¶ Josh Seftel joins the Chuck ToddCast
This episode of the Chuck Toodcast is brought to you by Quints. A thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to pieces that mix well and last. That's where Quince shines. Premium fabrics, considered design, and every day essentials that feel effortless to wear and dependable even as the seasons change. Quince has the everyday essentials I love with quality that lasts, lightweight cashmere sweaters, not too expensive either by the way, short
sleeve Mongolian Kashmir polos, linen bottoms, and shorts. Quinch works directly with top factories and cuts out the middlemen. That's why it's more affordable. You're not paying for the brand markup or any fancy retail stores, but you're still getting quality. Everything is built to hold up to regular wear and still look good. Quite often I'm wearing something that I've gotten from Quints. It is incredibly comfortable. I've become a middle aged man who loves his quarter zips. They have
plenty of those. I have been very pleased, and it's just, you know, when I like a piece of clothing, I probably wear it too much and usually tell after about two or three months. That's not the case so far, with Quinn's that's been impressive. So right now, go to quins dot com slash chuck for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. It's a full year to build your wardrobe and you'll love it. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last.
Go to qu I n ce dot com slash chuck for free shipping, three hundred sixty five day returns quints dot com slash chuck. So joining me now. He is the directmentory that you can see on Netflix right now. It's called All the Empty Rooms and this is uh it's it's about gun violence, but it's not about gun violence.
¶ People are surprised by the portrayal in "All the Empty Rooms"
What the doc is is about is going back to the victims of school shootings, to their parents who allowed my guest and his filmmakers. My guest is the director of this film of All the Empty Rooms, called Joshua Seftel, and it's in some ways a it's the bigger picture. And I want to talk to josh about this because I've I've done my own little things. When I was
¶ Public has grown to accept over 100 school shootings a year
doing Meet the Press Reports, our document document series that I had put together in conjunction with me, the press, and we were constantly looking for different ways to portray gun violence, to try to break through the numbness that the public felt. And I you know, one time we featured a mortician who explained what it was like to deal with gunshot victims. And so we did our own ways to do this. This was a very powerful another powerful way to do it, and in fact, as powerful
as I've seen yet. And so the director of All the Empty Rooms, Josh Seftel, joins me. Now, Joss, it's nice to meet you.
¶ Seeing the empty rooms of victims forces you to feel something
Same here, Chuck, great to be here.
So, I mean that's the you know, in some ways, you could say, Okay, I already know everything I need to know about this, stop right. I mean, it's a straightforward thing. And yet if you don't watch it, you don't get it.
Yeah, a lot of people have said that they after they watch it, they say, wow, that's not what I was expecting. And I think what has happened is that a lot of us in this country have become numb
to the idea of school shootings. You know, there was a school shooting last week, and then there was one in the week before, and there are about over one hundred school shootings a year now, we don't even hear about most of them, and we've reached the point where it just becomes a headline that literally fades away within hours or even minutes.
And we almost treated it like the flu. Oh there's an outbreak, it's crazy.
We've we've accepted it as something that's normal, and it's not normal. And we you know, with this film, like your story about the mortician, it's it's another way of talking about the issue, but it's really what we've done is we've gone into the empty bedrooms and told the stories of each child through the objects that are left
¶ Why has mass shooting frequency been accelerating?
behind in that room. And there's something about that that I think has resonated with people where it forces you as a human being to feel something.
You know, we've shifted on this, and i'd say, you know, you guys talked about in the in the Dock the media's role in this, and when when school shootings first started, and and sort of the patient zero in this case was the probably the University of Texas. You know, that was the modern sort of beginning of this. And in the eighties, you and I are about the same age. We grew up with the so called postal shootings, right where it was supposedly post you know, people were going
member it became a phrase, going postal. Then Columbine happens, and it shifts and it's and there is something about this mass shooting virus that's in our society where you know, yes, the workplace is still a place that is a potential vulnerable spot. But we haven't stopped with the school shootings, like we haven't moved past that. It's continues to be and it's a I think we're all trying to figure out why is it accelerating?
Yeah, you know, in the in our film, Steve Hartman,
¶ Does media coverage of shootings plant the seed for more?
who is the CBS news reporter. He's on CBS Sunday Morning and the evening news.
Right, he's the good news guy. He's the good you feel better, right, He's the he is the way do you hear this one? And in a good way? Right? He makes you cry, It's it's one of those, but it's in a good cry usually exactly.
