The Truth In This Art: Stories That Matter

Rob Lee: Welcome to The Truth In Its Art, your source for conversations connecting arts, culture, and community. These are stories that matter, and I am your host Rob Lee. Today I am thrilled to welcome my next guest onto the podcast, a Los Angeles based filmmaker, editor, story analyst, and writer, who's drawn to complicated characters and stories that test our empathy.

He wrote, directed, and edited his first feature, American Stream, which is a part of the Maryland Film Festival for 2026. So please welcome to the podcast Chandler Chavez. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Thank you for coming on.

Thank you for making the time. And I'd like to start off with this introductory question. We get these really cool like artist statements and bios. And in the world of chat GPT now, I like to just have people say it in their own words, that personal touch. So if you will, could you introduce yourself in your own words? Sure.

Chandler Chavez: I mean, my name is Chandler. As we said, I'm a filmmaker originally from Arizona, but now based in Los Angeles. And that's pretty much it. I've only made one movie. I'm trying to get more made. But aside from that, you know, I hang on the cinephile and the gamer. I like to read like a jog. I have three cats. That's that's it. That's my entire life in a nutshell.

Rob Lee: I like it. I like it. And I read something in there to add a little bit more texture to this that I read that you wanted to make your first movie by 30. I. Yes, I did. And you came to your right. But that goal at around 20. So all right, overachiever. That's a thing. Oh, God, no.

Chandler Chavez: So it was I. It was a self-imposed goal when I turned 20. I wanted to make a movie by the time I was 30. This is back when I was in film school and it was just one of those things where, you know, you got to film school and you have a very specific idea of how you make a movie, which is you graduate, you go get some internship somewhere, you know, work your way up and then hopefully someone will give you the keys to, you know, or the keys of the castle and let you make your own movie.

I learned by about like 22, 23 that it wasn't going to happen that way. Just because a number of things, but mainly the changing landscape of independent film. So I did impose this like goal on myself that I needed to make one by the time I was 30. Because it's a lot easier to make a movie if you've made a movie before.

So I just wanted to make something, you know, however cheap it was going to be, whatever idea we had. So thankfully we started shooting this movie when I was around 26. Wrote the script when I was 25, shot when I was 26. The process of making it took four years. And the I'm not kidding when I say I finished the final cut like three days before I turned 30. So buzzer beater, buzzer beater of a life goal, but I did it.

Rob Lee: And that's, and that's great. I like that you teased it or what have you. We're definitely going to talk about your film, American Stream before before too long. But one of the things in that I think that shows up in the film, but also that thing applies to perhaps your story there.

And what I hear from artists all the time is this notion of a delusional belief in oneself. And same in that I've been podcasting 17 years. I am 41 and I got this sort of thing of like, well, at 30, you know, I'm going to do this. And 10 years in, I'm going to do this and just having these sort of goals, these stretches. How does delusion work for you as an artist, as a creator?

Because you do a lot of stuff like you kind of undersold yourself a little bit there and at intro. But talk about delusion a little bit as a tool to propel you.

Chandler Chavez: As delusion is a tool to propel. Well, it's interesting because I don't necessarily, I think that the key to escaping delusion for me personally is just not even thinking about it. It's one of the things where I can't even really think about like the process. I look at it now, the movie, now that it's finished and understanding that it's a four year process. And I look at it and just completely disassociate. I'm like, I don't remember sitting there shooting it, writing it, editing it, tweaking it for four years.

It's just like its own thing to me now. And I do think that this trap that a lot of people fall into is just if you face the goal, the objective head on and you really think, sit down. If I were to, if you were to tell me like five or six years ago, how long this is going to take and all the annoying little steps I'd have to do. If you told me how much like time I'd be spending in illustrator making Twitch chat, I never would have done it. The key is to just not think about it. You just go into it. And to be delusional, you have to like kind of understand what you're getting into. And I think it's just better to just go ahead first.

If I was a little more logical and thought about it, I would definitely be delusional. But I think it's just one of those things when I'm like, yeah, I'll make a movie. How hard could making a movie be? It's like, what? Camera a few friends, but it's not until you're done.

Rob Lee: Yeah. No, I think that's, I think that's a good point. Like, if you're saying this is your, your, your first feature. So having, you know, experience to play with, but making sure you're getting your, your first like feature film done, you're just kind of going in.

As you were, you were touching on just kind of like, I'm just going to do this and we'll, we'll see where it goes. And I think there's a bit of maybe delusion that plays a role in that in the sort of positive sense. I think often when we look at delusion, we look at it as you have, you're out of touch with reality. It's like, yes, and I'm going to get this done.

Chandler Chavez: Well, that's the thing about, you know, just directing a movie in general is that the job of director is just to get everybody as delusional as you. Because I think, I think another huge thing they learned in the onset of making this is that I just assumed that whenever you are, you become a director and you know, you get all these people behind you, they're all going to be just as excited as you. And they're going to see it the same way as you do.

And we're all giving the same team. And I think no matter what level you are, half of the job is just convincing these people that have, you know, gone into battle with you that it's going to turn out all right and to just trust you. I even had people who worked with me on this for like four years who didn't see the movie until we screened it for the first time at like a local festival that were literally just like they would see. And like, I had, I don't even, this isn't the thing that we made. Like, I don't know how you made this work. I don't know how any of this works, but you're never going to like fully get people on board until the final product is done. But if you can just like fake it, you know, just at least make them think that you haven't under control or know what you're doing. I think that's a big part of it, unfortunately.

Rob Lee: I like it. It instills, it instills confidence. Like, when I do this, I'm like, look, come on, I'm just going to ask you some questions. Take this, take the trip with me, ride with me. I don't know. Is that question makes sense? And then people are sharing their life story. Gotcha.

