The genius of Caveh Zahedi

365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die is a podcast that experimental filmmaker Caveh Zahedi started at the beginning of this year. Each episode is a short story, ranging from six minutes to 30 seconds, told directly to the audience. Zahedi has been a quiet star of the American indie scene for decades. His films are almost always autobiographical, and his podcast, with episodes titled ‘My Least Favorite Person’ and ‘My Therapist Insists I Tell Suzanne About the Prostitute’ and ‘What Richard Linklater Said To Me About Why I Was a Failure’, is no different. The subject matter ranges from past sexual experiences, failed film projects and parenting to run-ins with famous people, and his ex-girlfriends.

If Zahedi can be called a superlative artist, it is in the category of openness. The Show About the Show, his television show that has a cult-like following, is a docuseries with a seemingly simple premise: each episode is about the making of the previous episode. It depicts his life with an intensity — and intimacy — that is unmatched even in the age of reality television. Zahedi’s insistence on showing himself smoking weed with his students on set — because it happened — results in his near-termination from a professorship at the New School. The pressures of reenacting their entire life on camera pushes his wife to pursue an affair, and eventually she divorces him and takes the kids — only after Caveh has directed a sex scene between her and the lover. Zahedi’s most acclaimed film, 2005’s I Am a Sex Addict, tells the story of his ‘compulsive honesty’ and addiction to paying for sex as he prepares to embark on a third marriage, freed from his addiction.