Skip to content
TrackPodcasts
societySep 4, 202639:10

'Cookie Queens' documentary filmmaker Alysa Nahmias

About this episode


Documentarian Alysa Nahmias has directed and produced films about PTSD, navigating the world with disabilities, the criminal justice system and other serious topics. Her latest film is called Cookie Queens follows the lives of four young girls as they sell Girl Scout cookies. It may seem like a departure from Alysa's previous work, but it's a story that's not just about cookies. Alysa joins us to talk about how she landed this subject to tell a story that's about the pressures of aging out of childhood, economic class and the harsh realities of capitalism. 


See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Get every episode summarized

Each time Bullseye with Jesse Thorn publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.

Email me new episodes

Free for 3 shows. No card needed.

Hosts & guests

Transcript ready

326 searchable segments. Every word is indexed and playable.

'Cookie Queens' documentary filmmaker Alysa Nahmias

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

0:00
39:10

Full transcript

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn'Cookie Queens' documentary filmmaker Alysa Nahmias. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.

This message comes from Workday. The Enterprise AI platform with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails, so every AI action is permission-aware, giving you the ability to get work done right. It's a new Workday. Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. What does it mean to sell Girl Scout cookies? And I mean, look, we can stipulate Girl Scout cookies are delicious. I personally am a big fan of Samoa's. Why? Because I am an adult with a very refined palette. And whenever that time of year rolls around, cookie time, when you see Girl Scouts camped out in front of the grocery store,

or when your coworker emails you about ordering some cookies from their kid, I mean, it is exciting. It's almost a season in America. But what does it mean for the girls actually selling the cookies? They raise funds for their local Girl Scout councils, of course. But they also, for a brief period of time, become salespeople. Like real deals, salespeople going door to door, selling online, making social media videos, staking out prime real estate in front of Target. My guest, Alyssa Namius, was never herself a Girl Scout. But she was fascinated by the culture of American girls and the microcosm that is Girl Scout cookie sales. So she went out into the world and she found some Girl Scouts. Four of them, to be precise. And her film follows those four Girl Scouts as they learn to be, I guess, entrepreneurs, to experience capitalism and all of its highs and lows.

And to see what that kind of education means to girls living today. It is, as you would expect, adorable. But it is also, as they say, a very rich text. Cookie Queens is the name of the documentary. It's one of my favorites of the year. I can't wait to talk with Alyssa about it. Let's dive right in. Alyssa, welcome to Bullseye. And congratulations on this beautiful movie. I was so moved by it. Thank you so much, Jesse. It's great to be here. You know I'm a fan. Were you worried when you decided to make a movie about a group of young girls all trying to achieve their goals? That it was going to be a corny movie? I don't think I was worried about that because it was, the goals were sort of a way to get into something bigger.

I was not super concerned about whether the girls met or didn't meet their goals. I was looking at this Girl Scout cookie sale as a sort of microcosm of thinking about girlhood and capitalism and the ways that girls and women learn about our value. But there is a kind of like, there's conventions of the subgenre of documentary that's like the competition doc. You know, and so I was interested in that. Like how do we like work with those expectations that people have of seeing lots of stories around that, both in documentary and then there's like the reality TV competition type of stuff. And so, so yeah, I was interested in like, surprising people around that a bit and not giving them exactly what they expected. But yeah, I think if I had just been wanting to make that thing, there would have been more of a real danger that it could be corny. I mean, like decades ago on the show when I was, I might have still been in college or just out of college.

I had Jeffrey Blitz on when his movie Spellbound was in theaters that ended up winning a Oscar. And Spellbound is an incredible movie like hilarious, amazing movie about kids and a spelling bee. When that movie won an Oscar, there was a decade of movies about children in magic competitions. Right. Any competition. Any competition and like, look, children are adorable and competitions are a structure. Right. But I could tell when watching your film that that was not the thing that you were interested in. What were the specific things that you were thinking about when you started thinking about Girl Scouts and Girl Scout Cookie sales? When I heard someone, one of my producers talk about this Girl Scout who sold him a lot of cookies. How many cookies are we talking?

