Directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Carlos López Estrada and Academy Award-nominated director and cinematographer Zac Manuel, the film follows the Grammy-winning and trailblazing, rapper, singer, songwriter, Lil Nas X, over 60 days as he embarks on his first ever tour across North America on his debut album tour Long Live Montero.
The all-access documentary is an intimate portrait of an artist navigating identity, family, expectations and acceptance, all while reflecting on his place within the legacy of Black, queer performers. We see Lil Nas X connect with us in his most personable way yet and uncover his personal experiences, from being raised as a black queer performer in the deep south, through to his rise to fame, and his place in the pop world as a 23-year-old artist.
As Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero hits digital platforms on May 22, Nick L’Barrow had the chance to chat with co-director Carlos Lopez Estrada (Blindspotting, Raya and the Last Dragon) about constructing the documentary around Lil Nas X’s concert, the unique relationship he shares with his fans, and celebrating a wide variety of communities through his films.
Nick: I’m really excited to chat with you today as I’m genuinely a big fan of your work. I imported a blu-ray copy of Blindspotting into Australia because I love that movie! I think that climatic rap scene is one of the most impactful scene I’ve watched in the last 10 years!
Carlos Lopez Estrada: Thank you for saying that! Yeah, it’s been a minute since that movie came out in 2018. It’s one of those little movies that like really travelled, and I think it made an impression on people. It’s crazy to know that it’s out there doing that.
Nick: It’s an incredible film, and this documentary is fantastic too! As someone who wasn’t as familiar with who Lil Nas X was as a person behind the music, this felt like such an intimate and personalised documentary. I’m curious to find out from a filmmaking perspective, where does the balance sit in making a film that is both a love letter to Lil Nas X and his fans, but also something accessible for those who don’t know much about him?
Carlos Lopez Estrada: I think that was kind of the journey we went on as filmmakers. Both Zac [Manuel, co-director] and I knew about Lil Nas X, obviously. It’s hard to live on this planet and not know who he is! But I don’t think we knew the depth of him as an artist and a person.
And I think in the process of making this documentary, we really got to kind of fall in love with him having him talk about his music and having to be able to meet his fans. We got to really understand what his music means to so many people on such a deep level. I think that we were able to sort of pull so many layers back from the celebrity, from the internet presence.
Then all of a sudden, we were left with the person, and asking some pretty deep questions and just trying to really understand himself and the relationship he has with himself. It was just a really beautiful process to learn about artists and not so much the persona.
Nick: I feel like that raw exploration is felt through they way you and Zac present that documentary. I really enjoyed the use of DV camera footage, or not using traditional “talking head” shots to interview Lil Nas X. You interview him when he’s in bed, and there is this vulnerability that is captured on screen, to your earlier point. Was the visual style of this documentary something that you and Zac established early on in the process, or did it happen naturally?
Carlos Lopez Estrada: I think a little bit of both. I mean, we definitely were following his [Lil Nas X] lead, and he opened up his world to us, and he opened up his house to us and really let us in.
The bed interview was actually Zac’s idea, so I can’t take credit for it! But we knew from the beginning that this documentary just needed to feel different. We couldn’t just do a traditional “talking head” interview. And that meant editing wise and style wise, we had to work a little bit hard to make it feel like its own thing. So, we brought on this editor who is incredible, who had worked a lot with Beyonce. And we told them that we wanted this to feel unexpected and fun, and just like, youth driven. And we wanted them to try stuff that you normally wouldn’t see in a documentary. That was the ethos from the very beginning.
Nick: There is a very touching moment halfway through the documentary where there are interviews with what I would assume are Lil Nas X superfans talking about how impactful Lil Nas X has been on their own journeys with sexuality and freely expressing who they are. How important was featuring those stories within this documentary?
Carlos Lopez Estrada: Yeah, I mean that was completely intentional. But it was one of those things that still really surprised me. From the very beginning, when we were meeting him and meeting the label, they mentioned how the fans are really important to him, and the relationship that he has with his fans in unlike any other artists.
