Corey Feldman’s Documentarian Marcie Hume on Why the ’80s Teen Icon Is More Than Just a ‘Victim’ or ‘Villain’

For moviegoers of a certain age, child star Corey Feldman has remained an object of endless fascination. From early roles in “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,” “Gremlins,” and “The Goonies” to his collaborations with Corey Haim in “The Lost Boys,” “License to Drive,” and “Dream a Little Dream,” he was ubiquitous in theaters and on cable TV in the 1980s — Jordan Peele called him one of the greatest teen icons of all time. As an adult, however, Feldman entered a decades-long stint in the tabloid wilderness, working as an actor only intermittently after struggles with addiction and the trauma of alleged abuse as a child in the film industry.

Feldman was a legitimately great actor with both dramatic (“Stand by Me”) and comic (“The ‘Burbs”) chops, but in the 1990s and beyond he became known less for his talent as a thespian than for his bizarre forays into pop music and for “Corey’s Angels,” a group of attractive young women who lived in his house and served as his backup band. Feldman claimed they were aspiring actors and singers he was supporting; to the outside world it sometimes looked as though Feldman was exploiting them or even serving as a kind of amateur cult leader. Feldman’s frequent assertions of his own abuse and exploitation when he was younger only served to complicate the issue.

Documentarian Marcie Hume is one of those people who always found Feldman to be an intriguing figure, and in 2016 she began filming him for what would ultimately become “Corey Feldman vs. the World,” a riveting feature documentary that follows Feldman and his “angels” on tour. Hume was given incredible access to Feldman for around a year, and the film that resulted from it is astonishing — riotously funny, deeply troubling, and provocative in the complex questions it raises about celebrity, power, money, sex, abuse, and how they’re all intertwined.

Hume adopts a vérité approach that largely lets Feldman speak for himself — there’s no editorializing, and there doesn’t really need to be given that Feldman’s life and personality are so dramatic that a straightforward presentation of the facts is plenty wild. Whatever your preconceived notions about Feldman are, Hume’s film will expand and challenge them; the movie’s greatness lies in its ability to capture all of Feldman’s contradictions and self-destructiveness, empathizing with him without soft-pedaling his sins.

It’s a major piece of work and one of the great celebrity documentaries of recent years. Following the film’s independent release online last month (it’s currently available for purchase and rental on iTunes), IndieWire spoke with Hume via Zoom about the challenges not only of making the movie but of getting it out into the world — especially given Feldman’s animosity toward it in spite of the fact that the film lets him tell the story almost entirely in his own words.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

IndieWire: What were the origins of this documentary, and what was your prior relationship to Corey Feldman and his work?

Marcie Hume: I had a deep, visceral fascination and reaction to Corey, seeing him pursuing his music and making these self-produced videos. It was just jaw-dropping and unreal watching him try to establish a different type of career as somebody that many of us had grown up seeing in the limelight in a time when fame was very different. He was a pop icon at 13 when there were just a handful of famous teenagers.

I made contact with his management and met with him and filmed a sizzle reel for a TV show that didn’t sell. It took me quite a while to get from there to the documentary, because that was not as exciting or enticing to Corey and his management as a TV show. But then my film [“Magicians: Life in the Impossible”] came out, and I think they saw that I could make and finish a movie. I was invited to come film Corey’s wedding in Las Vegas, so I packed up my gear and drove there, and that was the first thing I filmed for the documentary. I just kept filming from there and kept getting invited to his house and gigs and everything else you could imagine.

What were the initial conversations like with Corey about the parameters of the documentary as it started to become a real thing?

It was a very long process. He’s learned not to trust people, so I just tried to be very friendly and open with him. He did try to establish control over everything, but that was really difficult when you’re on the road in an RV or a bus with all of these people wanting to live their own lives. It was an incredibly frenetic environment. As we developed more of a rapport, he didn’t really tell me what to do. But what’s so fascinating, and what I’ve had to think so much more about, is what it is to have no control over telling your own story. Because seeing his reaction to the movie, over which he has zero control, it’s quite extreme. And it has forced me to think about the idea of having no control over your own story and how scary that must be.

Yet in a sense you are letting him tell his own story, as much as possible. There’s not a lot of manipulation.

We did let him tell his own story, and so much of the movie is from his own point of view. It was crucial to show his perspective and how it’s the foundation of the world that he created and why these women are with him on tour and why things fall apart. I think to make a simple takedown or a simple vindication of him would have been the wrong thing to do, because the movie is about the ecosystem that produces someone like Corey, about the industry that made him and used him, and the fans that mock him. But also, you see firsthand the ideas that he expresses himself, and you as an audience have to grapple with what is going on inside this man’s mind. It’s down to the audience to decide. I cannot make a judgment about what is happening psychologically with him.

