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EXCLUSIVE: ‘Am I Racist?’ Director Talks Race Hustlers, Ridicule, And Conservatives In Media
The following is an edited transcript of an interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and Justin Folk, director of the hit comedic documentary “Am I Racist?“on a special Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.
The Daily Wire’s new Matt Walsh-starring comedy “Am I Racist?” is now the most successful documentary to hit theaters in a decade — despite major headwinds from legacy media and a hostile Hollywood. We sat down with the director, Justin Folk, to discuss his film’s box office run, its launch on Daily Wire+, and why getting conservative content in theaters is now more crucial than ever.
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JOHN: Joining us to discuss the box office run of the Matt Walsh comedy “Am I Racist?” is its director Justin Folk. Justin, great to have you on the show.
JUSTIN: Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s good to be on with you guys. Listen to you guys a lot, actually.
JOHN: We love to hear that. Look, you directed the Daily Wire’s first big documentary hit, “What Is A Woman?” This film is sort of a sequel in some ways, but it’s also very different on many levels – that includes this time you took your film to theaters. That’s a major risk, but it appears to have paid off here. First, how much has the film brought in from theaters at this point?
JUSTIN: Well, we’ve passed the $12 million mark at the box office, which is very, very exciting and actually quite historic for a documentary. I believe we’re the top documentary of the decade. And to achieve that sort of level of success in the theaters out of the gate for The Daily Wire, I think, was a big achievement and I’m really proud of it. I know the team is proud of it. Ultimately, there were a lot of people involved in that effort. But at the base of it all, we had to make a good film for that to happen. You mentioned that this film is different than “What is a Woman?,” and that’s by design. We didn’t want to come out with a half-hearted sophomore effort, and we knew we had to do something different. We knew we had to kind of go bigger. “What is a Woman?” is a little bit more of a straightforward documentary. This one is much more of a comedy and we felt like the issue of race demanded a different approach. With what we’re seeing with all the race hustlers and the people who are dividing us as a society, we just felt like ridicule would be one of the best tools we could use when making this film.
JOHN: Right. Speaking of ridicule, describing the film was actually a bit of a struggle sometimes for people. Some called it a “mockumentary,” which is not actually correct, but it did include a lot of mocking of things, as you said. If you could sum up the approach to this film, what were you trying to attain?
JUSTIN: Well, first of all, let’s start with the category. It would officially be categorized as a comedic documentary, which isn’t a very sexy term. I don’t think those two things usually go together. So I think it’s hard for people to kind of understand what this is. But it’s comedic and so there’s a lot of laughs, there’s a lot of jokes in there, but it’s a documentary, too, because these are very real situations that we put Matt Walsh in and we wanted things to play out with real people. So that approach was something we basically started with. We knew the success of “What Is Woman?” was achieved by allowing people to kind of talk, to say what they really feel about things, and that was very eye-opening for Americans. In terms of race, same thing here, we wanted these people pushing this race agenda to just say in their own words what they felt and what they wanted for the rest of us as Americans. We felt that would be powerful for Americans just to see and then to decide for themselves if this is the right path. The approach involved taking Matt, dropping him into the situation with these people, and essentially having Matt believe them, then chart the course based on all of their prescriptions. And that’s what Matt did. He basically became one of them, and in doing so, I think we revealed the ideology underneath and what’s behind it all. When Matt adopted this character as an anti-racist grifter himself, you got to see what’s behind it philosophically and what it all leads to. And that was our goal, to have Matt become one of them, essentially.
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JOHN: You know, it strikes me that this the “Yes, and…” approach that you learn in improv – the entire film is Matt performing a “Yes, and…” which really opens the door for letting some of these DEI “experts” go deeper into their ideology than they normally would if you started to question their approach. And it clearly worked here. Did you expect this kind of reception in theaters, this degree of success?
JUSTIN: You know, I was hoping for this level of success, this reception. The thing that surprised me was how consistent the response was in terms of being positive and in terms of people understanding the humor. If I had a fear, it was that we were making a film that only the demographic males 25 to 55 would really enjoy, but the rest — women and older people — it would maybe just kind of go over their head. But that hasn’t been the case. I had the fortunate ability to go to some of these pre-screenings before the film came out, and I got to watch the audience react to a lot of the jokes and a lot of the things that were in the film. And it was universal. It was across the board, the reaction that we got from people in the audience – whether they were young or old or male or female. And that just gave me a big sense of pride that we made something that everybody can enjoy. Now some people think some jokes are funnier than others, and some people really love some moments in the film compared to others. But really it was, as a filmmaker, you try to make something that would be universally accepted and liked, and that was just great confirmation for what we did.
JOHN: Now one of the controversies for the film early on involved critic reviews. This film has gotten outstanding audience reviews from the start, but was shunned by major media critics. Where did the critic reviews stand at this point? Did you get some of the legacy critics to actually weigh in?
JUSTIN: We had a couple mainstream critics eventually limp in with a review. And I think they did that because they were sort of called out for, for ignoring this film. Initially they were staying away from it. We have our theory why they were staying away from it, and that involves the fact that it was a good film – and I don’t think they wanted to give Matt Walsh that platform. We did have a lot of, I guess, mid-tier critics review the film, and it was very, very well-accepted by them. And these are people with no ax to grind. These are people who don’t work for a major media entity, and they were just quite honest with their review and they just were like, “Wow, this is a very, very powerful and very funny film.” Some of them even got backlash for doing so. We can kind of understand why some of these mainstream critics ignored it because we knew they would actually face a lot of backlash.
