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Interviews

John Dower Pursues the Mystery of D.B. Cooper

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This undated artist’ sketch shows the skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper from recollections of the passengers and crew of a Northwest Airlines jet he hijacked between Portland and Seattle on Thanksgiving eve in 1971.

When Kenny Daglish made the transition from Celtic in Scotland to Liverpool in the English Premier League, John Dower’s Scottish father found his European football allegiance transitioning, too. Over the years, the Dower family avidly followed their team, attending the miracle win in Istanbul in 2005 and now enjoying the latest spoils of success under manager Jurgen Klopp, who has led them to Champions League and Premier League titles. But don’t confuse John Dower’s fandom with partiality as the unblinking eyes of a documentarian.

“I’d just love to tell the story of the man who I’m deeply in love with, Jurgen Klopp, who has done extraordinary things in a short amount of time,” he shared via ZOOM from England. “But directors are coldhearted assassins, and I put aside my love when it comes to filming. It would be great to hang out with the guys, but I’m not signing on for a film where the director doesn’t have the final cut. Besides, the best sports dramas are the ones where you don’t really see the sports. The film can’t replicate the drama of the game.”

Dower has done sports stories before, like his documentary Thrilla in Manila, but his latest looks into the legend surrounding D.B. Cooper. While other films had been made trying to investigate what really happened on November 24, 1971, Dower’s look at the hijacker who jumped out of a Boeing 727 with two hundred thousand dollars in ransom money investigates those who believe they know what really happened – because they know the real Cooper.

“We’re not trying to solve it,” explains Dower. “The FBI have tried unsuccessfully for fifty years so how is a guy from South London? If you’re at a pub telling the story, ‘It’s stormy night, it’s Thanksgiving Eve, a guy in a suit and sunglasses gets on a plane.’ It’s not dramatic enough because it’s one of the most passive hijackings ever!”

“He’s so polite, he might as well have been English.”

Dower knows that it would have been easy to mock or satirize the different individuals he interviewed for the film, each who is sure they knew the real D.B. Cooper. Of course they can’t all be right, but their passion for what they believe is captured, fairly, on camera by a documentarian who is more than willing to tell their stories.

“I respect their belief in their stories,” says the director. “Now, I’m not equating myself to him, but when [Steven] Spielberg was making Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he said, ‘I don’t necessarily believe in UFOS but I believe in the people who believe in them. They’re not just the village crazies.’ They’re pouring their lives into why they believe this. As we got deeper, other suspects popped up, like a guy in Long Island who wanted several thousand dollars to tell us it was the guy from Catch Me If You Can. Once you ask for money, you’re instantly dismissed because you’re in it for something else.”

Nancy Abraham told Dower that as people walk up and down passing other people on the street, cheek to jowl, that each has story after story inside of them. It’s those stories that Dower has sought in pursuit of the Mystery of D.B. Cooper, but he’s clear that it’s still a mystery, and it’s not up to him to solve it.

“You’re kind of relieved they lost the cigarette butts,” Dower admits, referring to the lack of DNA evidence. “With the Internet, there’s not a lot of mystery left in the world. That’s the beauty, the purity of Cooper’s uncertain story. You can be part of completing the story.”

Dower believes that any belief system, any perceived story of an individual, has an element of craziness because it’s their story and not rooted in things that the rest of us would call realistic. But he says that the people he interviewed have “D.B. Cooper shaped holes” in their lives, and that as he listened to them, they convinced him. “Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good story,” he admits.

Jaws was the first story that caught his attention like that, at twelve or thirteen, in the theater with his father. It was the first time Dower realized that a movie was made with care and thought, and one scene captured his attention in a way that he can still recount it forty-five years later.

“It’s that moment when they open the town back up and they’re all on the beach. They’re apprehensive, and they do a crash zoom in on Roy Schneider’s face. But then everyone comes rushing out of the water, and one kid is bloody eaten! Then they go crashing into the mother’s face. She’s not the woman you’d expect, not a soccer mom, but someone you could clearly tell was a slightly older woman, a bit spinsterly. This boy was her world and there was no one else. That’s when I realized casting was important, and the storytelling was amazing.”

Dower was drawn into the world of documentaries by films like Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line, the story of the trial and conviction of Randall Dale Adams for the murder of police officer Robert Wood, and Nick Brunfield’s Tracking Down Maggie, an access-free documentary that tried and failed to gain access to then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The action turned from watching documentaries to making them at the turn of the century, just as he came across Chris Smith’s American Movie, a documentary about the struggle of Mark Borchadt to get his horror film made.”I still watch it once a year, it’s so wonderful. They make a film about a guy in Wisconsin who is trying to make a horror film with his mate. It’s horrible and he just won’t give up. Documentaries are allowed to have moments that are funny, moments of levity.”

That’s why the strangeness of the various stories about D.B. Cooper’s potential next chapter appeal to him. They are a little off the wall, not as serious in sensibility to viewers, but no less true to the people who believe them. Still, don’t assume that this is a farce, because Dower knows there’s more at stake here, even if it’s hidden behind a wink and a grin. The film is asking questions about ideals that everyone takes for granted.

“It’s about belief, about memory, the stories we tell ourselves,” admits the director. “We all do it. Why are these people any different? I’d so love if one of them was the accurate story behind D.B. Cooper.”
It’s all still a mystery though – and that’s what makes it a story worth Dower telling. Even today, discussing money that washed ashore, mentioned briefly in the movie but not fully unpacked, reveals another mystery. “The fact that the money washed ashore, that element gives it another gear because the FBI showed the money couldn’t have been there that long. They did tests on the elastic bands, and there’s no way it could be there in that status. The money had only been there a year, not nine. Where did that money come from?”

“It’s almost as bonkers as him jumping out of the plane.”

Maybe that will be Dower’s next investigation, presenting the stories as he finds them. But like a good story, the audience is left to fill in the blanks and consider their own interpretations, based on their own beliefs, their own memories, and what they tell themselves.

The Mystery of D.B. Cooper premieres on November 26 on HBO.

The Ugly, Beautiful Gift of Cancer: 1on1 with Dauzat St. Marie

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In a moment, one phone call can change everything.

That’s exactly what happened to singer Heather St. Marie and her husband Matt Dauzat of pop duo Dauzat St. Marie. While on the biggest tour of their career, St. Marie’s world changed forever when she found out that she had breast cancer, immediately turning their lives upside down. Terrified and traumatized by the results, the two had to put their tour—and their lives—on pause to begin an entirely new battle. 

Amazingly, after a lengthy battle, St. Marie is thrilled to be cancer-free and the duo have found a new purpose with the ‘In It Together’ campaign, a drive to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Filled with a renewed sense of hope, the two are excited about the opportunity to help women who are facing the same struggle that they experienced themselves. As a survivor herself, St. Marie knows that she will never forget the day that things began to change.

“It was crazy because we were at the highest of the high,” St. Marie starts. “We were out on tour with Pat Benatar, who’s an icon for any female singer, and Rick Springfield. It was just amazing and we were on top of the world. Then, that happens. I felt that lump. I think that when you’re on tour, you learn how to kind of compartmentalize. I just kept telling myself that it’s going to be nothing… But, there’s always that little voice saying, ‘what if it’s not?’ So, I wasn’t going to sit on it. I called my doctor the very next morning and I said… I need to get in and see you. I wasn’t sure what to think but it escalated very quickly and within 48 hours, it’s like, yes, you have cancer.” 

“Immediately, you go from the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. I had to hear this news on the phone because my doctor went out of the country while we were waiting on lab results… and wasn’t back for a month. That’s a long time to wait to not know. Everything flashes before your eyes, and I just kept thinking, I’m not ready to go… You learn how to just focus on what’s right in front of you and just one foot in front of the other. I think that’s kind of what we just did. It was like, deep breath and this is the new battle. It’s not touring anymore. We’re just going to jump… from tour battle to cancer battle. We just switched gears and everything in our whole lives changed at that point.” 

Though St. Marie may have been the one suffering physically, there is no question that both she and Dauzat were ‘in it together’. For him, the experience may have seemed like it was from the outside yet he was very much committed to helping anywhere he could.

“It’s the same fight. On tour, I’m the booking, often the driver, tour manager, and everything else,” he explains. “So, I just kind of fell into the caregiver role and was just there to support, with lots of driving to appointments and just whatever needed doing. It’s not a whole lot of thinking that is involved. You just have to fall into the role and do it. One foot in front of the other. You can’t hardly think too many plays down the road. You kind of have to focus on the battle of the day, which is very unlike what we usually do. We typically have our next few moves kind of thought out and maybe even in play. With the cancer thing, it almost seemed like the doctors would only really want to kind of give you enough for you to be able to digest and accomplish now, not really telling you exactly what’s coming after that. They just kind of seemed to keep us focused on the battle of the day. Tomorrow is another day, which kind of made it easier in a way because there’s a lot of stuff we don’t need to know. Let’s just focus on what we can do today.”

When they finally got the news that she was cancer-free, you might expect that both Dauzat and St. Marie would be ecstatic with joy. However, after a grueling process, St. Marie points out that their initial reaction was quite the opposite.

