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Speaker 1: dot com slash chuck. So joining me now. He is
Speaker 1: the directmentory that you can see on Netflix right now.
Speaker 1: It's called All the Empty Rooms and this is uh
Speaker 1: it's it's about gun violence, but it's not about gun violence.
Speaker 1: What the doc is is about is going back to
Speaker 1: the victims of school shootings, to their parents who allowed
Speaker 1: my guest and his filmmakers. My guest is the director
Speaker 1: of this film of All the Empty Rooms, called Joshua Seftel,
Speaker 1: and it's in some ways a it's the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk to josh about this because
Speaker 1: I've I've done my own little things. When I was
Speaker 1: doing Meet the Press Reports, our document document series that
Speaker 1: I had put together in conjunction with me, the press,
Speaker 1: and we were constantly looking for different ways to portray
Speaker 1: gun violence, to try to break through the numbness that
Speaker 1: the public felt. And I you know, one time we
Speaker 1: featured a mortician who explained what it was like to
Speaker 1: deal with gunshot victims. And so we did our own
Speaker 1: ways to do this. This was a very powerful another
Speaker 1: powerful way to do it, and in fact, as powerful
Speaker 1: as I've seen yet. And so the director of All
Speaker 1: the Empty Rooms, Josh Seftel, joins me. Now, Joss, it's
Speaker 1: nice to meet you.
Speaker 2: Same here, Chuck, great to be here.
Speaker 1: So, I mean that's the you know, in some ways,
Speaker 1: you could say, Okay, I already know everything I need
Speaker 1: to know about this, stop right. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: straightforward thing. And yet if you don't watch it, you
Speaker 1: don't get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people have said that they after
Speaker 2: they watch it, they say, wow, that's not what I
Speaker 2: was expecting. And I think what has happened is that
Speaker 2: a lot of us in this country have become numb
Speaker 2: to the idea of school shootings. You know, there was
Speaker 2: a school shooting last week, and then there was one
Speaker 2: in the week before, and there are about over one
Speaker 2: hundred school shootings a year now, we don't even hear
Speaker 2: about most of them, and we've reached the point where
Speaker 2: it just becomes a headline that literally fades away within
Speaker 2: hours or even minutes.
Speaker 1: And we almost treated it like the flu. Oh there's
Speaker 1: an outbreak, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: We've we've accepted it as something that's normal, and it's
Speaker 2: not normal. And we you know, with this film, like
Speaker 2: your story about the mortician, it's it's another way of
Speaker 2: talking about the issue, but it's really what we've done
Speaker 2: is we've gone into the empty bedrooms and told the
Speaker 2: stories of each child through the objects that are left
Speaker 2: behind in that room. And there's something about that that
Speaker 2: I think has resonated with people where it forces you
Speaker 2: as a human being to feel something.
Speaker 1: You know, we've shifted on this, and i'd say, you know,
Speaker 1: you guys talked about in the in the Dock the
Speaker 1: media's role in this, and when when school shootings first started,
Speaker 1: and and sort of the patient zero in this case
Speaker 1: was the probably the University of Texas. You know, that
Speaker 1: was the modern sort of beginning of this. And in
Speaker 1: the eighties, you and I are about the same age.
Speaker 1: We grew up with the so called postal shootings, right
Speaker 1: where it was supposedly post you know, people were going
Speaker 1: member it became a phrase, going postal. Then Columbine happens,
Speaker 1: and it shifts and it's and there is something about
Speaker 1: this mass shooting virus that's in our society where you know, yes,
Speaker 1: the workplace is still a place that is a potential
Speaker 1: vulnerable spot. But we haven't stopped with the school shootings,
Speaker 1: like we haven't moved past that. It's continues to be
Speaker 1: and it's a I think we're all trying to figure
Speaker 1: out why is it accelerating?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, in the in our film, Steve Hartman,
Speaker 2: who is the CBS news reporter. He's on CBS Sunday
Speaker 2: Morning and the evening news.
Speaker 1: Right, he's the good news guy. He's the good you
Speaker 1: feel better, right, He's the he is the way do
Speaker 1: you hear this one? And in a good way? Right?
Speaker 1: He makes you cry, It's it's one of those, but
Speaker 1: it's in a good cry usually exactly.
Speaker 2: And he decided, you know, seven years ago that he
Speaker 2: was sick and tired of all the school shootings and
Speaker 2: even having to report on them in a way where
Speaker 2: they would say, hey, Steve, go go figure out, like
Speaker 2: what's the silver lining on this one. You know, find
Speaker 2: a hero, find a find the libraryan that you know
Speaker 2: collected all the condolence cards, or find the EMT who
Speaker 2: got there in time to save one of the lives.
Speaker 2: And he and you know, those stories matter. But he
Speaker 2: just reached a point where he said, I don't want
Speaker 2: to do that anymore because nothing's changing. And when he started,
Speaker 2: when he covered his first school shooting, which was in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven in pel Mississippi, he I think there
Speaker 2: were seventeen school shootings a year, which is too many.
Speaker 2: But now when we were making the film, there were
Speaker 2: over one hundred and thirty school shootings a year. So
Speaker 2: you know, you do the math on that, and it's
Speaker 2: just insane.
Speaker 1: Well, this is why I understand why many people think,
Speaker 1: is it the media's fault that this is accelerated, Not
Speaker 1: that the media causes it, but that the media helps
Speaker 1: plant the seed. Right, And look, you guys delve into this.
