He Spent 10 Years Filming the World’s Oldest People | Sam Green

Sam Green (0:00)

The mystery of what's going to happen tomorrow, none of us knows, you know, so all these things kind of wait on me. And I think I thought the oldest people in the world, if I talked to the oldest people in the world, I would learn something. In a way, I think through the course of making the film, at some point, we interviewed a nun who lived in the same building as the nun we were filming. And we said, why certain people live a long time and other people don't? And she said, the mystery. She just made this gesture like that, the mystery of none. And you know, I think over time, I've come to accept that, in a way, the answer is, there are no answers.

Chip Conley (0:33)

Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis Podcast with Chip Conley, where we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful chapter of your life.

Chip Conley (0:48)

Welcome to the Midlife Chrysalis. This is Chip Conley, and I love films. I don't know about you, but I love films. I will go to film sometimes by myself. When I was a kid, I wanted to do that and I felt embarrassed. Today, it's like, no, that's my little guilty pleasure, is to sneak off to a film by myself. Now, it's not to say I don't like to go to a film with my friends. My friend, Vanda and I go watch films here in Santa Fe a lot. But the reality is, films take me to a place and they always have.

When I was a kid, I thought I was going to- you're a kid.

A young adult, I thought I might become a filmmaker when I grew up. At the end of this episode, I will tell you state of the end about the film that I, the screenplay that I wrote and that maybe someday will be made. Part of the reason we have an MEA Film Fest every December is because I love films, and I love bringing together filmmakers.

We have, last year, we had 53 filmmakers and 60 films over the course of seven days. That's a lot, and then we had about 50 attendees. What's amazing as a film festival is you're like hanging out in the hot tub, going for hikes, doing yoga, eating meals with these filmmakers and actors and actresses, lots of them Academy Award nominees and winners. Today on this episode, I am interviewing Sam Green, a well-known documentary film maker who had an Academy Award nominated film 20 years ago and has a new film that's perfectly suited for the MEA audience called The Oldest Person in the World, in which he spends 10 years chronicling whoever was the oldest person in the world, interviewing them because that's a revolving door. People don't live very long once they become the oldest person in the world. And it's a really, it's a great film. And it opened, it was at Sundance earlier this year, got rave reviews, and it will be in our film fest in December. So let's dive in. And at the end, I'll tell you my three key lessons from this episode. Sam Green, welcome to The Midlife Chrysalis.

Sam Green (2:58)

Great to be here, Chip. Thanks for having me on.

Chip Conley (3:00)

You were nominated for an Academy Award a little over 20 years ago. The Weather Underground, a documentary.

And you have a film that we're going to talk about today that is the oldest person in the world. And we saw early clips of it two years ago.

Chip Conley (3:17)

Yeah, that's right.

Chip Conley (3:19)

At our film festival, we had Julie Bonello, who's an MEA alum and a producer, executive producer.

She gave us some clips and it was beautiful. It was exciting. And then your film went to Sundance. First of all, congrats on that. Number two is, it earned rave reviews at Sundance. So tell us about the film, Sam, and what led you to making this film?

Sam Green (3:44)

Okay. So the short version is it's called The Oldest Person in the World, as you mentioned. And for 10 years, I've filmed each person who has that title. As you can imagine, it's a title that changes pretty often. Most of the people are 115 or 116 So I spent a decade doing that, and I started off just kind of as a lark. I was curious, what is this phenomenon? Why are people so interested in this? But over time, the project changed and got deeper. Things happened to me in life. I had a child, I got ill, I thought about the world a lot more as I aged, and all of that started to seep into the film. So it became a bigger sort of meditation on time and fate, and the mysteries of being alive.