January 4, 2024 • 60 mins
Ava DuVernay’s newest film, Origin, breaks a lot of molds. The book on which it’s based, Caste, grapples with some of the deepest inequalities in our world today, and was famously deemed unadaptable into a film. Not to mention DuVernay came to the adaptation as the industry entered one of its biggest slumps in recent memory.
Not one to be dissuaded, DuVernay found a way to adapt this seminal book and to fund it outside of the typical studio-or-streamer model for making a movie. The result is a sweeping mosaic of personal stories, including Isabelle Wilkerson’s own, that chronicle how lives today are defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. The adaptation speaks for itself: there were many tears in the audience of this Q&A, taped live at Art Basel in Miami, one of the partners in a revolutionary new funding model that made the project possible.
This incredible movie and the innovation that underpins its production have a lot to teach about new ways to approach some of the most intractable problems of our time.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is next question.
Ava Duvernet has a new movie coming out this month.
It's called Origin, and it's really something special. It's based
on the book Cast by Isabelle Wilkerson, which had famously
been deemed unadaptable, but that wasn't going to stop Ava.
(00:28):
What was especially fascinating about this conversation was Ava's unusual
path to funding this film. Usually the team might go
to studios and streamers like Netflix for that, but it
wasn't quite working out the way Ava wanted when it
came to Origin, so she forged a new path, going
to philanthropic organizations and corporations and convincing them to fund
(00:53):
the movie. Those conversations also turned into an entire infrastructure
of social outreach around Origin, from community screenings to curriculum
for educators who might want to discuss the book or
movie in classrooms. So in this interview, which we recently
taped at Art Basel, Ava broke down how this remarkable
(01:15):
film came to be and her hopes for the movie's impact.
Then I sat down with some of her partners who
helped make her dreams a reality. I hope you enjoy.
There's so much I want to talk to Ava about,
(01:36):
and I tried not to pepper her with questions backstage
so we would be fresh. But I also want to
give you all a chance to ask Aba some questions
as well. But first, let's kind of start at the beginning. Ava,
have you always been a big fan of Isabelle Wilkerson's.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I'd read the first book, first of all, thank you
for being here.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Of course, Katie.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's a big deal, so thank you, Katie. Course I'd
read the first book, The Warmth of other Sons, and
I was an admired of that work. And so when
Cast was published, I actually had gotten it in Galley's
before it was it was published, but I was shooting
and I didn't have a chance to read it. And
(02:18):
when it came out in the summer of twenty twenty,
in the middle of the pandemic, at the beginning of
the pandemic, I just couldn't read. I was just in
a daze. Yeah, So I didn't end up reading it
until about three months after it had been out, and
Oprah actually kind of convinced you to crack it open,
and you were asking me to read it since galleys
(02:39):
and several other people. You know, it was the Book
of the Summer, and I just I hadn't gotten to it.
So I would hear about it here or there. People
would suggest it to me or assume that I'd read it,
and so I finally, I finally did.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And what did you think when you read the book?
Because I know it was declared as unadaptable? What made
you determined to prove otherwise?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Eva?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Uh, well, I I think it's just my curiosity and
interest in the in the general, I won't even say
subject matter, just the the audacity of the argument. At times,
I wasn't even sure if I agreed with it, but
I was provoked by it, which I think is a
(03:25):
fantastic thing to be. Allow yourself to be provoked by
new ideas, but by things that jar you, by things
that that that that force you to think differently, and
so as long as that's a safe environment and environment
where there's respect, I think being a provocation of one's
imagination is a positive thing. And that's what happened to
me with the book. I was, you know, ignited by
(03:47):
the ideas, the thought that the primary lens through which
I see myself being a black woman, that those are
predicated uh, that those identities are predicate on something that's
very much animated by cast in our society, and that
those ideas of the isms racism, sexism, is laophobia, homophobia,
(04:10):
anti semitism, whatever it is, all sit on top of
something else called cast, and cast is the skeleton and
all of those other isms are the skin. You know,
cast is the wound, and everything else is kind of
on top of it. And so I just thought, what
a vibrant idea to help organize my thoughts. I wanted
to talk to folks about it, but I know that
(04:31):
from thirteenth and from when they see us that popular culture,
that putting these tough ideas in movies and TV shows
moves it into the culture faster than anything else. And
that's what I really wanted. So that's why I started
to think about could this be a movie?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And of course you had to transform and translate these
these thoughts from a pretty dense, fairly academic book into
a narrative, a story, and you turned it in and
to really Isabelle Wilkerson's journey. When did you have that
aha moment?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Eva?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You thought, this story is really the story of the
woman behind the writing.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yes, well nothing is impossible, and so I knew I
was interested in the ideas in the book. But they
weren't a lot of characters in the book. There were
some though. There was Augustin Irma, the German couple, right,
she ends up in the camps, he doesn't hile there
was Alison Elizabeth Davis, the African American anthropologists, right who
In the book, Miss Wilkerson says that they were doing
(05:34):
their research primarily in Natchez, Mississippi, But she has a
couple of lines in there that says that they used
to they had studied in Europe. And I was like, wow,
they studied in Europe. Where so when I went and
did that research, it connected them to Germany. So the
characters started to come together. I thought, well, maybe it's
just about these historical characters. Then I said, I don't
want to make another history movie. I just didn't want
(05:56):
to make another one. So I was forcing myself to
look in the book and find a contempt very character.
And then one day I was reading a chapter in
the book and the author was recounting her research and
she was using the word I a lot, and I
was like, she's a character. She's the contemporary character. So
when I went to her and I said, I'd like
(06:17):
to adapt your book and there's a main character that
I'm really fascinated by, who.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
You what did she say?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
She she agreed rather quickly. She agreed rather quickly, and
she gave me the answers to all the questions that
I needed over a course of about two years, you know,
about a dozen and a half conversations, multiple hours.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I was going to say, because on Zoom there's so
many intimate details Isabelle's life and her losses and these moments,
I mean, how much creative license did you take ava?
For example, when she and her mom are looking at
the cloud at the nursing home or assisted living facility,
(07:05):
whatever it was, exactly and some of the conversations. Did
she say, you can expand upon our conversations and build
these characters as you see fit.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
She did. She gave me the freedom, and she was
very gracious and telling me the stories about the losses
of her mother, her husband, and her cousin Marian and
then allowing me to go and interpret them. And so
stories like her and the Plumber are pretty much exactly
what she recounts in the book, but stories about things
(07:40):
that happened with Marian. None of that is in the book.
And so so it was a balance between being inspired
by the book the history, and the book going beyond
the book into her personal history that she told me,
and then other research historically that I brought to the pages.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
It's such an effective mosaic, and I think, you know,
I'm a big fan of all your filmilms, but it
struck me that this kind of had elements. It had
elements of a documentary, it had elements of a feature film.
Can you talk about And it's such a vast, you know,
story to cover with so many different components. Talk to
(08:17):
us about how you were able to figure out the
structure of this and you know, going from the past
to the present to vignettes and almost like short films
about each of these characters that are placed in history.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
The way I was able to do it really points
directly back to the financing model because I was free.