Speaker 1: You know, when we first covered school shootings, it was
Speaker 1: always through the perspective of the shooter. Who is this guy?
Speaker 1: Who is this person that climbed up on the Texas
Speaker 1: on the bell tower, Who is this person that was
Speaker 1: wearing a long coat leather coat, and they became infamous. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we rightly realized, hey, what are we doing?
Speaker 1: You know, don't do this because that does you will
Speaker 1: encourage copycatters.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with with the coverage of serial
Speaker 1: killers in the eighties and how how media covered serial
Speaker 1: killers in the eighties. And I think it's a much
Speaker 1: different situation now, but it's I mean, what is the
Speaker 1: right way to do this? I think we The fact
Speaker 1: that this gets worse, not better means we're not doing
Speaker 1: this the right way. We haven't found it yet.
Speaker 2: There is you know, the most popular nonfiction programming out
Speaker 2: there is true crime. Yeah, there's something about human beings
Speaker 2: that we wanted. I personally am not interested in it,
Speaker 2: but we want to hear these stories. We want to
Speaker 2: hear about the person who did something bad. You want
Speaker 2: to understand them, judge them, maybe see them face justice
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have a thesis that it's just all about
Speaker 1: making ourselves feel better about our place.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think you might be right.
Speaker 1: Right, That's why this appeals so much because I I
Speaker 1: don't get it either. I don't want to see how
Speaker 1: bad humanity is to each other all the time.
Speaker 2: But I think that the news organizations, you know, are
Speaker 2: are tempted by that kind of storytelling. And it's hard,
Speaker 2: you know, because people are interested. But I do commend
Speaker 2: many of them for shifting over time because a lot
Speaker 2: of the organizations, including CBS News where Steve worked, have
Speaker 2: made a commitment to not focus on the on the
Speaker 2: shooters and to spend less time on that. And what
Speaker 2: Steve Hartman wanted to do, and this is you know,
Speaker 2: we followed him for this was a seven year project.
Speaker 2: We followed him our film crew for a couple of
Speaker 2: years of the toward the end of the project, and
Speaker 2: what he wanted to do was to shifted even further
Speaker 2: away from talking about the shooters to completely just focusing
Speaker 2: on the lives lived by these children. And that's where
Speaker 2: the empty bedrooms come in, is we you know, I
Speaker 2: haven't told you how the project started. Steve was fed
Speaker 2: up and he actually wrote a letter to every single
Speaker 2: family who lost to child since Sandy Hook and he said,
Speaker 2: I want to come to your house with a photographer
Speaker 2: and I want to take pictures of your child's empty room.
Speaker 2: And to his surprise, a bunch of people said yes.
Speaker 2: And he started to collect these photographs. And then he
Speaker 2: reached out to me three years ago and he was
Speaker 2: he said, you know, I'm starting to collect these photos.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do with them, and do
Speaker 2: you think there might be a documentary film here? And
Speaker 2: he showed me one of the photos. It was a
Speaker 2: photo of a child's bathroom and there was a toothpaste too,
Speaker 2: with the cap left off, and you could tell and
Speaker 2: feel the sense of the child who had once been
Speaker 2: there and left that cap off, went to school saying
Speaker 2: like I'll put that on later, and never came home,
Speaker 2: and you could feel the absence literally, And I just thought, wow,
Speaker 2: this could be very powerful and a whole new way
Speaker 2: to reframe this issue. And so that was three years ago.
Speaker 2: We set out on the road a couple months after that,
Speaker 2: using credit cards, trying to figure out how to piece
Speaker 2: this together. And three years later, you know, we have
Speaker 2: this film. It's on Netflix, it's nominated for an Academy Award,
Speaker 2: and we're trying to show people a different side of
Speaker 2: the issue, which is the children, Like what is the
Speaker 2: cost of all of this? What is the cost? What
Speaker 2: is the human toll that that we're all facing from this?
Speaker 2: And because we don't get to see that. No, it
Speaker 2: doesn't cover that.
Speaker 1: We when I was telling you about the what what
Speaker 1: I actually the piece that we had done, it's about
Speaker 1: three years ago now it still sits in YouTube, and
Speaker 1: it was it was part of this. You know, I
Speaker 1: got frustrated that that the regular meet the press, I
Speaker 1: couldn't tackle these issues right for a variety of reasons, right, meaning, oh,
Speaker 1: you've got to be on the news and you've got
Speaker 1: to react to what's happening in the White House, and
Speaker 1: the Trump era is the Trump era, right, and you
Speaker 1: realize we needed an outlet. We have all the we
Speaker 1: have all the room in the world and the wage
Speaker 1: of streaming, right, and so we thought we wanted to
Speaker 1: go back to these places where there were mass shootings
Speaker 1: and just find out how people were living their lives
Speaker 1: a year later, two years later. And that's how we
Speaker 1: were at a bar, where how are people getting along
Speaker 1: now with you know, six months later because we don't
Speaker 1: go back. You know how often I've had to cover
Speaker 1: a ton of school shootings, just like Steve did. I
Speaker 1: mean that was just you know, if you if you
Speaker 1: were in the main in television media in the in
Speaker 1: the last twenty years you've had and had an anchor,
Speaker 1: You've anchored your shrif of school shootings. We always say
Speaker 1: we're not you know, hey, we'll be back. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not just telling the story right now, we're coming back.