And he decided, you know, seven years ago that he was sick and tired of all the school shootings and even having to report on them in a way where they would say, hey, Steve, go go figure out, like what's the silver lining on this one. You know, find a hero, find a find the libraryan that you know collected all the condolence cards, or find the EMT who got there in time to save one of the lives. And he and you know, those stories matter. But he just reached a point where he said, I don't want
to do that anymore because nothing's changing. And when he started, when he covered his first school shooting, which was in nineteen ninety seven in pel Mississippi, he I think there were seventeen school shootings a year, which is too many. But now when we were making the film, there were
¶ Says a lot about American psyche that True Crime is so popular
over one hundred and thirty school shootings a year. So you know, you do the math on that, and it's just insane.
Well, this is why I understand why many people think, is it the media's fault that this is accelerated, Not that the media causes it, but that the media helps plant the seed. Right, And look, you guys delve into this. You know, when we first covered school shootings, it was always through the perspective of the shooter. Who is this guy? Who is this person that climbed up on the Texas on the bell tower, Who is this person that was
wearing a long coat leather coat, and they became infamous. Right, Yeah, and then we rightly realized, hey, what are we doing? You know, don't do this because that does you will encourage copycatters.
Right.
It's the same thing with with the coverage of serial killers in the eighties and how how media covered serial killers in the eighties. And I think it's a much different situation now, but it's I mean, what is the right way to do this? I think we The fact that this gets worse, not better means we're not doing this the right way. We haven't found it yet.
¶ Focus of the doc is on victims, not the shooters
There is you know, the most popular nonfiction programming out there is true crime. Yeah, there's something about human beings that we wanted. I personally am not interested in it, but we want to hear these stories. We want to hear about the person who did something bad. You want to understand them, judge them, maybe see them face justice or not.
¶ Asked parents of every child killed since Sandy Hook to film their room
Yeah. I have a thesis that it's just all about making ourselves feel better about our place.
And you know, I think you might be right.
Right, That's why this appeals so much because I I don't get it either. I don't want to see how bad humanity is to each other all the time.
But I think that the news organizations, you know, are are tempted by that kind of storytelling. And it's hard, you know, because people are interested. But I do commend many of them for shifting over time because a lot of the organizations, including CBS News where Steve worked, have made a commitment to not focus on the on the shooters and to spend less time on that. And what Steve Hartman wanted to do, and this is you know, we followed him for this was a seven year project.
We followed him our film crew for a couple of years of the toward the end of the project, and what he wanted to do was to shifted even further away from talking about the shooters to completely just focusing on the lives lived by these children. And that's where the empty bedrooms come in, is we you know, I
haven't told you how the project started. Steve was fed up and he actually wrote a letter to every single family who lost to child since Sandy Hook and he said, I want to come to your house with a photographer and I want to take pictures of your child's empty room. And to his surprise, a bunch of people said yes. And he started to collect these photographs. And then he reached out to me three years ago and he was he said, you know, I'm starting to collect these photos.
I don't know what to do with them, and do you think there might be a documentary film here? And
he showed me one of the photos. It was a photo of a child's bathroom and there was a toothpaste too, with the cap left off, and you could tell and feel the sense of the child who had once been there and left that cap off, went to school saying like I'll put that on later, and never came home, and you could feel the absence literally, And I just thought, wow, this could be very powerful and a whole new way to reframe this issue. And so that was three years ago.
We set out on the road a couple months after that, using credit cards, trying to figure out how to piece this together. And three years later, you know, we have this film. It's on Netflix, it's nominated for an Academy Award, and we're trying to show people a different side of the issue, which is the children, Like what is the
¶ Media that means to come back to tell victims stories aren't able to
cost of all of this? What is the cost? What is the human toll that that we're all facing from this? And because we don't get to see that. No, it doesn't cover that.
We when I was telling you about the what what I actually the piece that we had done, it's about three years ago now it still sits in YouTube, and it was it was part of this. You know, I got frustrated that that the regular meet the press, I couldn't tackle these issues right for a variety of reasons, right, meaning, oh, you've got to be on the news and you've got to react to what's happening in the White House, and the Trump era is the Trump era, right, and you
realize we needed an outlet. We have all the we have all the room in the world and the wage of streaming, right, and so we thought we wanted to go back to these places where there were mass shootings and just find out how people were living their lives a year later, two years later. And that's how we were at a bar, where how are people getting along
¶ Stories must be told, regardless of how painful. Like Emmit Til
now with you know, six months later because we don't go back. You know how often I've had to cover a ton of school shootings, just like Steve did. I mean that was just you know, if you if you were in the main in television media in the in the last twenty years you've had and had an anchor, You've anchored your shrif of school shootings. We always say we're not you know, hey, we'll be back. You know, we're not just telling the story right now, we're coming back.
We don't come back, right we don't we By the way, when we say we're going to come back, we do mean it at the moment. You know, I really genuinely believe that, like, yeah, we should, we definitely will come back. And then stuff happens.