Chandler Chavez: Things in general, though, I think the big thing I always think about is, you know, when you're, you're a kid, you told you could do anything. And I think what really shattered that belief is not even necessarily getting into film school and realizing how difficult that would be. I remember there was a brief period when I was in college where I thought, maybe I'll be a librarian. Do you know how hard it is to be a librarian?

Do you know how competitive that job market is? You have to know the, obviously you have to know the Dewey Decimal system, but you also have to like essentially intern at a library forever. And then when you eventually become librarian, they're only going to consider if you have like a doctorate that already throws you like 100,000 in debt. And then when you finally get that position, it doesn't really pay that much. So when I realized that something as simple as being a librarian was this, it's just a fissian task. I'm like, well, if everything sucks, I might as well try suffer doing the thing I want to do. Yeah.

Rob Lee: You know, I had, I had beliefs when I was younger. Like I have a data analyst background. That's what I do for work and a day job. But I had beliefs when I was younger that I was going to be an astronaut engineer with a background in robotics.

And to your thing about how much, how much like education and work and stuff goes into that. And then it started to trim down. And I think when I was in high school, I started listening to and watching talks that Kevin Smith was doing. And I was like, I want to do that. And, you know, sort of the going to film school and all of that stuff. And then dropping out of film school and being a podcaster. I kind of robbed that being a podcaster of my own way, I suppose.

But still, Kevin Smith is a piece of, he's one of the reasons I started podcasting, frankly. And so, you know, I just, just something about that. Once you get a taste of what it is to get into the thing that you're curious about, you're like, why not? Let's just give it a shot.

Chandler Chavez: Well, hey, look at it now. No one wants to go to the moon anymore, but there's going to be a clerks for by the end of the decade. Just you wait. I know he died in the last one, but they're going to bring him back somehow. I don't know.

Rob Lee: That's really for you. A little bit. That's really funny. So enough about other folks's movies. Let's talk about your film. You know, could you give us sort of the quick, you know, picture what that, what your film is? And I want to like bury the lead a little bit to let you do most of the talking in that area. And then I have some questions I want to pepper in, but the floor is yours. Could you describe your film to us? Sure.

Chandler Chavez: It's, it's called American Stream. It is a dark comedy screen life movie, meaning that it takes place entirely on computer screen. It is specifically about Twitch streaming and that hell scape is a very, very low budget movie that we made for, I guess I technically can't say how much we made it for.

I've been told not to say because I think that affects our distribution chances, but just know that it's very little, very little, a perfectly attainable amount of money this movie was made for. But yeah, it's just like a movie about the, I don't want to say the rise and fall. It's more like the fall and then fall again of a Twitch streamer. It plays out in a series of streams that take place in real time with a Twitch chat that propels the story. That's basically it. The long and short of it.

Rob Lee: Thank you. And if you will, what motivated the theme and sort of why now? I have my own takes on it as a person like observing and being a non-streamer and, you know, but sort of doing this and I see a correlation between sort of how streamers grow and how podcasters grow and all of that. But what motivated the theme and why now? Well, why in the last four years?

Chandler Chavez: Well, it started out, the main idea came from a place of practicality where I was telling you before I wanted to make a movie, but you know, there's so little you can do with like the amount of money we had.

And I think I just remember at a certain point, it was around 2020. I was, I had COVID or at least I thought I had COVID. I was locked in a room for two weeks. I was living at home.

So I isolated myself to not get my family sick. And in those two weeks, I just watched a lot of Twitch streams with which I don't usually do. Believe it or not, not like a huge stream person. Like I find the culture interesting, obviously, but I'm not like one of those guys that would, you know, watch these for hours on end.

But for that two week period, I was. And I think there's just a, I came up with the idea where I'm like, oh, you could easily make a movie out of this. Because the resources I have is just me, my friends, very, very cheap cameras in like a few rooms.

You can make a whole movie out of that. And as far as like, it started there with the practicality. And then I went to a bunch of, you know, I watched a bunch of streams and documentaries about streaming that kind of gave me ideas for the story. But it wasn't until recently that I think I really understood what it was about or like what I gravitated towards. Because it was pointed out to me recently that this is, in a lot of ways, a movie about independent filmmaking, where you have nothing but a camera and a dream. You're doing this all on your own, very low budget for no money, no recognition, nothing. But there's something that compels you to do it because you just want to do something.

Right. Now, obviously, I'm a little different from this guy, a lot different from this guy. But the more and more distance I get from it, the more and more I realize like, oh, there, even if I wasn't conscious of what I was doing, I was definitely working out some of the concerns. Because it was mainly about, you know, being 20 something and wanting desperately to make a movie and having no means to do so. And I think, you know, it kind of reflects that a little bit.

Rob Lee: So when you're working through the film, you touched on it earlier, the notion of being able to make something with your friends. And that's one of the things I got into podcasting for, actually.

It's like, oh, I get to just hang out with my friends, shoot the breeze, and that's kind of cool. And, you know, at times when it got to, hey, can you write those show notes? Can you be the person that runs the show? Oh, no, we were having fun.

It was fun when I was doing it, but you just showed up. So talk to me a bit about sort of perhaps working with friends or working with a crew that you were, you know, familiar with in developing and in producing this film.

Chandler Chavez: Again, just with everything else, it starts with practicality. Because I'm like, you know, I bet I can convince my friends to do this for no money. There's a lot of them did. But there was some more, some more heavy lifting roles needed to be paid. But it was just, you know, I've been making shorts with these people for years at that point. And we all, I think we all just wanted to make the jump and make something bigger.

And it was, it made it an incredibly comfortable environment because I had been on like films that's before or like TV sets before, where you feel this sense of hierarchy. You know, you know that you're at the bottom of the totem pole and you don't want to speak your mind. You don't want to make any decisions.

You just kind of want to, you know, keep your head down and hopefully be able to move up. But because we were all friends, we'd all done this before. No one's helped that.