He was at a pizza joint and you know, she had a whole wagon full of cookies. Like she starts by complimenting his hair, et cetera, et cetera. And like we're just getting to know him a little bit. And then all of a sudden the mom comes around with a wagon full of cookies and it turns out they had not just the wagon full, but the garage full, you know, of cookies at home. And so, but even as he told me that story, I think one of the things I was thinking about and why I wanted to do this project was he thought was like, yo, she was so cute and so sweet. And then oh, well, she was also really smart and sat and then all of a sudden she becomes even cunning, right? I related to that girl actually in the way that he and probably many others in the world were perceiving her as this kind of, you know, innocent, sweet, cute, et cetera. And then, oh my gosh, she's also really smart and has something to, you know, she has some business to do here. So I was thinking about that and I was thinking about like that girl scout cookie world as not only like visually interesting and full of characters, both like my friend and my producer and also this girl who we could relate to and who would get at some of the, who would help get at some of these ways in which girls are stereotyped and the ways in which they and we challenge those stereotypes.

And so when I was working with the girls, I really embraced like being honest with them about how they quote unquote turn on and off when they're selling, you know, they physically put on the uniform and set up the tables and do these kinds of say these lines that they're taught about how to sell cookies and then they also make it their own and I was really interested always in getting to outside of the cookies, you know, what, what was their family life like what else were they doing? How could we look at girls more three dimensionally than they're usually represented in the media? It's really inspiring to see the kids perform. It's really incredible to see them master this skill and art and it's also discompeting. Discompeting. You know, there's there's a moment where one of the moms in the movie says the window for play is closing in her daughter's life.

Was it hard for you sometimes to see girls working and performing in such a way that they'll get the approval of adults? Yeah, it was hard sometimes. There were times like also when our crew, you know, my crew was on max 10 hour days, you know, and that's a long day. And there were days when like and we had lunch breaks and stuff like that and there were days when we were leaving and granted we wouldn't be shooting necessarily with the girls all day like we would sometimes do other other things pickups, whatever, but they would be going like they'd be like, oh, you guys are leaving already, you know, we're still selling we're still going and sometimes that was the girls sometimes it was the parents and so that those tensions were felt and then, you know, we should be able to see what we're doing. So we show in the film, for example, like one of the girls, the parent ends up bribing her to sort of participate more, you know.

You're an artist, a documentarian, but you have to sell your work. I mean, to some extent, you're selling your work right now. But you also have to sell your work to big businesses, people with film distribution companies and production companies and so on and so forth. So, what do you relate to about what these kids were doing? What were you gaining perspective on about your own life? I think that this is one of my most personal films in that I see myself in all of the girls and not just in my girlhood, you know, reminiscence. There's a scene where Aura, our youngest girl scout is going out to sell for sort of for the first time in a big way with her wagon and she's experiencing rejection, you know, customers who walk by and she's also there's one customer who says, you know, I might come back later and buy some and I relate to that so much I compare it to every finance year, you know, that I approach with my projects, you pitch and you're like, oh, and you know, that was a good call.

They said that maybe we'll talk, you know, they'll they'll they'll give me a call or we'll have another meeting maybe maybe they'll watch a rough cut. And so I really think that these girls are emblematic of experiences that we all have doing business. I hope that people see themselves in the film that way and I totally do. I think that it's complicated to be an artist and also engage in the commercial enterprise of the art market or the film market, the film industry and to be able to navigate that is something that I, you know, and I think many other peers grapple with, you know, we, we and the notion of selling out and all of that like I think, yeah, there's there's a lot there and it feels really personal to me. I really do relate to the girls. We get a lot more still to come with a list of nommious, she's director of the new documentary, cookie queens stay with us. It's bulls eye for maximum fun dot org and NPR.