“It’s funny. You would think that, when the doctor says you’re cancer-free, you should be celebrating,” she reflects. “Instead, it was almost like this small depression kicked in. I think [it was] a day or two later that we really talked about it. For the last year and a half, we’ve had this battle. Every day, you get up and you’re fighting cancer. Then, one day, you wake up and you have no battle and you have no purpose. You’re almost adrift, you know? So, while you should be celebrating because it’s a huge accomplishment to beat cancer, all of a sudden, the fights gone out of you and the rug’s pulled out from under you. I bring this up because that’s why we decided [that] we need a new purpose. So, we’re going to take this song and we’re going to turn it into something to help others who are going to go through what we just gone through. That’s kind of how the whole campaign was born.” 

Despite the heavy emotional burden they were already experiencing, the two still felt that they should open up about their journey to their fans. Not knowing what to expect, they found that they were overwhelmed with the outpouring of support that they received.

“We thought about it for a long time. A lot of people said you probably don’t want to do that. It’s enough work as it is, right?,” St. Marie states. “Giving updates to family members and close friends and now, all of a sudden, you’ve got everyone to kind of give updates to and respond to. But again, we just felt in our hearts that we had to do it. It was humbling to see all the love that came back from all over the world. All these years that Matt and I have toured and worked online promoting and just keeping these connections with people that we don’t really like calling fans. They’re really more like friends. All of that just came back 10x. It was really beautiful! It did absolutely help me on those dark, hard days to keep going, because I knew that there were people that cared. People wanted to see the good outcome and so it gave me a reason to fight.” 

“That’s kind of what we’re here talking about today with the In It Together Campaign,” Dauzat continues. “We decided to use our platform for good and helping others. We decided to share our cancer battle with our fans because we have really strong relationships with [them] and the responsible thing to do was to share what we’re going through in hopes that it might help others. We started getting these messages from women saying, ‘Hey, you know, your story inspired me to go out and get a mammogram that I’ve been putting off for however long!’ Then some others were further reporting that, ‘Hey, your story inspired me to go get a mammogram. And I found out that I have early stage breast cancer.’ So now there’s your light bulb moment, right. Now, if we spread this awareness, we can help save lives because the ugly statistic is one in every eight women with breast cancer. So, if we can get the word out to eight women and they all go get their mammograms, we can save the one early detection.” 
With a new sense of purpose in their hearts, the In It Together Campaign was soon born. Spearheaded by their incredible new single In It Together, the goal of the campaign is not only to raise funds for the American Cancer Society but also to raise awareness of cancer’s widespread effects. As the video began to come together, St. Marie says the experience ended up being far more special than she could have imagined.

“We knew we wanted to help people and we knew that the song had a lot of potential,” she beams. “We hit up some good friends of ours who were a dynamic filmmaking duo, Sebastian Paquet and Allie Roberto and told them what we had in mind and brainstormed and they ran with it. They get us. We all just started hitting people up and we got this beautiful crew of mostly women and then we had the male actor who was in it. Everyone was there for a reason. Everyone had been touched by cancer somehow and it was just beautiful. When we got the video back, I cried. It was even more beautiful than I had in my mind and more impactful. It was just fantastic. So, we said the world needs to see this as much as we can hit and reach. We thought, how can we make the biggest impact?” 

“The first thing that came to mind is the American Cancer Society. They’re over a hundred years old and they’ve actually grown to be global,” she continues. “They’re a great organization. So, we reached out to them just on a whim, they got back immediately and we developed a team there. Some of the people were concerned [that] if I donate to a corporation, is it actually going help these people? When we started talking, you hear their passion. They have one of these guys whose head of communications on the west coast and he’s on the phone sometimes late at night, talking to people who’ve just gotten a cancer diagnosis because there’s a 24-hour hotline. These people care that much. They’re not just sitting in a corporate office, signing papers and doing their little thing. They are actually on the front lines helping so I felt good about the fact that we were going to join forces with them and they care as much as we do. 

Since both the song and the campaign are incredibly personal for the duo, there were several aspects of their story that St. Marie felt would be important to the development of the video as well. 

“For me, mostly, it was not just my story but the story of the caregiver,” she recalls. “Those opening scenes are actually very much how it happened. Unfortunately, I had to find out on the phone. Matt came in the room and when he saw my face, we both almost just crumbled. That hits me every time I see it because the actors portrayed it, you can see it. That’s just how we felt. That was very important because the caregivers sometimes get overlooked. I think that their role is a lot harder even than for the patient, because they’re the ones dealing with the fallout. They’re the ones having to deal with the reality of cooking and cleaning and taking care of them and all these things. It’s exhausting and draining, so that was really important.”

“The second thing that was really important to me was that, when the girls come in and surround me, it’s symbolizes what I felt. I said early on having breast cancer is like joining this club that you never knew existed and you never wanted to be in, but if you have to be in it, it’s beautiful… When you join this cancer club, it’s a beautiful thing that happens because it hits us. Strangers on the street, when I’m out would you say, I’m going to pray for you or just I hope you’re going to be okay. It’s a terrible, ugly, beautiful gift that you’ve been given and I wanted to portray that in the video.” 

Embedded within the lyrics of In It Together is the somewhat surprising suggestion that the highs and the lows are not only intertwined but also necessary. According to Dauzat, this idea stems from their belief that the worst moments of life allow them to experience a deeper sense of appreciation for the better times.

“I think, without great lows, how can we truly appreciate great highs? It’s all about perspective, right?,” Dauzat believes. “So, it’s a necessary thing. We always really appreciate the lows. We appreciate the tough times that we’ve gone through because when we experienced the good times, we really fully can embrace it. We feel that we’ve earned that because we’ve gone through things. I think people need to embrace the lows and understand that, when you’re given lows, there are a lot of great lessons that you can take out of those moments. You can use those to create your new highs or to enhance the new highs that are coming later.” 

“In modern society, we’re living longer and we’re so detached from death as opposed to people in the 1800s, when it was really a part of life, you know?,” echoes St. Marie. “So, I think that might be why people are afraid of challenges because it brings up emotions and the fact that we’re all mortal. No one wants to look at that these days, but, like Matt said, those are the things that make us multi-dimensional. Those are the things that make us complex and more interesting and stronger. If you’ve never been challenged, you’re kind of weak because you don’t know what it’s like to go through that. I feel that, for me, I’ve always been compassionate, but I don’t think I even had the capability of being as compassionate and empathetic as I am now that I’ve gone through this. Even just appreciating the little things, like we would draw to radiation early every morning across Los Angeles, South of Santa Monica. We got to see so many amazing things. There was a butterfly migration, Millions of butterflies are migrating from Mexico up north. I wouldn’t have seen that if I hadn’t been going to my radiology appointment. So, with cancer, it’s like somebody cleaned the window with Windex and, all of a sudden, everything becomes crystal clear. It’s the little things that we can appreciate and you don’t get that unless you’re going through some suffering and some difficult times.“

With the campaign now in full swing, the duo are thrilled to get the word out to as many people as possible. Asked how people can participate, St. Marie declares that there are a number of different ways that the public can donate financially or simply show their support on social media.

Says St. Marie, “You can donate immediately. If you text DSMBand to 20222, that’s going to be a $25 immediate donation that’s also tax deductible. It goes directly to the American Cancer Society. If you guys are fortunate enough that you’ve survived this crazy year and you have a little bit more, you can do more on our site (dsm.band). There will be a way that you can donate with a credit card for extra large donations or, if it’s a company that wants to donate, you can donate with a cheque and all that information is going to be on the landing page.” 

“If you’re looking for a holiday gift that keeps on giving, you can donate with your credit card and put it in honor of somebody or as a tribute to someone who’s passed away from cancer. We’re trying to make this inclusive to everybody. Now, if you guys don’t have any money, if you’re struggling really hard, we get it. All we ask is that you share the hashtag and the post. We’re going to blanket it. We’ve got a whole list of friends, family, celebrities that all on board with us to push this campaign out. So, when you see it, please share it. The hashtag is #inittogether. We’re going to be having it out there so that most people just go watch the video. It’s compelling. Honestly, everyone on this Earth is going to be touched by cancer or has been already… I’m a direct recipient of the good work that American Cancer Society is doing so you can feel good about this, if you get involved in our campaign,” 

For full audio of our conversation with Dauzat St. Marie, click here.

Interview with Ron Howard, director of Hillbilly Elegy

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I recently had an opportunity to join with some other writers in a roundtable interview with Ron Howard, director of Hillbilly Elegy, based on the memoir by J.D. Vance about growing up in Appalachia and the Rust Belt and eventually going to Yale Law School. The film deals mostly with his family life and the trials involved with his mother’s addiction and the role his grandmother had in his life. Here are some of the gleanings from the questions asked.

You’ve made a lot of films that deal with true stories and some documentaries as well. Is there something about those kinds of stories that appeal to you?

I think that maybe as I’ve gotten a little bit older I’ve found that there’s something very powerful in choosing a subject where you can witness something extraordinary—it happened. You present it to an audience not as fiction—not as something you wish could happen, but as something that has occurred. I think that in the relationship between the storyteller and the audience, there’s that understanding that in some ways allows a filmmaker to take even bigger risks with characters when it’s based on reality. I discovered that with the first movie that I took on that was based on real events. That was Apollo 13. I also found one other thing. When audiences know it’s based on a true story they tune in in a slightly different way. It’s kind of a different kind of exchange. It still meant to be exciting, exhilarating, emotional, dramatic, you know, and entertaining in those ways, but you kind of connect to audiences’ hearts and minds in a slightly different way. That appeals to me.

