We caught up with the brilliant and insightful David Liban a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

David, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project, to me, is my latest feature film, Publish or Perish. Aside from being a filmmaker, I am also a film professor and have been deeply ingrained in bureaucracies of the pressures that exist in academia. The idea of this film surfaced early in my teaching career as I was first hired as a tenure track professor.

Those unfamiliar with the academic work-life, mostly do not realize what professors go through when they are under the scrutiny of a tenure committee. It’s huge. Firstly, you are required to have a terminal degree (PhD, MFA) which can take many years to earn. If you’re lucky enough to land a tenure-track job, then you have seven years to ‘prove your worth’ and have success as a researcher, scholar or a creative. What does this success look like? Basically, published books, articles, research, films, screenplays, etc… that gain a degree of visibility and accolades. Basically you need to produce work that is acknowledged by audiences and peers. AND if you don’t meet this elusive expectation, you lose your job after 10+ years of working towards the goal of tenure.

This is where the phrase, “Publish or Perish” comes from. If you don’t “publish”… you lose your job. Therefore, faculty often spend a great deal of time, work, stress and mental energy to prove that they are valuable contributors to their discipline.

The benefits of receiving tenure are that you then have academic freedom, prestige and job security. Once you have tenure at an accredited college or university, it’s nearly impossible to lose your job. That right there… is great incentive to achieve this goal.

While going through this process myself, and living the stress of it, the thought occurred to me, what if I accidentally ran over a student on the eve of delivering my tenure materials. Of course, the “real me” would do the right thing and handle such a tragedy responsibly, but the fictional me could see myself not wanting this accident to derail my career goals. This was the starting point when I sat down to write this screenplay. Being a fan of dark comedies, like the Coen brothers, I felt I had a good story that could live out this dilemma and this fictional journey. Given my firsthand knowledge of the complexities and personalities found in academia, I built a fictional college (Sayles College) where this would all take place.

This film project if very personal to me as I poke fun at the world of academia and really, anyone who has had an adversarial relationship with a superior will be able to relate, and hopefully enjoy this movie. We had a test screening and people were laughing and enjoyed it, so I was very encouraged.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

How and why did I become a filmmaker? I can do my best to detail that here, but what might look like a clear path, in reality I am just another person trying to make the most of one’s life with the abilities I’ve been given.

Not knowing how far back I should go, I’ll start with my upbringing. I grew up in Little Neck, New York and was often exposed to movies, theatre and books. My mother was an artist and my father a mathematician/math professor. My parents loved movies, museums, theatre, and I was raised in New York where there were loads of opportunity to experience all sorts of art. In my home there was a great deal of encouragement to pursue the arts, or at least to learn to appreciate and enjoy art.

Then I saw Star Wars. I know I am not the only person to use this as a launching pad, but I had never experienced anything like Star Wars. I was truly blown away and activated. I wanted to tell stories like this and learn how to do that too. I borrowed my dad’s super 8 camera and started making movies. I made films with friends, I made animated films, and I sought out a school in Manhattan that taught kids how to work with 16mm cameras. I now knew what I wanted to do, but it always just felt like a hobby, but as a kid hobbies have much greater significance.

When I went to college, I was advised by my father to pursue the thing that interests me most. He was a professor too, and knew that college is not a vocational school. It’s a liberal arts education with an emphasis in something you like most (your major). So, that’s where I started to think more about being a filmmaker and figuring out how to pursue this on my own. I wanted to connect to audiences the way my filmmaking heroes did. That was my goal.

Out of college I started a small video production firm that I enjoyed working at for a few years. I was so happy to be making money doing something with the skills I had developed. I loved the cameras, the lights, the mics, the editing console. It was all very engaging! Yet that ultimately became tedious as I found myself making other people projects and not the ones that were living in my head.

When I decided that I wanted to make my own movies, at any level, I looked at academia as a place to be surrounded by other creatives and a job with an expectation to make art. It was a perfect fit. I learned that I needed a terminal degree to pursue this path, and was accepted into an MFA program at Brooklyn College. This was my true starting point in developing my ideas and working at a professional level. From there, I scored my tenure track job(s) where I was making short films and documentaries. My films were jury selected into festivals and won awards, which was both gratifying and a resume builder for my tenure pursuits.

My goal was to make a movie-a-year and later one of them won a Emmy award. This was for a documentary I did on the end-of-life phase called, Mortal Lessons. But deep down, I wanted to make fictional feature films. So, I did. I collaborated with colleagues, students and local talent and made a feature film called, A Feral World. That went on to receive international distribution even though we did this on a micro budget. Most people who worked on the movie were volunteers. For the money I needed, I crowdfunded, received a few grants from the university where I worked, dug into my savings and managed to complete the movie. In fact, my son, Caleb Liban stars in the movie (low budget producers find talent and resources all around them). That film was picked up by Gravitas Ventures and went on to receive awards and film festival screenings.