This message comes from Sotfa back to school takes a lot of energy, focus and stamina not just for the kids, but for the teachers and parents too. And that requires deep restorative sleep, the kind that every Sotfa mattress is designed to provide because every tomorrow starts the night before and now save up to $625 on $1000 or more at Sotfa.com slash NPR. That's S double a TV a dot com slash NPR. This message comes from better help, imagining carrying a backpack every day inside it every conversation every mistake every expectation. It is easy not to notice how heavy it is until someone asks if you want to put it down sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that. Better isn't one size fits all better as personal. It's therapy tailored to the individual to help lighten what you carry match with a therapist who truly understands. Visit betterhelp.com slash NPR. This message comes from wise the smart way to manage your money around the world with wise you can send spend and receive money in over 40 currencies at the mid market rate.

Learn more at wise.com. Teas and sees apply. Welcome back to bullseye. I'm Jesse foreign. I'm talking with Alyssa Namias. She's a documentary filmmaker who's covered the Cuban revolution. Visual artists people living with disabilities her latest film what she directed is cookie queens. The documentary follows four girl scouts while they're on a mission to sell as many girls out cookies as they can. It is of course as cute as can be but it is also a powerfully intensely nuanced portrait of American girlhood. Hello Rex. Hello. Would you like to buy some girls out cookies? It's cookies isn't it? Yes we got the thin men's and the Samoa's and then what do you suggest? Do you want to know the best deals?

Yeah. The best deals are 20 cookies but they're actually sandwich cookies so that means that they're 40 cookies. I had an experience today on bullseye where I replied to my friend Josh Gondelman had made a little thread about the challenges of making money as an artist on social media and I just sort of agreed with him. And pointed out it becomes harder and harder to not just make commercials that are pretending to be content because of the fact that the social media companies through which most people consume media these days are more and more trying to build wall gardens that trap users and consumers and take bigger and bigger chunks of the advertising that results away from the creators. And this dude replied to me and said well maybe they shouldn't be making nonsense content to feed the algorithms of meta who support these slavery and blah blah blah blah.

And this was moments before I watched your film and I couldn't help but think about that interaction because these girls are participating in a marketplace. Enjoying many parts of it, enjoying the hard work and the skills that they're gaining and they're gaining skills that are important survival skills for them that will be important survival skills for them as an adult. But they're also trying to participate in a child's play activity of being in Girl Scouts and to do so requires that they participate in this market. There's not a different way for them to do it. They could go out and sell four boxes. It's like plenty of Girl Scouts do that. I don't mean to suggest that anyone has to prioritize this in their life in this way. But to participate in the market, it's not like they can be like well I'll get the trip to summer camp a different way.

You know what I mean? Certainly, yeah, unless their family can just do that, right? But the Girl Scout camps are different and I think that they are really appealing. And yeah, that analogy to sort of any involvement, engagement in an industry, you know, where we were both loving what we do sometimes in some ways and also feeling fraught about it, you know, feeling conflicted about it. Sometimes even disliking aspects of it. That is definitely something I was interested in with this sort of microcosm view of the Girl Scout. So somehow it's so easy to see it when it's a little girl sometimes, you know, for people at least we're seeing with audience, like I'm feeling it with audiences, people are like infuriated sometimes that the girls and families are stuck with the boxes that Girl Scouts won't take them back, you know, at the end of the day. And it's like so much of our world runs on credit and families go into debt for all kinds of things that are how much higher stakes than cookies.

So if you can feel furious about the cookies, can you feel furious about health care or education, you know, and then for artists too, like, yeah, when we get when we take it into a different place. Can we think the interesting thing like you talked about this, the play of it, I was really fascinated by that because the girls are learning like they're learning the economy, the business of selling cookies and also the economy as if it's a game. The stakes are high. I don't mean to minimize that like money is, you know, has this very real impact and effect and also the economy is constructed. And so because it's like that, can the questions they ask are valid and maybe it can change. Will you start to make a movie like this? You know that so much is going to hang on what you can look at through that camera and that mostly you're going to be looking at these kids. And so it all is hanging on, can you find four kids who are interesting to watch and like shout out to all children. There's no children that are boring to watch.