Speaker 1: We don't come back, right we don't we By the way,
Speaker 1: when we say we're going to come back, we do
Speaker 1: mean it at the moment. You know, I really genuinely
Speaker 1: believe that, like, yeah, we should, we definitely will come back.
Speaker 1: And then stuff happens.
Speaker 2: More school shootings happen usually. And what was interesting for
Speaker 2: us was that some of the people we visited and
Speaker 2: photographed the empty rooms in their houses was they had
Speaker 2: never talked to the press. It's amazingly why they had
Speaker 2: said no. They said no, I mean, why would they
Speaker 2: want to talk to the press, you know, after they.
Speaker 1: But they need to share that, you know, in some ways,
Speaker 1: I think what you're hopefully with this, what this does
Speaker 1: for families and victims. You have to tell your story.
Speaker 1: I know it's hurts, but you have to tell your story.
Speaker 1: People need to see this. And that was exactly that
Speaker 1: was all the way back to Emmett Till. Right when
Speaker 1: Emmettill's mother said you must print these photos in Life magazine.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, that's agreed.
Speaker 1: This is in some ways it's a derivative of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great comparison. The families said to us,
Speaker 2: we don't want our child to be forgotten. We want
Speaker 2: the world to know about them. And we were saying
Speaker 2: to them, we're coming here to tell the world about
Speaker 2: your child and who they were and the life they
Speaker 2: lived through through the empty room, and we were very
Speaker 2: much aligned in that, and it's what they want. They
Speaker 2: want the world to not forget.
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Speaker 1: life insurance is something you should really think about, especially
Speaker 1: if you've got a growing family. You know, in this
Speaker 1: day and age where there's record there's so many recordings now,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm sitting here watching your film and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking at the same time, and I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: I'm in this position for whatever reason, I'm two kids
Speaker 1: in college. I don't know what I would want. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I would want to say videos of
Speaker 1: them and see them alive, if I can't be with
Speaker 1: them alive. I was just thinking, you know, it was
Speaker 1: one of those that was I didn't know if that
Speaker 1: was gut wrenching or not. The keeping the room as
Speaker 1: it is made that really resonated with me. It is
Speaker 1: this day and age where you get to go back
Speaker 1: into time and see these people alive. It's spooky and
Speaker 1: I don't know how I would handle that as a
Speaker 1: as a parent. I that was a It was one
Speaker 1: of those I've just was you know, you do you
Speaker 1: let your own mind wander when you have your you know,
Speaker 1: when you when you're And I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have watched this film have shared with you
Speaker 1: experiences like that where you just start putting yourself in
Speaker 1: that place. What would you do? How would you do it?
Speaker 1: I really connected with the mother who said, you know
Speaker 1: what I did? I want the room to smell like
Speaker 1: my son.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I thought about that because my kids just are
Speaker 1: in college. They're still here, they're still alive, but their
Speaker 1: rooms smell like them in my nest, and it means
Speaker 1: a lot to me. So I don't it is it is.
Speaker 1: That's what made this move film so powerful, is that
Speaker 1: you actually didn't need you barely needed narration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's so there's you know that that room
Speaker 2: in Santa Clarita Dominic Blackwell's bedroom, the parents keep the
Speaker 2: dirty laundry basket. Yeah, it's been there for six years
Speaker 2: and they haven't got that. Yeah, and and they, like
Speaker 2: you said, they keep it because they don't want to
Speaker 2: lose the smell of their child. And Frank was telling
Speaker 2: me the other day, Frank's Dominic's father. He was saying
Speaker 2: that the hardest part is that you start to forget
Speaker 2: what their voice sounded like. And and I think that's
Speaker 2: why they liked having the video. You actually start to
Speaker 2: forget what their voice sounded like, and then you hear
Speaker 2: the you watch the video and you remember. So it's
Speaker 2: a it's uh, yeah, it's unimaginable.
Speaker 1: How do you compartmentalize when you make something like this?
Speaker 1: Because there are days, there were days when I'd cover
Speaker 1: school shooting. So I mean, look, I was at the
Speaker 1: White House lawn for Sandy Hook and my kids were
Speaker 1: the same exact age, right, And I was on the
Speaker 1: lawn with the Jake Tapper and Norah O'Donnell at the time,
Speaker 1: and we all had kids the same age, and we
Speaker 1: were a wreck, and we had to do live shots
Speaker 1: all day and it was exhausting and you know, no, please,
Speaker 1: it wasn't even I wasn't a victim, right, it was
Speaker 1: just you know, having to having to pull it together
Speaker 1: right and not be able to. So how do you
Speaker 1: how did you how did you compartmentalize putting this together?
Speaker 1: Because it's this, this, this really had to hit you
Speaker 1: on some days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean two of the kids in the film
Speaker 2: are this We're the same age as my daughter, my
Speaker 2: oldest daughter, nine years old. Yeah, it is. It's tough.
Speaker 2: I try not to center my experience in the in
Speaker 2: talking about the film, because that, you know, what these
Speaker 2: families have gone through.
Speaker 1: Is just, yeah, this is their experience.
Speaker 2: I get that it's unacceptable, it's it's horrible, but I
Speaker 2: think that you know the experience of being in those bedrooms.
Speaker 2: You know, I travel a lot for my work. I'm
Speaker 2: away from my family a lot this project. When I
Speaker 2: was away, every time I came home I had never been.