More school shootings happen usually. And what was interesting for us was that some of the people we visited and photographed the empty rooms in their houses was they had never talked to the press. It's amazingly why they had said no. They said no, I mean, why would they want to talk to the press, you know, after they.
But they need to share that, you know, in some ways, I think what you're hopefully with this, what this does for families and victims. You have to tell your story.
¶ Many parents kept their slain children's rooms untouched
I know it's hurts, but you have to tell your story. People need to see this. And that was exactly that was all the way back to Emmett Till. Right when Emmettill's mother said you must print these photos in Life magazine.
Yes, that's right, that's agreed.
This is in some ways it's a derivative of that.
Yeah, that's a great comparison. The families said to us, we don't want our child to be forgotten. We want the world to know about them. And we were saying to them, we're coming here to tell the world about your child and who they were and the life they lived through through the empty room, and we were very much aligned in that, and it's what they want. They want the world to not forget.
Do you hate hangovers, We'll say goodbye to hangovers. Out of Office gives you the social buzz without the next
¶ Parents want to preserve the smell of their children
day regret. They're best selling. Out Office gummies were designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood, and enhance creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you can tailor the dose to fit your vibe, from a gentle one point five milligram micro dose to their newest fifteen milligram gummy for a more elevated experience. Their THHC beverages and gummies are a modern, mindful alternative to a glass of wine or a cocktail. And I'll tell you this,
I've given up booze. I don't like the hangovers. I prefer the gummy experience. Soul is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Soul specializes in delicious HEMP derived THHC and CBD products, all designed to boost your mood and simply help you unwind. So if you struggle to switch off at night, all so as a variety of products specifically designed to just simply help you get a better night's sleep, including their top
selling sleepy gummies. It's a fan favorite for deep restorative sleep. So bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to Soul today. Right now, Soul is offering my audience thirty
¶ How did you compartmentalize when making this doc?
percent off your entire order. So go to get sold dot com use the promo code toodcast. Don't forget that code. That's getsold dot Com promo code toodcast for thirty percent off. Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from personal experience. I was sixteen when my father passed away. We didn't have any money. He didn't leave us in the best shape. My mother, single mother, now widow, myself sixteen trying to figure out how am I going to
pay for college? And lo and behold, my dad had one life insurance policy that we found wasn't a lot, but it was important at the time, and it's why I was able to go to college. Little did he know how important that would be in that moment. Well, guess what. That's why I am here to tell you about Ethos Life. They can provide you with peace of mind knowing your family is protected even if the worst
comes to pass. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy, all designed to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. There's no complicated process, and it's one hundred percent online. There's no medical exam require you just answer a few health questions online. You can get a quote in as little as ten minutes, and you can get same day coverage without ever leaving
your home. You can get up to three million dollars in coverage, and some policies start as low as two dollars a day that would be billed monthly. As of March twenty twenty five, Business Insider named Ethos the number one no medical exam instant life insurance provider. So protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos dot com slash chuck. So again, that's
Ethos dot com slash chuck. Application to may vary, and the rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me, life insurance is something you should really think about, especially if you've got a growing family. You know, in this day and age where there's record there's so many recordings now,
¶ The hope of the doc is that everyone can feel the weight of the loss
and you know, I'm sitting here watching your film and I'm thinking at the same time, and I'm wondering if I'm in this position for whatever reason, I'm two kids in college. I don't know what I would want. I don't know if I would want to say videos of them and see them alive, if I can't be with them alive. I was just thinking, you know, it was one of those that was I didn't know if that was gut wrenching or not. The keeping the room as
it is made that really resonated with me. It is this day and age where you get to go back into time and see these people alive. It's spooky and I don't know how I would handle that as a as a parent. I that was a It was one of those I've just was you know, you do you let your own mind wander when you have your you know, when you when you're And I'm sure a lot of people who have watched this film have shared with you experiences like that where you just start putting yourself in
that place. What would you do? How would you do it? I really connected with the mother who said, you know what I did? I want the room to smell like my son.
Yeah.
And I thought about that because my kids just are
¶ People with the power to fix this problem need to see this doc
in college. They're still here, they're still alive, but their rooms smell like them in my nest, and it means a lot to me. So I don't it is it is. That's what made this move film so powerful, is that you actually didn't need you barely needed narration.
Yeah, well there's so there's you know that that room in Santa Clarita Dominic Blackwell's bedroom, the parents keep the dirty laundry basket. Yeah, it's been there for six years and they haven't got that. Yeah, and and they, like you said, they keep it because they don't want to lose the smell of their child. And Frank was telling me the other day, Frank's Dominic's father. He was saying that the hardest part is that you start to forget what their voice sounded like. And and I think that's
why they liked having the video. You actually start to forget what their voice sounded like, and then you hear the you watch the video and you remember. So it's a it's uh, yeah, it's unimaginable.
