Crackpots #19: Caveh Zahedi (Patreon)

This week's Crackpots comes from Caveh Zahedi, a filmmaker and professor based in New York. I was first introduced to him several years ago via The Show About the Show. Caveh's work falls somewhere between personal documentary and performance art. For several decades he has mined his own life and relationships to produce material that's self-referential and radically honest while remaining unavoidably subjective. You can follow some of his currently ongoing projects on Instagram and Patreon.

— YC

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1/25/2025

5:12 pm. Yung Chomsky’s birthday party is tonight. I’m not really in the mood to go but it seems like it means a lot to him for some reason and I feel a certain amount of gratitude for his many kindnesses over the years, so I’m going to bite the bullet and go despite the freezing cold. 

11:48 pm. The party was okay. I’m always hoping I’ll meet a viable romantic partner at one of these things and I never do. But it was nice to talk to Liz and Brace, and to meet Yung Chomsky’s mom and brother. Brace is extraordinarily charming. Listening to him talk, I couldn’t help thinking, “Wow, I wish I were that charming.” He’s warm and open and unpretentious in a way I’m not. I’m pretty sure I come off cold and closed off and pretentious by comparison. No wonder they have a hugely successful podcast and I don’t. 

One nice thing that happened was that a guy who has a podcast called Doomscroll[1] told me the Stalker play[2] we performed a month ago was the best theater experience he’d ever had. That felt particularly good in the wake of one of my students saying earlier that day that the play was “bad” and that the audience was only pretending to like it.

1: Joshua Citarella2: I had just taught a class on Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker and, for our final project, we put on a play about the film.

1/27/2025

11:42 pm. At Yung Chomsky’s party, Farah[1] and Brace were both saying that I should run for mayor. They were half-kidding, but they were also half-serious. Farah offered to run my campaign. I asked her if she was serious and she said she was. I’m seriously considering it. 

1: Farah Marie Velten was the friend I had invited to Yung Chomsky’s party. She plays Ashley in The Show About the Show.

1/28/2025

One of my 365 Videos[1] on Instagram now has 13 million views. Maybe I could be mayor! And the clip from The Imitation of Chris[2] has almost a million. People are asking me where they can see the film. If I could find it, I would put it on Gumroad and charge people a dollar to watch it and hopefully finance my Brecht film[3] with that money. But I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. I wish I were more organized.

1:  I’ve been doing a daily year-long Instagram project in which I upload a short video from my life every day in chronological order. 2:  The Imitation of Chris was the first film I made at UCLA film school. It won the A&E short film festival which meant that it aired on A&E.3: I wrote a script about Bertolt Brecht called How To Be a Good Person in a Bad World that I am currently trying to raise money to shoot.

1/29/2025

10:06 pm. The amazing thing that happened today was that, after trying for days to find a copy of The Imitation of Chris, Peter[1] reminded me that he had a VHS copy that he had taped off the television in 1987 when it aired on A&E, years before I ever met him. 

Luke[2] posted it to Gumroad, but it only got 3 rentals. Also, it turns out that Gumroad takes the first dollar of every dollar made, so I made zero on that one, and would have made zero even if a million people had rented it.

11:34 pm. Stoned. Re-read the Brecht script in anticipation of my Zoom call with Lars Eidinger[3] tomorrow. I had forgotten how good it is. Made me feel less worried about our Zoom meeting tomorrow. 

Should I run for mayor? Maybe. My platform – honesty. I will only take $1 per person (like Gumroad). Better public transportation. A subway train every minute. A bus every minute. 

But the best part of the day was that Beckett[4] came over and we assembled the stationary bicycle together. It was like a real father-and-son thing to do – building something together.

1: My friend Peter Rinaldi has a podcast called Back to One. He’s one of the longest recurring characters in The Show About the Show.2: Luke Walls is one of several younger filmmakers who help out on my various film projects. Because I am technologically inept, they often help me do basic internet things like uploading content. 3: Lars Eidinger is one of the greatest living German actors. He has appeared in films by Olivier Assayas, Claire Denis, Noah Baumbach, and Peter Greenaway.4: Beckett is my sixteen year-old son. He was named after Samuel Beckett.

1/30/2025

The conversation with Lars went about as well as it could. He was easy to talk to and seemed to like me. He says he wants to do the film. He also thinks I should play myself. 

1/31/2025

11:10 pm. Lars emailed me this morning. The Brecht script is looking hopeful again.