Children are amazing because they're like little tiny people, but they're really bad at some things. But how do you go out and choose children to spend all this time with before you've spent all this time with them? It was fun because children are at or you know often entertaining if we pay enough attention and really smart, you know, we did a casting. The film is totally independent. So I didn't we didn't work with the Girl Scouts organization during production or anything like that, although they knew about the project. We ended up getting to parents through like social media groups, our own networks and through organizations and such. And my casting producer Whitney met with like hundreds of families for very quick zooms and exchanged emails and all that. And then I met with dozens and I ended up visiting families and spending a few days with each of them. I ask kids really, I think questions that tried to get it like what is their imagination like what is their world view like.

But it could be so vastly different like I would ask them, you know, these were in my casting conversations. If you could sell cookies anywhere in the universe real or imagined, where would it be? And we got you know such different answers. Some were like, well, I would be at the Costco on the corner of such and such at this hour, like very strategic cerebral practical. And like that's a great response. They had a good reason. And then others were like, well, I would be out in outer space wearing a rainbow space suit, you know, and there'd be cookies everywhere and aliens I'd sell them to. And I thought like both of those are so fascinating, you know. And so I was looking for kids that had these kind of imaginations and ability to articulate and be creative because I was seeing the kids are my collaborators. They're like you were saying the key collaborators in this and I knew I wanted it to be fun and I knew I wanted it to be also serious and reflective at times. So I was looking for that and I was looking for kids that were going to be on a journey that they were at some kind of inner journey.

Not that again, the goal wasn't to make a film about just about Girl Scouts and the and the ins and outs of that. It was about something bigger. So I wanted the stories to have resonance in a more universal way, whether it was about sisterhood or finding one's voice or like what it means to have your identity be so tied to something that you've done in the past that you're, you know, you can't part with it. And so these were kids that had those qualities and I was looking for families that had love, even if there was sometimes say arguably too much pressure on a kid that there was really good intentions. I wanted to explore that and be able to have a cast that was different in ages where the girls could like we could see them reflected in each other as well. Yeah, and then it was just building trust and I mean it's I've done lots of documentary filmmaking and when you really pay attention and listen like you were saying not just kids but most people.

There's something there to explore some story to tell, but we did film with seven to get the four main stories in the film because you never know what's going to happen and which ones are going to work well with each other. When you're making a documentary about kids, what is your responsibility to the kids? My lifetime, like I am responsible to these kids for the rest of my life and I've told them that, you know, I get emotional because it's like it's the high stakes even though this film is not intentionally trying to do anything negative or put them in a bad position. And it's really public and consent was ongoing and still is it's something that I tried to talk with them as best I could at the beginning and with them and their parents about how you know this is going to be one one perspective on your life at one moment, you know, and it's going to be very public people it's like having a little video that's just one moment in your life that everyone will be able to have access to for the rest of your life.

That is a huge commitment and I think as best they can they understood and understand it and we keep talking about it and if it changes at some point and one of them is not happy with how things are going and I'll be there to work through it with them. I think that's the best that and I know our whole film team and community will be there. So yeah, but I do have concern and I also have a lot of hope and joy and so far knock on wood it's been really awesome they're great the girls are like are we going to take all every Q and A at film festivals like can we please take audience questions we're going to take audience questions at this one right like they read letter box pretty religiously. Oh yeah. After every screening you know we're having if we're having dinner or something olives already scrolling letter box. Hi I'm Olive and I'm a girls got from troop to 19 cookies are the same but the price did go up unfortunately it's now six dollars but we can do the math for you.

I want to stop for one second I feel like that's the part's taking too long and I like the joke that we can do that but I don't think it's working so I think maybe we cut that. Okay my website is me want cookies calm alright cookie monster so if you want to buy can they also be several booths thank you for watching bye. Okay how was that good it was good I liked it was good enough for the website. I mean yeah I can do this. Okay I saw it. When I was a teenager in my mid like mid teens I saw this movie called aka Don bonus which is a first person documentary made by a teenager who lived in this housing project in the South part of San Francisco. It's maybe like half an hour and he's a first generation immigrant and it's just this kid shooting his own life and talking about it from behind the camera.

