV show, and late‑in‑life decision to publicly confront Donald Trump. They discuss the challenge of balancing E. Jean’s buoyant, hilarious persona with the gravity of the assault and its lifelong impact, the complicity and constraints of the boys’‑club media world she navigated, and the transformative power of women’s friendship and lawyering embodied by Carroll’s bond with attorney Robbie Kaplan and her close circle of friends. Throughout, Ivy reflects on how E. Jean’s willingness at 75 to reckon with her past, revise her own advice‑giver legacy, and insist on telling the truth offers exhausted audiences something rare in the Trump era: a story that is both deeply sobering and unexpectedly joyful, galvanizing viewers—women and men alike—to see sexual violence, patriarchy, and American democracy as inextricably linked. Get full access to Dream of a Better World at vanessahope.substack.com/subscribe

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Ratings & Reviews

5
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3 Ratings

About

vHopeful Conversations is a video interview series where director Vanessa Hope sits down with bold, visionary filmmakers and authors whose work confronts conflict, power, and injustice while still making space for nuance, empathy, and hope. Each episode offers an intimate, craft‑focused conversation that goes beyond loglines, headlines, and blurbs, inviting listeners into the creative process and the ethical, political, and emotional questions behind urgent films and books. Expect thoughtful, unhurried dialogues that challenge easy narratives, foreground art’s potential to shift public imagination, and leave you with a deeper understanding of both the stories and the world they’re responding to. vanessahope.substack.com

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