Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley have every discovered success making documentaries concerning the pantheon of comedy legends, from Gilbert Gottfried to Mel Brooks. Now, they’ve teamed as much as doc one other nice performer in “Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story,” which premiered on the 2026 Sundance Movie Competition.
Apatow and Berkeley have been joined by Bamford herself within the IndieWire Studio, offered by Dropbox, to debate the method of assembling a movie about her multifaceted profession.
“Her act has at all times been so fascinating,” Apatow mentioned of Bamford. “She tells so many unimaginable tales about issues she’s gone via in her life that are actually creative and hilarious, but in addition give individuals loads of hope. I simply at all times thought, ‘I feel all this must be in a single place, to get the entire story.’ All through her profession she has all these specials and he or she tells a bit of it as she’s going via it. That was the primary thought, what in case you may hear the entire story via her stand-up in a documentary.”
Berkeley defined that, whenever you’re working with an artist that’s as prolific as Bamford, one of many largest challenges is discovering a method to inform a aspect of her story that she hasn’t already advised herself.
“It was simply attempting to determine what the story was. Maria has advised her story so many instances in so many various methods, it’s like ‘How are we bringing one thing new to that?’ That was at all times an enormous problem,” Berkeley mentioned. “I’d go shoot some stuff, I’d present it to Judd, we’d undergo the archive and simply piece the story collectively as we went.”
In the beginning of the movie, Bamford isn’t positive if she needs to take part within the documentary in any respect. She ultimately got here round, in fact, and he or she had a predictably humorous reply concerning the largest distinction between making a documentary and different types of artwork.
“Different persons are doing many of the work!,” she mentioned with fun, earlier than sincerely including that “it’s pretty to have someone take curiosity in your life and your work.”
Watch the whole dialog with the “Paralyzed by Hope” workforce above.
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