He uses social media to break the barrier that exists between musician and fan, and we were trying to craft how to involve the fans in the film. It’s not an easy thing. But we had this idea to have these confessional booths that we could do outside of the concert, before it started. So, we set up the booth and just invited people in to talk.
And we decided that we weren’t necessarily going to be asking them about the music, their favourite songs, and these typical fan questions. But rather, we would ask them questions about transformation, and about difficult moments in their life and how they overcame them. Those became sort of like the backbone of this beautiful thing, where all of a sudden, we weren’t telling Lil Nas X’s story, but we were really telling a story about transformation, and one where all the fans were a key part of that. It’s really a beautiful sequence that, to me, gave a lot of purpose to everything else that we were doing.
Nick: I think that feeling is the case with your entire filmography. You tell stories that celebrate different communities and cultures, but you also highlight the unbreakable bond between those communities too, whether it’s race, sexuality, gender, class. Are telling these stories something that you feel is important to you as a filmmaker?
Carlos Lopez Estrada: Definitely. I mean, that’s a really thoughtful way to think about my work. It’s been this journey that I’ve been on. At first, I think it was just instinctively the type of stories that I was pulled towards. Then at some point when I made my second movie, this tiny, little, independent movie called Summertime, and it was done in collaboration with this group of young spoken word poets. And I really feel like that cemented something for me about how there’s a way to make movies that really involves the communities that you’re representing on screen and involves them in a little bit more of a meaningful way in the filmmaking process.
It really kinda shifted something for me. I think specifically, ever since then, the type of storytelling that I’ve been drawn to is definitely one that has a specific type of purposeful relationship between filmmaker and the people that you’re making the movie with, whether it’s in front of the camera or behind the camera.
I feel like now, I’m on this lifelong journey to better understand what this idea of community driven filmmaking can mean, and hopefully it’ll just continue to get deeper and broader as I make a couple more movies.
Nick: As a fan of your work, I’m excited to see how that evolves of your career, man! I want to ask about how the narrative Lil Nas X conveys through his concert and music coincided so well with the narrative of the documentary. What was the process of selecting certain songs from the concert to match with certain scenes of the film?
Carlos Lopez Estrada: It was definitely tricky because the concert was so spectacular! And there were a couple of songs that we wanted to include, but you know, we just had to make some hard decisions.
I think what was really special about the show is that it was essentially arranged chronologically with the music, and then the way the songs were selected was definitely around his story. And it was built in three acts for that particular reason!
One of the big concepts when the show was being assembled was this idea of cycles, and the idea that something you think is the end, is really a new beginning. He’s gone through all the cycles. He’s accomplished something that, you know, most people would have thought would be the peak for an artist. Then all of a sudden for him, it’s really been a door into a new world. So, we were really just trying to follow the pattern that he had already created with the show and recreate his musical journey with the song choices.
Nick: I want to wrap up with this. Lil Nas X mentions in this documentary that before the music, he was studying to be a cardiovascular surgeon! So, I’m curious to know whether there was a different career path for you before filmmaking?
Carlos Lopez Estrada: I mean, I wish I had such a beautiful, purposeful story as Lil Nas X does! I think for me though, I knew from a very early age that I wanted to direct. I was one of those kids that would run around with a little camera and make movies with my friends.
My path was through music. I played in bands and started making music videos for my friends’ bands. And then that kind of snowballed, and that’s how I got my first movie – through music videos. That was Blindspotting.
I guess the closest thing I have to that is music, and having been raised in the MTV era, and having music videos as a part of my visual language. Then all of a sudden I had access to nicer cameras, and I went to film school, and that’s kind of how it all really happened.
Thank you so much to Carlos for his time, and to NixCo PR and Universal Pictures Content Group for organising the interview. Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero is available on various VOD platforms from May 22.