You know, I was free for the first time since
i'd made independent films when I was using my own
money and I was just starting out and no one
cared since I'd made one hundred million dollar films for
(08:57):
Disney and Netflix and all the Yonce videos and Apple
commercials and all of the things. But there's always someone
looking over your shoulder, you know, and there's always someone
saying are you sure about that? And we can't do.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
That questions which probably causes you to question yourself.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It changes, you know, what you're making changes, The vision changes,
and it's okay, you're taking millions of dollars of these
corporations money and they should be involved. But if you
have a vision and an idea and you consider the
prospect of being able to fully birth that without someone
breathing down your neck or changing the vision or doubting
(09:38):
or fearful, fear based decisions, wouldn't you choose it? And so,
in venturing to finance this film outside of the studio system,
I gave myself the freedom to think about this storytelling
differently than I would if I was inside the studio system.
And that meant I'm going to blur the lines between
(09:58):
documentary and narrative, if I'm going to have historical and
contemporary and also a surreal element. Are there leaves falling
in the scene? Yeah, tell it? I thought, try, just
try it, you know, and and and and to throw
all of that into the pot and see what came out.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to
ask you about sort of where the idea of the
falling leaves that you use repeatedly, you know, that is
really a motif in the film. Where did that come from?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
And was it? I mean, how does that happen?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes, well, you know, and interpreting Isabelle Wilkerson the story
of the of the passing of her loved ones and
trying to interpret that visually, you know, and trying to
you know, kind of bring that to the heart of
the people who are watching. I went into my own
personal experience with loss and when my father passed away
(10:55):
quite unexpectedly, that's how I felt. I wanted to I
felt was in a black hole and I just wanted
to be buried with leaves so that people would look
out on the lawn and think, oh, well, maybe she
was here and now she's not and didn't matter because
he wasn't here. And that's how I felt. And so
trying to articulate her loss by connecting it to mine
(11:15):
was something that I tried to share. And that's what
filmmaking is you know, you can take the script, you
can take the book, but the best filmmaking is the
filmmaker imbuing themselves, putting their fingerprints on the experience and
leaving a bit of themselves behind in the scenes. And
so that was based on my own personal feeling.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I thought it was so beautiful and really effective, and
you I mean, there were so many the visual vocabulary
of the movie is so varied and rich, and some
of the scenes obviously were quite difficult to pull off,
you know, the scenes with the Nazi rallies for example,
and the scenes in India. I mean, talk about sort
(11:55):
of the challenges of shooting these stories and so many
different places.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, so most films of this size that look around
this size would be I don't know, maybe ninety two,
one hundred days something like this. We shot this in
thirty seven days. I went to three continents, so we
were you know, in Delhi, in Berlin, in our domestic
(12:23):
base with Savannah, Georgia, and so, you know, really thinking
about the finite amount of money we had, I could
never go back to the studio and say we're a
little over, we need to pad that, or the crane broke,
no problem we'll send over another one. Or you know,
we're in India now, in the middle of the street
(12:44):
and there's no electricity and we thought there would be
a generator here. What should we do? It was Paul
Garns and me looking at each other saying, we're going
to figure it out. It's just the two of us,
the man who was on the stage at the top
of the and so you know what an adventure want
to ride? It's addictive. I want to do it again
(13:05):
and again.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
You like to have to be really careful with money.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
I like, I like to be able to spend the
money in service of the vision and not in service
of fear, you know what I mean, and not and
not to be thank you, and and I think so
much of in my industry, in a different industry than
many of you, but it is fear based. So many
(13:30):
of the decisions that are being made are being made
because a boss's boss or my boss won't like that,
or just everyone's doing their little bitty piece. And the
idea that we as filmmakers, as artists, as producers, as friends,
you know, catalyzed by the great work of Regina Miller
who raised the money and just like side by side
(13:51):
with me a partner, and in putting this model together,
we envisioned a new world, a new way to make
this kind of scalable. You know, a film that felt
intimate but also had epic pieces to it, that was international,
it was global in scope, that was about serious subject matter,
subject matter that you know is less attractive to studios
(14:14):
to make. Imagine the pitch. I go in and I say,
they say, hi, Eva, gosh, we haven't seen you in
a while. Miss you. Guys, how are you? And so
what are you thinking about? We just want to hear
we're going to work with you. Yeah, no, I want
to work with you all too. So my next piece,
I'm really interested in making a film about cast. Cast.
(14:37):
You want to have a cast in it? No, cast,
the social phenomenon of the hierarchy of human beings. Like
that's not They were like, I didn't, I didn't even
do it. That would have been the pitch. And so
we saved ourselves a year of going through and doing
that and try and we just spent the time instead
building something new.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Talk about the Trayvon Martin of it all. And you know,
as a black woman writing and directing this film, what
it was like, and I think you did that so
beautifully with the nine to one one tapes, and I
know that was choreographed exactly really how it happened with
(15:21):
George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. Can you just talk about
sort of the importance of that scene, eva, juxtaposed with
so many of the historical moments in the film.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yes, yes, Well, in my conversations with the author, she
had shared that I asked, where did this idea of
cast count come from? A lot of it, she traced back.
Her early thoughts about it were around the Trayvon Martin case.
She was she was writing about it, she was thinking
about it, and so I was trying to, you know,
(15:56):
find a way to interpret that and put it in
the in the film. And it took me a while
to decide to actually show what happened. But what was
important is if I showed it, I had to show
from his perspective too, And I wanted you to see
him first. It's just a kid talking to a girl
on the phone. He went to get some candy. But
when you hear the killer's version, he was a sinister guy,
(16:21):
looked like he was on drugs, walking around the place.
What is he doing here? They always get away? That's
what George Zimbers and Zimmerman says on the tape. That
was the real tape that you heard on that tape
on the second nine one one tape where you hear
the woman and she's calling in the real woman, you
can hear Trayvon Martin screaming in the background, and so
you can hear the gunshot, right, and so you actually
(16:44):
have that murder caught on tape. And so to think,
how can I honor this Instead of just doing the tape,
I wanted to do the kid, the kid that he
was just before, so that when you hear the tape,
when you see what the reenactment of what had happened,
you know him already. You know what he was doing.
He was talking about breakfast, he was talking about whatever
(17:04):
they were talking about. His mother was kind enough to
I called her before I did anything, and I asked her,
I was so nervous to talk to her. She was like, girl,
are you nervous? You know, just talk to me. She
was so lovely, Sabrina Fulton, and she said, do it,
you know, do it.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I've interview.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Isn't she wonderful? Yeah, she said do it, and she
so you know that was done with her permission and
book ended. Now that you've seen it, you know the
first image of the film is him, and the last
image of the film is him. And there are many
parts of the film that are tough to watch and
that I've cried over, whether I was writing it, filming it,
(17:42):
or editing it. And I'm all cried out on the movie.
There's nothing that I cried anymore except his last look.