Right. You know, I, there were many days where I went and got the coffee or got the lunch orders and people would give you their two cents on a scene or have, you know, I took all creative input from everywhere. I think it's just a better environment to work in because you just, you know, you're, you're, there's comfort. There's honesty, there's communication. And again, they didn't get paid that much. He didn't mind.

Rob Lee: So was there in speaking of it and thinking through it, because, you know, there's a lot of things that are honestly not getting made. So budgets are really small and folks are getting very creative with how they're making stuff, but still with that desire of getting something made.

And I would imagine that you looked at certain filmmakers, whether it be how they approach film, how they approach funding, how they approach it, maybe even the sets. Because I see some posters and stuff in the background in your space here.

Chandler Chavez: You know, you said you're a little bomb. Actually, my, well, a lot of these are my roommates posters, which I do love. My posters are hanging right above me right here. But yes, I mean, as far as like the film making influences go, I think a big, the two huge things that I think really propelled this story and like, you know, how I went about thinking about it was one, there's this documentary that I watched on YouTube. This is YouTube channel called Down the Rabbit Hole. They did a two hour documentary on the Twitch streamer slash YouTuber, Wings of Redemption, which the entire thing is like a two hour documentary that just takes clips from his real time on YouTube. Because he started as like a YouTuber back in like the late 2000s and then eventually transitioned into Twitch streaming. And the entire movie is just made up of real clips that you could take from his YouTube channel.

That sort of just does clip speaking on their own provide like the sort of rise and fall arc because you see his initial success in YouTube. The fame gets to his head. He starts making some questionable decisions in his personal life that sort of like leaks into his content. And then there's just the documentary culminates in this moment where he just has this breakdown on stream.

It's one of the most heart wrenching things you'll ever see. But that's sort of what informed the structure. I'm like, OK, we can take we can make a bunch of these Twitch streams, make it seem like it's evolving over time. The the camera lighting and the camera quality will start off a little more lo-fi in the beginning than by the end. It's going to look really nice to, you know, sort of simulate that. That was like the main inspiration stylistically.

But another thing that happened in 2020 is I just got really into. Are you familiar with the director, Mike Lee? What is his name? He's a British filmmaker. His most recent movie was that movie Hard Truths with Mary Ann Jean Baptiste.

He did a movie Naked, Secrets and Lies. He's a huge, he's a huge director for me. But I just remember they added like 20 of his movies to the Criterion channel that week that I was isolated. And all of his movies, the way that he approaches it is that he doesn't write the stories. He just gets so much actors. He really likes, has them create characters.

They improvise these characters and then they make stories based on these improvisations. And you would never know that watching the movies because they feel so full and complete and well plotted. But the main things that the performances are like incredible. The performances feel so real.

They feel like real people. I think it was a combination of that, his movies and the documentary that maybe you want to do something that was like tied to this very specific culture, but has a character at the center that I think propels it into something more. Because the thing about the way I see movies at least is that the most important thing is character.

I don't care if your movie looks good, has crazy cinematography, crazy camera tricks, crazy editing, music, whatever. All I care about is, is there a character at the center that I really, really like and I can think of the movie in terms of them. So that's where I started with the character in the movie, built the style around it.

And those are basically the two main things that I think. And you know, the usual stuff like John Cassavetes, Spike Leege and Jarmusch, they're huge inspirations to me. Just because they made movies on their own terms and found their own audiences. But yeah, just like a whole mix of every independent filmmaker I was watching at that time. Just one way or another helped me out. Fantastic.

Rob Lee: And see the good thing about letting the guests cook, you've knocked out two of my later questions already. So I appreciate that. He's trying to get me out of here. No, no, no, no. I'm enjoying this. You know, you're making my job easier.

So I want to go into a bit about the writing process because your writer, director, you're in the editing row, all of the things. You're doing everything. You catered as you were touching on.

Chandler Chavez: I got coffee. I'm a horrible cook. And I did not edit the whole, I co-edited. I was in the editing room the entire time. But I am, god, if you see my editing timelines, you would just have a heart attack. They're so messy. I don't label anything into some absolute nightmare. Oh, you're one of those guys? I'm one of those guys. Yep. And imagine the entire movie of this.

Rob Lee: So how does wearing multiple hats make things easy? And I definitely hear you kind of stressing this notion of practicality. But also what makes them challenging as well? Because I think there's a little bit of that, oh man, I didn't really think about that. When I wrote this for some people, it's like, I could direct around that, or I could rewrite some things to make up for directing laps and things of that nature. So talk a bit about sort of that, wearing multiple hats, directing and writing, and also the challenges there. Yeah.

Chandler Chavez: So again, writing this, I wrote this to make it. So all the limitations were constantly with me as I was writing the whole thing out. So I knew that is going to be just like one room, one webcam, the camera movement is very restrictive.

You can't move the camera very often. So I wrote with all those practicalities in mind. But when you're making movies of this size, everyone has to do like three different things. So when I was writing, I was also thinking of producing where I had like three different plans for everything, because like there's a scene where he goes out into a restaurant, or you know, he goes out into the world with his phone, does a live stream. And I knew that it would be better if we could have a real restaurant.

But I knew like maybe we wouldn't have the budget for that. So I wrote different versions of every scene. One where we actually get the restaurant, which we ended up getting, two where I just send the actor to do whatever, just go out into the world against random people and hope he doesn't get their face in the camera so they don't have to get release forms. But it was also nice having all the people I worked with because they were able to tell me what did and was and wasn't feasible. But a huge part of, you know, directing a movie is understanding that things will go wrong and you have to adapt. Like for example, there's a scene in the movie where the lead character gets swatted, where the cops come in while he's streaming. And what happens in the middle of the movie, what happens in that scene is that the cops kick down the door and the camera falls onto the desk, which in the original script that was not supposed to happen, we're supposed to have much cops come and make it really kinetic. And we had cops that we like local actors and they just didn't show up. So they don't show up like, well, well, we could either, we have to get a little creative here.