How do you compartmentalize when you make something like this? Because there are days, there were days when I'd cover school shooting. So I mean, look, I was at the White House lawn for Sandy Hook and my kids were the same exact age, right, And I was on the lawn with the Jake Tapper and Norah O'Donnell at the time,
¶ The word "Gun" is never mentioned, didn't want to turn off viewers
and we all had kids the same age, and we were a wreck, and we had to do live shots all day and it was exhausting and you know, no, please, it wasn't even I wasn't a victim, right, it was just you know, having to having to pull it together right and not be able to. So how do you how did you how did you compartmentalize putting this together? Because it's this, this, this really had to hit you on some days.
Yeah, I mean two of the kids in the film are this We're the same age as my daughter, my oldest daughter, nine years old. Yeah, it is. It's tough. I try not to center my experience in the in talking about the film, because that, you know, what these families have gone through.
Is just, yeah, this is their experience.
I get that it's unacceptable, it's it's horrible, but I think that you know the experience of being in those bedrooms. You know, I travel a lot for my work. I'm away from my family a lot this project. When I was away, every time I came home I had never been. I always loved coming home, but it was a different level of getting to see my kids again and feeling a sense of gratitude for for what I have. I think that, you know, the our hope is that the power of this film is in trying to capture what
¶ Photos of empty rooms led 2A enthusiast to change his mind
is what it was like to be in those rooms, what it was like for me and my team to go into those bedrooms, because our hope is that everyone will feel the weight of the law, will feel that absence, and it will, you know, reconnect them with something that's already within them. I mean, you think about how you felt when you heard about Sandy Hook, or how you felt when you heard about ubildy or how you felt when you heard about Columbine, and I don't think most
of us feel that way anymore. When we hear about a school shooting. We're not as shocked, we're not as outraged,
¶ Got an email from a Sandy Hook denier that watched the doc
we're not as engaged. We might not even read the article. And what we're trying to do is to get people reconnected, to feel that those feelings again that they felt back then, because we our hope is that we can take that empathy we might feel from watching this film and channel it into change, into re engaging with issue, into having hope again that maybe we can create change because where we are right now is unacceptable.
Look, it's on Netflix, which means a lot of people can see it. The question is are the right people going to see it? You know, I would love to see organized screenings of lawmakers, state houses as well as the US Capital, because you want to know that the people that have the power to do something right, we don't. You know, not everybody agrees on what the something is, but I think there's collective agreement we ought to do something.
And in order to motivate people to go find find a maybe not the solution, but a mitigation strut whatever it is to at least focus on it. They need to feel this, right, They need to you know, It's like, how do you get everybody to watch this that maybe has decided. Look, I'm you know, it is not going to change my view on whether, you know, we should even manufacture weapons that can do this to the human body.
Yeah. Well you might have noticed this, but in the film we never mentioned the word gun.
¶ The doc paints a 3D image of the victims, that gets missed normally
Yeah, it's never said.
And that was by design because we did not want people to have a reason to ever turn the film off. We wanted to tell a story that was purely human, that on the surface was a political that is about the absence of these children. And and you know, I think what we've been seeing is that people of all kinds of opinions are watching and are affected by it. I'll give you a couple of examples. One, we we
took the photographs from the film. So these are the photos of the objects around the room, the little toys and trinkets and things that are left behind that tell the story of each child. And they're familiar. You know, there are things that if you have kids, you're going to see things that are in your kid's room. If you don't have kids, You're going to see things that
probably were in your room growing up. And and we took those photos and we created a photo exhibit which is actually right now in Los Angeles and New York. And we when when they were when they were installed. They were installed by this guy who apparently was quite conservative, and we found out later he you know, he wears a T shirt that says guns aren't stupid, people are anyway.
This is the guy who's hanging the photographs of the empty rooms, and halfway through the day of hanging them up in the gallery, he started to weep and he told his boss that he needed to go home. Anyway. The next day, this guy comes back in goes up to his boss and he says, I just need to tell you something. I will never wear that T shirt again. And we've heard stories like this where people who you know,
you couldn't imagine that they would change their mind. But there's something about these photos and the stories of the kids that like softens people's hearts. And we just feel hopeful, you know. Steve Hartman got in an email from someone
¶ Parents choose to grieve & respond in different ways
who had been a Sandy Hook denier who saw the film and watched it all the way through and he said to Stevie, said, thank you for this film. I didn't feel preached or lectured to, and therefore I was able to watch it and it opened my mind.