Sometimes when I'm doing a Q and A, if I
catch it, I get very emotional. His last look right
at her. It's a really shot where he's looking down
the barrel. The camera's always looking at you, and he's
(18:04):
just something about it that gets me every time. Now
I don't look at it because I will start to cry.
Unlike Katie, who was crying in the background, like literally
came out of our little holding areas in Katie Kirk
and she's just very much crying. And like I said, Katie,
who I know a little bit what is going on.
(18:25):
She's a out right the albright.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I think it's so honestly heartbreaking and upsetting and so beauty.
I mean, that little boy is so precious and the
man who's recounting the story. I didn't want to ask
Ava backstage because I wanted to hear her true response
is I wondered, you know this idea of the documentary
meets a feature if the man telling Isabelle's character in
(18:53):
the movie was actually his teammate. Was he Albright's redheaded
teammate or was he an How.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Many people think he was a real guy, okay, the
real man, and how many think he was an actor? Okay,
more people think he was real. Okay, he's somewhere in
the middle. Okay, he's not the real man. He is
not the real man. He's also not an actor. Okay,
(19:22):
let me tell you who he is. When Regina Miller
was talking before an answer to your question, Katie of
what are the ways in which you've included your ideas
about social justice and social impact into the filmmaking, one
of the ways is to try to eliminate as many
hierarchies as we could on set. So when I walk
(19:43):
through the set, I'm the boss, and the way it
usually goes is, no one talks to me unless you're
in my inner circle. And when I say me, I
mean the director. No one talks to the director unless
you're asked a question, or unless you're the DP or
the production designer in that top top circle. It's very
rare that folks are just coming up to you because
(20:03):
you're the director and you must see your unwalking leave
her bee, right, It's ridiculous. So one of the things
that I like to do, and when you look at
the who would be considered the bottom of the hierarchy
of a set, it's the extras. Okay, the extras who
I call background actors, but the extras they're put off
(20:26):
to the site. They have a different place where they eat,
they have a different place where they sit.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So there's a cast system, the cast.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
System right on every single set. They're kept away from
the rest of the set. It's like bring them in
and they come in like cat and they're like, you
go over there, you go over there. They're not treated well.
They're not treated well. And I think the reason why
I have such empathy for them is because one day
my mother said, I want to try to be an extra,
and I was like, I don't think you're going to
like it, and she's like, I just want to. I
can make one hundred and fifty dollars for the day,
(20:53):
and I'm just gonna do it. She came back so devastated.
She was just so I was like treated like a
subhuman And so I thought, as we started to think
about the different ways to break down casts, the idea
of really talking to the actors and background actors and
really including them in the process became a part of
our process. So on this particular day, I'm walking across
(21:16):
the set where the pool is and one of the
background actors who had been free. I talk to them
all the time. I set up the scene with them.
They know what they're doing. They can eat regular food,
they can be with the regular people. Like we're trying
not to segregate the set. He stops me and he says,
Miss Duverne, I just want to tell you the scene
we're doing today. It really I feel emotional about it
(21:36):
because something like that happened to me when I was young,
And I stopped and I said, tell me, and he
told me a story that add some similarities to the
scene that we were shooting. Now, the background actors are
so segregated, they don't get a script, so they don't
ever know what we're doing. Because you can't give like
a thousand people the script end up on LinkedIn. I
don't know whatever you yeah, and so we just kind
(21:59):
of don't give them pages. But I like to at
least describe it to them. So he says, I'm not
sure what's going on here, but this reminds me of something.
He tells me what it reminds him of, and I said,
and he's almost has tears in his eyes as he's
telling me. I said, you know, if I give you
the pages of this script, you can go over there
and read them. Do you think that you could tell
the story of the pages with the same emotion that
(22:22):
you're telling me your own story? He said, I'll try.
So he goes over he's reading the script. I'll go
over to Andre Newellis. She's about to go to lunch.
I said, just give me one more second, just one
more second. She said, oh, did we forget a scene?
I said, it's a new scene. It's a new scene.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Just come here, and said, I was going to say,
what happened to the actor who was supposed to it
was never scripted?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Okay? Good felt that for no, No, that guy.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
She sits down, he comes over. It was I said,
you think you can do it. He said, yeah, I'll try.
So he sits down and without a script, he's he's
he's interpreting the story of al Bright that he read
in the script, and he's saying he's putting himself in
the place, and he's saying, I was I was a
little boy. And he tells that story one take, Wow,
(23:08):
one take. He told that story with such love and
memory and just all that you see on the screen.
Real heck, tough. Grips on the set were like, I'm
not crying. It's fine, it's fine, it's no big deal.
Ange New starts to cry in the scene. She starts
to interview him. In the scene, they get to the
part where she says how old were you? And I'm like,
(23:31):
oh gosh, he's not gonna know how old. I didn't
put the age in the script. I know that Albright
was nine and the man said I was nine, nine
years old. Paul Garns is like, what's happening? And that's
what's there. A little maze, a little bit of actor,
(23:51):
a little bit of magic, a little bit of the unit.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
That's such a great story.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
We need to take a quick but when we come
back some audience, Q and A for Ava, and of
course I have some more questions of my own.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter,
Wake Up Call by going to Katiecouric dot com. We're
back with the one and only Ava DuVernay. I wanted
(24:34):
to just have you say a couple of the acting
was so superb, So talk about Angeenue Ellis Taylor, who
played Isabelle.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
She was in King Richard, Right.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
She was nominated for the Wasn't she fantastic?
Speaker 3 (24:46):
She played the Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
She was nominated for the Oscar Best Supporting Actress for
King Richard Y Right, she played the Williams the wife.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah and all right, anything you'd like to say about
her other then she was fantastic. I mean, she really
carried the whole movie.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Right, he's her movie. You know, it's the first time.
She's a woman close to my age, in her early fifties,
and she'd been working Love Carecraft Country. She was in
my film when they See Us, so many incredible parts
and had never been the lead in the film, and
so it really speaks to the disparity and opportunity for
black women actresses of a certain age, or of any age.
(25:26):
And so she took the She she took it, and
she ran with it. She was incredible to work with.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
She was amazing. John Burnhal, who played.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
John Burnhal, who I had only known as the Punisher,
and had such a when I met with him, such
an intelligence behind his eyes, a real passion for the
subject matter. He really cares about this. We could have intelligent,
thoughtful conversations about the subject matter, about the world. And
(25:55):
so we really connected. And he and I was looking
for someone who had enough wagger to play that crossing
the street scene of Hey, hey didn't did you? Didn't
you hear her? She doesn't want to put the thing
in the front yard. I needed that guy and so
and who could also say it's my birthday, Yeah, it's
(26:17):
my birthday.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
The guy who could do both of those.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
He was really He did it. Not as cute as
my husband John, but he.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Is really cute. I wanted to A fun fact though,
John Bernhal, which is so interesting, is the brother of
Ryl Samberg's husband Tom. I think bumper anyway, little trivia
for everyone. Niss Nash bets what I mean. Good lord,
(26:43):
she was so great, so funny, so movie y.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
She always says, when I gave you the script, I said, yeah,
read the script, and I want you to bring a
little lightness, a little levity to it. She said, with
this script, she's like, girl, I'm gonna have to go
off book of places here or there. So she's one
of one of my dearest, dearest friends. And she actually
was shooting a television show that she's the lead on
and at the same time that we were shooting the film,
(27:11):
and she was able to get them to let her
be off every Friday, so she would work all week.
