While continuing his career in fiction filmmaking, Flender never lost the interest in documentary making. In 1998 he began filming a musical portrait of the Boston-based rock band The Upper Crust. Unforeseen dramatic developments within the band led Flender to continue shooting on and off for the next five years. The resulting documentary, Let Them Eat Rock, played film festivals in 2005 and 2006 to mostly positive notices. Following the 2010 Tonight Show conflict, Flender joined Conan O’Brien (whom he knew since their days at Harvard) on the road, as part of the Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, and filmed the ongoings behind-the-scenes, onstage and between shows. The documentary, titled Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, was released in select theatres on June 24, 2011, which Roger Ebert featured on his list of best documentaries of 2011.

With the documentary completed, Flender returned to directing television in multiple genres, including episodes of the comedies Suburgatory and Super Fun Night in 2014, the drama Finding Carter and multiple episodes of the thriller Scream in 2015 and 2016. Flender directed two episodes of the 2016-1017 science fiction series People of Earth and returned to character-based drama in 2019, directing Kirsten Dunst in the Showtime original series On Becoming a God in Central Florida.

Rodman Flender completed his next feature film in 2019, when he mixed romantic comedy, horror and the road movie with Eat Brains Love. It premiered at the London FrightFest Film Festival to very positive reviews and won “Best Picture” at the 2019 Screamfest Horror Film Festival.