Now as a kid, I always liked history, and the first film I ever made that was a serious film was a documentary about the Depression that I made when I was in high school. So I’ve always been fascinated by true stories. I was just afraid to delve into them and it took all the way to 1995 and Apollo 13 for me to do that. You asked about documentaries, that’s something I’ve only had the nerve to try in the last six years or so, and I really, really enjoy it. I never want to give up scripted films and television shows, because I love working with actors and creating moments, but there’s something about capturing events and recounting them that’s a different kind of creative exercise and a slightly different kind of storytelling, but more alike than I guessed it would be. I’m able to use more of my experience on a documentary than I ever thought I could. I feel very grateful that through Imagine Entertainment and various relationships that I have this opportunity to work in different media.

HILLBILLY ELEGY (2020) Director Ron Howard and Glenn Close on the set of Hillbilly Elegy. Cr. Lacey Terrell/NETFLIX

This is a story about American mythology. What can we tell about ourselves in these characters regardless of where we come from?

Of course, that’s a very personal thing. It deals with different relationships and aspects of J.D.’s life and his family’s experience. There are multiple themes and story values. People are going to take from it what they will and evaluate it through their lens. That’s fair enough. When I read the book, I didn’t believe that there was a movie in the big sociopolitical overview. Which is interesting. I enjoyed reading what J.D. had to say and what he thought. But it was the family that intrigued me. What I felt I could relate to, of course, was some of the cultural specificity and understanding specific reasons behind the economic hardships that family faced and some of the cycles of abuse and addiction and whatnot, which is very powerful. But I really hope that people realize that I was looking not broadly at an entire generation or society. This is J.D. Vance’s family story. To the extent that it does reverberate in people’s lives, I think it goes far beyond Appalachia or the Rust Belt. I think what’s interesting about it is in addition to that cultural specificity, you do have the sort of universal shared sets of experiences. I was enthusiastic about the possibility of offering new perspectives on this kind of shared humanity. I hope it does resonate with people from all corners of the country.

When asked about where this film fits within the thread of his other works, Howard began pointing to the place of family in some of his films.

It’s my first family story that is based on real events. Well, Cinderella Man was arguably a family story as well. I care about characters. I care about dimensional characters. I’m not that interested in bad guys. I’m really interested in how people work together to try to achieve something. When you talk to J.D., he does not think of this as a pull yourself up by the bootstraps type story at all. He thinks of it more as a rescue story. He feels that he simply would not have been able to achieve any of these ambitions, any of these goals, without the important women in his life, especially Mamaw, and his sister Lindsey, and then later Usha, and even his mother Bev, despite all her difficulties, was able to be there for him at a couple of times and allow the right things to happen. I think that really interested me. That this is a story about people who could have difficult lives, packed with regret, some of which they own, some of which they feel the victims of, but at a particular moment, they may have the opportunity to make a huge difference in a life of somebody they care about, and change the course of a family.

HILLBILLY ELEGY: (L to R) Glenn Close (“Mamaw”), Amy Adams (“Bev”). Photo Cr. Lacey Terrell/NETFLIX © 2020

He continued in this theme when asked about the way the women in this story filled in for the absence of a father figure.

J.D. himself leaned very heavily on Papaw. In his mind his grandfather Papaw was a great guy. After he passed he began to recognize that Papaw had made some mistakes and some regrettable decisions along the way. It wasn’t until he was older that he began to realize that it was in fact the women in his life who had made the difference. When I asked him, “When we were beginning to adapt the book, what were the two most dangerous periods in your life? I have to narrow this story down. Where were you the most distressed?” He cited these two times: when he was 13 and 14, and then again when he was at Yale. I was surprised by the Yale answer. I thought it might have something to do with the Marine Corps, which was so important to him. He said “Well, the Marine Corps was important, but almost 100% positive—once you got out of boot camp. It was a great growth experience for me and an opportunity I’m grateful for. But it was Yale where it almost all came tumbling down.” I found that very surprising, but it was at Yale that he began to realize that there was so much he could lose. As a boy he felt bad. He really wasn’t happy. He knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t much see the future. He couldn’t see the forest for the trees. At that time he didn’t even realize he’d been rescued by his very heroic grandmother. Later he fully understood that. In a lot of ways that’s why he wanted to write the book.

What were the hardest parts of trying to adapt this book that has so many different levels to it?

I think you just said it: there were so many different levels. This is one of those things where it’s very trying to decide what you want to leave out. By the same token, what I liked about it, unlike other movies based on real events that I’ve done that were tremendously eventful—whether it was about race car drivers or Nobel Prize winning schizophrenic geniuses or going to the moon—this was about the turning point in our lives that to anybody else on the outside, you might not even notice it happening, but within your family it’s historic. It’s seismic. It’s trying to find those twists and those turns and those turning points in J.D.’s life that were really the ones that we needed to dramatize. So we started looking at these two crisis points. It’s tricky, because it’s nonstop struggle. You don’t get a lot of comfortable time in the movie recognizing the times of peace and harmony, which there were some. But this is about these two periods when he was most in jeopardy—emotionally and to some extent physically, and when his future was most in doubt. It was really filtering through his life not just the book but also all of the interviews and identifying something we could present within the framework of an entertaining, engrossing, suspenseful, emotional movie narrative so that people could sit and watch it and lose themselves in it in a way you hope they will.

Step Up to the Booth: 1on1 with Sue Kramer (BE DOPE. VOTE.)

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I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s an election next week.

Even if you haven’t, director Sue Kramer certainly has.

With the 2020 Presidential election finally here, it is time once again to head to the polls and share your dream of what America truly values. However, despite the overwhelming need for people to get out and vote, many people choose not to do so (or worse, feel that their opinion doesn’t matter). Concerned that people may miss such an important opportunity, Kramer developed Be Dope. Vote., an online campaign devoted to encouraging people to use their political voice. Asked where she got the idea for Be Dope. Vote., Kramer begins by pointing out that the word ‘dope’ jumped out at her due to its ties to current social conversations.

“I love the word ‘dope’. I’m a wordsmith and a screenwriter… I always get real connected to certain words. I love certain words and I also love the origins of certain words so I started looking up how ‘cool’ was this word that was used by jazz musicians, [who were] almost predominantly musicians of color. Then, [the word] got taken over by the Woodstock revolution and became gentrified within language. There’s this slang word that… became this word used by all. ‘Dope’ is very similar in that [the word] was used predominantly by people of color. Now, it’s become cool to use the word dope because being dope is also being woke. These are two things that are at the top of the agenda in terms of our lives right now in terms of the global stratosphere. So, I thought… what would be the phraseology to get people to vote? And I came up with Be Dope. Vote. and it just worked.”

With an emphasis on diversity, Kramer’s hope is that the Be Dope. Vote campaign will reach as broad an audience as possible.

“I specifically cast everyone from a nine-year-old to [former West Wing stars] Richard Schiff, who’s in his sixties [and Allison Janney],” she explains. “I cast men, women, children, teenagers, black, white, Asian to really represent the diverse culture that we live in. This video is a representation of faces and ages and gender [within] our global community and of our United States community where the vote is at stake right now. So, I am actually not just going after the youth vote. But the truth is this election has three groups of people that need to get out and vote. One of them, surprisingly is the white male. If 1% more voted democratic, then that could change the entire election automatically, which is shocking. I’m going after the 20 to 30 something because they did not come out in the last election and they need to come out in this election. So, I went after people who they love and also the black vote, which is important. So, Billy Porter, Miss J and ASAP Ferg being in the video and Brittany O’Grady (who’s biracial) and Ryan Destiny, who’s black, all of these faces of beautiful color are needed. Everyone’s needed to really speak to all the people that need to get out and vote.” 

As the election draws nearer, Kramer feels that the sense of urgency to get to the polling booths increases as well. While each federal election seems important, she also believes that people believe that voting in this year’s campaign may be more critical than others in recent years. 

“I think that people are appalled at what our country has become,” Kramer argues. “I think that we’ve never been more divided because of the current president. I do say ‘because of him’, even though I made a very bipartisan video that can be shared by anyone to go out and vote. You should use your voice, whatever it is, you should vote. But I think that people are fired up that they want change. I do think that there’s a lot of people on the president’s side that think possibly that he’s doing an okay job or might be thinking about a bigger picture of different beliefs. But I think that the tide needs to change and I think that people want to be part of this tidal wave… There’s a lot at stake here, so I’m willing to do anything it takes in terms of using my creative power to try to make an impactful, passionate plea to get people to vote.” 

Having been involved in political campaigns before, Kramer was initially unsure about stepping into the ring with this election. However, after reading a discouraging message online, she felt called to speak out about the importance of speaking your mind through the polling station.

“I hope Be Dope. Vote. has legs to last for decades and becomes a campaign that is used for every big election,” Kramer claims. “[I want to] put some type of creative spin on that helps ignite and fire up people to use their voices. The real reason I came up with this is because… after the Brianna Taylor ruling, I saw a tweet by a football player saying [that] he was throwing in the towel and that he wasn’t going to vote purposely. He’d just given up. Then, thousands of people responded saying the same thing: ‘I’m with you. I’m giving up. I’m not voting.’ That day was the day that I said I have to do something. I have to figure this out. I can’t let people throw in the towel, or I can at least do my best to try to convince them otherwise. So, I came up with Be Dope. Vote.” 

Because of the pandemic, Kramer viewed this as an opportunity to take a different approach with her celebrity guests. Rather than gathering together in physical space, Be Dope. Vote. is a refreshingly honest video that lets people be themselves over Zoom.