On Thursday nights, she'd take a red eye, she'd land
in Atlanta and then take a puddle jumper to Savannah.
She'd get into Savannah, she'd work all day, late night
until like three o'clock in the morning, and then she'd
fly back on Saturday and do it all again. She
(27:31):
did that for four weeks.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
She was amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
And I asked David backstage, but she told me she
would tell me out here about Nick Offerman, who's one
of my favorite actors, because I thought in what was
the HBO series that he was in with the rest
of us. Yeah, I thought that episode so incredible. It
was one of the best piece of pieces of acting.
I've ever seen that episode, and if you all haven't
(27:54):
watched it, it's just amazing.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
I hope they won an Emmy for that.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
But anyway, we'll find out in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
What did what did he think about playing a guy
I got plumber with him?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Maga hat.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah, he had to tell this audience they're they're not
like us where they know the details of who every
actor is. You say, Nick.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Offerman, which Nick's Plumer? And how did he feel about
that role? I actually loved that scene.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
I know a lot of people love that scene. A
lot of people really love that scene. He I'd worked
with him on a on a show I did for
Netflix called Colin and Black and White about Colin Kaepernick.
He played the father. Thank you. The one person who
watched it, thank you, thank you, ma'am. It was all
for you, mam, thank you. And and I loved him
and we got along so well. And the last thing
(28:41):
he told me after we left the set on the
last day of shooting Colin Black and White. He said, Hey,
if you ever need me, call me, and so he's like,
I'll be there, And so I called him. I said,
I need you, I need you one scene, just one scene.
Will you come in and do it for me? So
he he came. He did the one scene. He was incredible.
(29:02):
He didn't really get that I was going to put
the Maga hat on him until he had arrived and
he said, do you really want me to wear this?
I said, I really. I want to do some takes
with it and some takes without it. And he said,
does do the letters have to be this big? He's
very funny. He's very very funny. That is funny. It's
(29:22):
the next thing to say. And he put it on.
He got a little bit uncomfortable about it, but he's
an actor, so he figured it out.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
But I did love the interplay between, you know, between
and Nick and they had a fun something really beautiful
that and how it brought everybody down to a level
just talking about parents and.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Talking about loss. Yeah, one thing we're all going to
have in common.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Right, How about any questions from the audience. I have
a few more, but I've gone way too long. But
here's one right up there. Do you see it?
Speaker 2 (29:55):
You all?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Can you raise your hands so that people with the
mic can see you?
Speaker 4 (29:59):
Thank you? My question.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
I don't know how involved you are with the fundraising process.
I know we've talked a lot about the virtues and
how it allows you to do some of the great
work that you just displayed for us today. But to
the degree that you were involved, I wondered if you
can maybe tell us a little bit about the lessons
that you learned, maybe for others that might be considering
going down a similar path, and anything that you might
(30:23):
have done differently.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Thank you well. Like I say, I have to make
sure that I mentioned Regina Miller, who's the executive director
of Ray Alliance, who's really you know, the architect, along
with with our colleague Erica of of bringing it in.
You know. The idea for this came very simply. I
(30:45):
always watch PBS documentaries and I see at the end
of the documentaries with the support of the Ford Foundation
and the Da Da Da Da Da, and I always thought,
since I was in college, I wonder if they would
ever fund something else, a narrative film, and so, in
wanting to veer away from the studio system. We just asked.
(31:05):
The first place we went was a Ford Foundation and
we asked Darren Walker, who was one of our funders
at ARRAY, and he said, yes, we would consider that.
And that gave Regina and I the courage to continue
and to ask other funders and other like minded individuals,
and the process began very personal. It was very one
to one. It wasn't a submission of grants. So that
(31:27):
was a privilege that I enjoyed that a lot of
people wouldn't and that I was able to reach in
and speak with the women. Maverene, pal Jobs and Melinda
could speak with these people directly. But the paperwork and
the ninety thousand calls in ninety thousand meetings and it
was actually ninety thousand I counted that Regina Miller and
(31:48):
her team did to bring that to a bank account
that Paul Gardens could then write checks to make a
movie was an extraordinary amount of heavy lifting. I think
as we look back, we think it could have actually
been about half of that in the future. We just
didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know because
it hadn't been done, and the entities that we were
(32:11):
dealing with had never done it, So everything had to
be thought of anew, how does this work? What is
the structure? Who do we even ask? Can we say
yes to this? Did you say yes?
Speaker 3 (32:20):
No?
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I said yeah, no, he said yes, No. Run it
through again, you know. I mean it was just a
lot throughout the companies, and so I think now we
have much more of a handle on it. We can
probably cut down to forty five thousand calls. But it
was a lot of back and forth. I would just
say it was personal relationships, you know, and it was
cultivating those. And one of the things that I say
(32:41):
is you have to be prepared, you know, you have
to prepare the soil for when the moment comes that
you can ask and be so fully formed that the
ask feels logical. Like I had a non profit making
films and distributing films for the last decade. I mean,
we had the muscles. We were ready to do it.
If anyone was going to do it, it was going
(33:02):
to be us. And so when we asked or when
we offered the opportunity, it was too a company that
was strong, and so I wouldn't suggest that anyone just
jumps into what we did, but prepare the soil, and
you know, maybe folks come up with another model that
I can use, but I think this is a model
(33:24):
that eventually will get easier, and I think some of
the companies are even looking at ways to streamline it
and offer more of the star artists.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Do you all mind if I asked two more quick questions?
Is everybody okay? Because I just have? Well three?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Really?
Speaker 3 (33:39):
So.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
One of the things that struck me, especially the second
time watching this, is how relevant so many of the
scenes were and how they kind of how much they resonate.
I was thinking about the book burning, and I was
thinking about book banning.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Also when they were in the library in Berlin, I
was thinking about the anti semitism that was so you know,
heartbreakingly portrayed with the couple in Germany. I was thinking
about the Indian scholar. I'm sorry I forgot his name,
but Raj who was talking about sort of cast systems nationwide,
(34:17):
he mentioned or worldwide, He mentioned the Palestinians, and I
was just thinking, did that strike you Ava as well?
As these historical references had so much relevance today, all.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Of them done before before our current times. I mean,
we wrapped this film in till August, and so yes,
I think it really you know, people say, oh, this
this film is coming out the perfect time. You know,
it's meeting this moment. There's really not a moment. And
there's no moment. There's no time when we're not not
(34:53):
treating each other well, you know what I mean, there's
no moment. There's not been a time traced in the
last one hundred years where there hasn't been a war
happening somewhere in the world. Where there hasn't been there
haven't been people who are being treated unfairly, people who
are dying at the hands of terrible events and regimes.
