Adam Bhala Lough // Filmmaker

I talked to Lough last Thursday, right after he had a positive call with Lil Wayne’s manager Fabian Marasciullo. He says the two discussed the possibility of formally releasing the film whenever the final cut is done. When Lough began filming the original Carter in 2007, Wayne gave him footage that other people recorded of him from 2002 to 2004. Lough, who originally began editing The Carter Documentary Part 2 with filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross, says there’s so much footage from that early period that he could do a two-part film.

Wayne attempted to block the official release of the original The Carter documentary, apparently due to scenes showing his lean usage. His $50 million lawsuit was thrown out in 2009, but the Quincy Jones III-produced film never received the full release it deserved, now being impossible to find beyond unofficial uploads on sites like YouTube. The footage captures Wayne at his zenith, with Tha Carter III going platinum in a week and the prolific artist realizing his self-fulfilling “Best Rapper Alive” prophecy. The Carter Documentary Part 2 shows Wayne an era (or two) before that period, creating an interesting juxtaposition.

In The Carter, he records in giant luxury hotel suites; The Carter 2 begins with him arguing over a room at the Radisson Inn. The film is unpolished, but it’s hard for fans not to feel his fervor to be the best artist he can, as seemingly every other scene showcases him rapping for whoever’s around. I had a sprawling conversation with Lough, a lifelong Wayne fan, about being around the iconic artist, the importance of showing the full scope of a subject, and how the original filming process reset the course of his life.

I was under the impression that you filmed The Carter Documentary Part 2 footage, but that’s not the case.

All this footage was during the making of the first Carter. I was shooting with Wayne in 2007 and 2008. Wayne gave me all this footage that he’d been shooting for two years. And he was basically like, “I got all this stuff. I don’t know what to do with it. Do you think you can use it in your movie?”

I watched it, and I was like, “This is amazing.” I tried to incorporate some of it into the original Carter, and it just didn’t work. It felt of a completely different era. It was like a different Wayne. It was on a different medium. I was using a different camera, the Panasonic HVX 200, which was the first camera with cards, and this previous stuff was shot on mini DV, so it just didn’t work. But I was sitting on it. First, I brought it to my friends, who are very successful documentary filmmakers, and Bill and Turner Ross, who have been around for a long time making critically acclaimed indie docs. They live in New Orleans, and I brought it to them, and they did a cut, and they sent that to me, and we were working back and forth on it.

And then I spent the last couple of years just working on it on my own, and I’d gotten it to a place where I was, kind of happy with it, but I felt like it needed more work, obviously. And I also wanted to get it done and then show it to Wayne. I knew if I just brought it up, like, “I want to do this,” it wouldn’t have gone anywhere. I literally just had to go and do it myself.

And then [sometime between] Christmas and New Year’s, somebody hacked my Vimeo, downloaded it, and then put it up on YouTube. It was some fan account called Louisianimal. I messaged them, and said, “Hey, man, I’m not going to sue you or anything. Can you just take this down? This isn’t finished and [it’s] kind of embarrassing for me. It’s not my best work at this point.” They didn’t respond. I also contacted YouTube. They refused to take it down. I hit up Jeff [Weiss], and Jeff knew somebody at a label, and that person was like, ”I can’t really help you.” So I was at a loss for what to do. I asked ChatGPT what should I do? And the AI told me that I should put it up, claim ownership over it, and if I’m able to do that successfully, then I can start taking down the other ones. And so that’s what I did.

And it’s actually started to work, I’ve moved forward with the process of getting copyright strikes on these other people who are putting it up. The problem is that now it’s disseminated everywhere. It’s on X, it’s on Tiktok, it’s on Instagram, but at least I can control it. I can manage it now that I’ve got it up on YouTube, and mine. The AI actually gave me good advice. So that’s how this all came about and why it’s suddenly out there.

What did YouTube say?

When you email them, I’m not naive enough to think that I’m actually talking to a person. I feel like I’m just talking to AI when they respond. I definitely did not speak to a human being over there at any point. But yeah, they refused to help me.

Who was filming the original footage?

I don’t know specifically. I do hear voices in some of the footage. There’s a male voice, there’s a female voice. I think Wayne just had a camera, or maybe he owned a couple cameras, and he just had people filming. Some of them might have been professional, some of them might have been the manager, some of them might have been friends, but that just made that just kind of Lent to the beautiful quality of the images [they’re] almost like home video.

