Producer’s Diary: ‘ChiefsAholic: A Wolf in Chiefs Clothing’ (December 2022–December 2024)

I have been producing projects with director Dylan Sires since 2017. Our previous true crime docuseries, Taken Together: Who Killed Lyric and Elizabeth? (2024), took seven years to complete before it was sold to Warner Brothers Discovery at the end of 2021. I was also a producer of the Discovery ID series Queen of Meth (2021) and the showrunner of The Last American Gay Bar (2024) on OUTtv.

Our latest project, ChiefsAholic: A Wolf in Chiefs Clothing (2024), is an Amazon Original documentary about Kansas City Chiefs superfan Xaviar Babudar, aka “ChiefsAholic,” who rose to fame with his social media antics. But a secret life came to light when he was arrested, unraveling a series of unsolved bank robberies committed across the Midwest. 

Dylan and I are both based in Des Moines, Iowa (his house is less than a mile from mine). Aside from going out to Los Angeles to work on shows, I have lived here in the same house for my entire career. I have been fortunate that so many shows have come through Iowa at one point or another, and that I was able to work on so many of them. Most have been unscripted and various reality TV spin-offs. The hustle of the industry in Iowa is no different than in any other market. For more than 10 years, I have been juggling multiple projects at a time. It’s the only workflow I know in this business.

Before ChiefsAholic, when we would be in development on a project, it meant we would go out on our own with our own money and resources to try and capture the story. Taken Together was years of us filming interviews and scenes on weekends. ChiefsAholic was the first time we were given money to develop something—US$60,000, in fact. That only covered two weeks to capture enough of the story that we could use to sell. It was naive of us to think that having a budget made things any easier. Two weeks quickly became seven months. But even after our Amazon deal was secured, the hardships of capturing a true crime story in real time remained. There were just more mouths to feed. The big luxury of the Chiefs story was that it predominantly took place between Kansas City, Missouri, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Our being from Des Moines meant that we all kind of speak the same language as the protagonists. As we went through the ringer, this became one of our biggest assets.

At the time of writing, ChiefsAholic carried a U.S. number one position on Amazon Prime for four days and generated a wild response from true crime fanatics and Chiefs Kingdom.

December 2022: Just after Christmas, Dylan calls me with a story idea. A friend of his has shared a YouTube video from a channel called “How bout those CHIEFS?”, which tells the story of a Kansas City superfan named ChiefsAholic who has a huge following on Twitter and was arrested in Bixby, Oklahoma, for robbing a bank with a gun.

Dylan and I try to figure out our next move. Taken Together has already wrapped a few months earlier and is scheduled to come out on MAX in July of 2023. We’ve spent so many years on Taken that it’s left us feeling sort of hung over. But what personally interests me in ChiefsAholic is a crime story without any murders or children getting hurt. It also feels pretty looney, which makes it kind of exciting. 

January 2023: I am in Vegas on a commercial job, while Dylan is back in Des Moines trying to hustle interest in the project. On my last night, I am on the bed in my hotel room trying to let my mind wander so I won’t fixate on the smells of perfume and cigarette smoke that are wafting up from the ground level of the casino.

A text message comes through from Dylan. It is a screenshot from Andrew Renzi (Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?, 2022) that reads: “Drake is funding your movie!”

In Iowa, we have to say “Drake the rapper” or people think we are talking about Drake University. However, I don’t need Andrew to clarify. He is referring to Drake’s production company, DreamCrew. They are one of the companies behind Euphoria, and they want to fund the development of this film for a budget of $60,000. Andrew Renzi is officially our executive producer.

Dylan also lets me know that he suspects that ChiefsAholic (Xaviar Babudar) might be a serial bank robber. I don’t believe him, because who would do that in 2022?

Dylan and I decide to use all of the budget for the screen. We choose not to take compensation from the development money and will wait until a proper deal is made with a distributor.