(35:14):
So this work was going to meet I thought it
was going to be about the books, you know what
I mean. I thought, oh, this is about education and
withholding of education. I really thought that was going to
be the moment that it met, having no idea that
references or things that were in a film about cast
would meet another moment. And so I just feel, you know,
we had a similar thing with Selma. We made Sema.
(35:37):
It was about a small black town that was fighting
for their rights and at the same time Ferguson was
happening a small black town fighting for the rights. But
there's always a small black town fighting for the rights,
you know what I mean. And so it's just the
work is speaking to the culture, and the culture is
speaking to the work.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Do you hope that this you know, I noticed both
times that Isabelle Wilkerson are on news character talked about
how subjugation really isn't about race, which I have to
think about some more because to me, I think in
many ways race probably exacerbates or amplifies that kind of
(36:15):
need for the fact that some groups try to dominate others.
But I'm going to have to actually readcasts which I
haven't read. But do you think this will open up
a different conversation about race in America? And how do
you think it will will do that? Because this, to
me is about dominance and superiority, And how do you
(36:38):
think it will reframe these conversations?
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Ava, I think you're exactly right. It's about dominance, It's
about power. It's about the hierarchy of human beings, so
that some are dominant have power and some are subordinate
and don't. And that is goes far beyond race, you know,
it goes far beyond race. You can apply that to gender.
You can apply that to sexual you can apply that
(37:01):
to physical ability, You can apply that to so many
ways that we create hierarchies for human beings based on
a random set of traits that we have no control over.
If you have no control over the circumstances of your birth, none,
but our society says, because you were born that way,
(37:21):
you go in this box and I label that, and
I know what you are and who you are inside.
You would look at me as a black woman from
Compton and wouldn't possibly think that I'm the world's biggest
you two fan. I mean, no one's bigger than me.
There is no one who loves Bono in the Edge
and Larry Moans Junior more than me. But you think
you might know me because of who I am and
(37:43):
where I'm from based on a random set of circumstances.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
That's cash and what you look up and what you
look like.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
And what I'm looking like. I don't look like a
YouTube fan. This is what it looks like. You look good, yes,
but you know so. I hope to your question, I
hope that it opens up people's thoughts about way more
than race. Yes, absolutely, thinking about race and new ways
and thinking about the things that race is built upon.
Why haven't we been able to solve the race question?
(38:10):
Are we asking the right question?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And the social constructs that maintain a cast.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Stem absolutely across the board.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Before we go, tell me about Seat sixteen, which is
the impact campaign that's happening alongside the film.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, Seat sixteen is what that is up there, And
basically it is, there's four million, four and a half
million sixteen year olds in the country right now, I think,
and I believe, and there's a lot of data that
suggests that sixteen is the sweet spot. That's the age
where you start to organize your thoughts about who you
(38:45):
are in the world and what your place in the
world is, what the world means to you. You start
to open up and it starts to become a little
less about only individual thoughts and more about, you know,
the way that society is organized. And so I feel like,
if we can get that fifteen sixteen year old to
see the film and we can plant some of the
(39:06):
seeds about cast and get this terminology, the language into
their thinking, now the earth might tilt a little bit
towards justice. If you have a whole generation of people
who can speak about our ills in a different way.
So set up with things called seat sixteen, not sweet sixteen,
isn't it cute? Seat sixteen? Because they're not going to
(39:29):
pay for it on their own. So you can buy
a ticket for a sixteen year old and we'll give
a free ticket to the kid and they can go
see the movie. It's really really simple. So it's sixteen dollars.
They get the ticket, they get a learning companion, and
hopefully they have a new vocabulary to think about the
things that we're leaving them with. You know, our generation
(39:49):
is leaving quite a mess. They're stepping into a lot,
and so I hope that this film can give some
organizing principles to young people as to how to think
about proceeding Set sixteen, Bye kids, sixteen dollar ticket.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
That's a great idea.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Hey, simple, David DuVernay, thank you so so much.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Congratulation, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
After this quick break, more from the amazing team that
helped bring Origin to the big screen. That's right after this.
We're back with more from the amazing team that helped
bring Origin to the big screen. Please welcome to the stage,
(40:39):
Paul Garnes. He's President of Array film Works, Tom Hall,
Global head of Social Impact in Philanthropy for UBS, and
Regina Miller, executive director of the Array Alliance, the nonprofit
arm of Array film Works.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
So here they are welcome. Hi.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
All right, So Paul, let's start with you. I know
that you have been working with Ava Dubernet since twenty eleven,
and over the last twelve years you've witnessed some pretty
significant shifts in the way Hollywood does business and the
way films are financed. So can you set the stage
and explain to everyone sort of the position that filmmakers
(41:25):
are finding themselves in in the current streaming environment or
the entertainment environment rit large.
Speaker 7 (41:32):
Sure, I mean, I'm sure many people here have heard
about the recently resolved labor contract that crippled the entertainment
industry for the last eight months. It's indicative of an
overall trend as we've tried to figure out new ways
and new business models to produce content deliver it to
(41:54):
an audience for a price, and streaming has really challenged it.
It's really rode it away what has historically been the
independent film model, where in the past we would go
out raise money, make a movie and then you end
up in this marketplace where you're just kind of dealing
with bidders and people try to get your product. Streaming
(42:16):
really has changed that because they don't buy just a
bit of the rights. If you go to a streamer,
they take all the rights forever. And so it makes
it very difficult for an independent film, which is usually
make on pure speculation, to really make its money back
and or give it an opportunity to move forward into
(42:39):
another production right after that. And so a lot of
times we end up in the studio system, which is,
you know, the normal way to make movies. The challenge
is when you want to make a movie that has
a particular statement and you want to do it in
a particular way. The strings that come along with that
process is that there's a lot of input on what
(43:01):
you show, who you hire to show it, who the
person that should be the one to say it. It's
all about the cooks in the kitchen, the cooks in
the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
And also streamers currently are contracting, right they were buying, buying,
buying suddenly, yeah, and.
Speaker 7 (43:15):
The industry is shrinking right right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
And I know initially this film was with Netflix, but
you all decided you wanted to take it back at
full control, and you noticed that Netflix were kind of
that the folks at Netflix were slow moving. So what
was the rationale and how much courage did it take
for you all to say, wait a second, we're going
to take this project back and we're going to run
(43:41):
run with it.
Speaker 7 (43:41):
Yeah, when we first started, we thought it was going
to be a traditional like it's going to Netflix, and
we had done projects with Netflix before and so as
a partner, we thought this would be a good place
for it. But as you mentioned, the industry started to
slow down last year to a point where shows that
would have been greenlit, which means that they were given
to go to move forward, we're getting now the flashing
(44:04):
yellow And from our standpoint, and what Avera really wanted
for this film was for it to be out now,
to be in the marketplace, to be in theaters for
people to see and talk about, far before the election
cycles and all those things.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
So, Regina, I know that you all raised thirty eight
million dollars from philanthropists and various foundations to get this
film made, And why did you think approaching these stakeholders,
if you will, would be your solution? To getting this
movie made.