So we could either just show room with no cops and somehow figure that out in post or you just have it fall down. So, you know, you're making these like, you're constantly making these like budgetary choices on the fly. And yeah, unfortunately, it's just one of those things I would love to live in a world where making the next movie, I just have to solely think about the directing. But unfortunately, you don't have the money to hire these people. You kind of have to learn how to do a little bit of everything.

Rob Lee: Yeah, but you know, I relate to that doing this, you know, I've been doing it as long as I have I'm the booker, I'm the host, I'm the editor, you know, well, I'm in the editing room, I do the same sort of thing you were describing.

And I'm sort of the graphic design person, a little bit of everything. And because there is there is no money. And chiefly, the goal is to make the thing happen. And, you know, when you're, let's say, generally, when someone is in contact with, you know, the truth in this art brand, they're, they're, they're checking in with me, they're tapping it with me and kind of, you know, going through questions or whatever in that way. So you've been in contact, you've been conversation with me the entire time. So I want to go back a little bit to the live chat using that is sort of a narrative device and kind of using that as a means to illustrate Thomas, I think is how it's being used. Could you talk a bit more about the sort of like chat and don't really get, you know, tight about all the work you put in of illustrating?

Chandler Chavez: No, no, no, I'm not talking about that. The main thing, another reason that I wanted to do this kind of movie like a screen life movie was to settle my sort of pet peeves with the genre. Because I watched a lot of movies. I've had seen a lot of screen life movies before we made this, but I also watched a lot in, you know, in the build up to this.

And I noticed a handful of like always consistent issues. One of them being that even in some of the best screen life movies, I would cite as an example, the movie Deadstream. Horror movie, great horror movie about a content creator who streams himself in a haunted house.

It's a funny, great movie. But my biggest pet peeve at that movie is at the end of the movie, there's like this gigantic scene where, you know, antics are ensuing and there's a live chat going down. And you look at the chat, one, the chat doesn't feel like real chat, it just feels like a bunch of canned messages being played ad nauseam. But two, the more annoying thing was that it's all the chats are coming in at the same like speed. Yeah, that's not how a real chat works.

A real chat's like real time where sometimes it'll be like three in a row and sometimes there'll be one, sometimes it'll lag a little bit. So I wanted that was the main thing is I wanted to make a chat that felt organic and real. But the other thing was that I knew that much like when you're watching a Twitch stream, you can only get so much enjoyment out of just watching a guy talk in a room. So I figured that the chat was a good way to keep the audience entertained. If they found the actor boring or the whatever he's talking about boring, read the Twitch chat because I put a lot of time into making sure the chat was kind of funny.

You know, with either with the usernames, the actual chat messages itself. So it was a way to sort of like just keep the pace going just to keep a little bit of variety. So you're not just watching a guy in a room the whole time.

But it also it became an experiment that I wanted to try from the onset, which was creating three dimensional characters that only exist in the form of text. Because as someone who spends a lot of time in like online spaces, discourse and that sort of thing, I really felt that I'd come to know deeply know a handful of people who I don't know what they look like. I don't know their gender. I don't know with their name. I don't know where they live.

I don't know what country they're from. But I know these people very, very well because I just spent a lot of time with them chatting, you know, in digital chat rooms. And I just found that to be very interesting and very modern things specifically in regards to like the streaming world, where you can have these online friends who you never seen, you never hear from. And I remember in the build-up to making the movie, there's a lot of notes from producers and financiers who like, we have to have a scene where the moderator, Skye, who he's chatting with the whole time, we eventually see his face, you know, that'd be this big reveal. I didn't want to do that because I'm like, I don't, people I talk to online, I don't want to see their face.

Who wants to do that? But it just became like the thing where the Twitch chat became such an integral part of so many different facets of the story that it then becomes the most time-consuming part. But I do think that if there's anything this movie accomplishes, it plays with these ideas in a way that no other in the screen life genre has. Which is my main goal, is to make something different.

Rob Lee: Yeah, when I saw that was the description, because I was like, this is a screen life movie. And I've seen a lot of those. I've seen the one described a moment ago, I've seen those things. I was like, that's not how that would happen.

And that specific scene you're describing. And I was like, has anyone been online? Like, who did you consult with for all these chats that come in? Or even some of the other ones where it's like, that's a device. So it's really refreshing to hear that you wanted to do so that you, obviously you researched and you had a point of view as to where they kind of fall short. I do a movie review podcast outside of this, and there's a segment that I call 1-6. And you know, like you can have a movie that is probably a C. And I think it's usually 1-6, maybe narrative, maybe a, you know, just a small choice that can move that C movie to a B and so on. And I think like the way that in making your own movie in that genre, you're like, I don't want to do what other movies have kind of like screwed it with, you know, as far as how they're showing or using the chat for it.

Chandler Chavez: Yeah, well, you know, another thing with all of these screen life movies is that a lot of them are based in genre. Dead streams obviously are horror movies, something like Unfriended or House or also horror movies. Like their main goal is to be a genre movie or searching slash missing those two movies.

Those are like, you know, we've done it in mystery movies. And I understand why the actual authenticity of like digital life is limited because that's not the point of the movie. Whereas this, this is the point of the movie.

It's showing this world how it operates, how it feels, how it functions. And I think, you know, skipping over or just not caring too much about the authenticity would greatly hurt it because at the end of the day this is not a genre movie. And if you're into the sort of thing, you're into this sort of thing. And if you're into the sort of thing, we want to make sure it's the most accurate version as possible. It was interesting too because we had a screening a few months ago as part of an online festival. And usually when I hear online festival, I think, God, because that just means you're streaming a Vimeo link. Who cares? No offense to people who run online festivals.

