When Phil Wall last appeared on this podcast, he was the everything guy—director, cinematographer, writer, editor—on The Book Keepers, a film about death and grief made intimate by how few hands touched it. Now Wall returns with a radically different project: a three-episode, 137-minute history of American men's professional soccer, delivered on a punishing deadline with a small army of creatives at his side. In Soccer Meets America, Wall is no longer the jack-of-all-trades, he’s a director in the classic sense.
In this conversation, Wall talks about soccer's strange, stubborn failure to crack the American mainstream (despite a passionate hidden audience), why landing Werner Herzog as a guest interviewee was a validating win, and what it feels like to release the tripod someone is taking from your hands because—as they keep reminding you—you're the director now.
Music: Podington Bear
