Why People Stay or Leave: Agency and Coercion

Following last week’s conversations with ex-Corey’s Angels musicians Margot Lane and Jezebel Sweet, director Marcie Hume joins us to talk about making Corey Feldman Vs. The World, the cinéma vérité documentary that starts as a quirky comeback chronicle and turns into an unexpectedly raw portrait of a former child star wrestling with trauma, ego, and the need to be believed.

Marcie shares how she first got access to Corey Feldman, what it was like to embed with him, his band Corey’s Angels, and their inner circle over years of on‑again, off‑again filming, and how the story kept shifting as his grievances, paranoia, and yearning for redemption played out in real time on and off camera. She also pulls back the curtain on the ethics of documenting someone who is both a survivor and a deeply unreliable narrator, the pressure from all sides—Corey, producers, fans, critics—to shape the narrative, and why she ultimately chose to keep the camera rolling long past the “hero’s journey” arc in order to show something messier, more human, and uncomfortably honest about fame, fandom, and the stories we tell about abuse and accountability in Hollywood.

Follow Marcie’s journey on Instagram @cfvstw, at YouTube.com/@CFVSTW, and be sure to watch the documentary on Apple TV, YouTube, and Google Play.

Trigger warning: This episode contains frank discussion of child abuse and sexual exploitation, emotional manipulation, trauma, PTSD, addiction, mental health struggles, and scenes of conflict and controlling behavior.

Also…let it be known that:

The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

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CREDITS:

Executive Producers: Sarah Edmondson & Anthony Ames

Production Partner: Citizens of Sound

Co-Creator: Jess Tardy

Audio production: Will Retherford

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Writer: Sandra Nomoto

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Theme Song: “Cultivated” by Jon Bryant co-written with Nygel Asselin

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