There are tons of great ones. But when I heard that our movie is playing here, I was a little hesitant first. However, in the build-up, first of all, the festival is called the Unnamed Footage Festival, one of the greatest film festivals ever. They do primarily found footage stuff. They emphasize horror, their main thing, found footage horror. So our movie did not get into the main festival because they just told us, like, you know, we like the movie, but it's not horror.

No one would like it here because people just want to go there and get scared. But they allowed us to play at their online festival, which was this 24-hour livestream that was curated with not only the movies that they were showing, but with a bunch of, like, animated shorts and fake trailers and stuff that they had made to make it, you know, feel like a 24-hour movie marathon. Our movie opened up this festival.

We're the first feature film playing. And the entire thing was streamed in a Discord that had, like, 300 people watching. So it was this really weird experience where I was watching the movie being streamed online while also on my second monitor watching people react to the movie in real time in Discord for a movie about reacting to things in real time on Discord.

Wow. So it was a very, but just the way that the people talked about this and the way they engaged with it, you know, they really, I think, helped or it was a benefit to us because we realized that they were engaging with it like it was a real stream. They were impressed by the authenticity. So at the end of the day, that's what we wanted to do was create an authentic look at this weird little world. And yeah, the Twitch chat was just such a huge part of that.

Rob Lee: So I got three more real questions I want to run by you. And one is going back to the main character, Kyle, right? You mentioned, like, a fall and then a fall. So talk a little bit about what that means to the degree in which it's not giving away too much because obviously we want folks to Maryland Film Festival since we're kind of going to talk about that a little bit. But just give us sort of a bit of a touch there.

Chandler Chavez: So it's an interesting thing where with the occasional, with some exceptions, the way that you like make it big as a Twitch streamer, it's not like being a musician or filmmaker and actor where you have like a hit song or you pop in an episode of TV or you make this big movie. A lot of the ways that online personas become huge is a lot of time through like blunders, embarrassing moments. You could argue someone like the hot tool girl from like two years ago was a big thing where it's like this is a weird little thing that she did. It got her really popular and she used that to make herself famous. But specifically in the world of Twitch streamers, there are tons of Twitch streamers who got big because like, I don't know, something horrible happened to them on stream and it became this clip that circulated that then got them big and then they used that to pivot into a more legitimate means of success.

So that was what the entire movie is based around. Because the character is not smart, he's not really talented, he's not a very good gamer, but like he is kind of that, you know, he's a peaked in high school, a rest of development mentally stunted guy that a lot of people gravitate to on Twitch. He's what is referred to as a LOL cow, LOL cow. Someone who you watch not because you think they are endearing or charming or smart, but because you want to see them suffer. You want to see them get embarrassed, you want to make fun of them, you want to prod them.

There's basically digital torture chambers. So this is how the movie is structured where he doesn't get like a big break, even though he's trying, he's not trying to be a LOL cow. No one ever tries to be a LOL cow, but it happens to them regardless. So it's this thing where he's constantly trying and trying and trying and trying and he's getting a little bit of a following, the kind of following that you would grow organically just by streaming every day.

You're not going to get huge numbers, but you'll get a fan base. And then that sort of takes a toll on his personal life and that sort of seeping in more to his content until the point where that collides. And he has this collision point where he has this breakdown and that is what makes him popular. So it's not a rise and a fall, even though that's technically what happens. There are ebbs and flows, but it's a lot more realistic to just how the Twitch landscape works today. I want something that felt like that because the thing that I get asked all the time within the comes to Twitch for me, especially from like older people, like my parents are like, what is the appeal? Why would you spend hours watching somebody play a video game?

You could just do it yourself. And the truth is I don't really know. But I do know a big part of that is just seeing people at their most natural, at their most human. And that's what kind of the movie is built around. It's just these moments where you see into his life, you see the human being behind the microphone or whatever. But yeah, it's a general structure.

Rob Lee: Thank you. It aligns with a term that has been thrown around a lot in the podcast spaces, which I kind of try to avoid. It's the sort of parasocial thing of like, oh, yeah, it's just like, I like to keep a line. I'm this person here and it's very similar to who I am, but there is a, it somewhat can try. We had a meeting time, you know, I'm on here.

This is a performance, all the whole thing. I'm asking real questions, but, you know, we don't know each other and, you know, we're framing this out. I'm beginning to like you, so that's a plus. But, but it is, it is a thing where, you know, perhaps sort of, I guess the parasocial component of it, folks in listening to these, these interviews and the seven years I've been doing this and the 900 plus interviews that I've done for this particular podcast. Oh, I know Rob. And it's just like, you may be in person, maybe, but, but a version of you.

Yeah, you're, you're, you're meeting a podcast or version of me. There's a foodie version. There's a vigilante version.

You don't want to see the vigilante version fighting crime. Look, like I said, I'm six four. I wrote up on people. I just went to try to go Marv style from Sin City.

It's great. So, so here's the, the sort of next two that I have for you. I want to talk a bit about the, the, the actual time and the, the, the time for the full scope, the sort of four years that were there. It's a timeline. I would imagine the initial principle shooting was a certain amount of time and then you have reshoots and multiple shoots and things of that nature. So did that have any effect on continuity, different sort of versions of performances, evolution and the reshoots?

Chandler Chavez: So basically the God, this is any lessons that you learned along the way. Oh, a ton. But yes, so a majority of the film was shot in May of 2022 over like a 12 week window.

Sure. That was initially when we were going to film all of it. And the way that we structured out our shoot is that we shot as close to chronologically as possible for a number of reasons.

One, because the set becomes constantly evolving. We meant to sort of like show the seasons changing. So we put up Halloween decorations and Christmas decorations or whatever. But the main thing is that we were all, this is everybody's first movie.