Speaker 2: I always loved coming home, but it was a different
Speaker 2: level of getting to see my kids again and feeling
Speaker 2: a sense of gratitude for for what I have. I
Speaker 2: think that, you know, the our hope is that the
Speaker 2: power of this film is in trying to capture what
Speaker 2: is what it was like to be in those rooms,
Speaker 2: what it was like for me and my team to
Speaker 2: go into those bedrooms, because our hope is that everyone
Speaker 2: will feel the weight of the law, will feel that absence,
Speaker 2: and it will, you know, reconnect them with something that's
Speaker 2: already within them. I mean, you think about how you
Speaker 2: felt when you heard about Sandy Hook, or how you
Speaker 2: felt when you heard about ubildy or how you felt
Speaker 2: when you heard about Columbine, and I don't think most
Speaker 2: of us feel that way anymore. When we hear about
Speaker 2: a school shooting. We're not as shocked, we're not as outraged,
Speaker 2: we're not as engaged. We might not even read the article.
Speaker 2: And what we're trying to do is to get people reconnected,
Speaker 2: to feel that those feelings again that they felt back then,
Speaker 2: because we our hope is that we can take that
Speaker 2: empathy we might feel from watching this film and channel
Speaker 2: it into change, into re engaging with issue, into having
Speaker 2: hope again that maybe we can create change because where
Speaker 2: we are right now is unacceptable.
Speaker 1: Look, it's on Netflix, which means a lot of people
Speaker 1: can see it. The question is are the right people
Speaker 1: going to see it? You know, I would love to
Speaker 1: see organized screenings of lawmakers, state houses as well as
Speaker 1: the US Capital, because you want to know that the
Speaker 1: people that have the power to do something right, we don't.
Speaker 1: You know, not everybody agrees on what the something is,
Speaker 1: but I think there's collective agreement we ought to do something.
Speaker 1: And in order to motivate people to go find find
Speaker 1: a maybe not the solution, but a mitigation strut whatever
Speaker 1: it is to at least focus on it. They need
Speaker 1: to feel this, right, They need to you know, It's like,
Speaker 1: how do you get everybody to watch this that maybe
Speaker 1: has decided. Look, I'm you know, it is not going
Speaker 1: to change my view on whether, you know, we should
Speaker 1: even manufacture weapons that can do this to the human body.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well you might have noticed this, but in the
Speaker 2: film we never mentioned the word gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's never said.
Speaker 2: And that was by design because we did not want
Speaker 2: people to have a reason to ever turn the film off.
Speaker 2: We wanted to tell a story that was purely human,
Speaker 2: that on the surface was a political that is about
Speaker 2: the absence of these children. And and you know, I
Speaker 2: think what we've been seeing is that people of all
Speaker 2: kinds of opinions are watching and are affected by it.
Speaker 2: I'll give you a couple of examples. One, we we
Speaker 2: took the photographs from the film. So these are the
Speaker 2: photos of the objects around the room, the little toys
Speaker 2: and trinkets and things that are left behind that tell
Speaker 2: the story of each child. And they're familiar. You know,
Speaker 2: there are things that if you have kids, you're going
Speaker 2: to see things that are in your kid's room. If
Speaker 2: you don't have kids, You're going to see things that
Speaker 2: probably were in your room growing up. And and we
Speaker 2: took those photos and we created a photo exhibit which
Speaker 2: is actually right now in Los Angeles and New York.
Speaker 2: And we when when they were when they were installed.
Speaker 2: They were installed by this guy who apparently was quite conservative,
Speaker 2: and we found out later he you know, he wears
Speaker 2: a T shirt that says guns aren't stupid, people are anyway.
Speaker 2: This is the guy who's hanging the photographs of the
Speaker 2: empty rooms, and halfway through the day of hanging them
Speaker 2: up in the gallery, he started to weep and he
Speaker 2: told his boss that he needed to go home. Anyway.
Speaker 2: The next day, this guy comes back in goes up
Speaker 2: to his boss and he says, I just need to
Speaker 2: tell you something. I will never wear that T shirt again.
Speaker 2: And we've heard stories like this where people who you know,
Speaker 2: you couldn't imagine that they would change their mind. But
Speaker 2: there's something about these photos and the stories of the
Speaker 2: kids that like softens people's hearts. And we just feel hopeful,
Speaker 2: you know. Steve Hartman got in an email from someone
Speaker 2: who had been a Sandy Hook denier who saw the
Speaker 2: film and watched it all the way through and he
Speaker 2: said to Stevie, said, thank you for this film. I
Speaker 2: didn't feel preached or lectured to, and therefore I was
Speaker 2: able to watch it and it opened my mind.
Speaker 1: You know what you just described there just triggered an
Speaker 1: interesting exhibit that I remember that's extraordinarily powerful at Yad
Speaker 1: Vashim in Israel, the Holocaust Museum there where fairly recently
Speaker 1: in the Warsaw ghetto in Poland. You know, they have
Speaker 1: a where they know a lot of Jews lived. When
Speaker 1: there's development, there's an attempt you know, if they dig,
Speaker 1: you know, and they find stuff they try to preserve,
Speaker 1: and they ended up finding all sorts of just ordinary
Speaker 1: everyday stuff that belonged to you know, Jewish families who
Speaker 1: were founded up. And the whole display is that it
Speaker 1: is just the stuff. There's stuff that they lived when
Speaker 1: they lived in Warsaw, and you know, there's toys, there's
Speaker 1: you know, costume, jewelry, there's and it's and it you know,
Speaker 1: it just it does bring a humanity to the to
Speaker 1: the to the victory. You know, these are you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the Holocaust, there's still some nameless
Speaker 1: and faceless people, right and and there is something about
Speaker 1: you know that that in some ways, having these exhibits,
Speaker 1: you know, can can just humanize the situation. And it
Speaker 1: sounds like what the responses you're sharing are the it's like,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the victims became three dimensional figures, right.