2/01

I got a call from Yung Chomsky this morning. He asked me if I would be willing to write a 1,500 word essay on any topic I want for the TrueAnon newsletter. He offered to pay me. I said yes, even though I’m already ridiculously over-extended. But it’s hard to say no to money. 

11:51 pm. Stoned. It was good to see Frank Black in concert. It was good to revisit those songs in that way. And it was maybe even good to let the children feed themselves and go to bed without me. But I miss them. 

2/02

9:34 am. It’s James Joyce’s birthday. Tempted to go to the Finnegans Wake study group’s birthday celebration brunch but I’m afraid of it being alienating. Plus, I have the kids and I’d rather spend time with them.

1:21 am. Tonight’s test screening of Season 3[1] was a bit rough. This season feels incendiary. The Woody Allen reference[2] was the least of my problems.

1: I have been trying to finish the third season of The Show About the Show for the past seven years. It’s finally almost done.2:  In the new season, I cut to a shot of Woody Allen from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask to illustrate the idea of having a court jester type of attitude. I had been worried that the Woody Allen reference might rub some people the wrong way but that turned out to be the least of my worries.

2/03

1:13 am. I like the idea of thinking through the ethical assumptions behind the attacks on the Show when Season 3 comes out. I like the idea of dramatizing the court of public opinion — a kind of surrealist space à la Joyce’s Circe chapter. 

2/04

1:32 am. Stoned. Dear Beckett, I love you so much. You have no idea.

Dear Scarlett[1], I love you so much too. I love you both so much. I just hope you can love each other one day even a fraction of how much I love you both. 

What makes any sense? Resting when you’re tired. Eating when you’re hungry. Having sex when you’re horny. And making art. That makes sense to me.

I’m doing a little better with my children, but I could still use a little improvement in that direction. 

It was touching what Farah said about my parenting. She’s right. A lot of dads treat it like babysitting. 

1: Scarlett is my twelve-year old daughter.

2/05

In the shower this morning, I finally had a moment to think about what to write for the TrueAnon newsletter. And I had the same idea I always have. Why not just write a journal about the two weeks I’ve been given to write this piece? I already have a lot of it written so how hard can it be? Plus, I have nothing to say about anything other than “this happened.” 

6:45 pm. In a really good mood because I just improved Episode 17 of The Show About the Show in a significant way. A guy at the screening had suggested a solution to an editing problem I was having and I remember thinking: “What a stupid idea.” But I tried it tonight and it totally worked. The episode is so much better now because of that guy’s idea. And I don’t even know his name or how to thank him for his contribution to the history of art. 

12:48 pm. Recorded a Conversations I Want To Have Before We Both Die[1] episode with Armen[2]. It was great to see him and to heal the rift that had come between us when, after Kathy[3] and I broke up, he started hooking up with her. I was able to talk about it and we were able to get past it. That was very healing. 

1: Conversations I Want To Have Before We Both Die is one of several podcasts I’m currently doing.2: Armen Enikolopov is a good friend. He’s also a neuroscientist.3: Kathy Joyce is my ex-girlfriend. We were together for about two and a half years and broke up a few months ago.

2/06

6:12 pm. I showed Meghan[1] the ex-fan’s angry tweet after the screening in which they called me: “a pathetic cowardly lecherous old man who coerces young women with new age bullshit and ruins the lives of everyone around him and should honestly **** himself. great season of television though.”

Meghan was visibly shaken and upset by their tweets. 

Spent a lot of the day processing that parasocial hatred. I know there’s going to be more of it when the show comes out, so it feels important, I guess, to practice being attacked. But it cast a pall over the day. 

It reminds me of the Lilliputians bringing Gulliver down to their level. It doesn’t stop me but it adds a heavier load to the load I’m already carrying, which I guess is the point — punishment for offending someone’s reductive moralism. I remember the ex-fan saying at the screening that they had tried to kill themselves in the past. Strange to me that their first line of attack would be to suggest that someone else kill themself. 

12:19 am. Scarlett learned how to play Satie’s Gymnopedie #1 because I told her I loved that piece. She recorded it and was excited to play it for me. 

I’ve been arguing in my head with that stupid ex-fan all day. I would say it’s a waste of time except that I’m working through something. I would really like to use this energy to write that book about art and ethics I was commissioned to write but I don’t have the space and time. Every hour of every day is spoken for. 

