#455: Lance Oppenheim

Lance Oppenheim on Midnight Cowboy by Poly High-School Band, Google Reviews, Cold Emails, and more.

Perfectly Imperfect is a newsletter offering “A Taste of Someone’s Taste” from guests like Ayo Edebiri, Charli XCX, Michael Imperioli, Rayne Fisher-Quann, Matty Matheson, Molly Ringwald, Mac Demarco, Lena Dunham, Dasha Nekrasova, Julian Casablancas, and Jeremy O. Harris. Full archive here.

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Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked Lance Oppenheim to share another taste of his taste on Perfectly Imperfect.

Lance Oppenheim is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and one the very first Perfectly Imperfect guests. I loved Some Kind of Heaven, his 2020 documentary on The Villages in Florida (aka “Disneyworld for Retirees”), so I was happy to hear that he was making his big return with not one, but two projects in 2024. Lance’s second feature film, SPERMWORLD, dropped on Hulu back in March and follows sperm donors connecting with prospective parents as part of new wild west of baby making. REN FAIRE, his brand new HBO series on the king of America's largest renaissance festival declaring his retirement, just aired it’s final episode last Sunday and Lance is doing a screening of all three parts + Q&A at Roxy Cinema on June 20th in New York City— you can find tickets here. Lucky for us, Lance is here to tell us what he’s been into.

Without further ado

Lance Oppenheim (twitter, instagram)

🎶 Midnight Cowboy by Poly High-School Band

The story behind my relationship with this song is probably not all that interesting… but discovering it was a real cathartic experience for me. I first heard this song when I went to see The Caretaker perform live at the Lincoln Center and I think he performed a chopped up version of it… I knew I recognized the melody from somewhere, but I was too timid to pull out my phone and Shazam it mid-show. Weeks go by, I’m still thinking about what that damn song was… I surf through The Caretaker’s discography. Nothing! I start sending voice memos to my musically inclined friends, humming how the melody went… nothing! Was I making up the existence of this song? Was I going insane? I saw Jon Rafman’s amazing short “Punctured Sky” where this exact thing happens to his protagonist (obsessing over a video game that he thought existed but no one could help him find it)... it had my number written all over it. I gave up and moved on with my life. But then, about a week or so ago, I was listening to Helena Deland’s new album while doing the dishes and I heard it again… a familiar melody… briefly interpolated on the song “Drawbridge.” But what was it?!  No comments on YouTube helped get to the bottom of this musical mystery.  

I sent it around frantically to all my friends. Ari Balouzian, who does the scores for my films, is a massive Midnight Cowboy fan and was able to identify it after a bit of trial and error. He sent me the Santo & Johnny cover (amazing in its own right)... and finally, after searching around on YouTube… I found it! A haunting piece of music, and the recording itself sounds so… brittle… that it almost adds an extra oomph to the aural sensation of bliss when you listen to it.

💬 Google Reviews

I enjoy going Demon Mode sometimes when my girlfriend and I are in a random establishment that could use some Google Review love. She writes the caption while I take the photos. I usually won’t know what she’s going to write, but I go off my gut and photograph myself in ways that I imagine will complement some dimension of her review. The result is a series of reviews that paint some sorta psychological profile of an amateur Food Critic (who occasionally frequents Marijuana Dispensaries) that is maybe on the edge of a nervous breakdown. 

📺 Entourage

I’ve been having an amazing time rewatching ENTOURAGE. I had a very formative experience watching the show as a 14-year-old… and seeing it now feels so deeply transportive to my teenage psyche. It’s also somewhat instructive in a way… I like how E becomes a lot more assertive and direct with people in his business dealings as the show goes on. I’m someone who struggles a lot with delivering bad news or saying no to things, so anytime I have to do this sorta thing these days, I just think about what E would do. I embrace the inner E… and let it all flow from there.

🧖‍♂️Russian Turkish Baths / East Village

I made both REN FAIRE and SPERMWORLD at the same time for the past three-ish years. I feel extremely lucky that I had the time and resources to do it, but the experience of shooting both at the same time was sometimes nightmarish. I’d be on an airplane more than I’d be in my apartment in NY. I developed a ritual, every time I’d return from a shoot, to go straight to the Russian Turkish Baths in the EV. I fucking adore the place. I have a pass for both days (I imagine many readers know well by now that there was a feud long ago between the two owners, David and Boris, and the fee changes depending on the day you show up and who’s running the show). I love Dimitry, who I believe is Boris’ son, he’s a cool ass guy who also is friendly with Ari Nagel from SPERMWORLD. Every time I’ve hit the baths with Ari, Dimitry will give us both discounts. We all just hang out, stream it up, have a beer… some Pierogi’s… come on, what could be better than that? Only thing to fellow readers — Sunday morning’s are a whole different beast… I’ll leave it at that… 

✈️ Airplane Banner Towing Services 

My sister Mel and I created a production company (To Be Formed) and we worked with photographer Chris Maggio and digi-artist Pablo Rochat on devising a stunt where we flew a massive sperm banner all across Los Angeles. Chris and Pablo are brilliant people whose work I’ve long admired. And they crushed it on this… the only snafu here: the towing service initially almost crashed one of their planes because the first sperm banner was too damn large!  Thankfully we avoided any major catastrophes… what a headline that would’ve made otherwise… 

🎵 Tiny Demons — Todd Rundgren

I’m producing a movie right now about the python hunt in South Florida that my buddy Xander Robin (who made this excellent short LANCE LIZARDI) is directing. Max Allman, who edited and produced REN FAIRE, is editing this thing too. We’re all Florida guys, and they’re using this song from Todd Rundgren in the edit that’s just fantastic. I love the song so much.

📧 Cold Emails

Do it! I send at least one cold email to someone whose stuff I admire once a day. Oftentimes people don’t reply, but when they do… relationships form and memories are made! So don’t be too shy, most people are just an email away…

✍️ Nick Drnaso’s ACTING CLASS

Hey, case in point with a cold email… I’ve been a longtime fan of Nick Drnaso’s graphic novels, and I found his info online after some sleuthing and sent him a long note about how much I adore his stuff. His book ACTING CLASS just totally fucked my shit up when I first read it. I don’t want to give much away, but to me, it fully illustrates the power of what a graphic novel can do. Formally and narratively it’s really a wonder to behold. Anyway, after cold emailing Nick and the two of us talking a bunch, we ended up getting to work together on a poster for SPERMWORLD. I love it very much, and his work eternally inspiring to me.

🗣️ Voice to Text

Steve, one of the participants in my movie SPERMWORLD, frequently uses voice-to-text. It’s something that ends up being featured fairly prominently in the movie. I guess through the editorial process of that film, I picked up the habit of doing it too… and lemme tell you, I fully understand the allure of it now. It’s awesome. I barely ever send a text message I write… I love the dictation process…

🎞️ The Making of the Phantom Menace 

When we’d hit a wall in the edit, Nicholas Nazmi, who cut and produced REN FAIRE, would bring up clips from this incredible making-of PHANTOM MENACE documentary. There’s an unforgettable scene burned into my brain… George Lucas and his crew’s reaction to screening a cut of the film. Everyone emerges from the screening seemingly feeling this acute sense of dread, but yet no one wants to voice it. Lucas seems panicked in his own way too, but masks it in unbridled optimism. He pushes his editors into uncharted territory, asking them to comp certain characters into scenes they were never featured in before, anyway… he’s a genius, and so is this documentary.