Stormy Daniels documentary interview with filmmakers

The Stormy Daniels vs. Donald Trump saga probably sounds like a story you already know. After the new documentary windy The film delves intimately into the actress-director’s turbulent battle with the former president and brings to life her daily reality behind all those sensational headlines. It highlights Daniels’ fateful encounter with Trump in 2006, who inadvertently became a scandalous household name in 2018, the downfall of her legal hero-turned-crooked attorney Michael Avenatti, her financially devastating defamation case and more.

Below is the film’s director and producer, Sarah Gibson (Orgasm Company: The OneTaste Story) and producer Erin Lee Carr (Britney vs Spears) discuss their film (trailer below), which is set to have its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival on Friday. Together, they make Daniels’ story more relevant than ever.

“Stormi’s story is timeless because what happened to Stormi will happen to women forever,” Gibson said. “It’s looking at this woman’s life — Trump aside — and seeing it in a way we’ve never seen before. We knew the political background of the story was important, but we really wanted to focus on her emotional journey through all of this.

Peacock will premiere windy On March 18, just days before Trump (“the orange ogre,” Daniels calls him) was set to begin his first criminal trial — a slush case in which Trump was accused of illegally using funds to pay off two women, one of whom was Daniels.

How did this documentary start? Did you have any fear about telling this story, or was doing so a no-brainer?

Sarah Gibson I met Stormi in 2019, and then she was detained at the Canadian border due to 17 (false) FBI charges on her record. She was texting me throughout this whole thing, and it seemed unbelievable. Then, when Michael Avenatti’s trial was going on, and he was representing himself in court and asking really terrible questions on the stand, it really hurt my heart. She recalled him promoting her book, and it was shocking that he would treat her like that in court after clearly trying to take advantage of her. “Erin and I just made a movie about Britney Spears and the justice system that doesn’t work for her,” I told her at the time. If you want to talk about this in a documentary, let me know. And she was like, “I just watched your documentary about Britney, let’s do this.” But we tried to get it done, and it was very difficult before the indictment (silent money).

Erin Lee Carr I was a little nervous. It’s an incredibly thorny issue about many things. We’re feminists, and the way we saw men treating this woman — and we’re not just talking about Trump, we’re talking about a lot of people — seemed really wrong. Plus, when I mentioned her name to people, they had a knee-jerk reaction that she was a gold digger, or a fraud, or any of those things. But when you look at the story, it’s not.

There’s a lot about it already. What surprised you about Stormy Daniels?

Gibson For me, it was her endless ability to find humor in really dark moments. We’ll talk about really interesting stuff, and you’ll come up with the funniest joke. And how they are able to survive through the news cycle, attacks and death threats. She is very resilient and does not have a victim mentality. She has this amazing courage and strength to stand up for herself. She is also a truly kind-hearted person who has close relationships with her daughter, her animals, and her community.

Carr As for me, I didn’t know that Michael Avenatti filed this defamation lawsuit and would later go to prison, but now Stormi has to pay Trump’s legal fees amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. How can this be possible when we see from the evidence that this person was convicted of defrauding her and stealing money from her in the first place? People think they know the facts of the case, but it’s really shocking. There’s a great line in the movie about the weight of justice not being weighed equally.

What parts of the film do you expect to get the most attention?

Gibson That someone like Stormy Daniels, who is portrayed in a certain way, doesn’t get a fair shake in the legal system. This is a really important topic that hasn’t been explored enough. We discovered it in Britney, and we’re exploring it again. I think there are a lot of similarities, and I hope if a lawyer like Michael Avenatti goes to prison for criminally mishandling his client, she shouldn’t be on the hook for a case that he mishandled and be on the verge of losing her house because she owes Trump’s lawyer all this money.

Carr And as far as takeaways go, the fact that there was a camera nearby when these things were happening — like being on the phone with her publisher and discovering her check — was missing. Do you know what happened in Canada? Or what happened in Ohio when she was arrested? Some of that stuff is there, but it’s another thing to see contemporary footage. People will get this new vision of what happened, what it looked like, and how it felt. The devastation of her marriage is depicted in real time and in painful detail.

