SXSW 2024 Interview- Dickweed Director Jonathan Green Talks About How The Stories And People Shaped His Documentary

There is nothing stranger than reality. Countless amazing stories have been written and will be written, and yet none will ever be as bizarre as the stories that are real. The Tiger Kings, the professional tickle leagues, which are a front for something even more weird, and the Dear Johns, who manage to carry out elaborate schemes for ridiculous amounts of time, all make for a captivating watch. Johnathan Green’s Dickweed is poised to be your next bizarre true crime obsession. Ahead of Dickweed’s premier at SXSW 2024, I spoke with Green about talking to a fascinating criminal, finding his stories, and his willingness to go to dark places.

Tracy Palmer- Hi, thanks for taking the time to meet with me. I really appreciate it.

Jonathan Green- Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

TP- Love the film. I requested it based on the title alone. It’s a piece of work right there. I mean, I’m from a generation where we ran around and called each other names like dickweed. Tell me about the story, how it came to you, and why you picked it. I’m just dying to know all of it.

JG- Yeah, I was working with my producer, David Ricksecker, and a couple of other people that we had in our story team at the time and back in 2019. And I think it was David who pitched the story. He’d read it in a Narratively article, and it was just so wild. And so yeah, it really came about just like that. And then we kind of went through our usual next steps. Once we said this is worth pursuing, we started writing letters, especially to [Hossein]Nayeri. And then he wrote me back.

So then I kind of started being a pen pal and eventually doing phone calls with him. Then I got to go down and meet him and kind of, you know, learned a little bit more about him and built rapport with him. And then David and I went and sat in his trial in 2019, for like, four weeks, almost every day, driving down from Pasadena. So we sat in the trial and were part of the media pool. So we were able to record everything. And then we’re off and running.

TP- Tell me about him[Nayeri]. Is he as bizarre and scary as he seems in the documentary?

JG- Um, I don’t find him to be particularly scary. I mean, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been in conversation with him for years, on and off. It’s not like we chat all the time. But I’ve been in conversation with him on and off for five years. His personality, sense of humor, and his, you know, just his, you know, who he is. It is very familiar to me at this point. But, um, yeah, I mean, I think he’s, he’s very intelligent. There’ll
be times we didn’t talk about anything related to the case or whatever. We’d just chat for an hour about books we’re reading and other stuff.

I try to, no matter what somebody’s done, like, I want to relate to them as a person because I want to see the personal side of them in the film. I don’t want to just be about talking about business, so to speak, and talking about the crime and what they’ve done. And, and I didn’t, I didn’t want to come off in a judgmental posture. I obviously have my opinions about the whole thing. But that’s not that useful in a conversation with him. So yeah, I find him to be an interesting human being that I talked to, you know.

TP- I mean, you probably can’t come across too aggressive because he wouldn’t want to talk to you.

JG- No, no, he’s got a, let’s say, he’s got very alpha male energy. And so you have to, you have to kind
of know your lane. But yeah, I did give him shit, though. And part of the reason is, like, it’s a little bit of game respects game where like, because I’m not just this patronizing or pandering media person, like many of the people he’d spoken with. And, you know, because I wasn’t trying to angle the whole time. I was just like, let’s talk about this. Well, why this? Why that? It’s weird, too, because Nayeri’s in the process of appealing, and there are legal frameworks in place. He’s never going to confide in me that he did any of the most heinous crimes now. Obviously, he broke out of prison. That’s not a big mystery. So he can talk at liberty and candidly about that. But, you know, he’s going to maintain for obvious reasons that he was not in the desert.

TP- And not part of the dick removal.

JG- Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And to be clear, he wasn’t convicted of the mutilation or mayhem because
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And to be clear, he wasn’t convicted of the mutilation or mayhem because they couldn’t prove which criminal did it. But because he was there, it doesn’t matter. I mean, he has a double life sentence because that’s the highest penalty for kidnapping. And so that’s what he was technically found guilty of.

TP- I saw Social Animals and Bitconned. I enjoyed both, but they have a very different vibe.

JG- No, I mean, I think Social Animals came about, you know, I was the co-founder and owner of an agency. And we were doing a lot of work with influencers and stuff, we kind of became Instagram experts to a degree. And then that opportunity presented itself in a non-conventional way. I wouldn’t say that I went and sought out that story. Brian directed Bitconned and I loved writing and producing on that.
And then I produced on another one of his films, Pez Outlaw, but Brian always gives me shit because I’m, like, I’m willing to go to a darker place than he is. So yeah, and also, like, you know, the filmmakers I respect the most don’t only work in one genre. And so it was nice, just to, like, do something wildly different than I’d done before. And of where my sensibilities would take it.

TP- How do you decide what parts you’re going to, you know, really expand on and what details
don’t really matter for the purposes of the documentary?