One of my main takeaways was the rapport that he had with the camerapeople in this film, whereas the original Carter seemed like a little bit more fly on the wall.

Yeah, I think you’re spot on there. I think the fact that it was most likely some of his friends in his crew that were filming, made him way more open then when I was filming, and I was this professional documentary filmmaker who was coming in and taking a purposeful fly on the wall approach.

The way that I approach shooting documentaries is that I’m a fly on the wall. I want to disappear into the background. I’m not talking to him, I’m not prompting him. I’m not saying anything. I’m just trying to blend into the background. So that’s what made that footage feel like that. Whereas, I’m sure when his friends have a camera, they’re up in his face, talking and joking and laughing, and so he’s interacting more.

What are the other subtle differences between the two films?

I think they’re completely different. I was just talking to [Wayne’s manager] Fabian about this, we were joking about it. He was telling me that there are so many different generations of Wayne. Fabian was talking about how he has all this footage of the post-jail Wayne and how different it is from Tha Carter III era Wayne from this 2002 to 2004 era. You can imagine how different that is from when he was in the Hot Boyz. There’s various generations of Wayne that are so different from each other; that’s fascinating.

And I’m not a music critic or anything, but I love music, and I know hip-hop really well, and I know Wayne really well. I think that this footage from 2002 to 2004 really represents

Wayne when he was just coming into the greatest rapper alive, when he was just reaching that. And then when I met him, he already was the greatest rapper alive. He knew it, and he was ready to pop, like mainstream.

In this earlier footage, he’s not mainstream. He’s still a famous rapper, not necessarily a household name. When Tha Carter III sold a million records in a week, and during that whole period, he literally became a household name. So I think they’re very different people and that shows in the footage.

How did you originally connect with Wayne to film the original Carter documentary?

Quincy Jones III contacted me. He had seen one of my previous films, and he was like, “I really want to work with you. I have this company. We have a deal with an offshoot of Miramax.” You’re not going to believe this, but it was a company owned by Harvey Weinstein and Steve Bannon. A lot of people don’t remember, but Steve Bannon actually came from Hollywood; he was a movie producer. So the original financiers of The Carter were going to be Harvey Weinstein and Steve Bannon, which would have been amazing if it had actually happened, but they shut down their company during production of the film.

So Quincy paid for it himself out of his own pocket. He basically approached me [and] said, “Do you want to direct this thing about Lil Wayne?” I said, “Of course, I do.” I think Lil Wayne is an incredible artist. I think he’s fascinating. Like, I’ve been a fan of the Hot Boyz since I was a little kid. So interestingly, the day I met Wayne was here in Boston. He was doing a show, it was one of those radio Summer Jam shows. Quincy called, called me. I was living in Brooklyn at the time, and he was like, “Wayne wants you to come up and film it and meet him. Can you get on a train right now?” I hopped on an Amtrak, I went up to Boston, I took a taxi to the show. I filmed the first shot of the movie, the slow motion shot of him onstage, is from that first show. And then I went on his bus afterwards and met with him and talked to him about the movie, and then from there, we just started shooting.

How extensive was that talk? I’m curious how much of a rapport y’all were able to build before you got into the process.

It was probably five minutes. He [had] just come off stage so he was tired and sweaty and inhaling blunts. But I showed him some of the footage I shot, and he was really impressed.

I’ll ever forget, he said, “You’re a beast with a camera.” And I was like, ”Thank you.” And like, that was basically it. And he went back to the back area of his bus where he goes to disappear. I guess it’s a bedroom. Then I hung out with Tez the rest of the night. And actually, Jim Jones came on the bus at one point.

The majority of the time when I wasn’t shooting with Wayne, but when I was on set, Wayne would disappear, and I was just hanging out with Tez and Mack Maine, and Nicki Minaj. At one point I spent some time with her before Wayne did The Jimmy Kimmel Show, when nobody knew who she was, and they wouldn’t even let Drake on the bus. He was, he was, like, such a dork that they wouldn’t even let him on the bus.

When he started selling millions and millions of records. It was a different story entirely. But he was definitely not allowed on the bus and wouldn’t hang out with any of because there were real Blood gang members around all the time. And I’m sure, he was intimidated by them too. I was, even though they were super cool to me. These are serious, Blood gang members with guns on them, like, some shit could go down.

I remember a piece where you said that there were times where you were trying to film him and had to wait at a hotel until he was ready to see you. How much of the recording process was “hurry up and wait” like that?