Says Kramer, “I brought in a friend and a colleague named Michael Rankin who has a show on LinkedIn called You Are Dope [where] he interviews people in this kind of Ed Sullivan radio style and he asks really wonderful questions and people are their authentic selves. Michael has a great new voice. And so that was a new fun factor.” 

“Then, I thought I’ve got to go all in with what we have, which is [that] we’re all talking on Zoom. We’re not doing hair and makeup like last time where my stars came in with agents and managers, hair and makeup and publicists. I [just wanted to] talk. So, we got on Zoom with all these wonderful people and it was just talking. I really pulled out these gems and Michael became the host and it was born. We put it together in basically a little over a week and then released it on Friday the ninth. I just hope that it has impact. That’s my biggest desire.” 

Since the Be Dope. Vote. campaign has launched in early October, Kramer has been overwhelmed by the support that it seems to have garnered from both celebrities and the general public. While success may be difficult to measure, she considers it a victory if anyone who sees their video changes their mind and gets to the polls as a result.

“I can’t quantify success,” Kramer points out. “I don’t have people calling me saying I saw your video and now I’m going to vote. But I can already call it a success by ASAP Ferg being one of the only rappers to come out. Snoop Dogg came out and said, we’ve got to vote. When these rappers come out and speak to their audiences, that makes a difference because they’re the voice of their people. So… if any of those people [in our video] hit their audience and somebody saw the video and thought, ‘Oh, I was thinking about not [voting] but, you know what? I’m going to do it.’ Then, it’s success. No matter who I hit around the country, it’s a success.”

“We’re trying everything that we can to just keep the fire going [and] spread the passion,” she continues. “I’m a filmmaker. I own an agency called Connecting Dots Guru, which is my branding agency seeing through a director’s eye and a screenwriter’s pen. I put my agency on hold for nine days and spent my own money on this to just get people to not throw in the towel. I’m not going after to be clear. I’m not going to change the minds of somebody who’s completely pro-Trump and was voting for Trump. Those people are still going to vote for Trump. I’m trying to change the complacent people who feel as if they’ve been too beaten down by COVID, isolation, Black Lives Matter, or by everything that’s gone on in this country over the past four years. But more importantly, over the past year and specifically after George Floyd, those people feel so beaten down that they just don’t have it in them. And I’m trying to say, come on, you can do this. You can do it.” 

With Be Dope. Vote., Kramer wants everyone to be reminded that each vote matters and allows people to have their say. While the political world is often frustrating, she also believes that that’s no excuse to simply abdicate one’s freedom of speech when the opportunity to express themselves is given.

“Hillary Clinton won the election in terms of votes, but lost the election on the electoral college,” she mourns. “Why? Because enough people didn’t get out and vote. And that is the reason, even though she won it in terms of the popular vote so that everyone was shocked. I, myself was shocked. Everyone I knew was looking at the CNN screens [and asking], how did this just happen? We cannot let that happen again. We cannot have regret that we did not get out. We cannot have a moment where we’re shocked that this happened, because if anyone thinks that they’re going to be shocked if Trump wins, then they better get out there. Get involved, bring a friend with a map and get out and vote because you don’t want to have regrets this time.” 

In addition, she contends that one has little right to complain about an outcome if they don’t participate in the process.

“Miss J says in my video that, ‘If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.’ So, we might not win this,” Kramer acknowledges. “I’m clearly on one side, but if you don’t get out there and try, you cannot complain. Everyone’s complaining and everyone’s tired. Rightfully so but you have to just pick your bootstraps up no matter how tired you are. No matter how much you wanted Bernie or Elizabeth Warren or anyone else to win the nomination, it doesn’t matter because that’s what happened with Hillary Clinton. All the millennials bowed out because they were upset that Bernie didn’t win. If they do that again, this time they will be ruining their entire future in terms of an endless amount of rights and an endless amount of ripples that, in my humble opinion, are catastrophic.“

To follow Be Dope. Vote., click here.

For full audio of our conversation with Sue Kramer, click here.

Bloody Battle for the Self: 1on1 with Brandon Cronenberg (POSSESSOR)

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Brandon Cronenberg is no stranger to a bloody mess.

As the director of Antiviral and son of one of the pioneers of body horror films, Cronenberg is more than comfortable wading through rivers of blood in order to investigate deeper ideas about the human experience. As visceral as it is mesmerizing, Cronenberg’s latest film, Possessor, is another violent exploration of mankind’s psychology that isn’t afraid to attack the senses. 

From a purely sensory perspective, the film’s violence—while graphic—looks great onscreen and a key part of that process is the cocktail used to depict the film’s blood. While Cronenberg isn’t sure what made up the mixture specifically, he appreciates the amazing work done by his visual effects team.

“The blood was spectacular and I can’t tell you too much about it because it was actually a secret recipe,” he beams. “I don’t know what it was. We had this fantastic effects artists, Dan Martin, and he’s responsible for so much of the wonderful practical trickery. He had some contacts who had this incredible formula for this very advanced kind of fake blood, which looks amazing. It actually coagulates like real blood and then washes off anything incredibly easily… I don’t even know if he knows what’s in it because it’s someone’s secret formula.”

More importantly, however, Possessor is yet another complex mindtrip from the young filmmaker that uses sci-fi elements to challenge our ideas about who we are. Written and directed by Cronenberg, Possessor follows Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough), a corporate assassin who allows her consciousness downloaded into the minds of others so that can commit murders for the benefit of the company. Tasya has a special gift for her craft. However, with each host that she inhabits, Tasya becomes increasingly broken by her experiences, leading to violent memories and urges that she must suppress in her ‘real’ life. When she accepts a mission to kill the head of a major corporation (Sean Bean), her host Colin (Christopher Abbott) begins to fight back against his unknown mental assailant, causing Tasya to lose control and potentially remain trapped in a prison of his consciousness.

Using Tasya as a key example, Possessor highlights our struggle to know who we are in an age where the nature of identity is increasingly difficult to pin down. Though his characters slip in and out of the bodies of others, Cronenberg believes that, ultimately, our identity cannot be separated from our physical selves.

“I don’t really think there’s a difference between mind and body,” he explains. “I think it’s all the same. I think the mind is really a process of the brain and you can’t really disconnect the two. Even though in the film, it plays it a little bit like that through the science fiction because she’s, in a sense, inhabiting other people’s bodies remotely, that’s more of a metaphorical thing to discuss identity. In reality, I don’t think those can be really separated.”  

Cronenberg goes on to explain that he believes that most people are simply presenting themselves for the benefit of others, rather than honestly depicting their true self.

“Ultimately, I don’t really think we have a true self…,” he points out. “I think it’s all to a certain degree performance. Sometimes we’re performing for other people, sometimes we’re performing for ourselves. So definitely there is an interesting–and I would say common–experience of being in a particular situation or trying to accomplish something and not being able to see yourself in it somehow because it’s at odds with your identity, whether it’s imposter syndrome or it’s just that disconnect between our own self-image and how other people see us.”

One of the more fascinating aspects of Possessor is its willingness to engage the notion of personal responsibility. While characters commit acts of violence, they are certainly not of their own free will but they must still face the consequences. With this in mind, Cronenberg says that he believes the notion of culpability is far more complicated than we like to think.

“One of the things that I keep coming back to what I’m writing… is the process by which we construct a sense of unified self, despite the fact that that doesn’t really exist,” he contends. “I think a human being is a chorus of conflicting impulses and ideas and emotions. Some of those come from our own brains, some of them don’t. There’s a very interesting science being done examining, for instance, human microbiomes and how other microorganisms in our digestive tract or parasites can affect our personality and affect our behaviors. Of course, in a more figurative sense, there’s the question of maybe what you could call psychological infections, how we pick up ideas from other people and claim them for ourselves. That’s especially interesting and kind of terrifying right now, [especially] when you look at what’s happening on social media and, for instance, foreign states meddling in the US elections. We are, in a sense, hackable now because we’re so completely online, but I don’t think we really yet understand what human society is becoming because of that. A lot of people believe that they have certain ideas that they’ve generated themselves, but they’re actually being manipulated in fairly nuanced ways online.” 

As a result of his research, Cronenberg also discovered some fascinating studies into brain functions and how they drive our actions and responses.

“I did some research into the neuroscience behind brain control,” he continues. “One of the things that I found was a Spanish doctor named Jose Delgado [who] had done some experiments in the United States involving brain implants in animals and human beings. There is a scene in the film where a kind of documentary plays on the television. There’s this bull fight and the bull has been implanted with this receiver. That’s actually footage from one of his experiments… The spot in the brain that he put this wire was stimulating different areas of the brain electrically and, because of where that wire was, the subject was acting in response to the stimulation but then claiming those actions for themselves. So, for instance, every time the experimenter pressed the button, the subject would get up from his chair, walk in a circle and then sit back down again. But every time he did that, he would insist that he had done it of his own free will. He [thought that] he was just looking for shoes or that he had heard a noise somewhere and was going to investigate. So, I think there’s a very interesting process of the brain by which we, in a sense, determine after the fact whether an idea or an action was generated internally. I think has fascinating scientific and philosophical implications.“

Given Possessor’s narrative complexity, Cronenberg enjoys the fact that there are any number of readings to the film’s meaning. One such alternative view is that the film’s subtext is that Tasya’s violent nature suggests an inner tension as she attempts to balance her career and family. To Cronenberg, this aspect of her character speaks primarily about the disconnect between her more animal impulses and the expectations of her domestic life.

