'Cookie Queens' documentary filmmaker Alysa Nahmias

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

**Jesse Thorn** (0:22)
It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. What does it mean to sell Girl Scout cookies? And, I mean, look, we can stipulate. Girl Scout cookies are delicious. I personally am a big fan of Samoas. Why? Because I am an adult with a very refined palate. And whenever that time of year rolls around, cookie time, when you see Girl Scouts camped out in front of the grocery store, or when your coworker emails you about ordering some cookies from their kid, I mean, it is exciting. It's almost a season in America. But what does it mean for the girls actually selling the cookies? They raise funds for their local Girl Scout councils, of course. But they also for a brief period of time become salespeople, like real deal salespeople going door to door selling online, making social media videos, staking out prime real estate in front of target. My guest Alyssa Nahmias was never herself a Girl Scout, but she was fascinated by the culture of American girls and the microcosm that is Girl Scout cookie sales. So she went out into the world and she found some Girl Scouts.
Four of them, to be precise. And her film follows those four Girl Scouts as they learn to be, I guess, entrepreneurs, to experience capitalism and all of its highs and lows. And to see what that kind of education means to girls living today.
It is, as you would expect, adorable. But it is also, as they say, a very rich text. Cookie Queens is the name of the documentary. It's one of my favorites of the year. I can't wait to talk with Alysa about it. Let's dive right in.
Alysa, welcome to Bullseye. And congratulations on this beautiful movie. I was so moved by it.

**Alysa Nahmias** (2:26)
Thank you so much, Jesse. It's great to be here. You know I'm a fan.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:30)
Were you worried when you decided to make a movie about a group of young girls all trying to achieve their goals that it was going to be a corny movie?

**Alysa Nahmias** (2:49)
I don't think I was worried about that because the goals were a way to get into something bigger. I was not super concerned about whether the girls met or didn't meet their goals. I was looking at this Girl Scout cookie sale as a microcosm of thinking about girlhood and capitalism and the ways that girls and women learn about our value.
But there is a kind of like, there's conventions of the sub-genre of documentary that's like the competition doc. And so I was interested in that. How do we work with those expectations that people have of seeing lots of stories around that, both in documentary and then there's the reality TV competition type of stuff. And so I was interested in surprising people around that a bit and not giving them exactly what they expected. But yeah, I think if I had just been wanting to make that thing, there would have been more of a real danger that it could be corny.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:52)
I mean like decades ago on the show when I was, I might have still been in college or just out of college. I had Jeffrey Blitz on when his movie, Spellbound was in theaters that ended up winning an Oscar. And Spellbound is an incredible movie, a hilarious, amazing movie about kids in a spelling bee.
And when that movie won an Oscar, there was a decade of movies about children in magic competitions.

**Alysa Nahmias** (4:23)
Right. Any competition.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:24)
Any competition. And like, look, our children are adorable and competitions are a structure.

**Alysa Nahmias** (4:30)
Right.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:31)
But I could tell when watching your film that that was not the thing that you were interested in. What were the specific things that you were thinking about when you started thinking about Girl Scouts and Girl Scout cookie sales?

**Alysa Nahmias** (4:51)
When I heard someone, one of my producers talk about this Girl Scout who sold him a lot of cookies.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:57)
How many cookies are we talking?

**Alysa Nahmias** (5:00)
He was at a pizza joint, and she had a whole wagon full of cookies. She starts by complimenting his hair, et cetera, et cetera, and just getting to know him a little bit. Then all of a sudden, the mom comes around with a wagon full of cookies. It turns out they had not just the wagon full, but the garage full of cookies at home.
But even as he told me that story, I think one of the things I was thinking about and why I wanted to do this project, was he was like, oh, she was so cute and so sweet. And then, oh, well, she was also really smart and sad. And then all of a sudden, she becomes even cunning, right? I related to that girl, actually, in the way that he and probably many others in the world were perceiving her as this kind of innocent, sweet, cute, etc. And then, oh my gosh, she's also really smart and has something to, you know, she has some business to do here. So I was thinking about that and I was thinking about, like, that Girl Scout Cookie world as not only, like, visually interesting and full of characters, both like my friend and my producer, and also this girl who we could relate to and who would get at some of the, who would help get at some of these ways in which girls are stereotyped and the ways in which they and we challenge those stereotypes. And so when I was working with the girls, I've really embraced, like, being honest with them about how they, quote unquote, turn on and off when they're selling, you know.