Film Geek: Written and Presented by Richard Shepard

Watch on TCM Sunday April 27, 2025 at 8ET/11PT

OVERVIEW: Film Geek (2023) is a joyous and emotional look back at a movie obsessed kid growing up in New York City, and his relationship with his mysterious father. Crafted entirely out of film clips from over 200 movies, as well as his personal archives, director Richard Shepard mines the material for clues to understand his own cinematic DNA.

MAKING OF FILM GEEK: Conceived in the height of the pandemic, writer/director Richard Shepard wrote the first draft of his Film Geek documentary script while under a mandatory two-week quarantine in Toronto, as he prepped for directing several episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale. “I wanted to tell the story of my movie infused youth in New York City,” recalls Shepard. “I also wanted to dig into the life of my loving but mysterious father, who had no discernable job, went by three or four different names, had an incredible connection and fascination with the city’s underbelly, and whose love of movies helped foster my own cinematic obsessions.” With a rough draft in hand, Shepard approached producer Stacey Reiss, who he previously collaborated with on the Emmy nominated HBO documentary I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale, as well on the HBO narrative short Tokyo Project starring Elisabeth Moss and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and the Netflix horror film The Perfection starring Allison Williams and Logan Browning. “I always bring Stacey my projects first,” says Shepard. “She’s got great taste, and she knows how to kick my butt to make the best film possible.” Reiss immediately saw the potential in Film Geek as a feature documentary, “Richard has such a unique sense of humor, and emotional point of view, I knew that he could create something both very personal, but also relatable to film fans.”  

Diving into the life of his father, was the most difficult aspect of the film. “I thought I had mined personal material before in my work,’ recalls Shepard. “But this was a whole other ballgame. Stacey and my editor kept pushing me to get more and more personal. To really dive into what made my movie-loving father tick.” Filmmaker Judd Apatow, who Shepard had worked with on the Lena Dunham series Girls where Shepard helmed twelve episodes over six seasons, was another person who the director leaned on for advice. “Every time I showed Judd a cut he kept saying, I love it, but you have got to push yourself further.” Recalls Shepard. Apatow adds, "Film Geek is a blast. A unique and compelling doc about fathers and sons and the movies that bind them."

With the pandemic closing movie theaters around the world, Shepard and Reiss saw the importance of highlighting the very act of going to the movies. “Movie theaters played such a unique role in my childhood,” remembers Shepard. “I can recall in which movie theater I saw almost all the films of my youth. That love of movie-going was a central theme in Film Geek”. On that point, Stacey Reiss recalls, they set out to find the perfect artist to be able to recreate the New York City theaters Shepard loved in beautiful drawings. “We learned that the photos that existed of the theaters Richard remembered were lousy or nonexistent. Very quickly we thought we should get a real artist on board to draw them,” says Reiss. This led the producer to discover Skip Sturtz on Instagram. Skip had been doing beautifully rendered drawings of people’s homes, and he leapt at the chance to join the Film Geek creative team. “Skip was amazing,” recalls Shepard. “He did an incredible amount of research so that the drawings of the theaters become this perfect time capsule of NYC cinemas in the late 1970’s and 80’s.”

Editor Adam Lichtenstein had cut Shepard’s John Cazale documentary and had also gone to NYU with the director and grew up being a complete film geek himself. “Adam remembers almost as much as I do about the cinema of our youth,” says Shepard. “Together we were able to navigate the over 200 films I talked about in the film for the best and most unique clips.” Editing took well over a year, with occasional breaks for paying gigs. “Richard was funding the making of this doc with residual checks from some of his TV directing work,” recalls producer Reiss. “Every time he got another check, we re-opened the edit room.” The Film Geek team shared their cut with various friends and advisors, and it was screenwriter Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, The People vs Larry Flynt” who championed the film and insisted on getting it screened at The American Cinematheque in Los Angeles. Said Karaszewski: “Film Geek belongs on the same shelf with the great personal essays on cinema like Los Angeles Plays Itself, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies and Elvis Mitchell’s Is That Black Enough for You, except Film Geek is much warmer and more emotional.”  

Following the LA Cinematheque screening, Bruce Goldstein of Film Forum reached out and asked to see the movie. Shepard was thrilled when his documentary got its New York City premiere at Film Forum during their four week “OUT OF THE 80’s” program in spring 2024. “I’m obviously a film geek, and there’s no geekier movie-going cathedral than the indominable Film Forum.”  

DIRECTOR BIO: Richard Shepard is an Emmy and DGA-winning director/writer whose feature films include the Golden Globe nominated The Matador starring Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear, Dom Hemingway starring Jude Law and Richard E. Grant, and The Perfection starring Allison Williams and Logan Browning which was named one of the best horror films of the year by Rolling Stone, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and New York Magazine. In his career, Shepard has directed ten television pilots to pick-up including Criminal Minds, now entering its 17th season; Ugly Betty for which Shepard won the Director’s Guild award and Emmy award; the Golden Globe and Emmy nominated Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist; and Acapulco for Apple, now in its third season. Through its six seasons, Shepard directed twelve episodes of the Golden Globe winning HBO series Girls, including the controversial “American Bitch” episode for which Matthew Rhys received an Emmy nomination, as well as several Emmy nominated episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale. He recently directed the final two episodes of the multiple Emmy nominated Welcome to Chippendales a Hulu limited series. Shepard’s short film Tokyo Project starring Elisabeth Moss and Ebon Moss-Bachrach premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was bought by HBO, and his HBO documentary I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale was nominated for an Emmy award. His first feature-length documentary, Film Geek, premiered at The American Cinematheque in LA and played at Film Forum in NYC in the spring 2024.  

PRODUCER BIO: Stacey Reiss is an Executive Producer at RadicalMedia. She’s an Emmy award winning filmmaker who produces documentary features, narrative films and series. Her credits include The Andy Warhol Diaries (Netflix); The Eagle Huntress (Sony Classics); Spaceship Earth (Neon); The Diplomat (HBO); I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale (HBO) and The Perfection (Netflix). Her films have premiered at festivals around the world including Sundance, Telluride, Toronto, Tribeca, SxSW and IDFA.

Written and directed by Richard Shepard. Produced by Stacey Reiss and Richard Shepard. Executive produced by Jon Stern. Edited by Adam Lichtenstein. Movie theatre artwork by Skip Sturtz.