Everyone who worked on this movie had never worked on a feature film before from the actors to the crew, everyone. So what we wanted to do was create an environment in which we got more comfortable as we went along. Because what we wanted to do is we needed to make sure that the stuff, the heavier emotional stuff we nailed. We didn't want to jump right into that because if we weren't ready, it was just going to turn out awful. There's nothing worse than a movie that shits the bed in the third act. But I also think that that worked really well for the movie itself because this is a movie about a guy who is learning to be more comfortable on camera.

His girlfriend, you know, incorporating her more into the streams. So it had this nice effect where the first few scenes, you know, take it or leave. There's things I'm not proud of in those scenes.

But I think there is a stiffness and an awkwardness that feels organic to the story. Because this is a guy who is now, the first like ten minutes of the movie, you don't see his face because he's too afraid to buy a facecam or a webcam or whatever and shows his face. But when he does, he's a little weird.

And by the time you get to the end, I think he's really confident in front of the screen. Ben Ashby, our actor. But that was the initial 12 day shoot. And the plan, we shot everything with the exception of the other streamer played by Spencer Goldman, Sir Spence on Instagram. That stuff was shot a year later. So the initial 12 day window, we shot everything, including an ending that is not in the final movie.

We shot a different ending. Then the whole reason that we were able to get financing is that we reached out to a bunch of Twitch streamers. One of them being a very, very big Twitch streamer. Wait, well, not name.

This streamer, I had him on camera, on his stream saying he would happily do it. And he signed an L.O .I., a letter of intent saying he'd be in the movie. We took that L.O .I. to the financier who got us X amount of money that I'm not allowed to say.

We shot the movie without shooting his scenes or hers. Smart. They don't know. There. Them.

There. We shot the movie not having their scenes done because we're going to shoot those later. We're going to, part of the deal is that this streamer was going to shoot their scenes on their own time. I wouldn't have to fly out to where they lived. I wouldn't have to direct them. I'd basically be like, hey, say these lines in this way.

Do it on your own time, whatever. So we shoot the movie and we're sitting on it for a few months because I didn't even know where to start with the editing. But then around the summer, June or July of that year, we start reaching out to the streamer. Didn't hear anything.

We reached out for months. Nothing, nothing. Eventually reached out to the manager and nothing. It got to the point where I had to, I don't want to say blackmail because that sounds... I basically, I circled the idea of litigation only for them to finally respond. And they basically said, oh, they don't want to do it anymore. I'm like, okay, shocker.

Well, that definitely throws a wrench into this movie because there are critical scenes that need to be shot. So then at the time I had moved from Arizona to Los Angeles and I had this job at the film studio. And I was just cold emailing all local Instagram, the YouTubers, Twitch streamers, whatever. And eventually I got a response from Spencer, who's a suspense on Instagram, who needs to do it, shot those scenes. That was a year later in July 2023. This is when we shot that scene. So it was a whole year after we'd finished everything else. And in the meantime, it takes forever to make this movie because there's so many VFX or whatever. So we didn't even have a working version that would be done by the time we shot his scenes. But we shot his scenes. We incorporated those into the movie.

And by, I'd say, end of 2023, early 2024, we had a working version of the movie, like a full, final 4K render. And we showed it to a few people. And we got a lot of notes. It was too long. At the time it was like an hour 55, which is just too long for an independent movie like this. And we also didn't, they did not like the ending, which the ending is similar to the ending we have now. It's just a lot more downbeat. It's just more morose. It's just him just sort of regret.

The subtext becomes the text. He's very blatantly regretting his decisions. So they didn't like the ending. And we had to make a few changes in the movies anyway. So then they just floated the idea of maybe reshooting the ending. And at the time, I remember those were like a low point in this movie where I'm like, we shot this movie two years ago and now I want us to go shoot more.

And now I'm very much open to that way of shooting. Because I do think you need to sort of like take a stop and look what you've done to see where it could go from there. So then the new ending for the movie, the final scene where him on the beach, that was shot May 2024, two years after we shot the rest of the movie. And I think it works too because that was two years after I had, we had shot the movie and I'd learned a lot in those two years just sitting and looking at the footage and kicking myself with the things that I wish I would have done better. So in those two years, I think the movie ends really strong because I learned so much about directing those two years that I really think that that last scene pops in a way that none of the other scenes do unfortunately.

But you always want to go out on top. But that was like the whole process. And then we spent like another year basically editing it, fine tuning it, adding the chats, taking scenes out, trying to make it as short as possible. And I think when we finally finished the film like fully was June of 2025. So three years after we shot right before my 30th birthday, I started making this when I was 26 and now I'm about 331.

That's finally coming out. And another thing that we did is that we spent like some time around 2024 just sending to every festival we could with what little money we had left. And we sent a version that didn't have full VFX. We sent a version that didn't have press materials. We didn't have a poster. We didn't have a press kit. We didn't have anything. And we just we got into very few festivals. But we got into a handful that premiered last year 2025. But we had learned so much from just those few festivals that we were able to get the materials we didn't have before. We got a better poster. We got press kits and we reapplied to a bunch of festivals.

And now we're getting into a lot more, one of them being Maryland, which is by far the first like big festival we've gotten into. But yeah, that's the whole process. It was a nightmare. Wow.

Rob Lee: I mean, I was sitting there sweating a little bit. I was just like, how'd you survive? So this brings me to sort of the last real question, two part question. And, you know, I think I think I have a gauge on it thus far through the conversation. But I'll ask is the film in your opinion with time removed and being with it, you know, once it's finished and you've sat with it for a while. Is it more of a critique? It was a dialogue on sort of society's pursuit to be famous, not be that low cow, right? And, you know, sort of secondly, what do you want the audience at the Maryland Film Festival to take away from the film?