Speaker 1: I go back to I think what we were just
Speaker 1: chatting about before, the before we were talking about just politicians, right.
Speaker 1: And you know, as as a reporter, I'm eternally always
Speaker 1: looking for the third dimension and political candidates. But in
Speaker 1: some ways that's what we fail to do when we
Speaker 1: talk about victims.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something about someone said to us they watched
Speaker 2: the film and they said, you know, you read a
Speaker 2: headline and you think, oh, that's someone else's child, But
Speaker 2: when you see the bedroom and you see all the
Speaker 2: objects in there, it's easier to say that's my child,
Speaker 2: or that could be my child. And I think that's
Speaker 2: the difference, is that it suddenly becomes part of your
Speaker 2: world and your life.
Speaker 1: And has this been an issue you've tackled before in
Speaker 1: documentary form or you've wanted to, or you've been looking
Speaker 1: for a way to like, you know, what's a better
Speaker 1: way to get people to focus on this issue?
Speaker 2: Well, The first film I ever made, when a long
Speaker 2: time ago, when I was twenty two, was about the
Speaker 2: abandoned children of Romania, And so it was a different
Speaker 2: kind of story about children. But at that time, in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, communism had just fallen, Chowshsku had fallen, and
Speaker 2: it was discovered that there were over one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: abandoned children in the country. And I went there and
Speaker 2: I lived in the orphanages and documented the conditions of
Speaker 2: the children, and there was some you know, obviously that
Speaker 2: footage of seeing children tied up and treated like animals
Speaker 2: had a real resonance with the people who watched the film,
Speaker 2: and it led to the American adoption of thousands of
Speaker 2: Romanian children when it was on public television. This film
Speaker 2: is shared some of the DNA, but it's different, you know,
Speaker 2: this film is about the absence of children. This film
Speaker 2: is about the empty rooms and trying to feel the
Speaker 2: presence of someone who's gone. And and there's something that
Speaker 2: seems to be resonating with people about that. We can
Speaker 2: all imagine that happening to us, and that creates a
Speaker 2: kind of empathy, I think, which we hope will lead
Speaker 2: to good things.
Speaker 1: Did the how many of the parents volunteered sort of
Speaker 1: like how what you know, I'm just curious if there
Speaker 1: was you know, how many of them have decided to
Speaker 1: you know, I'm focusing on this right. You know, different
Speaker 1: parents do different things in response to this right. Some
Speaker 1: get galvanized and want to you know, deal with one
Speaker 1: policy issue. Others, you know, maybe it's about helping helping
Speaker 1: other victims who go through this right, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious the various stu I'm sure you just
Speaker 1: heard lots of stories of how how how parents chose
Speaker 1: to grieve besides keeping the room, that's clearly I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it made me think we all memorialize people
Speaker 1: we love in some form or another, and there's always
Speaker 1: something we're like, I'm not letting that go, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not. You can't throw away that painting, honey, you
Speaker 1: can't get rid of that. You know, this beat up coin.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got this. I got this tattered two
Speaker 1: dollar bill that my father gave to me. Was I
Speaker 1: always got a two dollar bill when I lost a tooth.
Speaker 1: Later I'd figure out it was the same two dollar bill.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't have a lot of money. But
Speaker 1: it was but I you know, this two dollar bill
Speaker 1: and it was just I carried into my wallet. He
Speaker 1: died in eighty eight, I had it. I still have it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like this two dollar bill and it's just a
Speaker 1: little thing. So we you know, like I won't shave
Speaker 1: because my father had a beard, and I just somehow
Speaker 1: think I'm going to like lose his memory if I
Speaker 1: somehow shave it. Irrational, of course, but I'm just curious
Speaker 1: the various ways parents have chosen to channel their grief.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, one one of the things that really
Speaker 2: struck me is, you know, we we spend time with
Speaker 2: four families, all of them lost a child, two at
Speaker 2: the Saugas High School of Shooting in Santa Clarita, one
Speaker 2: at the rob Elementary School in Uvalde, and one at
Speaker 2: the Covenant School in Nashville. And what we saw is
Speaker 2: that each family has has a different relationship with the room,
Speaker 2: some going there all the time. Even it even varies
Speaker 2: between two parents in the same family. You know, for example,
Speaker 2: the Blackwells in Santa Clarita, Nancy the mom doesn't like
Speaker 2: to go into the room at all, and Frank goes
Speaker 2: in there every day. So it's they all have different
Speaker 2: relationships with the rooms. And what is inspiring to me
Speaker 2: about all the families I met is that all of
Speaker 2: them have different political points of view, but they've all
Speaker 2: organized creative foundations in memory of their children, all four
Speaker 2: families to do different kinds of work that they deem
Speaker 2: appropriate that they think is going to help change and
Speaker 2: make things better. And I just have so much admiration
Speaker 2: for them for channeling their grief into something that's helping
Speaker 2: the world. And that's I've seen across the board with
Speaker 2: most of the families that we've met. I want to
Speaker 2: tell you one quick story about one of the rooms,
Speaker 2: you know, talking about the relationships that families have with
Speaker 2: the rooms. The mule Burgers Brian and Cindy, who lived
Speaker 2: in Santa Clarita. Their daughter Gracie was killed six years
Speaker 2: ago at the Saugus High School shooting, and right afterwards
Speaker 2: they said to themselves, like, we need to leave here.