“To me, the career aspect of it is maybe a part of a broader struggle that we have again with how internally we see ourselves, but also, on a certain level, we’re all apes living these animal lives but in this strange civilization that we’ve built for ourselves. So, I think who we are internally is very chaotic and animal and then who we are as a result of civilized society is somehow very restrained. I feel like there’s often a disconnect between what’s expected of us and this kind of inner turmoil that we deal with. That’s certainly true in the professional sense… I wanted to comment to some degree on how all of us are dealing with that specific. In Tasya’s case, [it’s] a very pronounced disconnect because she has this sense of violence in her and these impulses which are still at odds with what’s expected of her in this civilized domestic setting. In many ways, that is more horrific to her than the violence.” 

Violence is key within Possessor, not only because of its graphic visuals but also because it becomes an external representation of the inner turmoil that Tasya’s character experiences throughout the film. 

“Her relationship with violence is very much at the heart of her character so the violence in the film is really very much narrative. I felt it had to be a visceral,” notes Cronenberg. “People had to feel on a sort of almost bodily level what she was experiencing emotionally and it also tracks what’s her psychology. So, sometimes you’re seeing it from a more observational perspective and then looking back on it and it’s this more sort of stylized, almost fetishistic thing, for her. I don’t want to go too far in analyzing the characters because… the narrative arc [was] designed to leave a little space for various interpretations from the audience… but certainly I was thinking of her in some sense like one of those drone pilots who experiences PTSD because of the violence that they’re engaged in even though they’re engaged in it remotely. Yet at the same time, there’s something in her character that’s very much drawn to it. I think it’s a bit of a question whether that’s something inherent to her or whether that’s something that’s being planted in her character by her mentor figure and by the corporation.” 

Possessor is now playing in theatres.

The Secret of Their Success: 1on1 with Sean Durkin (THE NEST)

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When does a house cease being a home?

This question lies at the heart of The Nest, a powerful and unflinching look at the emotional termites that can eat away at the foundations of a marriage. Written and directed by Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene), The Nest follows Rory (Jude Law) and Allison (Carrie Coon), married parents who enjoy a solid relationship built on intimacy and trust. Set in 1986, Rory and Allison live in a New York suburb and are the picture of middle-class success. However, when Rory receives an invitation to take a higher profile (and potentially higher paying) job back to his hometown of London, he convinces Allison that this will be best for them all. Renting an extravagant English country manor, everything starts out well for the family. However, as time marches on and debt piles up, Rory and Allison unspoken frustrations begin to bubble to the surface that threaten their entire relationship.

As he reflects on where his vision for the film came from, Durkin says that the idea stemmed from his own childhood move and his desire to explore the effect that that can have on a family.

“When I was a kid, I moved from England to New York,” he begins. “It was early nineties and it was a very, very stark change in atmosphere. The two places are so different, much more so than now. Now, it’s very seamless. So, I think I was reflecting on that time and that very sudden life change and wanted to explore a family making that move in that time. As I started to dig more into it, I decided to focus more on the marriage and explore a marriage that was really two characters, like a 50/50 movie. It’s not some big tragedy. It’s just trying to get into how a family stays together through this move. It really grew out of that.” 

Having experienced the move between from America to Europe himself, Durkin had much to draw on in terms of the vast distinctions between the two worlds. However, when looking at the cultures today, he believes that those lines are to difficult to identify and that the differences between them were far more prominent during the period in which the film is set.

“I don’t quite feel comfortable boiling [the differences] down,” Durkin reveals. “I think, especially with this, they were very different places at that time, and they’re much more similar today. I think that moment in time I chose to set [the film in] was the beginning of that. From that point on, they began to become more and more similar. There are still big differences, but there’s also a lot of similarities.” 

Set in the mid-1980s, The Nest also reveals the tensions between gender roles that existed during that era. Though his characters are both strong and confident, Durkin feels that the ultimate struggle of their motivations stems from the expectations that they have been handed by their respective cultures growing up.

“What I wanted to look at here was you have two people in a relationship that are both handed a set of values,” he asserts. “You get a glimpse of what their family’s values are. You get a glimpse of where they came from. You get a glimpse of the time period. These ideas are given to them by their families and the society they’ve grown up in. They’re chasing these dreams. Within that, there are dynamics that they are both handed. What I wanted us to do is explore those dynamics. For Rory, it was the sense of being a father and being the man of the house and having the most success possible [which] meant giving your family the best life you can and being as successful as you possibly can. For Alison, the values given to her are ‘stand by your man’. Both things sort of go against their truer nature of their characters so the film is about them battling themselves and each other to get to a more truthful place. All the things I just mentioned were really at their height in the mid-80s., It was a really transitional time for those expectations in marriage in general.”

Shot primarily inside the walls of a stunning Victorian manor, the proverbial ‘nest’ almost becomes a character unto itself within the film. Though awesome to behold, the building increasingly becomes less of a home and more of a prison as the characters are slowly swallowed by their surroundings. When searching for the right manor, Durkin and his team wanted to ensure that the environment exhibited the proper balance of daunting and inviting.

“We wanted to find a place that was overwhelmingly large, far beyond the wealthiest traders working in London… and somewhere that then has this atmosphere of [being] too big [and] scary.,” he explains. “[We wanted to] create and use genre elements without going into genre [where it’s] scary to live in this house and what’s haunting it is this ambition is this sense of unrest that’s within her and the family. So, it was really, it was really important to find the right blend and to not show up and it be a castle… It was really beautiful, but certainly more in that normal, trader commuter realm.”

“My production designer James Price, is just an expert at British architecture and understanding where those lines were and when a house was built. This house is 700 years old and the amazing thing about these places is that the people who live there, their families have been in there for 400 or 500 years. So, they actually know all about their ancestors and all of their family stories. It’s a very strange history involved, but you can really feel that history in these places. The atmosphere is thick.” 

With its emphasis on crushing one another for financial gain, The Nest is an exploration of the roots (and flaws) of our personal and professional dreams. Asked what he thinks the true nature of success may be, Durkin states that he believes those values are socially constructed and potentially misleading as well.

“Success is a construct of wherever you come from and what you’re given and what you think,” he argues. “It’s not really real. I think that’s what the film is trying to get at. The funny thing is that, when the movie starts, life in America is completely successful. That’s the joke, right? They’re living in this very cozy home. The kids are settled. What more do you want there? So, it’s about this dream, and I think everyone creates different dreams. Societies create different dreams and [I’m] just looking to ask the question of what really is success? Is it just stopping and eating breakfast with your family?” 

As relationship between Rory and Allison begins to freefall, Durkin reveals the pain that can be caused when our selfish ambitions take hold of our souls. Nevertheless, he also wants the film to offer a sense of hope to his audience by showcasing the ebs and flows that every marriage must endure.

“Life and success are cyclical, right?,” Durkin considers. “We all go through ups and downs, [be it] professionally, emotionally, family, [or] health. All of those things are in constant cycles and I think the thing that the characters in this movie are guilty of thinking that there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Life isn’t like that. The film itself operates in a cycle of family breakfast to family breakfast in a way, you know? I definitely hope that there’s hope in that. My intention is to make something about a family staying together and how they stay together.”

To hear audio of our conversation with director Sean Durkin, click here.

The Nest is now playing in theatres and is available to rent on VOD.

More than a Mantra: 1on1 with Father Ed Leahy (BENEDICT MEN)

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‘What hurts my brother or sister hurts me.’

Simple and powerful, that phrase provides the foundation of the educational environment at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark, New Jersey. Led by Father Ed Leahy, St. Benedict’s is structured around its foundational belief in community and mutual accountability. As the subject of the new documentary series, Benedict Men, the staff of St. Benedict’s and their students have built a new kind of school environment that Father Leahy insists is built around empowering youth within safe, spiritual community.

“The underpinnings in the school are community leadership, tending to the heart and academics,” Father Leahy explains. “Those four columns, so to speak, hold the thing up. Creating communities is what is essential to what we do, because it’s what has been destroyed largely in our country right now. Any sense of togetherness, of working towards a common goal, of giving up what you want for what we need, ‘whatever hurts my brother or sister hurts me’. That kind of sense is what’s completely absent in the country. So, we do it.” 

“I tell people all the time, we have a fence around our property and some people think it keeps the monks in or it keeps the bad people out. It doesn’t do either of those. It really marks off Holy ground. It’s a space where we can treat each other differently and be a sign to the world of what’s possible. [It’s] not because of our own strength, but because of the power of the Holy Spirit in us. It allows it to happen that it’s possible to have people of different ethnicities and faiths [to come together]. We’re mostly Christian, but we have large Muslim, Hindu and Jewish populations. It’s… a sign of faith and God’s love to the city and to its environment. That’s all we’re trying to do, but the community is the fundamental part of what does that. We’re all climbing the same mountain. It’s about faith. It’s not about religion. Religion is what gets us killing each other. Faith won’t do that.” 

Currently airing on Quibi, Benedict Men is a documentary that delves into the lives of the students at St. Benedict’s. As the school’s basketball team drives toward its latest championship, the youth are challenged to learn the meaning of brotherhood in all aspects of life.

Even so, while the power of community sounds good, it helps no one if it’s left simply as a mantra. However, what’s most impressive about St. Benedict’s is the fact that doing ‘life together’ has become embedded into every aspect of school life. For Father Leahy, much of establishing community stems from empowering students to use their voice and help participate in leadership themselves.