Even as a jaded teenager who had seen paris is burning at the proxy theater and whatever happened to be playing at the roxy theater three blocks from my house. I still remember how powerful it felt to see someone like me different from me in many ways but like an actual teenager who had real voice and agency in a film on a movie screen. And I can't imagine what it's like for all these I mean it must be literally a million or whatever girls who do girl scouts in the United States to see this experience represented on film in these different ways. The opportunities that I've had to connect with young girl scouts at film festivals and we did a few preview screenings it's been really emotional and inspiring to see that outpouring of you know of their emotion and what it feels like to see themselves represented and their experience and actually for women too who are older who had the experience of so I remember and people want to share their stories.

Specifically I'll share one the other day in Los Angeles we did a preview screening and there were a bunch of girl scouts there and afterwards there was a high school girl who came up to me and Shannon Elizabeth was there one of the girls in the film with her mom. And channel Elizabeth is Latina Native American and this young woman came up to us and was really in tears but like gratitude tears and and sort of almost she was just surprised she didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know what she was in for with the film and she just kept thinking Shannon Elizabeth and her mom and me for she said I'd never seen myself represented and she was talking about herself as a girl scout and she was talking herself about herself as a young Native American woman and that was really powerful to see that connection especially because we got to have in real time where she actually got to meet them after the screening so that kind of thing is powerful and it also I mean it's hard to stomach that I'm not going to be able to talk to her. This is a hard to stomach that girls haven't seen themselves represented you know in that way and it doesn't mean that it's not out there just because someone person hasn't seen it I'm not saying that but I think we need more of it and I'm happy if the film can offer that to some girls and also inspire them to know that their stories matter that sharing your story is something that people will care about because the girls in this film they're extraordinary of course and they're also ordinary kids.

or anything like that, but their stories matter and they're touching people. So that is gratifying, you know, for me as their collaborator and now friend. We'll be back in just a second. It's Bullseye from MaximumTun.org and NPR. Support for NPR and the following message come from FX's The Drop, a snowfall saga. Wanda and Leon are back, but this time they're chasing a different kind of legacy. As West Coast rap begins to take over 90s Los Angeles, Wanda is betting on a new generation of artists ready to make a name for themselves in hip hop. But in a city where every opportunity comes with a price, they'll have to decide what they're willing to risk to leave their mark. FX is The Drop, premieres September 8th on FX and Hulu. Hi everybody, it's Ellen Weatherford and Christian Weatherford. People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. But we can judge a snake by its ability to fly or a spider by its ability to dive.

Or a dung beetle by its ability to navigate with the starlight of the Milky Way Galaxy. On just as you of us, we rate our favorite animals out of 10 in the categories of physical effectiveness, behavioral ingenuity and of course aesthetics. Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, musicians, comedians and more join us to share their unique insights into the animal kingdom. Listen with the whole family on MaximumFun.org, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorne. I'm talking with Alyssa Namius. She's the director of the new documentary, Cookie Queens. I watched this movie on my oldest daughter's 15th birthday. And I may have already been having some feelings before I press play on the movie.

But I kept crying over and over. And one of the things that I was crying about was how sensitively you portrayed in the film. The ways that these girls relate to their girlhood and relate to adulthood. One of the girls is in a sort of debutante class. One of the girls has two older sisters, one of whom is in her teens and totally over everything. We have some good eye roll shots of her. Yeah, some really some really premium eye rolls. Yes. And there are all these questions about makeup and all these things that girls have to deal with

about what it means to be a big girl or an adult, even leaving aside the questions of economics. How did watching these girls so intently, as the parent of a girl who as you were making this film was in that kind of transitional adolescent period in her life. A fact how you thought about that period of life in girls generally and maybe even in your own, in your daughters. Well, I just want to acknowledge for a minute to the dads and that you would connect, you know, with it that way because that means that's also something that isn't always represented. And I wanted to make sure that the dads in the film and the dads watching the film could see themselves represented. I ran out in about a cookie costume. None of my children are in girl scouts. None of them are planning to sell cookies, but just in case that one that inspired me.