Speaker 2: We don't want to be here anymore.
Speaker 1: Perfectly rational. It would be a perfectly rational decision. I mean,
Speaker 1: and widows regularly say, you know what, I can't. I'm
Speaker 1: not living in the house anymore. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: just I get it right.
Speaker 2: Yes, And in their case, the thing that kept them
Speaker 2: from moving was they couldn't bring themselves to pack up
Speaker 2: the bedroom the room. Yeah, And so you know, Brian
Speaker 2: Muehlberger applied for jobs in different places and he'd get
Speaker 2: the job offer and then when it came down to it,
Speaker 2: he just couldn't. They couldn't do it, and they'd say no.
Speaker 2: And this went on for over five years. And in
Speaker 2: our film, Steve Hartman, after they collect the photographs of
Speaker 2: the empty room, he gave each family a photo book
Speaker 2: which contained all the best pictures of the child's bedroom.
Speaker 2: So he gave them this album. He gave the mule
Speaker 2: Burgers this album of Gracie's belonging all the photos that
Speaker 2: were taken. And after receiving that book, and after watching
Speaker 2: all the empty rooms the film, they finally said they
Speaker 2: were ready to move and they packed up the room.
Speaker 2: And they've since moved to a different state. And what
Speaker 2: they've done is in their new home, they're creating a
Speaker 2: garden in memory of Gracie instead of having the bedroom,
Speaker 2: so they've kind of turned it into something else. But
Speaker 2: they were able to move out of the home and
Speaker 2: pack up the room.
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Speaker 1: use the code Chuck podcast. It had to be hard,
Speaker 1: I imagine, almost not trying to get prescriptive right when
Speaker 1: you're it is it is always, you know, the journalist
Speaker 1: in you, I'm sure, was like, okay, but all right
Speaker 1: now what? Right? Now? What? But in some ways we're
Speaker 1: not ready for the prescriptive. I think that's the lesson
Speaker 1: I'm taking away from the last forty years of how
Speaker 1: we've handled these as a society. We're not, and so
Speaker 1: we need more of We need more of these because
Speaker 1: you need you need more people wanting prescriptive before you can.
Speaker 2: Get to prescriptive. I think I think the prescriptive exists.
Speaker 1: You know too, We just have it just will It's everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's it's you know, it's on the news, it's in
Speaker 2: and it's in most documentaries where there's a very strong
Speaker 2: point of view that you know that it is essentially
Speaker 2: alienates about half the people in the country and invites
Speaker 2: the other half to feel.
Speaker 1: Here you're trying to widen the lens, widen the mature
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 2: I just yeah, I just feel for me as a filmmaker,
Speaker 2: I mean, in those films, in that news and journalism
Speaker 2: is important. But for me as a filmmaker, what interests
Speaker 2: me is how can you tell stories that are that
Speaker 2: invite everybody in and allow them to share in potentially
Speaker 2: feeling something and potentially experiencing a story together, even if
Speaker 2: they have opposing points of view, that they could watch
Speaker 2: a story together and all get something out of it.
Speaker 2: And you know, in the case of all the empty rooms,
Speaker 2: we hope that for people who agree that we need
Speaker 2: to do better with guns and gun safety, that they
Speaker 2: that those people might feel re engaged with the issue.
Speaker 2: They might feel like, okay, a little bit hopeful that
Speaker 2: change can happen, That they might feel feelings they haven't
Speaker 2: felt in a long time when they when they think
Speaker 2: about school shootings and feel urged to do something. And
Speaker 2: then the other half we I hope that they'll feel
Speaker 2: something too deeply that makes them say, you know what,
Speaker 2: we need to figure this out. We need to change
Speaker 2: something because what is happening is unacceptable and we need
Speaker 2: to restart the conversation in a new place, which says
Speaker 2: which just simply says like, we all agree that our
Speaker 2: children need to be safe when they go to school,
Speaker 2: and how do we build from that place and restart
Speaker 2: the conversation in a constructive way that could lead to
Speaker 2: positive change.
Speaker 1: Did you ever contemplate making this feature length or was
Speaker 1: it always a short in your mind?
Speaker 2: We thought about it. We started as a short, and
Speaker 2: then the first cut of the film came in at
Speaker 2: like fifty five minutes, and is.
Speaker 1: The cutoff for the oscars? Is it forty minutes?
Speaker 2: Forty minutes? So anything under forty is a short and
Speaker 2: then anything and then I don't know what constitutes a feature,
Speaker 2: but you know, usually they're like seventy to eighty minutes
Speaker 2: at minimum minimum. So we were thinking, okay, fifty five,
Speaker 2: maybe we add another fifteen, and we're we have a
Speaker 2: short feature. But as we started editing more, we the
Speaker 2: film got shorter and it got better, and we finally
Speaker 2: got down to thirty four minutes, and we looked at
Speaker 2: it and we said, you know, what if we what
Speaker 2: if we cut out more of the talking? What did
Speaker 2: we cut out more of the dialogue? And we started
Speaker 2: just cutting and cutting and cutting, and eventually we had
Speaker 2: cut six minutes of dialogue and talking out of the
Speaker 2: film out of a thirty four minute film. But we
Speaker 2: left the film at thirty four minutes, so suddenly we
Speaker 2: had added six minutes of essentially silence to the film,
Speaker 2: which allowed people to be in the rooms, feel the absence,
Speaker 2: and and we found that that was much more effective
Speaker 2: because we weren't telling people what to think. We were
Speaker 2: just letting them go in these rooms. And then you decide,
Speaker 2: you decide what you want to feel, and you decide
Speaker 2: at the end of the film what you want to do.
