It’s four forty-five in the morning. I sit patiently at my desk, waiting for Caveh Zahedi to join the Zoom. I had originally approached him about buying a bong that featured heavily in his web-series The Show About The Show, which he advertised on his Instagram story that he was selling.

After realising it was going to be much too expensive, I went for the next best thing: an interview.

A face appears on the screen. Zahedi, 65, has a salt and pepper beard that reaches up around the sides of his head, leaving a bald spot on the top. Behind him, his apartment is a mess. Boxes, clothes and other items are strewn about without any obvious order.

I’m not sure what I expected. I’d spent the better part of the last month watching his work. Known for their autobiographical self-exposure, his films have served as inspiration to pop culture figures such as Lena Dunham and Matt Johnson, though Zahedi himself hasn’t quite reached the mainstream success of his admirers.

This is perhaps due to the unique nature of his output. Filmmaker Andrew Bujalski once stated: “Caveh is his own genre.”

Zahedi’s onscreen presence is neurotic, expressive and fast-talking. The man I meet here is much more reserved. He already looks distracted.

In our correspondence he’d told me he’d be editing his ongoing project Ulysses while we spoke. He shares his screen with me, letting me see the timeline of clips he has assembled.

An adaptation of James Joyce’s novel of the same name, the film is to be made of 24 parts, each an hour long. The first part screened in June, but Zahedi predicted it would take a decade to complete the whole thing.

Even so, he has begun preparing his next project; a film about Joseph Cornell.

“That one needs money. I’ve been trying to make that film for 12 years,” he says. “If I pull this one off, people will be surprised by it, I think.”

I try to make myself look worse than I am… we’re all just a little worse than we present ourselves as.

Zahedi tells me he will feature much less in the Cornell film, a departure from the rest of his work, which revolves almost entirely around him and his life.

I ask him what he thinks of the most common criticism of his films; that they’re narcissistic.

“It depends how you define it,” he says. He opens his mouth to continue but is promptly silenced by the deafening whir of a drill. As I’d been informed at the beginning of the Zoom call, construction is being done in Zahedi’s apartment. The wall being worked on seems just outside of frame.

“I try to make myself look worse than I am,” he adds, the shrieking drill accenting each word. “The deflationary elements in my work are the opposite of narcissism or egocentrism. They’re an attempt to reach one’s commonality with the other and to find a place of forgiveness.”

One of the goals of Zahedi’s work is to draw “a new map” of human life, something he detailed in an episode of his daily podcast 365 things I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die.

This new map involves acknowledging the parts of human life that many leave out.

“We’re all just a little worse than we present ourselves as,” he says.

Zahedi believes that there’s societal “indoctrination” that stops people from expressing their feelings, both good and bad.

“My son just went to college,” he says, resting both hands on the bald spot at the back of his head.

“And I was very moved or sad by his departure. And I was sort of trying to not show it with some sense of pride or something. It’s absurd.”

Some people, they don’t like what they see and that’s fine. They probably wouldn’t like me in my regular life either.

To draw this map, Zahedi has dedicated himself to total honesty with those around him.

2005’s I Am A Sex Addict touches on Zahedi’s father’s infidelity and its effect on his family growing up, positioning that experience as a driving force behind this philosophy.

The effects of Zahedi’s truth-telling are seen most notably in The Show About The Show, or The Show as it is nicknamed. Starting in 2017 with BRIC TV, the series’ conceit was that each episode would be a documentary about making the previous episode.

Zahedi’s pursuit of complete honesty eventually turned the show into a recount of his impulsive and chaotic romantic life, and ultimately saw his marriage fall apart as a result.

A New York Times profile of Zahedi was titled A Filmmaker Bared His Soul. It Ruined His Life.

I ask if he thinks the title accurate.

He shifts in his chair: “It’s people who don’t know anything about your life or making certain claims about what your life should be. So, no, I don’t agree with that at all.

“People have this very narrow view of what a life is or what ruining a life is,” he adds, looking off in the direction of the construction worker tearing apart his wall.

He explains that his marriage was ending anyway and The Show only accelerated that ending.

Peter Rinaldi, a longtime collaborator of Zahedi’s, calls his “radical honesty” inspiring, prefacing he may even get emotional talking about it.

“So many times since I’ve known him, I’ve faced a moment where I could lie to get out of something,” he says when I call him. “And I’ve thought of him, and chose the hard path.”

All we can really do is to share our maps of our own experience. People are going to read those maps differently than we read them, and they’re going to have their own interpretations.

He tells me most of the time they’ve spent together has been work-related and if they are to be considered friends, then it’s “not a normal friendship in any way, shape or form”.

Rinaldi adds that he didn’t think Zahedi has any real friends, ending with the assurance Zahedi wouldn’t be offended by this admission.

He speaks of him with affection and slight admiration, laughing with familiarity as I later recount my experience talking with him.

Zahedi acknowledges that he is a somewhat controversial figure. I comment that fans must feel they know him from his work, to which he reasoned: “They do know more of me than they do of most people. So it’s not illegitimate.

“Some people… they don’t like what they see and that’s fine. They probably wouldn’t like me in my regular life either.

“All we can really do is to share our maps of our own experience. And I think people are going to read those maps differently than we read them, and they’re going to have their own interpretations.”

As a final story Rinaldi recounts his recent discovery of an unread email from Zahedi from 2019. The email was written before take-off on a plane and apologised to Rinaldi for not being a good friend. As he tells me this he looks for the email to recite it to me, realising in real time he may have lost it again.

I have to cut my interview with Zahedi shorter than I hoped. Because of my free Zoom account, it is threatening to kick me off when we reach the 40-minute time limit.

Zahedi perches on his chair, eyes darting around the computer screen in front of him as he edits, and he offers about as succinct a summation of his philosophy as you’ll get, “just be honest about what you’re doing and what you’re thinking. And if everyone did that, I think everybody would be better.”

I thank the auteur for his time and say I will have the story to him by next week. As I end the meeting, he opens his mouth and says something, but I can’t make out what it is over the sound of the drill.

Main picture of Caveh Zahedi, montage with photo by Tessa Bury/Wikimedia.