Totally. We could definitely manufacture those. I take the adult cookie costume into my computer. My algorithm is ruined forever. Amazing. But yeah, to speak to your question about girlhood, it's funny. I, it must have been before I was making the film or in the early moments of it, I was noticing with my daughter in her twin years, like early twin years, that sometimes she was like, why don't you treat me like an adult? Why are you talking baby, you know, why, I mean, not baby talk, but like, why are you talking down to me? Why are you telling me what to do, which is so natural, you know? And then other times she was just like, mommy, will you please, you know, just in the, and I realized I didn't always know what she, you know, I was confusing. Like, does she want, which one does she want? We would always have really good conversations before bedtime, you know? And I just sort of shared that with her. I'm like, sometimes it seems like you want to be treated like a big girl and sometimes you want to be treated like a little girl and I just want to

honor that and I don't always know. And we came up with this thing where if she wanted to, she could say, LG or BG, you know, like treat me one of these or the other. And sometimes she did, sometimes she didn't say, it wasn't like a thing she had to say, it was just acknowledging it and it felt so good to acknowledge that because I realized I didn't really have it as a kid, you know? There are these years when you desperately want to be both big and little. And I also think sometimes I still want that, you know? And sometimes we adults still want that. And those years are so emblematic of that feeling of wanting, like, you know, there are days when I just don't want to adult and like someone save me. And especially as girls and women, like we were at my generation, we were fed so many like princess stories of the sort of classic kind where someone's going to swoop in, probably a man and save you or marry you and make you rich or whatever the fairy tales were. And like when you realize that

doesn't, you know, like that's not what you maybe not what you're going to get in also, maybe not what you want. It's a complicated thing. And I think girls today are, they aren't hopefully fed as much of that, at least in our circles with my daughter. And these girls are also really good at articulating that. So being able to bear witness to that, when I went into the film making with the whole crew, I said, like, we are looking for those moments. I'm looking for the moments where, you know, where they can be where they can be talking about business and what's good for business and they can be slurping ramen. Like I'm looking for the moments where, are the five year old can be talking to her dad about buying inventory and how much she's going to pay for it and eating with her fingers because she's five years old. Like I want to find those those moments. And that was so wonderful to do. And so like, yeah, for me as an artist as a woman. And then also I think for the girls to be allowed to be that way and see themselves

that way is awesome. Even our teenager now when she does Q&A, she's like, guys, I was in middle school then, you know, she's like, can it can see how she was wanting to be this kind of, you know, I've got it all figured out, I roll, et cetera. But then also now she can see how that was also herself as a younger girl. Yeah, I wanted to honor that. And I think we don't see it so much. So maybe it surprises people. But I think the inner feeling of it is really familiar at least to me. I have these vivid memories of being a little kid after my parents divorced when I was four. But before my dad remarried, which I think was when I was eight. So I'd be six, seven years old. We lived in this little apartment in San Francisco, my dad and I. And in his closet, we're hanging his sashes from when he was an Eagle Scout as a kid. And he never asked or expected me to become a

Boy Scout. But my dad didn't save much in his life. And you know, he went from being an Eagle Scout to joining the Navy and did not save things from the Navy and had a very negative experience in the Navy. Right. So even as a six year old, I could tell how important these were to him. Was your mom a Girl Scout? She was. Yeah, she was a Brownie in 1950s in Chicago. And yeah, these objects, like they earned them, you know, like that it means something. What the it's not just an object. It's like the kids who who work for these patches for these badges for these pins, it signifies that. And my mom, I don't know if she saved her uniform, but she definitely told me about Girl Scouts to some extent. And she ended up being not just the first woman, but the

first person in her whole large Greek immigrant family to go to college. And she ended up going to grad school. And there is a higher correlation between a high correlation between Girl Scouting and women, you know, having social mobility, getting education, being in leadership positions. So it's correlation, not causation, but like they're it's there. And my and I think in the 50s for my mom, it was like, you could if you were an ambitious, active girl, your options were Girl Scouts and cheerleading. And she did both. Like we didn't have they didn't have sports. So in 1912, when Girl Scouts were founded by Juliet Gordon Low, who was a disabled woman who had lost her husband and was on her own and wanted to start a space for girls to, you know, connect with each other and to have and even the cookie sale then starts a few years later. And it's like it's a time we have to remember when even my mother-in-law couldn't open a bank account without getting as a single mom without getting her brother to co-sign in 1970s. So this is women couldn't have agency in the same