Speaker 1: This is just such a reminder to me that, like
Speaker 1: you just certain things you can't convey via the word. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: it did, it is it is, you know it is.
Speaker 1: And this is what documentary filmmaking over the last ten
Speaker 1: years is just grown by leaps and bounds. Part of
Speaker 1: it is that distribution's never been easier, right, the buried
Speaker 1: nentree has never been never been easier. It's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you thirty years ago, where do you distribute this short? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean I'm just right. I mean just imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you convinced the folks over at CBS Sunday morning,
Speaker 1: hey let's do a thirty let me do a thirty
Speaker 1: minute piece, and of all programs that might light a
Speaker 1: thirty minute piece, it's it's a Sunday morning, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's difficult, right, that's a that's a one shot,
Speaker 1: Like where would this have gone? I mean, this is
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the beauty of of of what
Speaker 1: you know. It's funny. I don't think we all realized
Speaker 1: how hungry people were for documentaries until we got a
Speaker 1: platform like Netflix in our everyday life in Hulu and
Speaker 1: all these places. Now that that that have made that
Speaker 1: if you know, there's always been these great documentarians out
Speaker 1: there ready to make these films. There just wasn't any
Speaker 1: place to put them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's true. Thirty years ago it would
Speaker 2: have been it would have played at festivals, maybe in
Speaker 2: a couple of theaters before a feature, maybe otherose.
Speaker 1: And it's always please. I grew up, we had the
Speaker 1: one you know, every town had the one theater that played,
Speaker 1: you know, that had the docs. Right, it was always
Speaker 1: the same theater that also had the foreign films, right,
Speaker 1: you know, that was like the only place you could
Speaker 1: get that stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, that's right. But you're right, it wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been seen by you know, this film has already been
Speaker 2: seen by millions of people because of because of Netflix,
Speaker 2: and you know they acquired the film at after the
Speaker 2: tellur Ride Film Festival where we premiered.
Speaker 1: And so hard to get funding for this, I mean
Speaker 1: you said you used a lot of credit cards because
Speaker 1: I can imagine you know, it's not a it. You
Speaker 1: can't sit there and say, yeah, I definitely think we'll
Speaker 1: be able to sell this. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't know if the folks at Netflix or A or
Speaker 1: at an Amazon or at a Hulu or a Peacock
Speaker 1: might say, yeah, I don't I don't know that people
Speaker 1: we don't want, you know, we don't want something that
Speaker 1: makes people shut the platform off. I mean, I hate
Speaker 1: to be that cynical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just say that there's not a lot of
Speaker 2: ROI on short documentaries. We you know, films like this
Speaker 2: are made out of passion and out of care.
Speaker 1: Well. I'm pretty involved with the folks at Docs d
Speaker 1: DC Docs, and we used to do a film festival
Speaker 1: to meet the Press Film Festival for five or six years,
Speaker 1: and it was only for shorts. Yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: a whole world of filmmakers that I was realizing were underserved.
Speaker 1: It's an underserved community with tremendous content.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, all the people that all the people that
Speaker 2: were part of this film, all the people that eventually
Speaker 2: came on board and gave us funding or helped us
Speaker 2: in different ways where they just cared about the issue.
Speaker 2: None of them expected to make money. We didn't make money.
Speaker 2: We lost money, but that's not why we made the film.
Speaker 2: We made it because all of us want to see change.
Speaker 1: Happen, and documentaries are like good investigative story books, right,
Speaker 1: you know, only about one out of one hundred actually
Speaker 1: make money. They're not meant to make money, They're meant
Speaker 1: to amplify a story, amplify an idea. On those fronts,
Speaker 1: let me close with this. What's next for you?
Speaker 2: Well, in the immediate future, we're about to you know,
Speaker 2: the voting for the Academy Awards is happening started today,
Speaker 2: started on February twenty sixth, got it, and it goes
Speaker 2: to March fifth.
Speaker 1: So we're kind of, oh, it's campaigning. Huh.
Speaker 2: We've been campaigning because we you know, our hope is
Speaker 2: that look, being nominated is amazing. We've gotten so much
Speaker 2: attention and brought it to the subject of school shootings
Speaker 2: and gun safety because of the nomination, and we're so
Speaker 2: grateful for that, and also the families who shared their
Speaker 2: stories of their children and their dream of making sure
Speaker 2: the world knows about their kids is coming true. And
Speaker 2: you know, if we whether or not we win the Oscar,
Speaker 2: obviously winning the Oscar would amplify that and you know,
Speaker 2: help with this issue. But we're really happy about where
Speaker 2: we've gotten to and we're not going to stop working
Speaker 2: on this. We are going to continue traveling the country
Speaker 2: and the world with this film, and we're we and
Speaker 2: we have this photo exhibit, which is going to continue
Speaker 2: to travel to different cities around the country for the
Speaker 2: next year or at least. Well.
Speaker 1: The photo exhibit feels like an incredible sort of secondary
Speaker 1: way to bring attention to this, not just to the
Speaker 1: topic and the and the film itself.