You know what you just described there just triggered an interesting exhibit that I remember that's extraordinarily powerful at Yad Vashim in Israel, the Holocaust Museum there where fairly recently in the Warsaw ghetto in Poland. You know, they have
a where they know a lot of Jews lived. When there's development, there's an attempt you know, if they dig, you know, and they find stuff they try to preserve, and they ended up finding all sorts of just ordinary everyday stuff that belonged to you know, Jewish families who were founded up. And the whole display is that it
is just the stuff. There's stuff that they lived when they lived in Warsaw, and you know, there's toys, there's you know, costume, jewelry, there's and it's and it you know, it just it does bring a humanity to the to the to the victory. You know, these are you know, when it comes to the Holocaust, there's still some nameless and faceless people, right and and there is something about you know that that in some ways, having these exhibits,
you know, can can just humanize the situation. And it sounds like what the responses you're sharing are the it's like, all of a sudden, the victims became three dimensional figures, right. I go back to I think what we were just chatting about before, the before we were talking about just politicians, right. And you know, as as a reporter, I'm eternally always
¶ Each family & parent has a different relationship with the empty room
looking for the third dimension and political candidates. But in some ways that's what we fail to do when we talk about victims.
Yeah, there's something about someone said to us they watched the film and they said, you know, you read a headline and you think, oh, that's someone else's child, But when you see the bedroom and you see all the objects in there, it's easier to say that's my child, or that could be my child. And I think that's the difference, is that it suddenly becomes part of your world and your life.
And has this been an issue you've tackled before in documentary form or you've wanted to, or you've been looking for a way to like, you know, what's a better way to get people to focus on this issue?
Well, The first film I ever made, when a long time ago, when I was twenty two, was about the abandoned children of Romania, And so it was a different kind of story about children. But at that time, in nineteen ninety, communism had just fallen, Chowshsku had fallen, and it was discovered that there were over one hundred thousand
abandoned children in the country. And I went there and I lived in the orphanages and documented the conditions of the children, and there was some you know, obviously that footage of seeing children tied up and treated like animals had a real resonance with the people who watched the film, and it led to the American adoption of thousands of
¶ Some families want to move, but can't bring themselves to pack up room
Romanian children when it was on public television. This film is shared some of the DNA, but it's different, you know, this film is about the absence of children. This film is about the empty rooms and trying to feel the presence of someone who's gone. And and there's something that seems to be resonating with people about that. We can all imagine that happening to us, and that creates a kind of empathy, I think, which we hope will lead to good things.
Did the how many of the parents volunteered sort of like how what you know, I'm just curious if there was you know, how many of them have decided to you know, I'm focusing on this right. You know, different parents do different things in response to this right. Some get galvanized and want to you know, deal with one policy issue. Others, you know, maybe it's about helping helping other victims who go through this right, that sort of thing.
I'm just curious the various stu I'm sure you just heard lots of stories of how how how parents chose to grieve besides keeping the room, that's clearly I mean, you know, it made me think we all memorialize people we love in some form or another, and there's always something we're like, I'm not letting that go, you know, I'm not. You can't throw away that painting, honey, you can't get rid of that. You know, this beat up coin. You know, I've got this. I got this tattered two
dollar bill that my father gave to me. Was I always got a two dollar bill when I lost a tooth.
¶ Was it hard not to get prescriptive?
Later I'd figure out it was the same two dollar bill. You know, we didn't have a lot of money. But it was but I you know, this two dollar bill and it was just I carried into my wallet. He died in eighty eight, I had it. I still have it.
You know.
It's like this two dollar bill and it's just a little thing. So we you know, like I won't shave because my father had a beard, and I just somehow think I'm going to like lose his memory if I somehow shave it. Irrational, of course, but I'm just curious the various ways parents have chosen to channel their grief.
Yeah, I mean, one one of the things that really struck me is, you know, we we spend time with four families, all of them lost a child, two at the Saugas High School of Shooting in Santa Clarita, one at the rob Elementary School in Uvalde, and one at the Covenant School in Nashville. And what we saw is that each family has has a different relationship with the room, some going there all the time. Even it even varies
between two parents in the same family. You know, for example, the Blackwells in Santa Clarita, Nancy the mom doesn't like to go into the room at all, and Frank goes in there every day. So it's they all have different
relationships with the rooms. And what is inspiring to me about all the families I met is that all of them have different political points of view, but they've all organized creative foundations in memory of their children, all four families to do different kinds of work that they deem appropriate that they think is going to help change and make things better. And I just have so much admiration for them for channeling their grief into something that's helping
the world. And that's I've seen across the board with most of the families that we've met. I want to tell you one quick story about one of the rooms, you know, talking about the relationships that families have with the rooms. The mule Burgers Brian and Cindy, who lived
¶ Conversation must start with "How do we keep kids safe at school?"
in Santa Clarita. Their daughter Gracie was killed six years ago at the Saugus High School shooting, and right afterwards they said to themselves, like, we need to leave here. We don't want to be here anymore.