Speaker 5 (44:42):
First of all, philanthropy is changing, and the philanthropists of
today are looking for innovative ways to invest, both through
program mission related investments PRIs or MRIs through their endowments,
and then they're also looking to put their philanthropic dollars
(45:03):
to work in meaningful ways. And we have a visionary
and Ava DuVernay is extraordinary, and she had a clear vision.
And fundraising is easy when you can go to funders
with confidence and clarity of what you want to achieve,
and she was clear. And it was impact from the
(45:24):
beginning to the end, not just a marketing campaign for
two weeks. It was infusing that into everything we do,
how we treat communities when we go in there, how
we leave them better than we found them, and also
how to put philanthropic dollars into action to really have
change immediately, because we can't wait.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
And the film is really just the beginning. You know,
it's community screenings, it's education conversations. Is this really that
new a business model or is this similar to what PBS,
for example, has been doing for decades.
Speaker 7 (46:00):
Certainly, I think philanthropic relationships in creating documentaries has been
a very known model, but when you cross it over
into the narrative feature world, it is unique, and so
it's exciting to see kind of what the take is
from that experience.
Speaker 5 (46:17):
And also, when everybody comes out to see this movie
and the box office does well, not only WOUL the
social impact investors make their money back and then some
but philanthropy will be reinvested in through our grants that
we put into the movie. And now those grants can
keep generating more and more towards impacting our mission. So
the way that the synergy between social impact investing and
(46:40):
philanthropy is going to keep feeding the mission is beautiful
and it's continuous.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
It's like a virtual circle, right, And Tom, can you
break down this concept of catalytic capital and what that
means exactly?
Speaker 8 (46:57):
Yeah, maybe, just before I do that, I think just
to kind of fried context to why UBS is sitting here.
And you know, we have a million oworth clients around
the world, and that's also a million philanthropists. We know
that ninety percent of our clients are already involved in philanthropy,
and in fact they say that they want to try
and solve the pressing social and environmental problems the world's facing.
(47:19):
But the reality is that philanthropy on its own can't
do that. Forbes estimated that philanthropy are about ten trillion
dollars by the mid twenty thirties.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
That's a really big number. That's five times what it
is today.
Speaker 8 (47:30):
But if we take the sustainable development goals as a
proxy for solving these big social environmental issues, we need
thirty trillion. So if we try and give people free
healthcare or free education, the money is just going to
run out. So we have to use it catalytically, which
is why I fully agree with you.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Philanthropy is changing. It's innovating.
Speaker 8 (47:46):
People want to see their capital innovating first and foremost,
but then those innovations going to scale, and there's really
only two pathways to scale.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
You can use your philanthropic dollars.
Speaker 8 (47:56):
For example, many people might not know we're all sitting
back here in this theater because the rn D for
the vaccine development the COVID vaccines was done with philanthropic capital.
It was a risk that the market would never have
taken on its own, but that was then scaled through
investment capital at the right time for all of us.
So that's one pathway that you can be truly catalytic.
(48:16):
The other is that you can also you know, idea
new business models around maybe early child development or children
learning more efficiently, more effectively, and then you can get
governments to adopt that. In fact, just earlier this week
we I was at cop and we had several global
governments agreeing to fund some treatments around neglected tropical diseases
(48:37):
that have been ideated with philanthropic dollars. Then we raised
just under a billion dollars as announced last week. So
you can really move huge amounts of capital into things
that work by thinking catalytically, thinking with scale in mind,
and that's what it's all about. And that's obviously very
exciting for philanthropists to be part of really solving issues
at scale.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
So you sort of start micro and then expand it
to on a much scale. Paul, how do you measure success?
You know, when it comes to the impact of this film.
I mean Regina mentioned box office, but is that really
how you're going to measure success? I mean, how much
of it is returning capital and how much of it
(49:16):
is changing hearts and minds and just having a huge
impact on attitudes.
Speaker 7 (49:22):
Sure, yeah, I think impact and success really go hand
in hand in this case. Obviously, the traditional successful conversation
after a movie comes out is how much money it makes.
That's what everyone you know, focuses on. But at its core,
one thing that we are really excited about with this
(49:42):
particular movie is this is a movie based on a
book called Cast that is banned in many states. And
so the idea that you also now can introduce a
movie that won't be banned, and kids in high school
who go to a school whe they can't read the
book Cast to understand the complexities of this conversation could
(50:05):
go to the movie and see it and still have
that conversation. And so I think when you look at success,
it is really for us based on the impact the
film can have. And you either walk away thinking, you know, wow,
this really means something to it, or you walk away
and say, you know, not even realize that you've planted
a seed there. And when someone gets into a situation
(50:25):
where the idea of Cast comes up in their regular life,
it's there. It's planted, and it can come out and
hopefully grow into something useful to society.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
But how important is it, Paul that this film makes money?
Speaker 7 (50:39):
It's very important that it makes money, you know, not
because I mean the good news is we've made the movie,
not because the return helps us make the movie, but
making money means that people are seeing it, and so
for us really pushing it out there, it helps recoup
the investment for our investors, but it really does fulfill
(50:59):
the other side of it. They go hand in hand,
the impact.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Tom, I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
You know, my husband and I started a media company
about five years ago, and we work with global purpose
driven brands. So it's not just sort of the philanthropists
who are or the you know, the private wealth folks
in a bank like UBS or a financial institution like UBS.
Companies are now getting much more involved in putting their
(51:26):
sort of mark on big, thorny social issues because consumers
are demanding it, their employees are demanding it. So do
you think that this model where corporations get more involved
in things like a film that has such an important
social message will continue and even grow in the marketplace.
Speaker 8 (51:50):
I mean, I think it's essential that that's what corporations do.
And ultimately, you know, when we think about impact, you know,
it can sound like we're trying to talk about doing
the right thing because it's the right thing do.
Speaker 4 (52:00):
But actually there's another way to frame it.
Speaker 8 (52:02):
If we meet the sustainable animal goals again, which I
use as a proxy for really addressing these issues around
social and economic inequality and making sure people can achieve
their potential. We're talking about adding three hundred and eighty
million new jobs the global economy and twelve trillion of
global value.
Speaker 4 (52:17):
Right.
Speaker 8 (52:18):
The growth is going to come from us actually finding
ways to finance and really enable people to get something
like education. I mean, actually just really interested in the audience.
Maybe raise your hand if you went to college or university. Yeah,
probably most of us would think that that was contingent
on our success. And then again, maybe raise your hand
(52:38):
if you had to take some kind of student loan.
Did anyone pay more than twenty percent on their loan?
Speaker 4 (52:44):
Anyone here? Just one person?
Speaker 8 (52:46):
So today globally, right, there's about five one hundred million
people who can't.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Get access to basic student credit.
