Five Questions with Seth Porges
Michael Melamedoff’s longtime collaborator and friend, Seth Porges, recently directed “How to Rob a Bank” available now on Netflix. It’s one of Michael’s favorite true crime films in recent memory, so naturally he was eager to talk to Seth about what he’s been doing in the documentary space, how the ‘80s and ‘90s influence his work, and how chatting in a bathroom line helps a film get made.
This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
MICHAEL MELAMEDOFF: Seth thanks so much for being here today. I’m really excited to talk to you.
SETH PORGES: Absolutely – great to be here!
MELAMEDOFF: “How to Rob a Bank” is a true crime documentary that is centered around Scott Scurlock, a free spirit who wants to live by his own rules. By the end of your film it becomes pretty clear – I don’t wanna spoil anything – but he betrays, in a lot of ways, his own ideals.
So many true crime films are about terrible people doing terrible things, but to me your film felt really invested in the humanity of your characters. When you set out to make the doc, how much did you think of it as a heist film versus a character study?
PORGES: It was always about both. The problem I’ve seen with a lot of true crime films is they don’t bother to make you understand the criminal. They kind of use that dun dun dun music and say crime doesn’t pay, and go full 1950s “Dragnet.” And that’s not interesting. What makes these stories interesting is understanding: How does a normal person end up doing this? The people who commit these crimes are born with the same DNA, the same chromosomes, the same everything that we are. Something happened that turned them into criminals. And we’re dismissive of criminals as being monsters or “others” in some way. I think we do a really big disservice to ourselves. I think it allows people to be dismissive of the tendencies that exist within all of us to do these sorts of things, rather than to confront them.
What made this story so compelling and sticky to me – something that I just couldn’t stop thinking about – was sort of the mystery of who this guy was. I mean, he was a guy who basically watched a bunch of action and heist movies and said, That looks like fun. I’m gonna do that. I think he bought into the very romantic portrayal of this lifestyle – the criminal life of the bank robber that you see in movies like “Point Break” – but was not able to put together what would happen if you actually did do these things in real life.
MELAMEDOFF: Your movie really beautifully interweaves these very intimate home video sequences of Scott with these alternately cinematic and terrifying recreations of Scott pulling off these heists – in a lot of ways feeling inspired by “Point Break,” the Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze heist classic. I'm curious how you thought about those alternating sequences and interweaving that footage to tell the full story of Scott.
PORGES: We really looked to every visual element in our tool kit to bring this story to life. As you mentioned, the film has ample home movies, we have Scott’s actual diaries, and we used animations in the style of a Hollywood storyboard which cinematically makes sense for the film. As the film goes on, they bleed into these live action recreations of the heist scenes. That was a very big collaborative effort – understanding the logic and how you sort of jump between these things without feeling random. I give a lot of credit to our production partners and to my producer Max who were really instrumental in cracking this code.
We had these animations as Hollywood storyboards because basically everybody in the film told us they felt like they were living out a Hollywood movie. As the story progresses and as shit gets real, the animations – the storyboards – bleed into sort of glimpses of the movie they all imagine themselves to be living in until reality itself is all that is left. I think if you’re watching the film – maybe you don’t piece it all together exactly like that – but I think on an emotional level you sort of get it and it works.
MELAMEDOFF: Speaking of “Point Break”... “How to Rob a Bank” and your last feature “Class Action Park” really elevate off of pop culture to tell these stories that are really funny, but also in unexpected ways are surprisingly serious. “Class Action Park” is this incredible time capsule surrounding the deregulation and capitalism-forward ideas that peaked in the 80s, told through the lens of a notorious waterpark. “How to Rob a Bank” is a window into the solidification of anti-establishment ideas that we really saw come into our consciousness at the end of the last century. Why do you love using pop culture as this kind of Trojan Horse? “How to Rob a Bank” isn’t just a nod to “Point Break.” It’s a nod to “Fight Club” and the Seattle grunge scene and the emergence of Starbucks and Big Tech in Seattle – it’s really this incredible time capsule, but it’s driven by pop culture. I’m curious how you think about it?
PORGES: I think I’m obsessed with stories that really bring to life this duality where you simultaneously find them horrifying but also are like, That’s kind of cool I get it, I would do that. “Class Action Park” is about this incredibly dangerous amusement park that hurt – and in some cases killed – a bunch of kids. But when you watch the movie, a lot of people would be like, I’d go there tomorrow. And to me, what becomes really interesting is how those two feelings coexist.