Perfectly rational. It would be a perfectly rational decision. I mean, and widows regularly say, you know what, I can't. I'm not living in the house anymore. I mean, you know, just I get it right.
Yes, And in their case, the thing that kept them from moving was they couldn't bring themselves to pack up the bedroom the room. Yeah, And so you know, Brian Muehlberger applied for jobs in different places and he'd get the job offer and then when it came down to it, he just couldn't. They couldn't do it, and they'd say no. And this went on for over five years. And in
¶ The film got better as it got shorter
our film, Steve Hartman, after they collect the photographs of the empty room, he gave each family a photo book which contained all the best pictures of the child's bedroom. So he gave them this album. He gave the mule Burgers this album of Gracie's belonging all the photos that were taken. And after receiving that book, and after watching all the empty rooms the film, they finally said they were ready to move and they packed up the room.
And they've since moved to a different state. And what they've done is in their new home, they're creating a garden in memory of Gracie instead of having the bedroom, so they've kind of turned it into something else. But they were able to move out of the home and pack up the room.
¶ Imagery can be more powerful than spoken word
This episode of The Chuck Toddcast is brought to you by American Financing. So if you looked at your credit card statement lately, you're working forty fifty hours a week just to buy groceries and gas, things that used to be able to afford right, and the credit card companies are charging you over twenty percent interest for the privilege. Think about that. It's a lot of extra money out the door. It's designed to keep you under water. Well,
American Financing is doing something they hate. They're actually trying to help people. They have mortgage rates in the fives. They're showing homeowners how to take their hard earned equity to wipe out that high interest debts. The average savings is eight hundred dollars a month. So talk to a salary based mortgage consultant, no upfront fees, no obligation, commission, none of that to see how much you can say and if you start today, you can delay to mortgage payments.
Give American Financing a call America's Home for home loans eight six six eight eight five ten point eighty one. That's eight six six eight eight five one zero eight one, or go to American Financing dot net. Slash the Chuck Podcast. Use that code. This episode of The Chuck Podcast is brought to you by Zbiotics. Let's face it, after a
¶ Streaming on Netflix allows for far wider distribution
night with drinks, it's hard to bounce back the next day. You have to make a choice either have a great night or a great next day. Well, that's where pre alcohol comes in. Zbiotics Pre alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct
in the gut. It's a build up of this by product, not dehydration that's to blame for the rough days after drinking. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme to break this by product down. Just remember to make pre alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly and you'll feel your best tomorrow. Now. Look, I don't drink anymore, so I can't give z biotic pre alcohol a personal endorsement. But my producer Lauren does drink and he tried it out. Lauren, how was your experience.
I'll be honest, Chuck, I was a bit skeptical at first, but the other night, I went out with my wife to our favorite spot from Margarita's and tried pre alcohol beforehand and got to admit I was surprised by how good I felt the next morning. Disable the pop right out of bed, get a workout in, have a great day of work. So pre alcoholic gets my stamp of approval.
So there you go. You ready to try it, Go to zebiotics dot com slash chuck podcast right now. You'll get fifteen percent off your first order when you use
¶ Funders for the doc didn't want to make money, they wanted to make change
Chuck podcast at checkout. Plus, it's backed by a one hundred percent money back guarantee, so there's no risk. Subscriptions are also available for maximum insistency. Remember to head to zebiotics dot com slash chuck podcast and use the code Chuck podcast at checkout for the fifteen percent discount. Again,
use the code Chuck podcast. It had to be hard, I imagine, almost not trying to get prescriptive right when you're it is it is always, you know, the journalist in you, I'm sure, was like, okay, but all right now what? Right? Now? What? But in some ways we're not ready for the prescriptive. I think that's the lesson I'm taking away from the last forty years of how
we've handled these as a society. We're not, and so we need more of We need more of these because you need you need more people wanting prescriptive before you can.
Get to prescriptive. I think I think the prescriptive exists.
You know too, We just have it just will It's everywhere.
It's it's you know, it's on the news, it's in and it's in most documentaries where there's a very strong point of view that you know that it is essentially alienates about half the people in the country and invites the other half to feel.
Here you're trying to widen the lens, widen the mature a little bit.
I just yeah, I just feel for me as a filmmaker, I mean, in those films, in that news and journalism is important. But for me as a filmmaker, what interests me is how can you tell stories that are that invite everybody in and allow them to share in potentially feeling something and potentially experiencing a story together, even if they have opposing points of view, that they could watch a story together and all get something out of it.