Speaker 2: And you can put it in public places, which is
Speaker 2: what we've done. You know, it's currently it's in Sunset
Speaker 2: Triangle Plaza in Silver Lake, and it's in Dumbo in Brooklyn,
Speaker 2: and you can just walk by it and check it out.
Speaker 2: And you know, hundreds of people every day are walking
Speaker 2: by and just taking it in. And we want to
Speaker 2: keep doing that.
Speaker 1: No, I mean it's look, I don't know whether you
Speaker 1: can get people to intentionally notice, but in some ways
Speaker 1: you almost want to get the unintended, to get it
Speaker 1: into unintentional public the public spaces where people stumbled into.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Joshua was great and it's a what to me,
Speaker 1: what's important about it as a as an artist? Is
Speaker 1: it how important it was as a visual story? Right?
Speaker 1: And that you know, I don't know if any judges
Speaker 1: are listening, but I think that should be a huge criteria.
Speaker 1: It's not just whether the topic is powerful, not whether
Speaker 1: the words are powerful. But you're making up film, right,
Speaker 1: you know, is it visually powerful? And needless to say,
Speaker 1: it's visually powerful.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks Chuck for giving me the chance to
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 1: And sure, yeah, absolutely, all right, maybe i'll see in
Speaker 1: the campaign trail. You've done with campaigns?
Speaker 2: Huh?
Speaker 1: Are you done with campaigns? Are you done covering political campaigns?
Speaker 2: Do you know what? Did I tell you? I made
Speaker 2: a film called Taking on the Kennedys. Do you know
Speaker 2: about that one?
Speaker 1: Oh? Which one was that? It was a familiar It was.
Speaker 2: About Patrick Kennedy's campaign, his first US congressional campaign in
Speaker 2: Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: Oh, I remember this in the from the Other Right.
Speaker 2: For he I followed his opponent, Kevin Vigilante, who was
Speaker 2: a Republican. And uh, it was a very kind of
Speaker 2: funny and maddening story. Yeah, and it was on PBS.
Speaker 1: It was very it was I do now remember this.
Speaker 1: It was. It wasn't the most flattering.
Speaker 2: Portrait, probably not back in the day, and I'm a Democrat,
Speaker 2: but back in the day it was you know, films
Speaker 2: like that really got seen. You know, when there were
Speaker 2: fewer channels and and so it was it was very popular.
Speaker 1: But right, well that was that was basically actually when
Speaker 1: we were talking about where would a film like this be,
Speaker 1: maybe p PBS was the was the the that was
Speaker 1: the home run. Right, if you've got a PBS pick up,
Speaker 1: you're like great at least.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people watched it there too, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: Right now it's not as much. There's it's harder to
Speaker 2: get audiences anywhere. They're much more, you know, right, who.
Speaker 1: Knows how this gets into people's algorithms, right, however that
Speaker 1: works exactly these days? Well, Joshua, good luck with the campaign.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, with the campaigning, it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a I know that's a process.
Speaker 2: And and are you still involved with DC docs? Uh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, whenever I can be. I mean, you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's hope, you know, putting together program helping with their programming,
Speaker 1: or amplifying their docs and all of that. Jamie sure
Speaker 1: is you know Jamie, I know Sky Sidney Okay, Sky's
Speaker 1: your partner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we actually I was talking with Sky the
Speaker 2: other day, so I do a I interview my mom
Speaker 2: on CBS Sunday morning, and we're on there regularly where
Speaker 2: I just talk to her about her life and she
Speaker 2: lives in DC and you know, what's going on in
Speaker 2: her life and her opinions on things. And we've been
Speaker 2: on for thirteen years. Anyway, she recently moved back to
Speaker 2: d C. And so I was talking with Sky at
Speaker 2: sun Dance about about this, and we decided we're going
Speaker 2: to try to have my mom be the person who
Speaker 2: tells you to turn off your cell phones and other
Speaker 2: things for the festival. So we're going. So we're getting
Speaker 2: involved with DC docs.
Speaker 1: Well, then I look forward to seeing you in whatever
Speaker 1: way that Jamie recruits me to get involved. Great and
Speaker 1: at a minimum, I'd like to use my podcast to
Speaker 1: amplify And I'm a you know, I probably probably at
Speaker 1: least once a month have some documentary filmmaker.
Speaker 2: On, So grateful for that. And when when do you
Speaker 2: think you're running this?
Speaker 1: We'll drop it next week, Okay, com during voting, don't worry.
Speaker 2: Sooner the better I know.
Speaker 1: I got you. We just did a feature length. You're
Speaker 1: not in competition, but we just had I'm trying to
Speaker 1: I'm like blanking in the title of the of the film.
Speaker 2: But Alabama solution.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no about that used body camera footage.
Speaker 2: Perfect neighbor, yes, perfect neighbor.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, Gita, I agree.
Speaker 2: I was with her last night. We're all we're all
Speaker 2: going to the same part.
Speaker 1: You're on the same circuit. Yeah no, no no, and uh
Speaker 1: yeah you're not. Don't worry. You're in two different categories.
Speaker 1: We are ye. Also you know we I am so
Speaker 1: the check podcast is promoting GETA and We've got We've
Speaker 1: got people were promoting in both categories.
Speaker 2: Here Joe Love, We're we're I'm having lunch with her
Speaker 2: today too, so I'll.
Speaker 1: Say hi, please do okay, thanks a lot
Speaker 2: Thanks Big kar