The DocFix Documentary Storytelling Podcast · Nigel Levy

The Supersize of Me of Black Magic...the Making of 'A Cursed Man' with director Liam Le Guillou

·34 min·2 clips

A New Orleans interview turns angry when Liam asks whether someone would put a curse on him.

1. The DocFix Documentary Storytelling Podcast episode centers on Liam Le Guillou’s A Cursed Man and the making of a documentary about black magic. 2. Nigel Levy hosts, Liam Le Guillou is the director of A Cursed Man, and DocFix is the story-shaping program Levy says he used to help him finish the film. 3. The episode asks what happens when a filmmaker travels around the world to find a practitioner of black magic who will curse him. 4. Liam says he wanted objectivity because he was director, subject, and editor, which he calls a "huge problem" for story judgment. 5. He explains that low-budget filmmaking pushed him toward self-editing, but that choice removed the outside perspective needed to test story ideas. 6. Liam says his earlier work in ITV news taught him two-minute storytelling, but not how to build a 90-minute documentary. 7. He says his previous feature documentary was "reasonably successful" but still had gaps he did not know how to fix. 8. The conversation returns to his wife, who is a mental health therapist and has no belief in spiritual ideas, and to the effect the project had on home life. 9. Liam says he was surprised that the curse had real effects on him, whether spiritual or psychological. 10. Nigel presses on why Liam made the film at all, and Liam answers that he is "deeply fascinated" by the subject and likes testing ideas. 11. Liam says the film changed because the story became about him, not only about magic. 12. He describes an early version with a library scene about the history and philosophy of magic, which he says was cut because it was more of a factual lesson than a story. 13. Liam says he learned that being a technical editor does not mean being a story editor, even after working since Avid’s early days in 2001. 14. He describes receiving broad notes on an early cut, then 13 or 14 pages of notes after thinking the film was nearly done. 15. Liam says that stage was briefly crushing because he was self-funding the edit and had to look at his savings account. 16. He says the notes still made sense and helped him push toward the level he associates with Netflix and "world-class documentaries." 17. The tone is reflective and practical, with a lot of direct back-and-forth about editorial decisions, audience perspective, and what survived the cut. 18. The format is an interview mixed with behind-the-scenes production stories, using specific shoot moments to explain documentary structure. 19. People interested in documentary editing, story structure, and independent filmmaking. 20. Viewers looking for a fast supernatural reveal or a purely paranormal debate.

As heard by us

A strange premise is used to examine documentary craft and structure.

Reviewer sees Nigel Levy and Liam Le Guillou begin with a premise that is hard to shake: a filmmaker trying to understand whether he has been cursed.

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Why you'd press play

A cursed-man documentary meets a blunt conversation about making it work.

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