Feels Good Man, the Film
Arthur Jones's documentary Feels Good Man premiered at Sundance in January 2020 and won a special jury award. It put Furie on camera, traced the character's capture and his attempt to win him back, and gave the whole story its first sustained public account. This facet collects the film's record and the conversation around it.
Part of Pepe
15 moments in this segment.
- - Arthur Jones at the Sundance premiere. A short interview with director Arthur Jones about Feels Good Man, recorded around the film's Sundance Film Festival premiere, where it took a special jury prize. It is the earliest video record in this collection of the documentary meeting an audience.
- - Feels Good Man closing-night discussion in Dallas. A post-screening conversation with director Arthur Jones and producer Giorgio Angelini after the film closed a Dallas festival. The exchange covers how the documentary handles the character's journey and the communities that carried it.
- - Virginia Film Festival discussion of Feels Good Man. Director Arthur Jones and producer Giorgio Angelini in conversation with the media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan, whose work is on the platforms that carried the meme. The pairing pushes the discussion past the film itself and onto how such images spread.
- - Live question and answer with Arthur Jones. A moderated session with writer and director Arthur Jones for a film-school audience, recorded on 22 October 2020, in which he talks through the making of the documentary. It is the longest single account by the director alone in this collection.
- - Cinematic Conversations: Feels Good Man. The Video Association of Dallas hosts a long-form conversation about Feels Good Man, the documentary on Matt Furie and Pepe the Frog. The discussion covers the making of the film and its run on PBS's Independent Lens, where it was streaming free at the time.
- - Garbage World, a scene from Feels Good Man. An animated excerpt from Feels Good Man. The documentary uses original animation drawn in Furie's visual idiom to dramatise the online spaces through which the character travelled.
- - Feels Good Man trailer. The trailer for Arthur Jones's documentary about Pepe the Frog and Matt Furie, released ahead of the film's September 2020 distribution. It sets out the film's frame: an artist trying to take back a character that had escaped him.
- - A critic's review of Feels Good Man. A short critical review of the documentary published around its streaming release, from an established film-criticism channel. It stands in for the film's reception, which ran well beyond internet-culture coverage.
- - A long interview with the makers of Feels Good Man. An extended conversation with director Arthur Jones and producer Giorgio Angelini about how the documentary was researched and put together, and about filming subjects drawn from online subcultures. At three hours it is the most detailed account of the film's production in this collection.
- - Japanese trailer for Feels Good Man. The Japanese trailer for the documentary, released ahead of its theatrical run in Japan in March 2021. It records the film's distribution outside the English-speaking market, where the character's political history was far less familiar.
- - Animating Feels Good Man: Nicole Stafford's reel. Animator Nicole Stafford's reel of her contributions to Feels Good Man, including background art, animation and compositing on the film's funeral sequence. It shows how the documentary's hand-drawn passages were assembled.
- - Matt Furie and the Feels Good Man team in conversation. A recorded post-screening discussion following a free Twitch showing of Feels Good Man, with Matt Furie, director Arthur Jones, producer Giorgio Angelini, streamer Trihex and reporter Taylor Lorenz. The session runs over five hours and ranges across the film, the comic and the character's life on Twitch.
- - Feels Good Man official trailer. The official trailer for Feels Good Man, directed by Arthur Jones, issued here by the distributor MUBI. The film follows Matt Furie as he tries to reclaim the character after it was taken up by the far right.
- - Arthur Jones and Matt Furie on Feels Good Man. Director Arthur Jones and Matt Furie in conversation at DePaul University's Visiting Artists Series. They discuss how the documentary was made and Furie's effort to regain control of a character that had been taken up by the alt-right.
- - Feels Good Man filmmakers at UC Santa Barbara. Director Arthur Jones and producer Giorgio Angelini discuss Feels Good Man with a moderator from UC Santa Barbara. They talk about working with Matt Furie and about the political context in which the character was co-opted.