And a lot of this footage predates you guys coming on the plane?

Gibson So, there have been four different film crews that have filmed footage with Stormi over the years. In fact, a filmmaker was filming her in 2006, around the time she met Trump. So we have scenes of her from a long time ago, months before she met Trump, so we can really get an idea of ​​what her life was like before they met in Lake Tahoe and who she was — how naive and wide-eyed in Hollywood she was. When the story broke in 2018, Stormi, being the skilled filmmaker she is, knew history was unfolding in her life. She summoned some of her friends, journalists and photographers, and asked them to come and photograph with her. So there was almost a sequence of shots that this movie was made from. …When I first told Stormi that we should do a documentary, she said, “Sarah, a lot of people have tried to make a documentary about me. No one will touch her because I’m a porn star and because of Trump. “No major media outlet would give me a chance.” So I said, “Well, have women ever tried? Give us a chance at this.”

The indictment added fuel to it. But one of the thoughts I had while watching the movie is that – from a storytelling perspective – it seems like the perfect ending point for this story is after the trial is over. Stormy may be on the stand to testify against Trump, but the film will now instead be shown next. Was that Peacock’s condition? Is this what you guys wanted? Why release this now rather than later?

Gibson We had no idea that the silent money trial would begin first. We were convinced that the election interference trial in Georgia would go first, like everyone else, and we assumed that trial would proceed. In fact, we never thought the timing would coincide (with the trial), it just turned out that way. I think Peacock really wanted to get it out around the time of the primaries. It’s a free ad for the documentary As They Unfold (the primaries). It’s been lucky in that way, but I also think it’s important for people to remind themselves of that story because a lot has happened since then.

Carr In a serious tone, this is life and death for Stormi. Stormi receives daily death threats. One of the best disinfectants is sunlight. We feel it is important to release this information as quickly as possible to demonstrate the current risks as we move toward indictment. I know people will be curious about the timing, but it was very important to be able to post this sooner rather than later to show what you’re up against. Also, one of the things that really bothered us along the way was how much the media kept referring to her as “porn star Stormy Daniels,” and it’s like it’s this constant diminishment and dehumanization. We would like there to be a shift in awareness and language about how we are portrayed in media articles.

I found it interesting how much the film felt like a piece of art — “Here’s what it’s like to have Stormy Daniels go through this extraordinary period” — rather than what some might assume is a politically charged controversy. You’re almost uninterested in Trump except when his actions directly impact your topic, and I wondered if that was a deliberate choice.

Gibson Yes, it was a deliberate choice. We really wanted to show what it’s like behind the headlines for a woman to go through something like this. You’ll never be able to see that. You never think about the impact on people’s lives behind clickbait. We really wanted to reveal how connected they are. Although her career choices are unconventional to many people, her daily life, marriage, being a mother, and being the breadwinner for the family is something many people can relate to. But then, when a bomb goes off in your life, as happened with the Trump story, she would try to work her way through it and maintain her career. She had a 20-year career before the story broke, directing between 10 and 12 films a year. She’s a very skilled filmmaker, and people didn’t know that. They just saw this seductress or woman who was just seeking fame and money.

I realize that there’s a certain amount of attitude when it comes to Stormi, where pro-Trump people at this point are probably assuming he did everything she said, and they don’t care. While anti-Trump people certainly assume he did everything she said, at this point they think “that’s minor compared to everything he’s done since.” Does this dismissive attitude frustrate you? Question: “Does this still matter?“

Carr It doesn’t matter. I think people sometimes reject political stories because of the fatigue that occurs. But these are real human beings whose lives hang in the balance, and alongside their happiness and ability to live freely, we all know someone who has struggled and faced a bully. So I hope that these stories will be told again and again because they deserve to be told and promote ongoing work. I don’t know that I would have been able to do what I did and throw my life into such insanity. It was very easy for her to recede into the background. I think it helps us as a society think about being brave enough to do that.