This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you hear weekday afternoons on the Drive. John Bame is an Atlanta based independent producer with a specialty in non fiction projects, and this new project of his was quite surprising to him. It's called Filling in the Blanks, and let's just start with the charming picture we're all seeing about when people fill out that DNA report to start the search for their ancestry and where they came from. For
John, it wasn't that charming a process, was it. Well, it started charming, but it ended up as quite a shock. I found out as I was got my results back that I saw all these half siblings who I knew nothing about. Who are these people? It was the scariest thing. First I thought, well, maybe maybe the tests a joke, you
know, maybe I was catfished. But it turns out that one of the people who was listened as a half sister sent me a like an in massage, just like you can do on Facebook, and she said, I see we're related on face on Facebook on twenty three and me and if you'd like to know more about how related, I'd be happy to tell you, I respect your privacy, enjoy your experience. And I had no idea what that meant. Uh yeah, I too have filled out one of those and who
is this person? And I've had to go to mom and say, Mom, who is this person? Oh yeah, that's your cousin so and so's daughter who married this person, and that's why the name is. But I've not had anything as shocking as wait, what dad had a whole other family. Well, it wasn't even that. It wasn't that Dad had a whole other family. It was that when I asked her to explain everything she did,
she said, well, I know your biological father. And they said that your parents were part of a program at Mount Sannah Hospital in New York in nineteen sixty three for infertile couples. So if you had a couple and mail was not fertile or was not able to have enough sperm, essentially they would provide anonymously a sperm donors sample and then you would go ahead and get
pregnant. And nobody was now And that was what they did. And that is what I found out one day in twenty nineteen and was in a state of shock. My dad told me. I'd said to him, I wanted to take a DNA test. We'd actually talked just socially at a birthday dinner about it, and in the middle of the dinner, he looked at me in front of his there were some friends there of his, and he goes, I don't want you to take that DNA test until I'm dead. And
I thought he was joking, and he was dead serious. And you know, what do you think I did the next day said, okay, let's find out, yes, exactly. And I did find out and found out that he he was not my biological father. Now there he was fine as far as the dad goes. He was not a bad man by any means. There are terrible things fathers can do to their children, and I was. I was not that that was not what the stories about, but he it was a surprise. They kept this secret. I was fifty four years
old when I found out. I have two older brothers. Apparently my mom went to the same U program at Mount and I to get to get spermed, basically because my dad was unable to was unable to have kids. And I guess he was just I guess back in those days, you know, they were kind of shame and men wouldn't really talk about it, so they just kind of kept secret and made it look like everything was fine. Well, you did have a lot of that, And we're talking to John Bame.
He is an Atlanta based producer. He specializes in non fiction projects and reality shows. But little did he know his own genetic search would a whole documentary would just spill right out of the pages of his DNA and on film.
At what point did you say to yourself, I've got I've got to document this when things slowed down during the COVID It really started out as a COVID project and I basically just interviewed my half siblings woo I discovered through twenty three in me and my donor dad, who I met on Zoom and I thought halfway through, you know, maybe I could do more with this than just sort of make a little, a little mini project. I can actually make a real documentary. So I just hunkered down and did it and it
worked out. It worked out really well, So I'm really glad. I'm really proud of what I did. You know, first, I was very angry at my parents were keeping this kind of a secret, But as I made the film. It was kind of a cathartic experience and it really helped me process. So the film had two two roles, you know. One it was it was kind of an interesting project, and the other was kind
of expensive therapy in a way. Well, the name of the documentary is filling in the blanks, which is exactly what John Baim had to do. And this happened to you later in life. John. So there's so many things I look back on, not only with the behavior of my parents, the behavior of my grandparents. Now that I am the age my grandparents were
when I was young, I have a different take on it. And so since you discovered this kind of late in your life, it probably is sitting a lot easier on you than it would have if you had been younger. It depends. I would say, if I had found out at fourteen from a DNA test, which didn't exist back then, but just hypothetically speaking, yeah, it would have. It would have really twisted me. If my parents had sat me down and said, look, there's something we want to
tell you. You know, it's it's similar to finding out your adopt You know, you want to know, you want to know the truth. Everybody has an origin story. And when you think you know you're one person and then you find out, I don't know, five and a half decades later,
you're not. That's something and you know, I had to make the decision do I tell my parents I know this or do I let them take it to the right They have since passed on since twenty nineteen, and so the movie kind of explores that, you know, do I approach them, Do I say, hey, I know your secret, I know what you've been you've been keeping, or do I not. But it's been a positive experience. I have a lot of Donor siblings. We just got together two
weekends ago in New Jersey, just had a little reunion. I've met my Donor dad. He's a very nice guy, and in that way, it's kind of rediscovering yourself. It's the oddest of midlife Crisiss, That's probably the best way to put it. I've reconnected with very very distant cousins, and I am pleased when I and I've met them for the very first time. I'm talking, you know, some of them first cousins, some of them second cousins. But I'm so pleased when I find that we have so much
in common. I imagine you found that too. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Look there are some people who you find out are your half siblings and you each out to them and they say, look, this is too weird. I don't want to deal with it. In my case, that's a little bit more of the exception than the rule. Most of the con it's really nice to connect with people you don't really have anything in common with, but you know, but you do, you find out you have it.
I kind of say, when we get together, it's like book club without the books. It's DNA club, if you will. And John Bamana. John Bam is the producer. Filling in the Blanks is the documentary he had to do exactly that with his life when he took a DNA test, and the documentary is available everywhere you get documentaries. John Bam, thank you for joining us today. All right, thank you very much. One of those places Apple TV or Amazon Prime. You can find it there or on
your local pablebond Max. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation