Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Steven Klein discusses Print The Legend”.
All right we’re here tonight with stephen klein, the producer of print the legend which is about to have a screening here in front of the audiences at makercon. Uh, stephen, we’re all super excited we’re happy to have you here. We’Re excited as well, oh, fantastic, so uh. How how how long have you been waiting for this to be released? When does this come out, so people can see that’s a good point, so the film comes out on netflix uh. Next friday september 26th we’ve been working on it depending on how you start the clock about two years uh.
It was just a little almost exactly two years ago, a little bit under that we started the kind of research filming where we knew we wanted to make a documentary in the world of startups and techno new technology and and somewhere where it would feel like. The next big thing the next macintosh moment would come and for the few people who are unfamiliar of this title, uh a lot of us know and have been following along and have been eagerly, anticipating the release. But if you could give just a super short description of what print the legend is. Yes, so on the surface, i think you’ll hear about print the legend uh it’s so it’s coming out as a netflix original documentary, uh and a lot of the press is gon na, be about it being a 3d printing documentary which is true.
It covers a lot about or really takes place in the world of 3d printing, but we think really underneath that it’s really a documentary exploring the american dream, what it takes to succeed in 21st, century america and really the world, but using the archetype of the american Dream story and we’ve core inspiration for that was walter, isaacson’s, steve jobs book. We felt like the archetype of steve jobs at the character of jobs as presented in that book was a kind of new and interesting american dream character. That was really casting a long shadow on the way entrepreneurs and people trying to create things in the world today operate and think, and so we wanted to find the kind of next steve jobs or the area of the next feeling of that macintosh moment and follow That course and 3d printing felt like the world in which that next big thing would come the fastest. So did you set out focusing on 3d printing or is that where you landed after exploring or how did that yeah, that’s where we landed? So we have there’s a big team and, and a little interview can’t give credit to everybody uh by name, but i’m gon na try uh. So we had a guy named chad, trout wine, who has a couple partners, dan and rafi, who came to us with the idea of this sort of apple exploration, something about apple and steve jobs and the culture, and they brought on some other producers that called odex Films, walter and andrew and our team we’ve got a company called exhibit a that’s run by seth, gordon and mary rolick who’ve made a lot of great docs. This community might really like uh the king of kong, that seth directed uh, that’s a good one, um, so uh, which clay and luis who directed this movie uh are and are therefore sort of the leads of of this film uh worked on king of kong as Well, um, so the seth mary clay, luis and i were kind of took that apple assignment and and ran with it and thought okay. Well, how do we do that right? We we thought well if we can get access to apple awesome, but, like many greats before us, we did not uh and uh.
We felt like also that ground was really well trod by people like isaacson and adam leschinski, and so we thought well what if we can find the next place and that led us to lots of exploration – and you know, like i said, hacker hostels incubators, all kinds Of places hacker spaces, this community and eventually found, among other things, 3d printing, and it felt like the most cinematic thing we found because uh, you know it’s objects being printed right before your eyes like augmented. Reality is super cool, but when you put it on camera, it just looks like special effects: um 3d printing felt really ripe, and it was around the time that bree was on the cover of wired and that forum labs was launching their kickstarter. That went on to great success and that 3d systems was entering the consumer market, so there was a lot going on and we could we knew. We could be there to capture that. That’S great.
So i i understand there have been a few preview screenings already. What kind of responses have you gotten from people in the community? Uh? It’S been very good, so fortunately thank you for that uh. So there’s there, the film has evolved uh documentaries, especially our team likes to make them in sort of what are called verite docs, where we just enter the world. We don’t really know what the movie is going to be about are going to be.
When we start. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we just try to be in a contained world in an open and what listening way and kind of find the story and then and then chase it, and so the movie therefore evolves over time. So we premiered the film at south by southwest uh, which is was our dream home for it, because they have, of course, the interactive festival where a lot of people from the maker community go uh and the music festival and the film festival.
And so that was great because people from the film and maker communities uh through the interactive all came together to see the film and it got a lot of excitement, uh and it evolved since then, but makers, you know all kinds of people have had all kinds Of reaction, we we hope that a movie that tries to ask kind of tough and important questions of the people in it and of the world in which it uh lives will make everybody a little bit happy and everybody a little bit uncomfortable. Because i think it asks real questions about what it tastes takes to succeed, what we ask of our leaders, what sacrifices we call on each other to make when we’re trying to build companies and the future of our society and technology and uh. You know, i think by and large people who are already passionate about 3d printing will feel excited that it’s covered in a movie.
We’Ll feel excited that we show how hard it is to build a business and how hard it is to bring new technologies to the culture. I think uh people in the maker community will probably wish there was a little bit more about the reprap project than there is because we we’ve cut whole scenes about it. We loved that whole story, but unfortunately, in the real estate of an hour and a half of a movie, not everything can get its full due.
So we hope someone else explores that really thoroughly um. You know uh and i think people everyone in this community is going to know someone in the movie and so they’ll be excited and thrilled and upset and curious about how that comes out. You know and we’d love to hear about all of it.
We’D love to have that conversation. That is fantastic, i’m looking forward to it again and what date is it available on netflix, friday, september 26th, uh and uh for a long time thereafter, all right all right! Thank you very much steven klein looking forward to seeing it yeah pleasure thanks. .