Speaker 8 (52:54):
Their only option is to if they're not lucky enough
to be one on a million to get a scholarshi,
the only option is to take a loan that's priced
at forty percent APR. Young women from Rwanda maybe you know,
and we know that if she can get into not
even college, like a six month coding course, she's going
to ten exer income.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
This can be fixed by companies like UBS.
Speaker 8 (53:14):
Our purpose is to reimagine the power of investing and
connect people for a better world. Connecting philanthropists like you
guys are doing with investors in these blended finance instruments,
you can solve this. We just did a fund recently
of small fund twenty two million dollars. Instead of doing
sixty scholarships, which is the traditional model, it's going to
do ten thousand students in the next ten years. And
that capital will be repaid and recycled again and again.
(53:36):
And models like that are scalable. That would only require
about half a trillion dollars to give finance, fair price
financing for education to every child in the world who
needs it. And these are the kinds of big ideas
that not just we as corporates need to have, but
as communities need to come together and build together.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Why has this film, Why does this film align so
well with UBS's values? You know, why was this you
know a good exam sample of this kind of partnership.
Speaker 8 (54:02):
Well, I think, ultimately, if you really want to solve issues,
you're always going to end up in pockets of inequality
and inequity, and in the US in particular, that has
this kind of dimension around conversations around racial inequality and
being able to and obviously I don't want to give
it away. I've seen the film. It was a paradigm
shifting experience for me. Gives us a new language to
(54:25):
be able to talk about things perhaps we haven't been
able to talk about, and dialogue is essential, right, I
was a cop earlier this week. We're not going to
address the issues of global climate change without working with
local communities well, helping them feed their families and really
understand what they're doing. We're not going to address issues
around inequality without working with local communities, entrepreneurs, and this
(54:45):
is something you know, Jamie, who was applauded earlier, which
she should be, has been working on this topic along
with our social impact team for a decade because we've
identified this as a key area that's critical to see
both the economic and the social benefits. And we've been
working with Black Innovation Alliance, for example, who we recommend
to our clients. Of our clients give we do a
ten percent match and it's not just about capital for
(55:07):
black entrepreneurs. It's also about mentorship and about actually just
trying to address some of the historic issues in this area.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
So this film will have a long tail, hopefully, and
it's going to reverberate as you continue to show it.
Hopefully it'll be on a stream or at some point
so that even more people can have access to it.
But Regina, can you just tell us briefly about some
of the programs and Paul you too, that you hope
to implement that. Will you know it will have a
(55:36):
ripple effect all across the land.
Speaker 5 (55:40):
Well, I already think it has because thousands of people
and in different communities worked on this film. Literally, it
feels like and it has changed hearts and minds. When
people walk out of this movie, they're change agents. They
want to even made the movie? Now, what are you
going to do with it? And I hear that all
the time, And I think I win the award at
(56:02):
Array for seeing the movie the most. I think I've
seen it ten times, and every single time I walk out,
I just love hearing the conversations. And this wonderful gentleman
that's in the audience today came up to me and said,
how do I do this in my community? I want
to bring this to San Francisco. I want to people
want to gather, I think, especially around important issues, and
(56:24):
they want to heal, and they want to have smart
conversations and they want to be educated. And I think
that with the work that we do our wonderful team
at Array. Mercedes Cooper, who's here tonight, is our senior
vice president of Programming. We host public, free programs around
the movie that will be incorporated by the large release.
(56:45):
Tammy Garnes, our director of A senior director of Education
and Understanding, is launching a beautiful digital learning guide that
is a masterpiece that I actually think schools can use
this learning guide for a year. It's a coursework. It's
not just a couple of prompts. They're extraordinary. Go to
Array one oh one and look at some of our
(57:06):
other learning guides, but there's nothing like it out there
in the education market. And then, of course, we have
a podcast that's coming out that Paul is going to
be moderating and leading, and we're constantly innovating creative partnerships
with Expedia. How do we create travel experiences around this
content and around the movie, how do we gather in
(57:28):
small groups and have meaningful conversations with each other. So
there's so many layers to array of how we approach impact.
But the other thing that we're so proud of is
you'll see it at the end of the movie. We
got the highest seal for environmental justice on a movie
that we also the way that the movie was made
and the way we cared about the world and the
(57:50):
community and the environment when we made it, So there's
impact on every level. And I just also want to
thank ubs because as a fundraiser, it's really really hard
to raise money and it's so beautiful when someone comes
to you and says, I have five donors that I
want to introduce you to and you didn't have to ask,
(58:10):
and that really shows the collaboration and leadership when you
don't have to ask, but somebody gets your vision and
Mark is like, we're going to get out there and
do it.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
We're going to help you.
Speaker 5 (58:20):
So I just really want to thank you because not
a lot of companies do that proactively, and it means
the world to every single one of us that are
trying to make and fuel dreams. Because a lot of
people have dreams, but you have to fuel them, so
thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
I think that's a great way to end the conversation.
So ladies and gentlemen, Regina, Tom and Paul, thank you.
Speaker 3 (58:54):
Thanks for listening. Everyone.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
If you have a question for me, a subject you
want us to cover, or you want to share your
thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world reach out.
You can leave a short message at six h nine
five P one two five five five, or you can
send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to
hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia
(59:18):
and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric,
and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and
our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller
composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call,
(59:40):
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Two
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is next question.
Ava Duvernet has a new movie coming out this month.
It's called Origin, and it's really something special. It's based
on the book Cast by Isabelle Wilkerson, which had famously
been deemed unadaptable, but that wasn't going to stop Ava.
(00:28):
What was especially fascinating about this conversation was Ava's unusual
path to funding this film. Usually the team might go
to studios and streamers like Netflix for that, but it
wasn't quite working out the way Ava wanted when it
came to Origin, so she forged a new path, going
to philanthropic organizations and corporations and convincing them to fund
(00:53):
the movie. Those conversations also turned into an entire infrastructure
of social outreach around Origin, from community screenings to curriculum
for educators who might want to discuss the book or
movie in classrooms. So in this interview, which we recently
taped at Art Basel, Ava broke down how this remarkable
(01:15):
film came to be and her hopes for the movie's impact.
Then I sat down with some of her partners who
helped make her dreams a reality. I hope you enjoy.
There's so much I want to talk to Ava about,
(01:36):
and I tried not to pepper her with questions backstage
so we would be fresh. But I also want to
give you all a chance to ask Aba some questions
as well. But first, let's kind of start at the beginning. Ava,
have you always been a big fan of Isabelle Wilkerson's.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
I'd read the first book, first of all, thank you
for being here.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Of course, Katie.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's a big deal, so thank you, Katie. Course I'd
read the first book, The Warmth of other Sons, and
I was an admired of that work. And so when
Cast was published, I actually had gotten it in Galley's
before it was it was published, but I was shooting
and I didn't have a chance to read it. And
(02:18):
when it came out in the summer of twenty twenty,
in the middle of the pandemic, at the beginning of
the pandemic, I just couldn't read. I was just in
a daze. Yeah, So I didn't end up reading it
until about three months after it had been out, and
Oprah actually kind of convinced you to crack it open,
and you were asking me to read it since galleys
(02:39):
and several other people. You know, it was the Book
of the Summer, and I just I hadn't gotten to it.