Pop culture references are a shortcut towards understanding the romanticism and appeal of all of these stories. “Class Action Park” was about taking this romantic ideal of the 1980s “kids going on adventures” movies – basically all of the things that influenced “Stranger Things”: your Goonies, your Meatballs, your Monster Squad – all those things which you look back on with this kind of hazy fuzz and nostalgia and go, Things were great back then. But were they? Like that had a death count to it. Was it great? Similarly, “How to Rob a Bank” was this guy who would watch movies like “Point Break” and say, Wow that’s awesome and that’s fun. You can take on a system, these banks are insured, you live this incredible carefree lifestyle, and nobody’s actually getting hurt. But is it actually great? What’s underneath the romanticism of Patrick Swayze spouting out these fortune cookie mottos to Keanu Reeves?
I think pop culture is a shortcut to our shared emotional engagement with these ideas and ideals that allows you to sort of subvert them, and in doing so allows you to be a little bit introspective. The viewer themselves becomes a character when they think about their own relationship with these stories and these ideas.
MELAMEDOFF: I saw your last two films as really defining windows into the ‘80s and the ‘90s. Is there another era that you’re dying to take on? Is there a very defining story that you wanna tell from the 70s or the early 2000s? It feels like you’re very concerned with stories within our lifetime.
PORGES: Yeah, you know it’s funny – I would say “Class Action Park” is like my ‘80s “kids going on adventures” coming of age movie. “How to Rob a Bank” is my ‘90s action-heist like a Michael Mann, Kathryn Bigelow movie… What’s my 2000s movie? I don’t think I really have a 2000s movie. The ‘80s and ‘90s were my childhood, and I think there’s something about my own personal, emotional, intellectual engagement and introspection with these eras. They’re also eras that I think really offer this very strange near-past ability to sort of recontextualize both pop culture and also our own shared childhood experiences.
I think one of the reasons “Class Action Park” hit was that a lot of people watched it and said, Even if I didn’t go to this specific park or grew up in this area, I did my own similar, stupid things as a kid and I understand and I relate and this speaks to me. And I think with “How to Rob a Bank” similarly – even if you’ve never robbed a bank, even if you’re not from the Seattle area, even if you’ve never heard of the story – I think we all had anger at the system or the strange romantic allure of robbing a bank instead of putting on a stupid tie and commuting to work every day. Right? I think there’s just a shared fantasy that people who grow up in these decades all sort of had, and I’m obsessed with that. But I think that nostalgia is dangerous, is the truth. And I think if we don’t bother to really unpack what it is that we’re drawn to about the past, we risk repeating the same mistakes.
MELAMEDOFF: Speaking of the more recent past, and our final question… You and I have been working together now for almost seven years, and one of things that makes me really happy is I remember sitting in an office with you talking about “Class Action Park” in 2017/2018. I remember very, very early sketches of the movie that was going to become “How to Rob a Bank.” I’m impressed to the degree with which you stuck with both of these ideas. We work in an industry where so many of the conversations we have lead to no, so I’m curious about these projects that were multi-year processes, and multi-year processes that yielded really I think terrific successes. What is your secret to sticking with it?
PORGES: You know, if I’m gonna make a movie, it better be about something I’m obsessed with. It better be about a topic that even if it never gets made, I still feel excited about researching it. By the time I’m actually rolling on a movie, that movie is so deeply sketched out in my head just from me talking about it to people – overwhelming my friends with the same story again and again at bars or at meetings or whatever! I feel like if you can enthrall somebody for 20 minutes in the bathroom line at a party, you’re halfway towards making a good movie. If I’m not sick of the story after four or five years, I feel like that story must be able to hold somebody else’s engagement for a 90-minute film. I just have confidence in that, you know? It doesn’t mean every idea I have will make it to the finish line, but that’s OK because I feel like there’s real value in salving my own curiosity. That’s what has driven me through a lot of these projects – not necessarily just the goal of getting a movie made, but the real true deep curiosity of understanding what the hell happened with the story.
I think I’m often drawn to stories that haven’t been fully reported or told before because of the thrill of discovery that comes from reporting these things, meeting these people, and finding out the truth. Both “Class Action Park” and “How to Rob a Bank” – especially “How to Rob a Bank” – were stories that really hadn’t been told in any format. Ever. The thrill of unpacking that, of uncovering the truth, is the real reward to me. To quote “Heat”: The action IS the juice.
MELAMEDOFF: It was great catching up with you today. I love your movies. I hope everybody checks out “How to Rob a Bank" on Netflix and if they haven’t seen it yet, “Class Action Park” on Max. I can’t wait to see what you do next.
PORGES: Thanks, I appreciate it!
Photo of Seth Porges courtesy of Nick Morgulis.