“The voice of the kids is what’s essential,” Father Leahy expounds. “So, we work hard in trying to help young people of color discover their voice or amplify their voice, which is exactly why I’m so happy about this piece and Steph Curry’s involvement in it. Steph Curry’s voice is being heard in a different way now… I think what’s happening in the country right now is you’ve got guys like Steph, LeBron and others… [who] are using their voice to raise issues and to cause people think, hopefully, in another way. So, leadership here amplifying the voices is what’s essential.“

“So, the kids run the place day to day,” he continues. “They’re responsible for the community and the decisions that get made within the context of community. It works. Our job, as adults, is to protect them from making decisions that will harm them in the long run or harm them physically Outside of that, they can, they make any decisions they need to make.” 

Of course, with any form of leadership development, differences of opinions can create conflict between the youth. For these instances, Father Leahy believes that the school must be a safe space for the youth to express themselves and take responsibility for their actions where necessary.

“You have to have a community of trust that allows for criticism,” he feels. “Mark Taylor, who’s tremendous coach, [will] take the ball [in the locker room] after every game, and anybody who wants it can get it for the purpose of ‘call outs’ or ‘shout outs’. So, you can either say something positive about another’s performance (or about your own) [with] a shout out, or you could give a call out. If somebody’s somebody screwed up or you did, you can admit that or you can say that to somebody else. It’s unbelievably effective to watch it in a locker room. It’s ingenious… We have a school meeting every day… We meet face to face. We don’t have any loud speakers where talking voices are coming out of the walls at you. So, we can deal with any issues that we need to deal with straight up, face to face, all together. It works.” 

While the emphasis of Benedict Men may focus on the success and obstacles faced by the school’s basketball team, Father Leahy understands that sports are only one part of their lives. In fact, he believes that the school’s job is to prepare their students for life outside their walls as best as possible. By encouraging the students to envision their future beyond the world of sports and fame, Father Leahy wants to them to avoid the stereotypical false dreams that he argues are being sold to African American youth. To him, these ‘hoops dreams’ that have been sold by the media have become a form of ‘nouveau slavery’ insofar as they turn students into products.

“[Modern basketball] is a nouveau slavery in that it’s essentially the buying and selling, so to speak, of African American kids,” Father Leahy begins. “It’s horrible. It even causes adults to begin to see teenagers as assets. I’ve seen it, even with parents. Parents can begin to see their sons as an asset rather than their son. And this doesn’t happen just in basketball. It happens in all youth sports now. There are a million people in the world that could be his coach or her coach. There’s only one that can be his father and there’s only one that can be his mother. Be his mother, be his father. Don’t be his coach. Don’t be as agent. Be his parent. That doesn’t happen a lot of times.” 

“It’s even more difficult in a situation where many of our kids are subject to a system of government that puts more African American men in jail than any place else in the world. (It puts more people in jail than any place else in the world!) So, lots of kids are living without their fathers. It’s a huge problem, because moms begin to worry that they’re going to lose them to the street. Moms began to grip even tighter to hang on to them at a time and an age emotionally when a kid is trying to separate from mom. It creates huge tensions, suffering, and resentment to operate in young men.”

With this in mind, it’s also important to Father Leahy that they care for the emotional and spiritual of their youth as well. As the third philosophical column supporting their school structure, ‘tending to the heart’ has become an essential component of the teen’s development.

“We have a pretty extensive counseling center that 40% of our kids will contact… at some time during the year,” Father Leahy enlightens. “We run small groups around topics like, the kids call themselves, Unknown Sons, [who are] kids with absent fathers. Another group is called Blues Men. They’re kids who suffer from depression. Another one is Ala-Teen, [who are] kids who are affected by somebody with substance abuse. There’s an anger management group… And then we have face to face, one on one therapy as well. It’s interesting. You see kids whose academic performance is horrible. Once they begin to deal with the issues of their heart, you can watch their grades go up like a thermometer. It’s amazing. The problem is nobody’s doing that in schools and the anger that exists in so many black and brown men in this country doesn’t addressed. They feel like nobody pays any attention and… in order to get people’s attention in this country, you have to turn over a car or something. It shouldn’t be that way. So, the leadership structure and the counseling center are huge in charge of giving these guys and girls agency.”

Similarly, Father Leahy also claims that the false narratives spread to the youth set up undo pressure on today’s African American youth to succeed in the world of sports. In this way, one of the aspects of Benedict Men that he appreciates most is the fact that the series does not shy away from the realities and struggles that the students face from the outside world.

“What the story tells you though, is the pressure that’s put on 16 and 17-year-old kids and should never be put on them,” he contends. “The only way that a guy like (basketball player and student) Zarique Nutter sees himself getting out and being able to help his mother is by being a basketball player. That’s horrible. Why is that the only way? But that’s the only way that it’s presented to these kids because of the media. What do they say? The media is controlled by white people, by the way, right? What do [the students] think? They see basketball players, football players, and entertainers. They don’t see the possibility of being a banker, a neurosurgeon, a dentist or anything other than an athlete or an entertainer. It’s just not presented with that. There’s nothing around them that gives them that notion that they can achieve. So, a guy like Zarique is up against it, living in that difficulty and feeling a responsibility to Mom to use this talent… A 16-year-old is not supposed to be doing that but this country forces that on African American and Latino guys. It’s not right. It’s a shame. I think [Benedict Men director] Jonathan Hock told a great story because he pointed it out… Until we get it figured out, we’re going to have big, big problems… It’s a damn shame that nobody wants to understand the sufferings of the other. Until we can do that, that’s going to be rough sledding. That’s my feel.”

Benedict Men is now available on Quibi.

Wrestling with Relationships: 1on1 with Zach Woods (DAVID)

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It’s always hard to navigate family relationships… but when our home life collides with the work world, things can become even murkier.

This tension between the professional and domestic worlds is the basis of David, the new short film written and directed by Zach Woods. Best known for his work on comedies such as Silicon Valley, The Office, and Avenue 5, David puts Woods in the director’s chair for the first time and tells the story of a therapist (Will Ferrell) who is struggling to find the balance between work and life. In the midst of a session with depressed patient, David (William Jackson Harper), Ferrell’s son David (Fred Hechinger) arrives and demands that his father leave work to attend his big wrestling match. As the two men argue about priorities, personal and professional relationships collide and Ferrell’s character must navigate which is most important to attend to in that moment. 

Because his father worked as a counsellor, Woods has a unique perspective on the experience that he brought to the script. On a deeper level though, his interest for the piece lay in exploring the messiness of human relationships.

“In real life, my father’s a therapist, so I’m familiar with that setting,” Woods begins. “My relationship with my dad isn’t really anything like the one in the movie and I obviously I’ve never wrestled before. (If I had wrestled, I would still be in traction, even if I did it in high school. [laughs]) I think that I’ve always thought therapists’ offices were kind of interesting situations and sort of the myth of the therapist’s complete lack of means. Therapy is so based on this sort of fiction that the caretaking dynamics only flow one way. I just think that’s so interesting when the therapist’s humanity comes leaking in through the pipe, basically.” 

“More broadly, I guess I’m really interested in messiness, basically, and how, in order to be close to people, you have to endure messiness like your own and theirs. At a time when there’s so many fantasies of perfectibility, when we’re constantly sort of performing our lives for each other in these ways that feel slightly disingenuous sometimes, the idea of three people having to negotiate their respective messes and figure out how everyone can get fed in the way that they need was interesting to me, I guess.”

As a director, it can always be a challenge to get the best out of your cast. However, as his first time behind the camera, one might expect that Woods would be even more nervous. However, Woods explains that his experience was quite the opposite as each cast member was ready to engage the material fully from the outset.

“Surprisingly, it really wasn’t [hard to work with them],” he marvels. “I think it’s because they were so gracious and generous with their talent and their time and beyond that, just showing up. There’s way in which, as an actor, you can show up physically, but not spiritually. You can be there in body, but not in spirit and that’s almost worse than just not doing it in the first place. There’s like sort of two levels of commitment. When someone signs on for a project, there’s something where they say, ‘I will be at this place at this time’. Then, there’s the other much more daunting form of commitment, which is to show up with your whole heart. When somebody does that, it’s infectious. If I am there and I’m vulnerable and really invested and you’re acting across from me, that gives you permission to then be equally exposed. But it’s kind of like someone has to take the first leap. It’s like skinny dipping or something. Someone has to run into the water first. Sometimes, on set, it can take days of waiting for people to run into the water. In this case, it was like all three of them were charging for the water from the get-go. From a director’s perspective, that is a gift.” 

Central to the film is Ferrell’s therapist who finds himself caught between his love for his family and his commitment to his patients. Reflecting on the complexity of these relationships, Wood believes that the core of these relationships remains a healthy form of supportive love.

“I think [relationships are] really complicated. I think, with good therapists, love sort of is the active ingredient. Not love that’s boundary breaking but, I think that the therapists I’ve had who have helped me in my life, a lot of it has been [due to] their insight, expertise and clinical perspective, but a lot of it has just been [due to my] feeling cared about. I think that’s a real relationship. It’s not really transactional. If someone goes to a therapist for help and the therapist is trying to help them, I think that’s a deeply human connection. So, it’s tricky when your family shows up and you also hopefully have a deeper human connection with them too.” 

With this in mind, Woods believes that one of the great challenges of human relationships is one’s ability to understand the world from another’s perspective. As we attempt to empathize with one another’s struggles, he believes that there are many who struggle with a deep-seeded fear that to do so may somehow result in the value of their views getting lost in the process.