Corey isn’t only a victim and he isn’t only a villain, and you have to sit with the fact that he can be harmed and also harm others. And he can be sincerely trying to tell the truth and also distorting the truth. And we all have those contradictions — maybe not to the same degree, but we all want to behave a certain way and we all fail to behave the way that we want to all the time. That might be one of the biggest themes of the movie: how much nuance and depth and contradiction can you accommodate in your view of the world? There’s no easy answer to any of it.

Tell me a little about the actual logistics of shooting Corey and the angels on tour. Are you riding the bus with them? Do you have any kind of crew, or is it just you and your camera?

I would come in for about a week at a time and stay on the RV, or the bus — there were a couple of different tours. I had my own bunk where I slept with my Canon 5D and my mic attached because I wanted to be ready at any moment to just take off the lens cap and start rolling. I have a filmmaking partner named Star Rosencrans who filmed when I was in New York or otherwise unavailable, and Bryan Donnell filmed one or two days with me. But other than that, it was just me and my 5D shooting Corey for about a year, which was the only way it could have happened. There wasn’t room for anyone else either physically or personality-wise.

It’s been several years since you shot with Corey, so how long did it take you to go through the footage you had and find a shape for it?

The footage sat there for a few years while I was looking for help and support. Eventually I found [editor and producer] Adam Franklin, who was already a Corey enthusiast. During the pandemic he had the time to sit and watch down all of the footage — and there was a lot of footage because I rolled as much as I could. We started talking about a structure and really staying squarely in Corey’s point of view, until the aperture started to open to the perspectives of other people on tour. And honestly, that aperture continues to open for me now as I meet and talk with the women.

Adam was almost supernatural in his ability to craft the story and let the humor come out without ever being mean or unfair. We had a lot of screenings where we tried to find the balance between the fun and joy and humor of the movie and the dark subject matter that made its way in.

When did your relationship with Corey start to fall apart?

In 2017 he decided he was going to make his own documentary, and that’s when he started to decide that he had no use for me. He asked me if he could have my footage, and I said, “I’m sorry, Corey, but I’ve spent so much time and almost all my money on this movie. I didn’t take other work to do this. I can’t just give you my footage.” I felt genuinely bad about it, because I have extraordinary empathy for him. When you’re a documentarian, your empathy finds corners that it wouldn’t in an average everyday relationship with someone. But I knew I could not give him my footage, and that was the last time I heard from him or spoke with him. He told Phil, his music manager, that he did not want to be involved in the movie. But I had invested so much time and money and effort and I knew it could be a great movie, so I had to finish it. It was extraordinarily hard to find the resources to actually finish it, but obviously we eventually did.

When it was finally done I called Corey, and I could tell he was really freaked out that the movie was done. I thought there was a very good chance that he would like most of it because it is very much his point of view and who he is. I said to him, “Look, I have to cover the point of view of other people. The women are in this. I know this is going be difficult, but I’m really excited to show you this. There’s so much in it of your struggles and your perspective.”

He came over to watch the movie, and we did not get a chance to talk about it. He left before we had a chance to talk, and then the day before the premiere, we received a cease and desist.

‘Corey Feldman vs. the World’

But the movie is out there, so has he actually been able to do anything to hurt it?

It was up on Amazon and now it’s not. Apparently Amazon errs on the side of extreme caution, so they have not put it back up even though there’s no danger, which is a real shame. We’re working on that and I would like it to be back up there. But otherwise I guess all has been fine. His claims are completely outrageous and baseless, but it’s very much his way of dealing with the world. You see it in the movie, how he copes with things he doesn’t like.

My mind was so blown by the documentary that I’m honestly a little surprised people aren’t talking about it more, and it’s why I wanted to talk with you — I really think it deserves to find a huge audience, and that people will love it if they find it.

I think we need to treat this moment we’re in in the industry as an opportunity to do things differently. I could never get attention on this film in the right way, and it blew my mind because to me I had a subject that was just so inherently intriguing and entertaining. I think some people really just don’t like Corey and find him hard to watch, and some I just couldn’t get to engage with the movie. All I knew was that I was going to get the movie out, no matter what. But it would be impossible to count the hurdles along the way. I truly wouldn’t know where to begin. This film almost killed me, and it’s still killing me because I’m trying to get people to pay attention, and it’s very difficult.

I think in this moment we’re only going to be getting more “no’s” from the industry at large, so we need to find ways as filmmakers to make sure that we’re going to get our movies out anyway. I don’t mean to be Pollyanna about it. It’s going to get harder, but there are only so many people who know how to really make a movie and get it done. So if you’re one of those people, it’s your time to shine. Really figure it out and keep that light alive.

“Corey Feldman vs. the World” is currently streaming on iTunes.