Screenshot courtesy: DailyWire.
JOHN: Yeah. At what stage did you begin to plan for a theater launch? Was this the plan all along or did this sort of become more concrete later on?
JUSTIN: Listen, there’s a lot of risk involved in going to the theater, and there are a lot of things that need to fall into place. And I’ve got to give credit to The Daily Wire team. I’ve got to give credit to Jeremy Boreing for navigating all that – Jon Lewis, Dave Coleman and the whole team. First of all, we had to convince theaters to take us. We had to convince the exhibitors themselves that this is something that they would want to have in their theaters and would actually do good business. And so there was a lot of hurdles along the way, and, meticulously, Daily Wire got over all those hurdles, and positioned this film in such a way that the exhibitors would take it. Also all the marketing that took place, there’s just so much involved in going to the theater. There’s a ton of risk, and that risk is something you definitely have to consider when launching into this. But I’m glad we did. I think we proved what we set out to do. And I just feel very fortunate that we were able to have people see this in theaters, where they could sit together in a group and laugh.
JOHN: About that, how significant is it for conservatives in particular to get content into theaters like this?
JUSTIN: As conservatives, we have to play on the battlefield that the rest of society plays on. We have a tendency to kind of shrink back into our silos and speak to only our people. And, listen, as conservatives, we have the best ideas, we have the winning ideas, and those ideas need to be played out on the main stage. And in the case of theaters, theaters are a main stage. Theaters are a place where a lot of people go for their entertainment. These are people, some of them, that aren’t really engaged in politics. These are people that have busy lives and don’t pay attention too much to a lot of the issues. And so we need to reach those people. And so, we need to perform the way the Left does when it comes to getting our ideas out there to the mainstream, and theaters is one way we can do that. And so, listen, not every conservative film is meant for the theaters. Different films have different purposes. In our case, we really went hard. We kind of went hard to the paint with the fact that we wanted to make this an entertaining movie first, and then have our ideas tucked in alongside. And, you know, that makes our film very palatable for a movie theater environment. But, listen, I think it’s very important that conservatives take some of that ground back from the Left and have our ideas play out on the main stage.
JOHN: Yeah, and seeing this reach over 1,600 theaters was a massive deal, just almost symbolically. The film is now going to be available on demand exclusively on the Daily Wire+ platform. In general, do theater runs help or hurt streaming performance in the industry?
JUSTIN: Theater runs. are extremely helpful. In fact, a lot of distributors refer to theatrical releases as a big marketing campaign. And I think that’s the truth here because it allows you to get your film out there in the public in a way that you wouldn’t normally have it out there. And so the theatrical release of “Am I Racist?” I think is only going to help really raise awareness with the general public, and then point those people back to Daily Wire+ to go watch it, if they didn’t get a chance to see it in theaters. And so, yeah, I think the theatrical release is really going to help this film. I think it’s going to really drive a lot of attention to it for the home entertainment platform and the Daily Wire+ platform. I’m excited about that because a lot of people didn’t get a chance to see it. People have busy lives, but at least they heard about it. And now they can go watch it on Daily Wire+. the good news there is they can watch as many times as they want, it’s not a one time viewing. And I do recommend that with this particular film. This is the type of film that you’re going to want to watch a couple of times just to catch all the great performances that Matt has throughout.
DailyWire+
JOHN: Yeah, I found that myself, there’s so many little details that you miss the first time around. For you personally, this is a unique film. It’s unorthodox in many ways. As a filmmaker, what did you learn in the making of this particular film?
JUSTIN: There’s a lot I learned in making any film, and it seems like every time we go out and do something we’re endeavoring to do something very difficult, and we’re diving into a topic. And when you dive into a topic, you have to sort of live it while you’re making it – and in this case, it was even more so, because Matt had to live this character, and so we had to essentially think like the other side. Matt had to adopt their beliefs and let them play out. So I learned a lot about the topic itself. I also learned a lot about America and how we view the issue of race, and how there are actually way more people who think rationally about this issue than I think we realize. It’s just that they’ve been taken advantage of. They’ve been polite. I think these people who are pushing this DEI agenda have taken advantage of so many people in this country who don’t want to be mean, who don’t want to be called a bigot. And so one of the things I learned was actually a hopeful thing, which was most people don’t go along with this stuff. They don’t go along with this racial division. That was sort of a hopeful thing I learned along the way. We found that common, everyday people don’t really buy what’s being sold by these so-called “race experts.” And so that was a very uplifting realization for me.
JOHN: Some of the more powerful moments in the film came from just regular folks dismissing the racially divisive talking points. Final question, what’s next for you? Any plans to work further with Walsh or any other Daily Wire talent? Can you answer this question?
JUSTIN: Absolutely. I mean, I can say that we are working on stuff and it’s been a pleasure to work with Matt on these last two films. We have such a great team. It’s a small, tight knit team of just great professionals who are just the best at what they do. And I’ll be honest with you, it’s a lot of fun making these movies with Matt. It’s not always easy, it’s a challenging thing to do what we’ve been doing, but it has been a ton of fun and we would love to keep that going.
JOHN: Well, we hope you do. Justin, thank you so much for talking with us. It’s been a pleasure.
JUSTIN: Thanks, John. Great to be on.
JOHN: That was Justin Folk, director of “Am I Racist?” available starting this week exclusively on Daily Wire+ – and this has been a Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.
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