“Sometimes I think there’s an attitude of empathy that you have a finite amount (and maybe you do). I hope you don’t,” Woods posits. “I hope empathy just grows on itself. But I think that sometimes it feels like, ‘if I empathize with you, no one’s going to empathize with me’ or if I empathize with that person, then I won’t empathize with the person they hurt. It’s like you have an empathy allowance that has to be budgeted carefully and I think that makes people sort of… cautious, at least about stepping outside of their own perspective because they’re scared. They’re like, if I care about you, is anyone going to care about me? If I think about it from your perspective, will my perspective get completely disappeared in the process?” 

“I think it’s a huge leap of faith. That’s also why wrestling was the metaphor for me. Boxing is so beautiful and elegant to me (almost like a ballet) and wrestling, I always thought was just two guys on the floor, grunting and rolling around. It’s so messy and inelegant looking from a layman’s perspective. I think that’s more akin to my experience of being close to people, which is just like struggling, sweating and smashing your face into someone else’s back [as you] try to figure out how to exist together and not to get pushed out of the ring, basically. It’s a little bit of a bloody business, but I think it’s worth it.”

In this particular scenario, all three characters have complex motivations that affect their relationships with one another in any number of ways. Asked if there’s a character that he connects with the most, Woods argues that there’s a part of him that has related to each of them at different various of his life.

“[I connect with] all three of them.,” he explains. “I’ve felt like the therapist before in my life where I [had] the feeling of [that] I’m doing my best and it’s not enough. The panic of being yourself, coming up short with a loved one and not knowing how to do better and feeling the shame and rage of that. I felt that before. But the patient feeling so identified with his own fragility. he’s saying like, ‘I’m starting to think maybe this isn’t a failure. This is who I am.’ I think trying to separate from your own misery is challenging and I’ve struggled with that before… The son, I know I can relate to the idea of I’m not leaving here until I get the connections. I’m down for the fight and I’m not going anywhere. Maybe you’ve said there’s not enough go around, but there has to be enough to go around.” 

“I think language can be a maze as much as it’s a bridge, right?,” he continues. “It can separate us as much as it can connect us. For example, the therapist [in David] says that whole thing about [how] you can say something and it releases a toxin into their ecosystem of the relationship and blah, blah, blah. It all sounds very pretty and sort of eloquent in a brutal way, but a truthful one. Then, it’s one of my favorite moments is because of… the way William Jackson Harper listens and says ‘Is that true?’. It’s not accusatory or anything. He’s just kind of skeptical because it doesn’t ring true. Then he stands up and he holds him. At a certain point, language is a little bit of a crude tool for the task at hand and you have to just touch people… So, I think that I found [that feeling] very relatable. It’s coming to the end of language’s utility and needing other tools.” 

Tightly written and performed, David is an entertaining but poignant piece that deserves its day in the sun. However, unlike feature-length films, it can be a challenge getting shorts in front of an audience. Even so, Woods is excited about the response to David and remains optimistic that others will get their chance to see it.

“[The film] got chosen for Cannes, which then got canceled, but then I heard whispers about maybe there’s they’re actually are going to try to do something… So, they’re selling it to various tv stations in Europe and festivals. It’s just the festival route. Then, I hopefully we’ll find a way to get it to the widest possible audience. Like anything you want people to see the stuff that you care about.” 

David premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is touring festivals now.

Fragile Dreams: 1on1 with Jack Mulhern (ODD MAN RUSH)

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While all sports have their passionate diehards, Jack Mulhern knows there’s something special about hockey fans.

Whether their home team has just won the Stanley Cup or if they’ve gone over 50 years without winning it all (sigh, sorry Leafs), hockey seems to connect deeply with the soul of its fans in ways that other sports don’t. As the star of the new hockey rom-com Odd Man Rush, Mulhern believes that what continues to draw people to the sport is the combative nature of the game and the offbeat personalities of the players.

“It’s gladiatorial [and] a very physical sport,” he considers. “We’re very clannish kind of a species. We like to duke it out with the neighbors, you know? I think there’s that. I think also [people are passionate about the sport] because, from my limited experience, hockey players are nuts, but in the best way. They’re like a bunch of loons, but they’re like really good guys. I guess it’s like this a lot of the time with a lot of really serious athletes. They’re really good, wholesome people that are just insane because they’ve pursued it so far that they’re just kind of caught in all these rituals and all these quirks of being. They’re fun, little character studies being around, specifically, hockey players.” 

Odd Man Rush, tells the story of Bobby Sanders (Mulhern), a young hockey player who dreams of playing in the NHL. When his young career ends with more surgeries than goals, Bobby finds himself playing in the European minor leagues. Moving from team to team (and traded for a washer/dryer combo), Bobby lives his life in a constant state of change. Things begin to turn around for him when he finally lands in Sweden and meets Elin (Elektra Jansson Kilby), a check out girl who helps him to confront the reality of his childhood dreams. 

Though he had some experience in the world of hockey in his youth, star Jack Mulhern found the most relatable aspect of his character was his journey slugging it out in the trenches in order to achieve success.

“I played in middle school and followed the Rangers a little bit because I’m from New York, but I’m not [a] crazy [fan],” he explains. “Luckily again, there was a lot of people that are the real deal. Dylan [Playfair] is the real deal. Bill [Keenan], obviously, and a bunch of the other guys. I could lean on them whenever I had any questions. Other than that though, there were a lot of parallels in terms of being sort of a young, ambitious guy jumping around in the minor leagues, chasing this dream to being a young actor, jumping around from gig to gig to gig. So, I found a lot of parallels there, you know?”

When Odd Man Rush provided the opportunity to revisit the hockey world, Mulhern became excited to hit the ice once again. Training with co-star Dylan Playfair, he took every opportunity that he had in the brief preparation time to reacquaint himself with the sport.

“I think I had maybe two weeks after I jumped off of this to go back,” he recalls. “Luckily, I had some equipment downstairs. Weirdly enough (or serendipitously), the previous year I was in a pilot that was close to going and one of the themes is that the character played hockey. So, I started going out to Chelsea Piers and playing pick up again, breaking in some skates and stuff like that. So, weirdly, I started that process a year before and, when this happened, I kind of was ready to go. I showed up a week in advance [to get] as much time as I could get together and Dylan was out there. He stayed with me every single day leading up to the beginning of production. So, shout out to Dylan. He’s the best.”

While Odd Man Rush may be a romantic comedy, it still takes its hockey responsibilities seriously. Giving the film an added sense of pedigree, the cast features numerous former players/coaches, including members of hockey’s royal families in Trevor Gretzky and Alexa Lemieux. As a relative newcomer to the hockey scene, Mulhern feels that the opportunity to work with people who have lived in that world reminded him what a rabid fan-base the sport carries with it.

“Trevor [Gretzky]’s a great guy. I really like him,” Mulhern begins. “I think what I took away was the reactions to those kids of those legends is how much [people care], which makes perfect sense because it’s Gretzky and Lemieux that we’re talking about. People really care. There’s a cult of personality around it. Same thing with Dylan. Dylan’s on this great show called Letterkenny. We’d be practicing a lot or shooting in a lot of rinks and, off the rink, crowds would form slowly of these other guys practicing and rotating in and out on different rinks in whatever facility we were at. So, every single time we’d get out, we’d be mobbed by people. So, hockey fans are the real deal. You don’t want to piss off hockey fans.”

Whether in sports or the arts, films that showcase dreamers who yearn to make it in the big leagues often highlight the joy of ultimately reaching their goal.  However, while Odd Man Rush does mimic some of these tropes, it also looks at the fragility of those dreams in the face of injuries and the simple realities of playing professional hockey. 

“The downside is ostracizing the people in your life by becoming a kind of a shell of a person because you’re so consumed with satisfying this sort of abstract ambition that you have for yourself,” Mulhern reflects. “It puts a lot of strains on the relationships, not just because of travel and because you’re busy all the time, but because you’re so consumed that you kind of can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s the same thing in acting, I’m sure (or at least the connection that I made into the character). You sort of forsake life in the pursuit of life. That’s the ambition trap, and it’s something I’ve been trying to navigate for these past four or five years that I’ve been doing this for a living too. I haven’t quite gotten it dialed yet but I’m getting better though.”

“Ultimately, none of it matters if you don’t have peace of mind [or] if you’re a miserable person,” he continues. “You could be the most successful person in the world and it’s all for not. When you will have paid such a hefty price to get somewhere, and all this stuff that really matters is gone by the time you get there. [That’s] not to say that everybody that ever satisfies the full extent of their dream and makes it to the NHL is a hollow shell of a person. But I find that those people that last, are [the ones that mind] their P’s and their Q’s. They know what matters, and they’re able to juggle things in a mature way.”

With the film’s emphasis on dreaming big, Odd Man Rush features a brief but important subplot where a very young Bobby writes a letter to his future adult self. Asked what he would say if he were given the chance to speak to his childhood self, Mulhern believes that he would likely encourage young Jack to make the most of every moment early in order to pursue his ultimate goal.

“Everything that I did or was involved in kind of got me to where I’m at now and it’s necessary,” he says. “I think I do regret [that] I didn’t want to be much of anything until I was in my twenties and I was forced to, because I was so down. If I could go back, things like education and all of these things are really just a consolidated group of resources. So, what I would advise myself or to any young person going through it is that, as much as you might think it sucks, try to be about the business now of finding those things that you’re really passionate about. Pursue it while you have the youth and the time to really kind of make the most out of everything around you and go to school for it too. That would be my advice.” 