And you know, in the case of all the empty rooms, we hope that for people who agree that we need to do better with guns and gun safety, that they that those people might feel re engaged with the issue. They might feel like, okay, a little bit hopeful that change can happen, That they might feel feelings they haven't felt in a long time when they when they think
about school shootings and feel urged to do something. And then the other half we I hope that they'll feel something too deeply that makes them say, you know what,
we need to figure this out. We need to change something because what is happening is unacceptable and we need to restart the conversation in a new place, which says which just simply says like, we all agree that our children need to be safe when they go to school, and how do we build from that place and restart the conversation in a constructive way that could lead to positive change.
Did you ever contemplate making this feature length or was it always a short in your mind?
We thought about it. We started as a short, and then the first cut of the film came in at like fifty five minutes, and is.
The cutoff for the oscars? Is it forty minutes?
Forty minutes? So anything under forty is a short and then anything and then I don't know what constitutes a feature,
¶ The topic wasn't just powerful, it was visually powerful
but you know, usually they're like seventy to eighty minutes at minimum minimum. So we were thinking, okay, fifty five, maybe we add another fifteen, and we're we have a short feature. But as we started editing more, we the film got shorter and it got better, and we finally got down to thirty four minutes, and we looked at it and we said, you know, what if we what if we cut out more of the talking? What did
we cut out more of the dialogue? And we started just cutting and cutting and cutting, and eventually we had cut six minutes of dialogue and talking out of the film out of a thirty four minute film. But we left the film at thirty four minutes, so suddenly we had added six minutes of essentially silence to the film, which allowed people to be in the rooms, feel the absence, and and we found that that was much more effective because we weren't telling people what to think. We were
just letting them go in these rooms. And then you decide, you decide what you want to feel, and you decide at the end of the film what you want to do.
This is just such a reminder to me that, like you just certain things you can't convey via the word. Yeah, right, it did, it is it is, you know it is. And this is what documentary filmmaking over the last ten years is just grown by leaps and bounds. Part of it is that distribution's never been easier, right, the buried nentree has never been never been easier. It's like, I mean, if you thirty years ago, where do you distribute this short? Right? Yeah?
I mean I'm just right. I mean just imagine, you know, maybe you convinced the folks over at CBS Sunday morning, hey let's do a thirty let me do a thirty minute piece, and of all programs that might light a thirty minute piece, it's it's a Sunday morning, right. Yeah, but that's difficult, right, that's a that's a one shot, Like where would this have gone? I mean, this is I mean, this is the beauty of of of what
you know. It's funny. I don't think we all realized how hungry people were for documentaries until we got a platform like Netflix in our everyday life in Hulu and all these places. Now that that that have made that if you know, there's always been these great documentarians out there ready to make these films. There just wasn't any place to put them.
Yeah, that's right, that's true. Thirty years ago it would have been it would have played at festivals, maybe in a couple of theaters before a feature, maybe otherose.
And it's always please. I grew up, we had the one you know, every town had the one theater that played, you know, that had the docs. Right, it was always the same theater that also had the foreign films, right, you know, that was like the only place you could get that stuff.
You know, that's right. But you're right, it wouldn't have been seen by you know, this film has already been seen by millions of people because of because of Netflix, and you know they acquired the film at after the tellur Ride Film Festival where we premiered.
And so hard to get funding for this, I mean you said you used a lot of credit cards because I can imagine you know, it's not a it. You can't sit there and say, yeah, I definitely think we'll be able to sell this. I mean, you know, you don't know if the folks at Netflix or A or at an Amazon or at a Hulu or a Peacock might say, yeah, I don't I don't know that people we don't want, you know, we don't want something that makes people shut the platform off. I mean, I hate to be that cynical.
Yeah, let's just say that there's not a lot of ROI on short documentaries. We you know, films like this are made out of passion and out of care.
Well. I'm pretty involved with the folks at Docs d DC Docs, and we used to do a film festival to meet the Press Film Festival for five or six years, and it was only for shorts. Yeah, and it was a whole world of filmmakers that I was realizing were underserved. It's an underserved community with tremendous content.
Yeah. Absolutely, all the people that all the people that were part of this film, all the people that eventually came on board and gave us funding or helped us in different ways where they just cared about the issue. None of them expected to make money. We didn't make money. We lost money, but that's not why we made the film. We made it because all of us want to see change.
Happen, and documentaries are like good investigative story books, right, you know, only about one out of one hundred actually make money. They're not meant to make money, They're meant to amplify a story, amplify an idea. On those fronts, let me close with this. What's next for you?
Well, in the immediate future, we're about to you know, the voting for the Academy Awards is happening started today, started on February twenty sixth, got it, and it goes to March fifth.
So we're kind of, oh, it's campaigning. Huh.