Chandler Chavez: Well, I guess the main thing is that I think what we were very worried about when we initially shot the film was that a lot of the stuff by the time the movie came out. So if you see in the movie, if you look at the bottom right corner of the screen throughout the whole movie, it takes place on the desktop. You'll see the date takes place in 2023. The majority of the movie takes place in 2023. And now whenever I screen the movie, they're like, interesting that you chose the year 2023 to set this movie.

Why was that? And I just say, because we were making it 2022 and we thought it would be out by 2023. So we were thinking a little bit ahead. But we were worried in that interim that things were like the culture itself is going to advance or, you know, change so much that so much of this would become unrelatable. But what we've noticed is that the exact opposite has happened, where this general arc of the story has, we've seen it play out with real people in the streaming community so many times since then, so much more since then. To the point now where this almost becomes like it feels like a parody of like stream culture.

Well, at the time I was just, you know, observing what was happening and, you know, incorporating the story. But now it just feels like we're lazy because this thing has happened so many times. To the point where there are actually streamers who agreed to do cameos for this movie, who I will also not name, who we had to in the 40 years of making the movie removed from the movie because they got canceled for very similar things that happened in the movie.

And there are still streamers in the movie now that we want to remove but can't because we have no money left. At this point we're just owning it. We're like, yep, there's going to be some problematic people in here.

When we asked them 40 years ago, we didn't know, but that just shows you just how this is impossible to keep up with. But that's like the main thing. It's definitely in conversation.

It's definitely critique. Because at the end of the day, I do find this culture and this idea both grotesque and also very interesting and heartwarming. Because I think the stuff that really connects with me is the stuff where these little online communities, which I've been part of, I've been part of many in the online community for films. I'm part of a criterion discord, which is just a discord dedicated to the criterion collection.

I've hung out with a lot of streamers. I do think it's a beautiful thing, but I do think once it hits a certain point, much like movies, once it hits a certain point where there's so much money and fame at stake, it becomes a shell of what it was before and you lose the humanity. So I definitely think that the movie is sort of like on both sides of the argument. But as far as like what I want people to take away from it, I guess a huge concern and inspirational idea about this movie is just that you hear so many people. You see so many stories of these people being canceled for reasons that are valid and both invalid. But I just think the way that things were today were just so eager to jump a dog pile on someone whenever they make some sort of a stake. And I think most of the time if you look into the reasons that some people are being canceled, it's a little more, obviously there are people that should be ousted from society entirely.

But there are some people where it's a little more gray. It's like, okay, you made a mistake. You're a human being. I probably would have made a similar mistake if I were in your shoes. And I think I want this movie to just examine that type of guy because he does make a great mistake.

That kind of mistake that a lot of people get canceled for. But because we see the movie from his perspective, we can see how he was thinking, how he reacted, and the minutia of that mistake that you don't typically see when you're looking from the outside in. But I guess the main thing is I just want people to maybe be a little more empathetic. Because at the end of the day we are all human and we do make mistakes. Some mistakes you should atone for. Some mistakes, I don't know. That's the main thing. A little bit of humanity.

Rob Lee: No, thank you. And I think that's why I'm a vigilante. I like to be the corrector of those mistakes for people. I appreciate that. And I think that's a really good consideration. And looking forward to folks checking out the film at the Marlin Film Festival. Now I'm really looking forward to getting into the rapid fire portion of the podcast. Don't overthink it. Whatever the quickest answer you got.

Chandler Chavez: Sure. Four track interview questions. So here's the first one. What was the last book you read? The last book I read. Oh, that's an easy one. I just finished Master in Margarita.

Rob Lee: I noticed you were a reader. Like I said, I was only your social for a day and I was like, okay. Big reader? Yes.

Chandler Chavez: So I try to read at least one book a month. Is that the last book I finished? I don't know. I think it was. I think it was the last week. But yeah, I try to read at least one book a month. And then while I'm reading that book, I also like to read at least one big book a year that I read in between the smaller books.

So if you have to, the last book I read, it's technically war and peace. I'm halfway through that because I'm trying to get through that this year. Last year was Infinite Jest. The year before that was Gravity's Rainbow. This year is War and Peace. The last book I finished was the Master in Margarita by Nik... I don't know his name. I like to honestly, there. Here's the next one.

Rob Lee: What is something, because I think of streaming, I think of videos, I think of a lot of different things with this question. What's something that without fail makes you laugh?

Chandler Chavez: Oh man. Without fail? Recently it's been videos of people like getting named with fireworks. It's very specific. It's very specific. I guess there's a lot of things that make me laugh. I watch a lot of TikTok and Instagram reels. My TikTok is stuff that I feel is genuinely overall good for me.

It's recipes that I want to try out. Film conversations about movies that I like. But then my Instagram reels is just pure brain rot. People getting hurt, really dumb deep fried meme videos. It's all absolutely nonsense. That's my junk food.

Rob Lee: Get you a man that can do both.

Chandler Chavez: The difference between the two is that TikTok, I could restrain myself, but I could be on there for hours if I really was unfiltered. Instagram reels, I can only take about 10 minutes before I need to go outside.

Rob Lee: I update my algorithm every 10 days or so just because I follow fitness content. It's just one step away from some scammily clad. Can we even have a little bit more fabric?

Chandler Chavez: You have to watch the video for a little bit too long.

Rob Lee: I was looking at Dumbbell Rose and I was like, I don't do squats. I can't do squats. My Achilles are bad. I don't do squats. Why are we looking at these squats? Oh, that's why. I got you. Here's the last one for the last Reptify question. This one came up last night. I changed this one. I thought it was really interesting. If you could watch any movie scene for the first time again, what would it be?

Chandler Chavez: The first time again, this is tough.

Rob Lee: I think of the ring. When she comes out of the television, the 2002 ring, I was like, oh, I saw that in theaters. I was like, I'm out of here. I'm going to hit the old Duffy trail.

Chandler Chavez: Dan, for the first time ever again, I'm going to do a more recent one. Sure. Have you heard of the movie Nirvana the Band, the show, the movie? No. Oh my God. It's an incredible movie.