February 2023: I fly to Tulsa on February 9. Xaviar Babudar is officially out on bail and has put himself up in a hotel while he gets his affairs in order. Dylan and our DP Bruce Bales drive down there two days before I do to film him getting out of jail and seeing his mother, Carla, and brother, Noah, for the first time in two months. We also meet Michael Lloyd, the bondsman who got him out. Michael is a tall Southern gentleman who is also a Chiefs fan—which is why he took the risk and bailed him out without any collateral.

When I land, I grab a rental car and meet the boys at the Peoria Inn. It’s one of those places where you can pull your car up right to the door of your room. Xaviar is only there for a night before he is able to get a spot at a nicer hotel.

I will never forget meeting Xaviar for the first time. Tall and very muscular, he is somewhat intimidating. But he also has braces on his teeth and a high-pitched voice that catches you off guard. We film Xaviar watching the NFL honors show, and as we wait for the MVP to be announced, we talk with him about his family life. His dad ran off when he was a kid and left his mom to care for both him and his brother. Eventually DHS took them away, and she worked hard to get them back. When she did, they eventually chose to live in a car as a family.

The next morning, everyone is talking about the Super Bowl, which is just three days away. Andrew, our executive producer, has a meeting with his friend at Netflix. He briefly mentions the story to the exec and is told, “Don’t show this to anyone. I want the first look.”

On the night of the Super Bowl, the team sets up in Xaviar’s new hotel room to watch the game with him. To say this is where the giant came to life is an understatement. Over a 72-hour time span, while we were filming, he won more than $150K from bets he made on the Kansas City Chiefs back in April of 2022.

After the Super Bowl, Xaviar becomes inaccessible to us. After three no-shows to sit down and be interviewed, we decide to change things up and start interviewing the Kansas City superfans in Chiefs Kingdom. Xaviar’s lawyer tells us he is now entertaining offers from several entities to tell his story, and we are just one of those entities.

We also learn that Xaviar has been served legal papers. Payton Garcia, the bank teller who was held at gunpoint in Bixby, is suing him for over a million dollars in civil damages.

We spend another week on the road, and then DreamCrew tells us to go home. We are out of cash.

March 2023: We have a small post team put together our pitch materials, which includes a sizzle of the stuff we shot. The excitement and compelling energy that Xaviar gave us resonate on the screen. Andrew takes the materials straight to Netflix, just as he was told. After their exclusive first look, their response is, “We don’t get it.”

Those words are like a gut punch. I don’t know what we’ve done wrong. We are the only ones who have gotten access to Xaviar. Many others tried, and all were unsuccessful. I will never understand why some decisions are made or why some projects get completely funded and then get shelved. I know this is not unique, and that the film industry is risk averse now. It is harder than ever to get something made. 

On Saturday, March 25,  at 9:00 p.m., I get a phone call from Dylan. “Michael Lloyd just called me; Xaviar cut his ankle monitor and ran.” Michael is heading to the hotel room where Xaviar was staying, so I start making calls for a camera operator in Tulsa who can meet him at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night. I pack a small suitcase and a few pieces of gear we need for filming.

Dylan picks me up and we head to Kansas City. It is a nearly three-hour drive. Michael texts us the coordinates of where Xaviar’s mother and brother’s car is located. On our way down Interstate 35, we learn that we have to operate on $1,000 a day. This includes all food and hotel rooms for Dylan, Michael, and myself. As part of the agreement Michael has made with Xaviar’s mother, Carla, he can use any method necessary to catch him. This includes a tracking device that he puts on her vehicle as an insurance policy after she’s signed the paperwork.

As stressful as it is, this is the moment when I feel we have a real story. We have to do this. I know someday I will look back on this moment and smile, but in that moment I hate the fact that this project is taking control of my life and we aren’t even being compensated for it.