Pretty much all of it in the US was like that. It wasn’t until we got to Amsterdam that he was totally accessible, for a number of reasons. Like, we’re in a different country, we were staying in the same hotel. So I could just, like, walk to his hotel room, and then maybe he’d also gotten to know me at that point. There was less distractions in Amsterdam. It’s significant that there were no [Bloods] in Amsterdam with him. They were only there in the US. They were always around. There was always all these distractions. So I think it was difficult for Wayne. I think it made it so that things would have to be lined up pretty well for him to want to shoot. But in Amsterdam, there were no distractions. It was really chill. It was only a few people there, like Mack Maine, Kidd Kidd, Jae Millz, Gudda Gudda. No wives, girlfriends, baby mamas, none of that. Birdman was there with his kids, and then Tez and a publicist, and that was it. So it was very chill. That was when we got our best footage.

How much experience did you have covering people where you had to pick your spots like this?

Not any at all. The only previous experience I had at that point in my career was shooting with Lee “Scratch” Perry, and there was a little bit of that, but he wasn’t nearly as famous. He was sizably famous, especially in reggae circles, so there was a little bit of that. But you’re also talking about a guy who’s 70 years old and has been really used to dealing with that, whereas Wayne was, I think at the time, 26 or 27. So it’s like, you can’t really compare.

What are some of the main lessons from the experience that you took into future work?

That movie changed my entire life and career, and my entire approach to everything. What I really learned, and what I think was the biggest blessing, was that previous to making the Carter, I was, I was really, [like] I had an idea about what I wanted to get and I had to get it. I was very bull-headed. My creative attitude, my attitude in general, was very rigid. It had to be my way or the highway. It had to be done the way that I wanted because this is how I envisioned it. And after dealing with Wayne, my whole attitude became flipped, almost, and I took on a really zen attitude of “I’m going to get what I get.” I have kids, and [that’s the] phrase that we use with them, when you’re giving out presents or candy or whatever you get, you don’t get upset.

That’s what I had to learn. Because at the beginning, when I was sitting for days in a hotel room waiting for Wayne to show up, or when he wouldn’t do interviews — he kept postponing doing a sit-down interview with me — I would get really frustrated and angry. But over the course of the year filming with him, I stopped fighting that. I just let it go. I just embraced the chaos, like this is just the way that it’s going to be, and if you can learn to accept that, then you’re going to be less stressed out and have less headaches. And B, maybe you’ll get something more interesting than you initially planned, because maybe you aren’t as fucking smart as you think you are.

I took that lesson through the rest of my career. So when I’ll be filming with Nyjah Huston, [for a] skateboarding documentary I did with [him called The Motivation], he was similar to Wayne in that he was a young, famous kid who could kind of do whatever he wanted. I’d be on set with Nyjah, and the producers would be really upset, like he’s not acting the way he’s supposed to, or he’s not showing up, or he walked off to go hang out with his friends, and left the middle of the interview, and they couldn’t believe that I was so chill and okay with it, but that’s where that came from.

I became very Zen in the rest of my life. It wasn’t just in the filming, but now I I’ve really adopted this philosophy of life, that’s almost Zen Buddhist. I let things happen. I accept everything that happens in the present moment. That doesn’t mean I can’t be angry at it, but I accept it first, that this is the way it is, that I’m not going to fight it.

There were scenes in The Carter 2 where Wayne was talking about women. He was saying if he gets put on child support, he’s not gonna be there for the kid. And there’s another scene where he’s talking about how he, at the time, isn’t dating Black women. I’m curious, what that process taught you about the necessity of showing the full scope of somebody?

I mean, that’s the interesting stuff, right? Like, that’s the goal. We’re incredibly complex, complicated individuals, all of us, and nobody’s perfect. And I don’t agree with him when he talks about not paying child support. I don’t think that’s right, but I’m not putting it in there because I’m glorifying. I’m putting it in there because I’m showing this is a very complicated individual, and all artists are, probably even more so than normal humans. I think I have an obligation to show people warts and all, rather than shaving off the sharp edges. Whenever I can do that, I do that.

Has “cancel culture” and the notion that we shouldn’t “platform” certain people affected your storytelling at all?