Based on that film’s success, I connected with a local producer by the name of Jonathan Miller. He loved my new screenplay, Publish or Perish, and had been thinking of getting into the film business. So together we embarked on this journey together.

I don’t see myself as “talent for hire” but a producer/writer/director/editor (filmmaker). I enjoy telling stories and crafting movies. As a producer, I have been able to surround myself with talented people who all share the same goal, that is, telling a good story and making a good movie.

Side note; I once heard Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies) speak at the SXSW film festival. One thing he said resonated with me. “When you have money to make a movie, everyone wants some of it. When you have no money to make a movie, people are willing to donate to the cause.” (Paraphrased)

People often ask me, “how long did it take to make the movie?” That’s another tricky question. You see, I had the ideas for my movies lurking around my brain for years. Writing the screenplay may come much later and then, that can be a 3-6 month endeavor. Then, pre-production takes months. The actual production (shooting) is wildly intense and hard, and often the briefest phase of production. Post production is the most fun for me. I love editing. That’s when it’s just you and the media, alone, putting the puzzle together. It’s where the movie is made and the most gratifying part of the process that can take another 4-6 months. When you’re editing there’s no personnel drama of the set, no weather worries, no gear failure… just you and the machine, building a movie. So, making a movie takes 2-3 years. Raising the money can take from 1-10 years, so getting any feature film made is truly a herculean task.

What am I most proud of? I suppose that I am working at something I love doing and collaborating with creative friends. Also, I am very proud of having made a movie with my sons. One of which is now in film school because he fell in love with the process of making movies after having collaborated together on A Feral World. He has role in my new movie, Publish or Perish but also is becoming a very good editor and filmmaker as well. What makes me proud? Creating a body of work and leaving a mark on the world. I was here.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I made the movie, A Feral World, it was a project that developed out of passion and circumstance. Initially, I made a short film called, Feral. It was a 16 minute film that was shown at a bunch of festivals and won some awards. Me and my team really enjoyed making the movie and I thought there was more story to tell. However, I did not have the sort of resources to make a feature film. As it was, Feral cost me close to $10,000 (part of that came from crowdfunding). As a professor, I am not rolling in the dough, so the challenge was how do I expand the film into a feature with limited resources?

I had seen the film, Boyhood by Richard Linklater, which was shot over 10 years. So I got the idea to shoot the film in 4 consecutive summers so a) the financial burden was stretched out over time and b) I believed it might be a selling point if audiences knew the actors would age over the course of the film, like in Boyhood. My son, Caleb who was 11 when he starred in Feral, was up for it, and my colleague and DP, Jessica McGaugh was game, so that’s what we did. We made four chapters and linked them together that ultimately became, A Feral World. It was this process that initially was a necessity that formed into the hook of the film, which also allowed us to complete the film.

When you are shooting the same film over four years, it is wildly stressful. People come and go, locations become unavailable, and only one person (me) has the drive to see it all through. If at any point I said, “enough.” No one would have blamed me or forced me to continue. But I wanted to see it through, so I made it happen. There was no studio exec who was hounding me.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I am always amazed at how people dismiss the work that goes into a producing feature film. We all do it and maybe we can reframe our responses. “Thumbs up/thumbs down.” Years of work is often diminished by a five star rating on Amazon or IMDB. It’s really hard to make a movie and people are too quick to tear it down.

Of course, we are all entitled to have our opinions, but I wish there was more sensitivity from the trolls that that trash other people’s work. They insult actors, the special effects, continuity, the script… everything is reduced to the power of those cryptic and often unfair criticisms. Let’s see what kind of movie they can make.

No one sets out to make a bad movie… (mostly, there is Sharknado…) and it’s a herculean feat to make a feature, so when people so easily trash it, they don’t realize, or care for the hurt they are inflicting. Audiences don’t know the handicaps the teams were working with (money, weather, illness, accidents… there’s an incalculable number of variables can impact what you see on the screen).

Does every film require undue praise? Of course not. But the trolls of the world should realize that their voices are being heard. I’ve seen actors brought to tears for something someone said on twitter. My response was a) don’t look at the reviews and b) that person feels empowered to attack because they themselves are not putting themselves out there by making art. Their contribution is nil.

Only film critics are film critics. They too can be a sour bunch, but they typically are coming from an educated background.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.publishorperishmovie.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/feral_filmmaker/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/publishperish
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-liban-6917581/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@publishorperish_movie
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1836976/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 www.feralmovie.net

Image Credits
B/W photo and close up David face. – Kelly Spencer All the photos by Cynthia Cazanas Garin