April 2023: We are still on the road with Michael Lloyd. He tells us he is running low on funds, so we decide to head south to Tulsa so he can make some money. Before we leave town, we follow Carla to a church parking lot. While she and Noah are inside for Mass, Michael changes out the tracking device so it will be fully charged while we are gone. As documentary filmmakers, it is not our place to interfere with what is happening in front of us. It’s a fine line to walk. Technically, it is 100% legal because she signed the paperwork that said it was okay. But it’s definitely a gray area.

Once we are back in Tulsa, Michael shares emails and calls from media outlets making him offers to participate in other projects. He shows us a letter from a producer with the Dirty Robber production company, addressed to Xaviar’s mother, Carla. They are making a plea to interview and get “the other side of the story.” He also plays us several voice messages from an Iranian woman who is coincidentally flying to Tulsa that week for “other business” and wants to have a drink with him. She claims she is the best interviewer in Hollywood and that she is willing to pay him $15,000 to sit down with her for three hours. She keeps saying, “$15,000 for three hours isn’t bad, is it?” And no, it isn’t. But she wants to sell the interview to a studio so they can make a movie about him. In the end, she’d be making a lot more than $15K.

Michael also tells us that ESPN has sent out a crew and that the director, Martin Khodabakhshian, is sending him messages over and over. The story is hot, and everyone is going after it. All of this interest validates that the ChiefsAholic story is not just something Dylan and I think is interesting. I also realize that Michael has had many opportunities to ditch us. He could have sold his story several times over and still participated in our film. Instead, he has gone through the ringer with us. The three of us have mutual respect for one another. We aren’t digging at him to give us story beats to make things more exciting. We aren’t artificially creating more problems to make a better film. What is happening is real.

It is best that we let Michael do his job without us messing things up, and in exchange he lets us capture the story as it happens. But Michael is getting nervous. He has 90 days to find Xaviar, or he will have to pay $80K to Tulsa County for losing him. 

In fact, all of our resources are running dangerously low. Dylan and I are watching our bank accounts bleed out. I personally am putting everything on a credit card, which is incredibly irresponsible since I have no money coming in. And why don’t I have money coming in? Because I am on the road chasing ChiefsAholic instead of taking other work.

May 2023: The WGA strike begins. Lots of people ask me if this will help documentary projects get greenlit. The answer is no. Pitch after pitch, we are getting nowhere. We hear a lot of things like “This checks a lot of boxes for us,” but they always return with a pass.

After hitting a major wall with Chiefs, I decide to shop around a passion project of mine called The Last American Gay Bar, a documentary series about the oldest gay bar in Iowa. I make a bet with Dylan that I can create, sell, produce, and release this project before ChiefsAholic ever comes out. As neither of us has any money, I bet him a six-pack of beer.

June 2023: We continue to receive passes from networks and streamers. Not only has ChiefsAholic not sold, but we get word that MAX is delaying the release of Taken Together: Who Killed Lyric and Elizabeth? for one year. Depression is setting in.

July 2023: On July 7, Michael Lloyd pays the $80K bond. Hours later, he receives a phone call that Xaviar has been found and arrested in Lincoln, California. Dylan drives down to Tulsa to capture the moment Michael pays the bond, and so he also gets to film the phone call. The film gods have finally given us a blessing.

OUTtv reaches out to my then-agent and makes an offer on The Last American Gay Bar. Delivery will be in May 2024 for a July 3, 2024, release. Two for one, the film gods again give us a win.

DreamCrew tells us that Amazon wants to make us an offer on ChiefsAholic as a 90-minute, feature-length documentary.

August 2023:The Last American Gay Bar closes with OUTtv. I am about to show-run my first original series. Simultaneously, DreamCrew closes its deal with Amazon to purchase ChiefsAholic. Dylan and I are about to co-produce our first feature documentary for a major streaming network.

My awarded budget for The Last American Gay Bar is less than $100K. Dylan doesn’t think it’s possible to make something for so little money, and sometimes low budgets are more of a headache than they are worth. But the exchange is that I will have 100% creative control.

I really don’t know what to think about all this happening at once.

September 2023: Xaviar gets a new lawyer, Matthew Merryman. He pleads not guilty.

