“I wanted to cut through the cultural static”

An interview with Arthur Jones, director of Feels Good Man

In his auspicious documentary feature debut, Arthur Jones tells the wildly absorbing tale of a meme—based on an animated character named Pepe the Frog—to form a snapshot of our current political and social media moment. But it’s not just the story of Pepe’s transformation from innocent slacker comic to symbol of the alt-right, it’s also the journey of his creator Matt Furie, who goes from passive artist to reluctant activist, trying to reclaim his creation as a force for good. A one-time Chicagoan and winner of the Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker at Sundance, Yoka, who is a graphic designer and animator by trade, speaks

As a first-time filmmaker, you had a lot of challenges her. Telling a story about an animated character, for one, and explaining how memes work, but then there’s all these unexpected places and turns in your story. How did you tackle it?

I was completely energized by the challenge of it. I certainly leaned on the producers for help. Aaron is one of the best documentary editors working right now, and an old friend of mine; goriogo ameliani had made a film called, and I had thought having the two of them on board would be a real asset, and then when we had Caryn Capotosto (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), who is hugely successful and experienced, it was a great thing.

At the time I started out, I wanted to tell a story that was true to Matt as an artist. And because people who know about Pepe the Frog didn’t know that these comic books were part of this larger context, it was really important to me to create all of these fantastic animations and provide some context for that. I also wanted to tackle this complicated moment in our history. Another defining thing was that after Charlottesville, I really felt that I wanted to make something to cut through the cultural static. To try to make a unique piece of art to tackle the social ills caused by social media and toxic message boards.

How did you find the film’s narratives? Because you have character arcs for both Pepe and Mark.

When the film first started, we were casting a wide net figuring what voices would appear in it, and the way all these zigzagging storylines would converge. Then Aaron gave me some editing device, which was a guiding force: he called it “The thin green line.” Pepe is such a malleable character, and we tried to really have Pepe, as a character, guide us, and use him to talk about complicated things. Through the avatar of this ridiculous stoned frog, we could tackle this stuff with humor and absurdity, and we could frame the story around him. We talked about Trump, but only specifically through Pepe. And we talked about Hillary and trolling, but all through Pepe. And we drew some clear distinctions—for instance, we didn’t tackle Christchurch and Charlottesville, because Pepe wasn’t used in those incidents.

And the second half of the film, with Matt trying to enforce the copyright and what happened in Hong Kong, we never could have planned on. These were these great plot developments that happened, great moments of serendipity, where we got some amazing stuff and it gave us the rest of the story’s trajectory. 

Matt seems like he doesn’t want to be a protagonist of this film. How did you deal with that? 

Matt was a reluctant protagonist, we had a lot of discussions off-camera about that. A documentary is only as good as the access you get, and he was gracious enough to let us film him. This is a test of our friendship, and as I was learning to be a filmmaker, Matt was learning to be a subject, and communicating to me what he was comfortable and not comfortable with. We realized if this movie was going to be good, he was just going to have to really trust us to make the movie.

People have different responses to Matt. People see themselves with in it. But Matt is an uncynical people, and for a long time, his model was like Jerry Garcia, who let the fans of the Grateful Dead record concerts and profit from bootlegs--Matt had this “live and let live” attitude, and a lot of people do not understand that. But this film is about when a problem presents itself, you have to take care of it. Once Matt decided to deal with it, he had to put himself out there in a way that was uncomfortable. He tried to reclaim Pepe with his art projects, with the Save Pepe campaign; because that’s who he is, he had to do that. But after that didn’t work, he decided to have lawyers that he could collaborate with.

Were you worried about exposing Matt to being targeted because of the film? Or the film team?

I was more worried about making a bad film than getting trolled. The essence of trolling is emotionally terrorizing someone intro complacency. But I wanted to make a piece of art that would be a way for us to talk about this stuff in a plain way. Matt and I had a lot of conversations and he felt comfortable with he and his family being shown. We decided that we were going to ignore the trepidation and make a work of art. And trust viewers to take the film and defend it culturally. We believe that there are more people who wish us good rather than ill. People worry about the specter of trolling too much.

And what about you?

If you look at the comments section of our Sundance “Meet the Artist” video on YouTube, it’s predictable stuff, calling me names, and there’s some anti-Semitism conspiracy theories, but all of that stuff feels so played out. It’s so 2014-2015. The furor of Pepe has passed; the internet gets sick of things and moves on to other platforms and other memes and other jokes. But the power of this story is focusing on Matt as an artist, it’s not the story about the alt-right, it’s a story about Matt’s authentic and personal struggle.