We've been campaigning because we you know, our hope is that look, being nominated is amazing. We've gotten so much attention and brought it to the subject of school shootings and gun safety because of the nomination, and we're so grateful for that, and also the families who shared their stories of their children and their dream of making sure
the world knows about their kids is coming true. And you know, if we whether or not we win the Oscar, obviously winning the Oscar would amplify that and you know, help with this issue. But we're really happy about where we've gotten to and we're not going to stop working on this. We are going to continue traveling the country and the world with this film, and we're we and we have this photo exhibit, which is going to continue to travel to different cities around the country for the
next year or at least. Well.
The photo exhibit feels like an incredible sort of secondary way to bring attention to this, not just to the topic and the and the film itself.
And you can put it in public places, which is what we've done. You know, it's currently it's in Sunset Triangle Plaza in Silver Lake, and it's in Dumbo in Brooklyn, and you can just walk by it and check it out. And you know, hundreds of people every day are walking by and just taking it in. And we want to keep doing that.
No, I mean it's look, I don't know whether you can get people to intentionally notice, but in some ways you almost want to get the unintended, to get it into unintentional public the public spaces where people stumbled into.
Absolutely.
Yeah, well, Joshua was great and it's a what to me, what's important about it as a as an artist? Is it how important it was as a visual story? Right? And that you know, I don't know if any judges are listening, but I think that should be a huge criteria. It's not just whether the topic is powerful, not whether the words are powerful. But you're making up film, right, you know, is it visually powerful? And needless to say, it's visually powerful.
Thank you, thanks Chuck for giving me the chance to talk about it.
And sure, yeah, absolutely, all right, maybe i'll see in the campaign trail. You've done with campaigns?
Huh?
Are you done with campaigns? Are you done covering political campaigns?
Do you know what? Did I tell you? I made a film called Taking on the Kennedys. Do you know about that one?
Oh? Which one was that? It was a familiar It was.
About Patrick Kennedy's campaign, his first US congressional campaign in Rhode Island.
Oh, I remember this in the from the Other Right.
For he I followed his opponent, Kevin Vigilante, who was a Republican. And uh, it was a very kind of funny and maddening story. Yeah, and it was on PBS.
It was very it was I do now remember this. It was. It wasn't the most flattering.
Portrait, probably not back in the day, and I'm a Democrat, but back in the day it was you know, films like that really got seen. You know, when there were fewer channels and and so it was it was very popular.
But right, well that was that was basically actually when we were talking about where would a film like this be, maybe p PBS was the was the the that was the home run. Right, if you've got a PBS pick up, you're like great at least.
And a lot of people watched it there too, right, yeah, Right now it's not as much. There's it's harder to get audiences anywhere. They're much more, you know, right, who.
Knows how this gets into people's algorithms, right, however that works exactly these days? Well, Joshua, good luck with the campaign. I mean, you know, with the campaigning, it's it's a it's a I know that's a process.
And and are you still involved with DC docs? Uh?
Yeah, whenever I can be. I mean, you know, whether it's hope, you know, putting together program helping with their programming, or amplifying their docs and all of that. Jamie sure is you know Jamie, I know Sky Sidney Okay, Sky's your partner.
Yeah, yeah, we actually I was talking with Sky the other day, so I do a I interview my mom on CBS Sunday morning, and we're on there regularly where I just talk to her about her life and she lives in DC and you know, what's going on in her life and her opinions on things. And we've been
on for thirteen years. Anyway, she recently moved back to d C. And so I was talking with Sky at sun Dance about about this, and we decided we're going to try to have my mom be the person who tells you to turn off your cell phones and other things for the festival. So we're going. So we're getting involved with DC docs.
Well, then I look forward to seeing you in whatever way that Jamie recruits me to get involved. Great and at a minimum, I'd like to use my podcast to amplify And I'm a you know, I probably probably at least once a month have some documentary filmmaker.
On, So grateful for that. And when when do you think you're running this?
We'll drop it next week, Okay, com during voting, don't worry.
Sooner the better I know.
I got you. We just did a feature length. You're not in competition, but we just had I'm trying to I'm like blanking in the title of the of the film.
But Alabama solution.
No no, no, no about that used body camera footage.
Perfect neighbor, yes, perfect neighbor.
Thank you. Yeah, Gita, I agree.
I was with her last night. We're all we're all going to the same part.
You're on the same circuit. Yeah no, no no, and uh yeah you're not. Don't worry. You're in two different categories. We are ye. Also you know we I am so the check podcast is promoting GETA and We've got We've got people were promoting in both categories.
Here Joe Love, We're we're I'm having lunch with her today too, so I'll.
Say hi, please do okay, thanks a lot
Thanks Big kar