Q&A with Harrison Fishman and Dylan Redford, Executive Producers and Directors of NEIGHBORS

What led you to go on this road trip across America to dive into neighbor disputes?

Neighbor relationships are really interesting. Neighbors aren’t family or friends, nor can you pick them. There is a cosmic random destiny to what brings two people to live next to each other. These seemingly different people can have surprising similarities. It is something like a chemical reaction when these people come together - with an outcome you can’t predict. 

We have been obsessed with videos of people in conflict online for a long time. A few years ago, Harrison’s brother, Sam, started sharing neighbor-to-neighbor fight videos from around the country with us. They were fascinating, gripping, unfiltered, and honest. The conflict, no matter how small, always felt so big. 

Everyone has a phone with a video camera constantly documenting their lives, surveilling the people around them. On top of that, there’s no formal way for law enforcement to handle neighbor disputes other than suggesting you document everything. So, whether it’s for social clout or a civil case, whoever holds the camera holds the power, “if I filmed it, I must be right.” They often film for proof and accountability. But more often than not, like body camera or surveillance footage, these videos raise more questions than they answer.

These themes and questions felt both so human and timely, and also so tragically comedic. There’s nothing more amusing than someone taking something absurd seriously.

We went on this tour across America because it was the only way to capture something bigger and messier than what already existed on TikTok. We wanted to see what happens after the video ends.

How did you discover and cast the real-life Americans featured in the show?

Casting was the most important and difficult part of our show, and our casting director, Harleigh Shaw, and her team did an incredible job. We wanted real people, in real disputes, who never intended to be on TV.

The biggest thing we sought with all of these stories was active, ongoing conflicts. We wanted everything to feel like it was happening in real time, to put the viewer right in the middle of the conflict and get to know these people deeply.

How do you find active, ongoing neighbor disputes with extremely idiosyncratic and unique people? Our casting team did everything under the sun to find neighbor disputes: reading local newspapers around the country, searching small claims court databases, neighborhood Facebook groups, going down all social media rabbit holes on TikTok and Instagram, in addition to posting flyers in person all around the country.

What would you like viewers to take away after watching Neighbors?

Our first goal is to make our audience laugh. Second to that, we hope to offer a somewhat unique opportunity to see both sides of a real-life dispute. Not just because it’s funny and dramatic, but because wrestling with two competing yet valid truths hopefully evokes some small sense of empathy.

We believe that, in most of these disputes, neither of the neighbors is “bad” or “evil”. They might have done something bad, but that doesn’t make them bad. People tend to hurt each other for a reason, a context that is nearly impossible to access.

We are forced to live within such contradiction and absurdity and have so little power to change anything. All we can change is how the front of our lawn looks, the fences we build, and what we wear while riding a Peloton. So when someone comes after that, it feels big and violent, and forgiveness feels cowardly. The only way out of a neighbor dispute is to try to see the bigger picture. Chances are, what’s at the core of the conflict is way bigger than yourself.