Since his experience on Odd Man Rush gave Mulhern the chance to rekindle an interest in a sport that has eluded him since his childhood, it’s fun for him to envision who he would like to play alongside. Were he given the opportunity to pick a fictional three-man roster of his own, Mulhern offered some surprising and unique choices.

“I liked [Brian] Gionta on the [New Jersey] Devil’s, back when I was playing. I liked him because I was short and he was smaller, really scrappy and a good player. So Gionta and [Henrik] Lunquist ‘tending. And Gretzky. Shout out to Trevor’s dad.”

For complete audio of our conversation with Jack Mulhern, click here.

Odd Man Rush is available on VOD now.

Political Gain (and Games): 1on1 with Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine (BOYS STATE)

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The political world is filled with men and women who both seek power for the sake of serve and help others or, more negatively, out of a need to self-validate by winning. Pending on the candidate’s goals and intentions, they can prove themselves to be agents for positive change or simply succumb to the immaturity of their youth.

But what does it look like when youth are the ones with the political power?

Directed by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, the new documentary Boys State takes the viewer behind the scenes at Boys State, a summer leadership program for teenage men, developed by The American Legion. (The film indicates that there is also a Girls State program but the filmmakers opt to only follow the boys.) With over a thousand teenage boys in attendance, the youth are challenged to build a representative government from the ground up. As the young men nominate and elect candidates, they also must decide what means—and requires—to win. Asked how they discovered Boys State, Moss claims that their interest was piqued back in 2017 when the events of the camp garnered national attention.

“We feel lucky to have stumbled upon Boys State as a prism to look at American politics and democracy today,” Moss begins. “We didn’t have the benefit of participating in the program as young people growing up in California. I just didn’t know about it. It wasn’t until we read about the program the Texas Boys State program, having voted to secede from the union becoming something of a scandal [in 2017] in the national news [that it] caught our eye. That was at a time that we, like a lot of Americans, were struggling to understand the irreconcilable political division in our country and how have we gotten to this point? What’s our way forward? I think [we saw] in Boys State and Texas, potentially a prism to look at these questions and look at how susceptible young men are to sort of the rhetoric of the moment and what they may offer us as a hope forward.” 

When the boys first arrive, they are split between two political parties, the Federalists and the Nationalists. However, despite the division, they are given no other political guidelines or priorities to build upon. Left to decide for themselves what they value, it’s fascinating to see how different the political ideologies can be amongst the youth. In developing their film, political diversity became a high priority for McBaine and Moss as they chose their subjects to follow.

“When we did find out about this program, we loved the idea that there’s this space where kids with politics to the right and to the left, [who] are [invited] and forced to come together and talk politics face to face,” McBaine explains. “There are so few of those spaces left, maybe not even the Thanksgiving table anymore in a family. So, we knew going in that it was going to be fraught and we hoped it would be. We knew it would be uncomfortable. It would be really interesting to see what went down if they voted to secede in 2017, what the heck were they going to do in 2018? But there’s 1,100 kids who were invited to attend every year and that’s a lot of people.” 

“We knew the only way we were going to be able to survive this event as something occurs and as a crew trying to cover it, but also emotionally. The kind of films we make really are character driven. We wanted to immerse ourselves with a small group, and we wanted that small group to have a diversity of not only background in life experience, but also different politics. So, we worked very hard over three months, criss-crossing Texas, and filming with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of boys, until we found the four that we do end up following through the program, all of whom are very different and surprise us. We’re very lucky we found the four that we did.”

Although Boys State seems to consist of a form of hyperreality of the political world, it does offer a window into the machinations of backroom Washington and the games that are often played behind the scenes. However, given the age of the participants, it begs the question of whether or not the young men took their experience seriously. While the sheer number of youth ensured a range in maturity, Moss claims that he was impressed just how important the experience was to many of the boys.

“I think there was both [mature and immature youth]. Actually, what’s interesting is you see both embodied in Robert himself,” he points out. “[Robert’s] not sure if he should take the process seriously or play to the cheap seats. I love that sort of just to work it out for himself and he realizes that he’s miscalculated and that Steven has actually taken it more seriously than he has. I love that discovery (Robert’s discovery and our discovery) that he’s been trying to figure it out. We were attracted to young men who take politics seriously. No doubt, all of them do. Robert had been a page in the U S Senate. Stephen had worked on political campaigns. Ben, as you know, had a Ronald Reagan doll on his bookshelf and is a political junkie. Renee is already like a grownup and taking activism and politics seriously. So we connected with their serious commitment to the political process and caring about it. No doubt that we saw boys that don’t take it seriously. You see them pass legislation about Prius drivers going to Oklahoma and pineapple pizza. That’s funny, but then actually got serious. I think that tension in Robert, in the group (and maybe our country as a whole) is really sort of reflective, right? It is actually kind of where we’re at. People want to go to Washington and blow up the system, whatever that means. We’re left with a bunch of rubble or they want to kind of come together and figure it out. Those ideologies are in contest at Boys State and exaggerated form.” 

“They’re also 17, right?” reminds McBaine. “We’re also making a coming-of-age film. I think that straddle of boyhood and headed towards manhood thing is a space we also wanted to visit frankly and check in with. So, to some degree, the serious unserious is part of their everyday in everything they do, let alone what happens.”

Similarly, one of the most fascinating explorations within Boys State becomes the drive for power. Although being elected within their system offers no real weight outside of Boys State, the drive to victory becomes a purpose unto itself for many of the youth. Asked what they saw regarding the pressure of obtaining power, Moss feels their experience shows that, while some people are simply willing to do whatever it takes to win, others do understand the importance of serving in political office.

“I think no doubt this kind of lust for power for power sake is something we’re living with and the consequences of that now in a very profound and unsettling way,” says Moss. “I love the moment where Steven has asked, ‘What is the purpose of a politician?’ (He’s campaigning for signatures on his ballot.) He says ‘To serve others and not themselves.’ That simple and yet profound definition is something we all need to remind ourselves about. I think you see it in Ben (and he would recognize it now himself with some perspective) that there’s a kind of corrosive aspect to winning an election at all costs for the sake of winning. He really embodies that in his strategy and his tactics. He’s brilliant at it. He even invokes some military kind of metaphors and talks about politics and winning as combined arms warfare, sort of exaggerated kind of violence to politics. So, confronting that and actually hearing Ben’s direct bluntness about it was shocking. But I think also what gave us hope was to see young men of color like Renee and Steven who have very different politics than the mainstream at Boys State rise to power because they have a positive vision. That sort of power for a purpose, if you will, was very hopeful for us to see not only them offer that vision, but to see their vision return in the support of the electorate.”

Since the experience consists of 1,100 young men battling for political gamesmanship, the film also feels like a window into youthful (and potentially toxic) masculinity. Filmed at the time surrounding the MeToo movement of 2018, McBaine notes that, while she didn’t know what to expect, she was encouraged by what she saw in some of the young men.

“We went with all these questions about democracy and hyperpolarization, and what are [the next generation are] taking in, and what they’re seeing in adult state,” she clarifies. “I think what we didn’t quite realize until we got into the room with 1,100 boys, that we also had this incredible window into boyhood. [It was] 2018. I guess if I thought hard enough beforehand, I would have realized this is what we’re going to see, but not until I got there did I really have to confront that we were making a film about masculinity on some level. I’ve never been in a space like that. Myself and two other cinematographers I think we were the only females for miles around. There was plenty on display there that kind of met my expectations for good or for bad about what I would see.” 

“In checking in on boyhood in 2018, around the era of MeToo, around conversations about toxic masculinity [and] what they’re seeing in politics in Washington, I knew I was going to see a certain amount of it. Some of it was going to scare the heck out of me and some of it was going to upset me. What I wasn’t totally prepared for—and I love this about what I do for a living—is that I then also saw and experienced all kinds of masculinity I hadn’t expected to see. And that really did involve a lot more empathy. Not just from Steven, this was really in a lot more spaces around the event than I thought, [with] listening and real emotion, frankly. It was an emotional week that I didn’t think was going to be an emotional week. That too has power in that space, and truly profound power. The connections that were made between some of these boys was really heartening, frankly and made me less worried about the men of the future… We want to do [Girls State] next. I don’t really have any good intel on what happens in those spaces yet, but we plan to soon.” 

When he considers whether or not their experience at Boys State has changed their view of the current political system, Moss believes that the film shows the type of maturity and growth within the participants that gives him hope for the future.

“I think we both wanted, on some level, a Hollywood ending to our story,” Moss reflects. “Actually, it was a process to accept what the outcome was, but we found it actually ultimately very uplifting that it’s a struggle. Stephen will continue to fight for what he believes in and he has so much to offer both in he himself, um, but in what he embodies and will inspire in others. Renee as well, what’s also been great to see is how much reflection Ben has brought to his behavior two years ago at Boys’ State and now he recognizes the corrosive impact of such politics on our body politic. He’s really disavowed that kind of politicking and the gamesmanship. I think that kind of moral growth we need as a country, he shown us in person, and that’s also really hopeful. Just the fact that we can still all get together, Ben, Renee, Steven, Robert, and kind of talk in a small form embodies what I hope for us as a country. We may not agree on everything, but at least come together and find out as Steven would say, what can we agree on? I’m sure there is something.”

Boys State is available on AppleTV+ now.