My favorite filmmaker explains why
Published July 08, 2026 · 4:20 · 11,879 views
About This Video
Adam Curtis is Van Neistat's favorite filmmaker. Three reasons, laid out in 4 minutes and 20 seconds: style, technique, and subject matter. This clip from Long-Form Episode 2 is the most direct statement Van has made about who shaped his thinking and why.
Style first. Van calls it "perfect taste in music, image, and the marriage of the two." Technique second. Curtis writes his own narration, edits his own films, and works almost entirely with archival footage from the BBC's documentary archive, which Van describes as possibly the most extensive in the world. Those two reasons are craft appreciation from one filmmaker to another. The third is the big one. Van says he is obsessed with Curtis's subject matter, that Curtis's films are the ones he watches and listens to over and over most.
So what is Curtis's subject matter? Van reaches for David Foster Wallace's 2005 Kenyon College commencement speech to answer. Two young fish swimming along. An older fish asks, "How's the water?" One fish turns to the other: "What the hell is water?" Curtis's subject is the water. The invisible systems, the ideological assumptions, the fake simplicity we all accepted because it was reassuring. Van puts it that plainly. No abstraction. The water is what Curtis films. The rest of the channel, the analog-living work, the films-that-matter page, all of it runs downstream from that influence.
What Van References: Adam Curtis, BBC documentary filmmaker. David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water" commencement speech, Kenyon College, 2005. The BBC documentary archive, described as possibly the most extensive in the world.
Related: The machine dream was never real (the full Long-Form Episode 2), Long-Form Episode 1, Films That Matter, Analog Living.
FAQ
Who is Adam Curtis?
A British documentary filmmaker who works for the BBC. He writes and edits his own films, built almost entirely from archival footage and his own voice-over narration. His major works include All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011), HyperNormalisation (2016), and Can't Get You Out of My Head (2021). Van calls him his favorite filmmaker.
Why does Van Neistat compare Adam Curtis to David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water"?
Because Curtis's subject is the invisible system everyone lives inside without noticing. Wallace's parable about fish who don't know what water is describes the same idea. Van uses it to explain why Curtis's work matters to him: Curtis films the thing most people cannot see because they are swimming in it.
Where is this clip from?
It is clipped from Long-Form Episode 2, "The machine dream was never real," published June 18, 2026. The full episode runs 33 minutes and 57 seconds. Van references Curtis six times across the full episode, making him the most cited figure in the piece.
Transcript
Who is Adam Curtis? [Curtis]: We live in a strange time. [Van]: Adam Curtis is my favorite filmmaker. [Curtis]: Extraordinary events keep happening. [Van]: Okay, why is Adam Curtis my favorite filmmaker? [Curtis]: Extraordinary events keep happening that undermine the stability of our world. Suicide bombs, waves of refugees, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, even Brexit.
[Van]: Three reasons. One, style. Perfect taste in music, image, and the marriage of the two. [Curtis]: Yet those in control seem unable to deal with. [Van]: Two, technique. [Curtis]: This film will tell the story of how we got to this strange place. [Van]: He writes himself. He edits himself. [Curtis]: It is about, however, the past 40 years, politicians, financiers, and technological utopians, rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, retreated.
[Van]: His films are voice-over, [Curtis]: Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang on to power. [Van]: titles, music, and archival footage from the BBC archive. [Curtis]: And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it. [Van]: He makes documentaries for the BBC, and the BBC has one of the most extensive documentary film footage archives in the world, maybe the most extensive. [Curtis]: And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it, because the simplicity was reassuring.
[Van]: And the third reason Adam Curtis is my favorite filmmaker, the biggest reason, I am obsessed with his subject matter. His are the films I watch or listen to over and over most. [Curtis]: Even those who thought they were attacking the system, the radicals, the artists, the musicians, and our whole counterculture actually became part of the trickery. Because they too had retreated into the make-believe world. Which is why that opposition has no effect and nothing ever changes. But this retreat into a dream world allowed dark and destructive forces to fester and grow outside. Forces that are now returning to pierce the fragile surface of our carefully constructed fake world.
[Van]: And what's Adam Curtis's subject matter? Adam Curtis's subject matter is what the water is. Give me that what is water joke link. Okay. You know David Foster Wallace's how's the water joke. [DFW]: Greetings, thanks, and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"
[Van]: See how this video fits into the full episode here. The Patreon is how you get in touch with me and contains the alternate universe to this channel.
People Referenced
Adam Curtis, David Foster Wallace
Films & Media Referenced
- referenced as the body of work Van watches and listens to repeatedly
- opening narration quoted in the clip ("We live in a strange time...")
- the "how's the water?" parable used to describe Curtis's subject matter