way. And the cookie sale as it started out had that kind of revolutionary route, right, with girls and women saying, we're going to raise some money and do this thing. And I think that's really interesting to me, especially with some of the storyline around olive, you know, trying to advocate for the girls to get more per box and such. Like, will there be, and could there be another revolutionary moment, let's say, or at least a reform? But I think it's like you're like you were saying with your dad and his, and his, I don't know what they call them in Boy Scouts as sashes. I mean, they are sashes. I don't know if they call them masculine sashes or something, but it's a sash. It's a sash. Tough sash. I don't know. Yeah, these things mean something because they're part of a tradition and the kids earn it. And, and we've had women like where they're, they're, I had a, at a screening the other day, a woman wore her sash from the 1950s, and she had saved it too. So there's something really meaningful there. Do you have a favorite girl scout, Cookie Alyssa? I mean, if I'm going with

classics, it's the thinnments. And then I also got to sample everything. And I became a fan of the lemonade. If you like lemon, it's got a lot of icing. It's dangerous. You know what, Alyssa? Now that I am a grown up, I used to be into thinnments, basic stuff like you. I'm not trying to big time our audience. Maybe some of them aren't sophisticated. It's like me, but I like Samoa's because I'm fancy coconut tastes good now. Amazing. Well, I know some girls who can definitely give you a hook up for those Samoas. Because they have them left over. They have them no, those are high demand. Those are popular. I'm glad to hear it. Yeah. Alyssa, thank you so much for coming on Bullseye. And thanks for your wonderful movie. Thank you so much for having me, Jesse. Alyssa Namias, folks, her new movie is called Cookie Queens. It is every bit as adorable and heartwarming and delightful and funny as you would hope it would be.

It is also a very thoughtful film about class and culture in America. I really think it's a special one. Get out there and see it. That's the end of another episode of Bullseye. Bullseye is recorded at maximum fun World Headquarters in the historic jewelry district of downtown Los Angeles, where it was 95 degrees and raining today. Yeah, really. It's not whether we're used to in LA. Thanks by the way to all the Angelinaos who came out to our screening of one of my most beloved films of all time, A Thousand Clowns. Thanks to the folks at American Cinema Tech and their festival Friend of the Fest for hosting Bullseye and finding a 35 millimeter print of that 65-ish-year-old movie was such a great time. It was so fun to introduce it and talk to folks after. Yeah, it was total great time. So thanks American Cinema Tech. Thanks everybody who came out.

Our show is produced by speaking into microphones. Our senior producer is Kevin Ferguson. Our producers, Jesus Ambroseo and Richard Roby. Our video producer is Daniel Spear. Special thanks this week to Jacob Derwin at Technica House in NYC for recording my conversation with Alyssa Namias. We get booking help on Bullseye from Meridaivus. Our interstitial music comes from our friend Dan Wally, DJW. You can find his music at DJWSounds.bandcamp.com. Our theme music was written and recorded by the GO team. It's called Huddl Formation. Thanks to the GO team. Thanks to their label Memphis Industries. You can follow Bullseye on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube where you'll find video from just about all our interviews, including the ones you heard this week. I think that's about it. Just remember, all great radio hosts have a signature sign-on. Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. This message comes from Prolon. Want a look and feel your best this summer?

Prolon's five-day fasting mimicking diet is a clinically developed nutrition program with the goal of promoting fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Developed at USC's Long Jeviti Institute, it aims to assist the body in entering a fasting-like state that helps reset metabolism, target visceral fat and support healthy metabolic markers. Get 15% off plus a bonus gift when you subscribe at prolonlife.com slash NPR. This message comes from Bull and Branch. Change the way you sleep with soft to 100% organic cotton sheets from Bull and Branch, designed to help you fall asleep faster, with airy blankets, cloud-like duvets and breathable sheets. Experience pure comfort on night one and feel your sheets get softer with every wash. Discover the difference with 15% off your first order at bullandbranch.com with code NPR. Exclusion Supply, seaside for details.

More episodes

More from Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

View all episodes →