November 2023: We regroup and form the team that will film the rest of the documentary. Our DP, Bruce Bales, returns. We now have a real crew of five people, which is still scrappy, but it isn’t just Dylan and me. We insist that we hire crew from Iowa or at the very least, the Midwest.

Even though we have a crew, I am still taking on multiple duties besides producing. These duties include production sound, lighting, and media management. Folks in larger markets probably find it odd, but when you live in these smaller industry markets you need to have a diverse skill set.

We head to Kansas City and interview Chiefs superfans. Superfans can sometimes become celebrities within the communities of their respected teams. Xavier was part of this subculture in NFL fandom. Chiefs superfans are the world’s biggest Kansas City Chiefs fans. They live, eat, and breathe the Chiefs. They don’t just live in Kansas City, either. Alongside filming locals, we fly people in from Canada and New Jersey. It feels good to be filming again.

I am also filming The Last American Gay Bar. Dylan joins the Gay Bar team as co-director of photography with Cole Needham.

On November 20, Martin Khodabakhshian’s 40-minute documentary, Where Wolf: The Search for ChiefsAholic, is released on ESPN+. It follows two of ESPN’s investigative reporters as they try to learn about Xaviar Babudar. The only spillover participants are two superfans and Xaviar’s lawyer, Matthew Merryman. Although it might have been a blow to have this come out a year before our film, it has no effect on us. It also shows the difference in storytelling between a crew who is paid to be there and two guys with nothing to lose.

January 2024: We return from the holiday break to devastating news. Both our master hard drive and backups are corrupted. Everything we filmed in November and December is toast. 

I don’t know how many hours I spend trying to save our drives. My heart completely sinks. I used to make this joke, “Yes we have insurance, but I really don’t want to know how it works.”

Well, I learn how our insurance works, and we have to schedule reshoots. I find out later that the corruption came when we upgraded from an Intel to an M2 MacBook Pro and offloaded to an exFAT-formatted drive (as requested from the post house). You can thank me for starting the Reddit thread on this topic that still goes strong today.

At the end of January, we return to Kansas City to film with Xaviar’s defense team. During this trip, a polar vortex slips into the Midwest. This is the type of cold air that hits your bones when you breathe. Andrew flies in and takes both me and Dylan to the Chiefs vs. Dolphins game. The windchill is -40 °F. Dylan’s hand freezes while he is trying to light a cigarette, and my beer turns to foam.

February 2024: Xaviar Babudar changes his innocent plea to guilty.

Dylan and I acquire a new attorney, and our deal discussions are back on.

April 2024: Dylan and I interview four different editors. We choose Alex Amoling. Vibes are good. He and Dylan connect on the creative. Alex has an edge to his style of editing that will shape the film into the high-octane fever dream that it becomes.

With postproduction in motion, we realize that we are still missing a huge part of this story: Payton Garcia, the bank teller who was suing Xaviar. She is the victim who was held at gunpoint when he decided to rob the bank in Bixby.

Dylan reaches out to her attorney to ask if she’ll participate, and she says no. After multiple attempts, we back off.

We must drive down to Tulsa anyway to film with the Bixby Police Department and the officers who arrested Xaviar.

Amazon tells us we have a delivery date of the middle of September, which is five months from now.

I discover that [redacted], who sold The Last American Gay Bar, has decided to stop releasing money for completing that project. His original commission of $6,000 was previously agreed on in a signed contract between my production company and his. He ends up pocketing $30,000 of the budget, which is $24,000 more than what the contract called for. Unfortunately for me, the agreement was made between his LLC and the network OUTtv. All funds released to him were then to be released to me. There is nothing the network can do unless I choose to stop working and miss the delivery deadline. I never hear from the executive producer again.

In order to meet my deadline with OUTtv, I use my salary from ChiefsAholic to finish production.