JG- Yeah, I mean, it’s super hard. Because this project was conceived in a number of different ways. And, you know, as filmmaking is obviously very hard to see through and stick with something long enough that it comes to fruition. And, so the feature version was where I started, but in the middle of the journey, we were going to make it a four-part series, and then it came back to being a feature. There’s definitely, I mean, there’s so much that happens.

For instance, the jailbreak we don’t even hardly talk about. The film kind of takes shape in an organic way, where it’s like, well, what storytellers do we have? And which things they can speak about from first-hand experience rather than just opine based on information that they have. They actually have personal stakes in it. And then that kind of dictates what you can expound on and what you’re going to contract in terms of the different parts of the story.

And, you know, we were under a difficult challenge with the interview with Nayeri, which is in the film. We only got that two weeks before we had the picture locked. I’ve been working on that interview for five years, and I only got him to agree to do it that late in the game. I had already made the film, the version of the film that wasn’t going to have him at all. And so, you know, it’s just the kind of challenge of documentary filmmaking because, you know, you are not paying an actor to show up on time. You’re kind of at the whim of who’s going to actually talk to you. And so all that to say, you have to kill many darlings, and you keep remaking the film.

I had great editors, Peter Garriott and Connor Davis. They, like, really helped shape what they thought was interesting. They understood my sensibility. And they’re like, well, I think we should lean into this because this is weird and funny. And I think this part of the film needs that after this part, which is not funny, you know. So I think the three of us and David[Ricksecker], who was the producer and writer on it, we all kind of were speaking the same language in terms of the kind of film we wanted to make or what the tone would be. Once we were in lockstep, people could just bring different ideas to the table. And then we kind of found the film and the process of making it.

TP- Who else would agree to talk to you because you obviously have actors playing most, if not all, of your characters? And Michael is in shadows. And I don’t know if that’s even real Michael or an actor playing Mike. Who agreed to talk to you, and would they have been on camera, or you just elected to go with a professional cast?

JG- Well, yeah, I mean, all the interviews are the real people. And so they all, you know, they all talk to us. I mean, Michael, I met at the trial in 2019. And I approached him and told him that I was, you know, developing a project around this and so forth. And he promptly handed me over to his attorney, and so we stayed in touch. But we were very grateful when we reached back out last year. He remembered us, and we kind of let things settle. He wasn’t ready to do anything on camera or otherwise, understandably, back then.

And so even though this is a project that has been around for a while, time actually worked in our favor because I think he had enough distance from the events and the trial that he was kind of ready to tell his story. And he’s gracious enough to do that. The same with Mary, you know, the other victim that was kidnapped. And so I mean, again, I’m always going after the storytellers that have emotional and personal stakes that were first-hand accounts of what happened.

We could never get to Kyle[Handley]. Another criminal, Ryan Kevorkian, who we spoke with in prison, is now out of prison, but we were never able to get a camera interview with him. So we really, you know, we really allowed Detective Peters to be our main storyteller and kind of leaned into the hardboiled, like, Neo-noir kind of crime story.

TP- This[Dickweed] could be a horror movie you’re watching, it could be a Netflix documentary, or it could be some cool Neo-noir. You know, a Sam Spade type of situation, and that is really cool. It keeps the viewer on their toes. I was fascinated the whole time. And I kind of didn’t expect to be so engaged.

JG- I mean, it’s great to hear you’re literally like the second person I’ve talked to who has seen the
film that didn’t have any context. So it’s great to hear that because I’m like, are the people going to be into this or not?

TP- They’re going to love it. It’s like Tiger King, kind of. Yes. It’s so bizarre. I mean, it’s just so weird. God, it’s weird. It’s super weird. So, do you like doing these kinds of weirder documentaries? Do you stick with reaching for these strange ones?

JG- I mean, strange is always good. I mean, I’m just interested in the human experience and all of its varied colors. I think crime is interesting because it’s like the human experience in a pressure cooker, where you get to see people on the brink of crossing over. I’m actually not interested in that kind of serial killer-type stories where somebody’s just so far gone. I’m much more interested in the person who marches all the way up to the line and then decides to step over it. Because I think that’s more relatable. I think it fits within the kind of, you know, tragedy tradition that is interesting to me. So, I mean, I wouldn’t say weird and perverse is necessarily my bag, but I think I’m definitely interested in seeing people cross the line that they didn’t think they were going to cross.

TP- Very interesting. One last question: What’s next for you? What have you got cookin’?

JG- We have two different True Crime docs that are kind of in different stages of development. One’s called lottery to robbery. That’s basically a True Crime/Comedy, and the tone is like Pez Outlaw. It’s about a guy who wins 90 million dollars, blows it all, and starts robbing banks. And then, and then I have something much more tonally dark about a murder that took place in my home state of Kansas. I’m looking at a story, and then I have two screenplays scripted films that I’m starting to shop around that are both crime-related as well. Oh, and probably a podcast that extends Nayeri’s story because I have like an 11-hour interview with him, and I used about 12 minutes in the movie. So I really want to expound on the more complicated, nuanced emotional layers to him.

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