I have a poster right here. But it's a web series that I've been a big fan of for a long time. It's a Canadian web series called Nirvana the Band, the show. It's about these two guys who, every episode, they try to get their band a show at this concert venue, the Riddley.

In Toronto, it's Canadian. There's a web series about 20 years ago that eventually became a TV series on Spike, or not Spike, Vice. And then now in theaters, you can see it right now in theaters, is the movie adaptation of this web series. And there's a scene at the beginning of the movie because they film all their stuff in the real world. They're actors.

Everyone else is just real people. They film it documentary Borat style. And the story changes based on the reactions of people or whatever. They have this plan at the beginning of the movie to jump off of the CN Tower, which is this gigantic tower, Space Needle-esque tower in Toronto, jump off and land in the Toronto Blue Jays baseball stadium. They're going to parachute in and then advertise their show. And when they go into the tower, they have parachutes just hidden under their jackets.

So they have these gigantic lumps on their back. And they're bringing in wire cutters because they're going to cut the wires at the top of the tower and then jump in. And I guess their initial plan for the movie was that they were going to be stopped at the security check and they had to find another way in. But the guy just let them in because they had to pick up the pliers and go, what are these? And the guys were just like, I'm going to use these to cut my pants.

And they let them in. So there's this incredible sequence where they then jump off the tower to the point where I think this movie four times, I do not know how they did this sequence. But I remember seeing it for the first time in a theater a few months ago with just a bunch of other fans of the web series.

And it was one of the most mind blowing things I've ever seen. And I'm 30 years old. My sense of whimsy is rapidly in decline. Movies very rarely impressed me anymore. But I was just like, I felt like I was 10 years old again watching that. And I would just love to feel that anything like that for the first time. It's so rare. But yeah, that's tight. The band to show the movie in theaters now probably won't be by the time this comes out.

Rob Lee: I have this, I have a tab for this. So I will be following up on this. However, I follow up on things. Again, vigilante. So here's the last question. And thank you for indulging me with the rapid fire.

So here's the last question. This is observational when I want to get sort of just we're reframing it as advice, only advice that you can really get from a position that you're currently at. So practical advice.

I'd be in use of practical filmmaker. Every, you know, it was a practicality and a lot of the stuff that you were saying, which I thought was really cool and really refreshing. What would be your number one rule or consideration with not to have your first feature under your belt?

You know, what would be your number one rule of consideration to be a practical filmmaker? Someone is like, I don't have the time, the money, the so on and so forth. What would you say to someone who wants to do that? Like that practical advice you can give is now a filmmaker with that one feature under your belt who has a practical approach?

Chandler Chavez: I guess the advice is that there's always a reason to not do something. I'm very glad I made this movie when I did because if I were to try to will this movie into existence now, just knowing the hurdles of just not just this particular movie, but movie making in general, just how impossible of a market it is to penetrate in any capacity, I would not want to do it. The thing is you just have to do it because none of this is practical. Literally none of it. You never meet a director who is just like, yep, we had all the time and money we needed. It was great.

It was wonderful. Even at the highest level. They are struggling to make their days. They are struggling to get something out on time and under budget.

Just know that at no level is this a feasible logical thing to do. The difference is that when you are a very low budget filmmaker and you have no one to answer to, you have all the time in the world. That doesn't mean take four years to make a fucking movie. The thing is when you are making your first movie is that you are answering to no one. You are not on a studio mandate deadline or whatever. We have to get a thing at a certain time. Just do it. Take your time.

See what works and if it doesn't work, reshoot it. There is no expectations. What I have noticed now just doing like festival type stuff is that there are so many movies out there. Way more than I ever thought there would be. When I made the movie I was like, oh my god, one of the ten people in the world who has ever made a movie. Then you go out and there are these movies that get into these festivals. Not all of them but I have seen some of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life.

There is no excuse. It is so much more impressive to have a shitty movie than no movie. Just make something. Whatever you can with what you have, do it. The alternative is no movie. That is a dark existence. I would not wish that on anyone. It is a bad place to be.

Rob Lee: I think that is where we can stop. That is a really good mic drop there. There are two things we want to do as we close out here. One, I want to thank you so much for coming on. You have been a real joy and a great to talk to.

Chandler Chavez: First real interview. I am glad we were able to make this happen. Secondly, I want to invite and encourage you to share with the listeners where they can follow you. Stay up to date with the social media, the website, all of that good stuff.

Anything along those lines. Keep in mind I do edit these. If you need to take a second, feel free.

The floor is yours. While our Instagram is American Stream Film, it is just American Stream Film. You will see. You will get more updates soon. We are starting a few more festivals.

We do have a website, but I do not know if it is active. I have to get into such a square space. Two things I will tell you is American Stream Film. That is our Instagram. I have a letter box.

If you want to hear me talk more shit about movies. It is Chandler Chavez on letter box. You will find me. I have a very scary picture. That is my profile picture. I think it is CC Buddy Rider. I do not know.

Rob Lee: It is probably linked to my Instagram. I want to follow you on it. I want to hear these takes. I may invite you on the other pod. I love talking movies.

Chandler Chavez: I have seen some of the best and worst movies of my life this week.

Rob Lee: I need someone to direct this bio pic about me for 2B. It is going to be fantastic. 2B is where the money is at. Those are yourself shorts.

Chandler Chavez: I am trying to make the perfect 4 out of 10 movie about me. I am aiming for 4 out of 10. I just finished one. I can give you all the advice in the world.

Rob Lee: I want to thank Chandler Chavez for coming on to the truth in this art. To tell us about his story and his feature debut. American stream which is a part of the 2026 Maryland film festival. For Chandler, I am Rob Lee saying there is art, culture and community. End it around your neck of the woods. You just have to look for it.