May 2024: We decide to spend the month editing so we can see what we have and what is still needed. The obvious missing piece is the victim’s side of the story. We are also waiting on Xaviar’s sentencing, which we learn won’t be until July.

Dylan reaches out again to Payton’s lawyer, and she says no again. Her lawyer, Frank Frasier, tells us that he is encouraging her to do this. But her only response is no.

The Last American Gay Bar is delivered to OUTtv on time.

June 2024: The first rough cut of ChiefsAholic: A Wolf in Chiefs’ Clothing has been delivered to Amazon. It’s four hours long and does not include Payton Garcia.

The Last American Gay Bar has a sneak preview at the Varsity Cinema in Des Moines as part of the 2024 Pride celebration. Many of the crew from ChiefsAholic are in the audience. While the film series plays, I sit in the lobby drinking with the executive director of the theater, Ben Godar. My anxiety is through the roof and all my nerves are shot. As the third episode is screening, Dylan comes out and tells me with a big smile that it’s working. People are laughing and crying. I’m not sure whether he is just telling me this to make me feel good, or if what he says is genuine. Then two more people from my crew come out and tell me the same thing.

We learn from Xaviar’s attorney, Matthew Merryman, that his sentencing is delayed until September. As there is no way we can make the September delivery deadline and include the sentencing, Amazon agrees to push delivery to the end of October.

Amazon also tells us the movie needs to get down to 90 minutes.

July 2024: On July 3, 2024, The Last American Gay Bar premieres on OUTtv and runs for six weeks. (I won that bet.) It is exciting to see thixs show come out so quickly. The local LGBTQ community celebrates it. I want to celebrate with them, but there is a lot on my mind with Chiefs.

Dylan and I are trying to figure out ways to convince Payton Garcia to be interviewed for the movie. We don’t want audiences to think that we are praising a guy for robbing a bank. Since all of our communication is going through her attorney, we aren’t sure if it is being communicated correctly.

The second rough gets delivered at just under three hours. It still does not include Payton Garcia’s story.

August 2024: On August 7, the final episode of The Last American Gay Bar airs. On August 8, Taken Together: Who Killed Lyric and Elizabeth? premieres on MAX. All three episodes are released at once. Dylan and I do a few interviews to promote the release, but the whole thing is over in two weeks. Over seven years of work, and it is over so fast.

After months going back and forth with Payton’s lawyer, she finally agrees to be interviewed. One last time, we head back to Tulsa. 

September 2024: On September 5, Xaviar Michael Babudar is sentenced to 17 years and 6 months without parole for bank robbery and money laundering.

Amazon agrees that the movie’s run time can be more than 90 minutes but not over two hours long.

October 2024: Dylan travels to Los Angeles to finalize color and sound. 

The movie is delivered to Amazon. It is 122 minutes long.

November 2024: On November 29, 2024, Deadline announces ChiefsAholic’s TV premiere date of December 24 and releases a teaser during the Kansas City Chiefs–Las Vegas Raiders football game.

December 2024: On December 23, 2024, we premiere ChiefsAholic: A Wolf in Chiefs Clothing at the Varsity Cinema in Des Moines, Iowa. 

On December 24, the film goes live on Amazon Prime. I remember staying away from the TV all day. I didn’t want to watch or hear anything about it anymore. Call it filmmaking PTSD. I felt the same way with Taken Together and The Last American Gay Bar. I never wanted to watch them again. These films no longer belong to us. They are out there for the world to consume in whatever fashion they choose.

On December 25, after spending the holiday with my family, I decide to read the reviews as they are coming in. Decider praises it and acts like it was one of the greatest documentaries ever made. The Wall Street Journal gives it a spanking. My favorite is a short user review on Letterboxd: “This could have been an email.”

This piece was first published as a guest column of the Spring 2025 print issue of Documentary.

Kristian Day is a producer, writer, and showrunner living in Des Moines, Iowa. He is also the host of the syndicated radio program Iowa Basement Tapes. He is represented by entertainment lawyer Paul McGrath and publicist David Mortimer.