Documentary First Podcast

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Episode 272: Quinnolyn Benson-Yates on Epic Bill: Failure, Reinvention & the Filmmaker’s Endurance

What does a 70-year-old endurance athlete who lost his video rental empire to Netflix have to teach documentary filmmakers? According to Quinnolyn Benson-Yates, everything. Her feature documentary Epic Bill took seven years to complete—starting as a short film concept before she’d even attended film school. The journey taught her that Bill’s mantra, “show up and suffer,” applies as much to distribution as it does to running 135 miles through Death Valley.

DocuView Déjà Vu:

Free Solo, 2018, 100 mins, Watch on on Disney + Package / Hulu, IMDB Link: Free Solo (2018) ⭐ 8.1 | Documentary, Adventure, Sport

Meru, 2015, 90 mins, Watch on Prime Video, IMDB Link: Meru (2015) ⭐ 7.7 | Documentary, Sport

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, 2020, 106 mins, Watch on Netflix, IMDB Link: Crip Camp (2020) ⭐ 7.7 | Documentary, History

What You’ll Learn

On Making Your First Feature:

How 10 years of archival footage transformed a short into a feature
Why filming in -50° weather requires hand warmers taped to drones
“Fail sustainably”: the importance of mentors who believe in you
The grace of allowing yourself to be bad at first

On Distribution:

PBS required cutting from 93 minutes to 56—painful but “snappiest version”
NETA (National Educational Telecommunications Association) is the PBS application path
Bitmax: an intermediary that handles QC and specs for Apple TV/Amazon
Revenue split: 50% to platform, 50% to filmmaker
Credibility matters more than connections when you’re unknown

On Reinvention:

“Reinvention is not a moment, it’s a system”
“Courage is a muscle”—keep building it with difficult challenges
Bill had to let go of the idea that failure is embarrassing
The film ends at the starting line, not the finish—you just begin again

Key Quotes

“Distribution does not solve or make your career by itself. You do that. You figure out your process, you stick to it, you find joy and curiosity that makes you keep creating.”

“Giving yourself the allowance to be bad is a huge grace. Eventually you’re going to more and more quickly realize what is good, what is to your taste.”

“Valuing the courage to try again is a radical concept. It is something that keeps you walking forwards in life.”

“The point of making a film is to have people watch it. There’s an ego check of where it’s being screened.”

About Quinnolyn Benson-Yates

Quinnolyn Benson-Yates is an award-winning filmmaker with an MFA from USC School of Cinematic Arts. Her feature documentary Epic Bill gained nationwide PBS distribution with promotions on CNN and SiriusXM, and is now available on Amazon and Apple TV. She’s a two-time winner of Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s 10-10-10 competition, and her short film Miss River screened at Palm Springs LGBTQ Film Festival. Her most recent short, a Western comedy called Man, premiered at Austin Film Festival. She’s currently developing her first narrative feature about a middle school girl starting a punk band with her dad—inspired by her own childhood as an eight-year-old punk rock singer.

Website: QBY | Film: Epic Bill – The Film | Instagram: @‌quinnolyn