It hasn’t. It’s been really difficult for me at times, like I got a lot of hate. It was really disappointing when my alt-right documentary came out, it was the number one spot on Netflix, and I got death threats from the alt right, but then I got hate from the left because they claimed that I was platforming Richard Spencer. I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

And time has proven me right, I’ll tell you why. First of all, they used footage from my film in the trial against Spencer in Charlottesville, where they bankrupted him. They made him pay for all the damage that was done in Charlottesville, him and a couple of other defendants. But they showed footage from my movie in that, in that trial. So all the people on the left who were talking shit about me, directly at times, for platforming him…that movie helped basically bankrupt him and destroy his career. He’s gone, like he disappeared, right?

It’s really upsetting to me, but I’m from a different generation, so I have to be aware that other younger generations think differently. I don’t want to end up being the old guy in the room who’ yelling at everyone. So there’s a balance that I’m trying to strike. And my mentors [as well as] the documentary filmmakers that I studied, the Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker, I’m gonna do the same thing they did, because that’s how good documentaries are made. I’m not gonna not interview somebody for fear of platforming them, I think that’s bullshit.

But beyond just that, I’m the type of person who likes to put myself into uncomfortable situations. I like being around people that I don’t necessarily agree with, even if they hate me, [or] if they’re racist. My family’s from India. I would talk to Richard Spencer about, like, “Why do you think white people are better than my people? Like, we came up with the concept of zero. We created algebra.” And obviously, he never had a decent answer for that. But I’d be interested to hear these kinds of things,

The sad thing is, I think that younger generations are less interested in being around people they disagree with. Maybe it’s because they don’t want to put themselves in uncomfortable situations. They don’t even like to feel uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s because they don’t want to feel as if somebody found out they were hanging out with some person they disagree with, they would be looked down upon? I don’t know what it is, but it’s kind of sad.

There was a scene in the documentary where he was talking about being introspective musically, and he’s like, “Yeah, I’ll have a tribute song, or one or two introspective songs, but music is my escape.” I don’t know if you saw, but there’s been a big discourse over the past two or three weeks over, like, Wayne’s “lack of substance.” Did you see any of this?

Yeah. I think that’s total bullshit. If you spend any time listening to Wayne’s body of work like that’s just not true. Even a song like “Me and My Drank,” there’s an incredible amount of substance in that song, which seems, on first blush, like, maybe like a silly song. But there’s real poetry in that song. That is a deep, dark song.

If you spend any amount of time listening to Wayne’s canon, I mean, we’re talking thousands of songs, he has a tremendous amount of substance. Not in all his songs. Some of his songs are purposefully just like fluff. I mean, probably on every album, there’s at least one song which is made for the radio. But to wholesale write him off like that is just, is absolutely stupid…You remember “Georgia Bush?” Wayne has done some fiercely political work.

When I was watching the documentary, it seemed like every scene was pretty long, like you stayed in a space, whether you’re at the hotel or in the studio. Is that a matter of it being a rough cut, or do you feel like, stylistically, you’ll go with that in the final iteration?

I think it’s a little both. I had been continuing to chop it up a little bit and shorten the scenes, but I started to like living in the scenes for a long time. Part of it’s also a reaction to social media and everything. I like forcing people to sit in a moment and pay attention. Also some of it is just incredible. Like, when he’s listening to “Hiroshima” on his bus, and it’s five minutes straight, and the CD keeps skipping…you can’t cut that scene.

I also don’t have any producer or financier looking over my shoulder and telling me, “Oh, you need to cut this. You need to make this fast.” So I’m doing it in the way that I want to do it, which is different, and not always the best, right? You’re a writer. Editors can make our work better, but I don’t have an editor on this one. I’m doing it myself.

One thing that I couldn’t help but notice is that there wasn’t any lean usage. In the first Carter there was a whole scene about his lean usage, and how it was affecting him, his temperament. How do you feel like that factored into who he was when you were dealing with him and what you observed in the Carter 2 footage?

I’d like to ask him if he was on lean at all in these years, In 2002 to 2004 he’s mostly, he’s just smoking weed, but in 2008 when I was with him, he was constantly on lean. I don’t recall a moment when he wasn’t and he was doing it on camera. It was not a secret, right? It was out in the open.

I think we talk about rock stars in that way too, like, “When so and so was doing LSD, and then when they weren’t. Their music was so much better when they were on LSD, and then when they got clean, their music sucked.” it’s almost like drugs define a generation of an artist, like this was his work, and how he was when he was on this drug. I think it’s the same with Wayne and probably a lot of other rappers, too. I’m not here to judge. I guess that’s part of what gets me in trouble, too as a filmmaker. I don’t have a problem showing that kind of stuff.

