EP067 - Flip On the Porch Light w/ Margaret Brown

We walk with Margaret Brown, director of BE HERE TO LOVE ME, THE ORDER OF MYTHS, THE GREAT INVISIBLE, DESCENDANT, and THE YOGURT SHOP MURDERS, and winner of Peabody, Independent Spirit, SXSW and Sundance awards. She brings along Max Pickle, her nine-year-old wire-haired dachshund, who sets the pace: shade, water, and a hard stop whenever he's done. Margaret's deep in publicity mode on THE YOGURT SHOP MURDERS, her HBO series about the 1991 killing of four teenage girls in North Austin. The series premiered on HBO in May, four episodes became five, and the case was solved just three weeks after the finale. THE YOGURT SHOP MURDERS is screening all week at AFS Cinema, culminating in a special September 3rd screening of Episode 5 featuring a Q&A with detectives from the case, moderated by Richard Linklater. Austin friends, don't miss this one! Margaret's blunt about the cost. She'd sworn off true-crime podcasts while making it. "Raise a toast to murder" felt like a cheap shot. She froze up in her first interview and holds one line firm: she's the filmmaker, not the detective. Ben has a better read. She flipped on a porch light, and everything came to it. Then the craft. How she and DP Justin Zweifach built a neon color language out of TWIN PEAKS and DRIVE without letting style flatten the families' honesty. Nobody had asked her about that until now. How A24 paid for crew therapy, a first in her career. How Claire, the UT student who tried to tell this story twenty years earlier, became her secret weapon and the show's spine. Ben traces the line from BE HERE TO LOVE ME through THE ORDER OF MYTHS, THE GREAT INVISIBLE and DESCENDANT, heavy places and buried histories, and Margaret resists the tidy version. This one was different, and she didn't know what she was signing up for. Then the Austin part. She and Pamela Colloff met at Brown and moved here in the '90s because they knew everyone at Emo's and could eat for a dollar at Quack's. Pam's "96 MINUTES" became TOWER, and Margaret's push over a 2012 lunch is why Keith made it at all. Margaret also talks about learning to wait for the thing to happen, and finding her own way into filmmaking at a midnight screening of SHADOWS during a New York heat wave, thinking: I have friends. We could film that. Plus: a stranger yells something unprintable, and it nearly becomes the episode title.   DISCUSSION LINKS: THE YOGURT SHOP MURDERS (2025) | BE HERE TO LOVE ME (2004) | THE ORDER OF MYTHS (2008) | THE GREAT INVISIBLE (2014) | DESCENDANT (2022) | TOWER (2016) | SHADOWS (1959) | SLACKER (1990) | DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993) | TWIN PEAKS (1990) | DRIVE (2011)   TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Meet Max Pickle 00:47 Ben's Freaks and Geeks era 01:51 Keith's fake film-student music videos 02:26 A stranger yells the episode title 04:15 Late July, and deep in publicity mode 05:36 Why she said no to true-crime podcasts 07:20 "I'm the filmmaker, not the detective" 07:53 Into Casa de Luz 08:01 Claire, the filmmaker who came first 10:35 Four episodes became five 10:53 The case gets solved 11:14 Flipping on the porch light 12:20 A cloud over four accused teenagers 13:38 Secret weapon, and the meta narrative 15:17 The Innocence Project scene 16:36 Justin Zweifach and shooting grief 17:28 Pam Colloff's dare 18:15 TWIN PEAKS and the footage 19:24 Color theory and neon beer signs 22:08 Wiseman: it's still 100% fake 23:22 The body of work, film by film 25:32 Why this one was different 26:32 A24 pays for crew therapy 26:59 "This is the last interview I have to do" 28:01 Celebrities on the trail 28:44 Recognized at the Impact Partners party 30:01 No separation from the work 31:10 When strangers bring you their grief 32:04 Pam Colloff and CAT