1: Meghan Mullane is one of my two research assistants. The New School allows faculty to hire research assistants with New School funds.

2/08

11:10 pm. I would love to make a film that cut back and forth between the making of a film about the life of Rimbaud and the making of a film about the life of Van Gogh. They both died when they were thirty-seven and they were born only a year apart. In other words, they were exact contemporaries!

Teach a class on Finnegans Wake. 

2/09

9:12 pm. Julia[1] canceled our dinner plans. That was demoralizing. I was looking forward not only to seeing her but also to getting out of the apartment and doing some socializing, which I desperately need to do more of.

Starting to worry about having the Show ready in time for the London screenings. But I guess it’s not the end of the world if I end up screening a work-in-progress. The Sheik and I [2] kept changing after every festival screening. 

1:44 am. Worked with Gloria[3] tonight. She said she had been meaning to call me because she felt bad for telling me about the ex-fan’s mean tweet. I told her about what had happened since then — that I had responded to their tweet with the single word “Cowardly?”  — and that the person had doubled down by saying I made them sick and that I was trying to intimidate them by asking them why they called me cowardly and that I was “pathetic” for asking that. Gloria, who’s a fan of this person’s work, urged me to DM the ex-fan and explain that I wasn’t trying to “intimidate” them but was genuinely curious to know why they would call me “cowardly.” 

I DM’d the person and, under Gloria’s tutelage, wrote a way kinder text than the person deserved. But Gloria did a good job talking me down from my indignation and persuading me to be gracious and generous, which I was. I offered to have a dialogue with this person if they wanted and tried to be as humanizing as possible. The person reached out to Gloria to say “Caveh’s not happy with me, lol,” but didn’t bother to respond to my attempt to make peace. 

The thing is, I guess, and this is why it was so triggering for me, that I felt unseen. I make films so I can be seen and when I remain unseen despite the films, I start to feel hopeless on an existential level. It hurts to feel unseen — at least, it hurts me — I feel hurt. 

The story of these last days is the story of my increasing closeness with Beckett. Our relationship is very strong at the moment. I love that.

1: Julia Mounsey is a playwright and performance artist who also happens to live on my block.2: The Sheik and I was a film I made that had been commissioned by the Sharjah Film Festival and subsequently banned in the United Arab Emirates.3: Gloria Cook is a young filmmaker who has been helping me on various projects but mostly on the Ulysses adaptation.

2/10

12:32 pm. The meeting with Arian[1] went well. He wants to produce the film but only if I rewrite it. He doesn’t like my character and wants to rethink it together from scratch. He suggested we both watch Freaky Friday as a point of comparison. 

2:13 am. Got a text message from Yung Chomsky asking me how this essay is coming along. I responded: “It’s more of a journal. Is that okay?” He seemed open to the idea, but also a little bit concerned.

Started listening to the latest TrueAnon podcast about the latest Trump outrages. It’s quite good. I really liked Brace’s unapologetic anti-Trump rants. He and Liz have a really fun rapport. But I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty for not being more engaged in what’s happening politically. I’m glad they’re doing what they’re doing but I personally feel completely powerless to do anything to stem the meteoric rise of fascism that is happening right now. Would running for mayor make any difference?

Stoned. Father, what would you have me do? Forgive me for being so resistant to reality. Help me to accept what is difficult for me to accept. Help me to understand your plan for me. What would you have me do? And may I have some love in my life? 

1: Arian Moayed is an actor and producer that I had sent the Brecht script to. He played Stewy on HBO’s Succession.

2/11

12:52 am. Fasted all day. I usually can’t even stand to miss a single meal, but eating nothing wasn’t so bad. 

It was nice to walk to Whole Foods with Beckett. I wish I could spend all my time with my children. That’s the worst thing about being divorced — not seeing them every day.

2/12/2025

12:31 pm. The colonoscopy went okay. There were no issues. I’d been worried that they would tell me that I only had a certain amount of time left to live, or that after going under, I would never wake up. Peter recently had a weird premonition in which he was convinced I had died. And as I was going under, I remember thinking: “I’m totally fine with dying. I was worried about finishing all of my various film projects before that happens, but I really couldn’t care less. If I die today, who cares. So I’ll love behind unfinished film projects. So what? I wouldn’t be the first.” 

But then I was happy that I didn’t die. And now, I just want to finish those film projects before I die for real.