Some people will say that it normalizes or glorifies the usage. But to me, the intention is that it shows how human that person is, right? When you think about when somebody is on lean, there’s a reason, right? Generally speaking, with those types of drugs, there’s trauma that they’re trying to deal with. There’s a lot of trauma in their life or growing up, even still. And clearly, there’s a ton of trauma in Wayne’s life. This is a guy whose father abandoned him, and then his stepfather was murdered, and then he was taken in by Birdman, and then he finally came out and admitted that he was trying to commit suicide when he shot himself in the chest.

I think when I was with him, he was still telling people that it was an accident, that he was on drugs, but he finally came out and said, “I tried to kill myself.” That’s some trauma. So that’s why I don’t judge people for that shit. It’s like they’re dealing with some shit, and that’s the best way that they know how to deal with it. Maybe they don’t have a therapist or access to a therapist. I mean, I’m sure Wayne can get it, the best therapist in the world. But like other people, you know? Life is hard, man, and humans are super complex. So my intention is always to show that. But I guess I’ve definitely caught some flak for like, “Oh, you’re glorifying it.” I don’t agree.

Do you feel like people said that about The Carter documentary?

Yeah, you know who said that about it? What’s that guy’s name? We’d screened the movie for Quincy Jones at his mansion in Bel Air. And there was an actor there. It was me, QD3, one of the producers, Quincy in his home theater, Chamillionaire, and a couple of other celebrities. And after it was done, this actor and Chamillionaire got into an argument in the theater, because the actor was saying that we were glorifying lean use. And Chamillionaire was like, “No, that’s bullshit.” They were friends, by the way. They weren’t hostile towards each other, but they were arguing. And Chamillionaire was like, “Nah. That’s the exact opposite of what the director is trying to do.” Meanwhile, I’m sitting there just watching them do this like, “Wow, this is interesting.” But yeah, people definitely did say that.

I’m writing a memoir, and I ran across an article suggesting that every good memoir gives the reader a universal truth about humanity. I was wondering if you identify with that as a documentarian, and if so, what do you think are those truths in both documentaries?

I completely identify with that. I think every great movie, or fiction, non-fiction, whatever, needs to contain some universal truths. It’s oftentimes not just one. One of the sort of universal truths that I tried to ground the first Carter in was the negative effects of fame and how the more people [are] around you, the lonelier you become. There were a few critics that mentioned how lonely the film felt in some parts. So that was certainly one of them. With this second one, I don’t know if I found it yet, which is why it’s still a rough cut; it’s completely unpolished.

So you talked with [Wayne’s manager] Fabian, and it was a positive conversation. What is your ideal vision for how this documentary could be disseminated?

I don’t know yet. There’s basically two options: There’s a big [streaming network] that would pick it up and put it out. The other option that I talked to [Fabian] about was some type of self-distribution where we just put it out ourselves to the fans. We’ll see where it ends up. It’ll go how it needs to go. This all happened for a reason, I think. I’m trying to turn tragedy into opportunity in a way.

What percentage do you think you were at with the film when it leaked?

There’s so much footage, I think maybe there could be two films. So in that regard, I would be like 40% done. But if it’s just this one part, then I would say closer to 70% done. But then it also needs to be mixed and color corrected and all that stuff.

Do you envision doing anything with the post-jail footage?

I would love to get my hands on that. I told Fabian, and we were basically like, “Yeah, well, let’s see how this goes.” But I would love to see that footage of him when he got out of jail. That’s got to be phenomenal. It must be so interesting because we didn’t see a lot of Wayne when he first got out of jail. He was really incognito for a while, so he must have been really dealing with some shit, right?

I always remember a quote where he said he came home and it was a big extravaganza. They went to Arizona, then a Hornets game, then Vegas, then a coming home party in Miami. There were a lot of people around, but he felt “out of place, mentally,” like it was jarring to go from being in a jail cell to being thrown right back into it.

I think that prison fundamentally changes you. It certainly changed him. It’s interesting. Wayne has had a pretty crazy life. He’s a fascinating individual. He’s a great artist, and he’s had an incredible life. You just think about all the stuff that he’s been through since being a little kid, it’s quite a journey he’s been on.

I’ve seen people continuously share this idea that they think Wayne is some kind of drugged-out, out-of-it, zombie, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. For one, you couldn’t work as hard as he does if that were the case. When I dealt with him, he was sharp, witty, alert, and this was always in the middle of the night. What was your experience like?