So I would hear about it here or there. People
would suggest it to me or assume that I'd read it,
and so I finally, I finally did.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And what did you think when you read the book?
Because I know it was declared as unadaptable? What made
you determined to prove otherwise?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Eva?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Uh, well, I I think it's just my curiosity and
interest in the in the general, I won't even say
subject matter, just the the audacity of the argument. At times,
I wasn't even sure if I agreed with it, but
I was provoked by it, which I think is a
(03:25):
fantastic thing to be. Allow yourself to be provoked by
new ideas, but by things that jar you, by things
that that that that force you to think differently, and
so as long as that's a safe environment and environment
where there's respect, I think being a provocation of one's
imagination is a positive thing. And that's what happened to
me with the book. I was, you know, ignited by
(03:47):
the ideas, the thought that the primary lens through which
I see myself being a black woman, that those are
predicated uh, that those identities are predicate on something that's
very much animated by cast in our society, and that
those ideas of the isms racism, sexism, is laophobia, homophobia,
(04:10):
anti semitism, whatever it is, all sit on top of
something else called cast, and cast is the skeleton and
all of those other isms are the skin. You know,
cast is the wound, and everything else is kind of
on top of it. And so I just thought, what
a vibrant idea to help organize my thoughts. I wanted
to talk to folks about it, but I know that
(04:31):
from thirteenth and from when they see us that popular culture,
that putting these tough ideas in movies and TV shows
moves it into the culture faster than anything else. And
that's what I really wanted. So that's why I started
to think about could this be a movie?
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And of course you had to transform and translate these
these thoughts from a pretty dense, fairly academic book into
a narrative, a story, and you turned it in and
to really Isabelle Wilkerson's journey. When did you have that
aha moment?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Eva?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You thought, this story is really the story of the
woman behind the writing.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yes, well nothing is impossible, and so I knew I
was interested in the ideas in the book. But they
weren't a lot of characters in the book. There were
some though. There was Augustin Irma, the German couple, right,
she ends up in the camps, he doesn't hile there
was Alison Elizabeth Davis, the African American anthropologists, right who
In the book, Miss Wilkerson says that they were doing
(05:34):
their research primarily in Natchez, Mississippi, But she has a
couple of lines in there that says that they used
to they had studied in Europe. And I was like, wow,
they studied in Europe. Where so when I went and
did that research, it connected them to Germany. So the
characters started to come together. I thought, well, maybe it's
just about these historical characters. Then I said, I don't
want to make another history movie. I just didn't want
(05:56):
to make another one. So I was forcing myself to
look in the book and find a contempt very character.
And then one day I was reading a chapter in
the book and the author was recounting her research and
she was using the word I a lot, and I
was like, she's a character. She's the contemporary character. So
when I went to her and I said, I'd like
(06:17):
to adapt your book and there's a main character that
I'm really fascinated by, who.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
You what did she say?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
She she agreed rather quickly. She agreed rather quickly, and
she gave me the answers to all the questions that
I needed over a course of about two years, you know,
about a dozen and a half conversations, multiple hours.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I was going to say, because on Zoom there's so
many intimate details Isabelle's life and her losses and these moments,
I mean, how much creative license did you take ava?
For example, when she and her mom are looking at
the cloud at the nursing home or assisted living facility,
(07:05):
whatever it was, exactly and some of the conversations. Did
she say, you can expand upon our conversations and build
these characters as you see fit.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
She did. She gave me the freedom, and she was
very gracious and telling me the stories about the losses
of her mother, her husband, and her cousin Marian and
then allowing me to go and interpret them. And so
stories like her and the Plumber are pretty much exactly
what she recounts in the book, but stories about things
(07:40):
that happened with Marian. None of that is in the book.
And so so it was a balance between being inspired
by the book the history, and the book going beyond
the book into her personal history that she told me,
and then other research historically that I brought to the pages.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
It's such an effective mosaic, and I think, you know,
I'm a big fan of all your filmilms, but it
struck me that this kind of had elements. It had
elements of a documentary, it had elements of a feature film.
Can you talk about And it's such a vast, you know,
story to cover with so many different components. Talk to
(08:17):
us about how you were able to figure out the
structure of this and you know, going from the past
to the present to vignettes and almost like short films
about each of these characters that are placed in history.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
The way I was able to do it really points
directly back to the financing model because I was free.
You know, I was free for the first time since
i'd made independent films when I was using my own
money and I was just starting out and no one
cared since I'd made one hundred million dollar films for
(08:57):
Disney and Netflix and all the Yonce videos and Apple
commercials and all of the things. But there's always someone
looking over your shoulder, you know, and there's always someone
saying are you sure about that? And we can't do.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
That questions which probably causes you to question yourself.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It changes, you know, what you're making changes, The vision changes,
and it's okay, you're taking millions of dollars of these
corporations money and they should be involved. But if you
have a vision and an idea and you consider the
prospect of being able to fully birth that without someone
breathing down your neck or changing the vision or doubting
(09:38):
or fearful, fear based decisions, wouldn't you choose it? And so,
in venturing to finance this film outside of the studio system,
I gave myself the freedom to think about this storytelling
differently than I would if I was inside the studio system.
And that meant I'm going to blur the lines between
(09:58):
documentary and narrative, if I'm going to have historical and
contemporary and also a surreal element. Are there leaves falling
in the scene? Yeah, tell it? I thought, try, just
try it, you know, and and and and to throw
all of that into the pot and see what came out.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to
ask you about sort of where the idea of the
falling leaves that you use repeatedly, you know, that is
really a motif in the film. Where did that come from?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
And was it? I mean, how does that happen?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes, well, you know, and interpreting Isabelle Wilkerson the story
of the of the passing of her loved ones and
trying to interpret that visually, you know, and trying to
you know, kind of bring that to the heart of
the people who are watching. I went into my own
personal experience with loss and when my father passed away
(10:55):
quite unexpectedly, that's how I felt. I wanted to I
felt was in a black hole and I just wanted
to be buried with leaves so that people would look
out on the lawn and think, oh, well, maybe she
was here and now she's not and didn't matter because
he wasn't here. And that's how I felt. And so
trying to articulate her loss by connecting it to mine
(11:15):
was something that I tried to share. And that's what
filmmaking is you know, you can take the script, you
can take the book, but the best filmmaking is the
filmmaker imbuing themselves, putting their fingerprints on the experience and
leaving a bit of themselves behind in the scenes. And
so that was based on my own personal feeling.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
I thought it was so beautiful and really effective, and
you I mean, there were so many the visual vocabulary
of the movie is so varied and rich, and some
of the scenes obviously were quite difficult to pull off,
you know, the scenes with the Nazi rallies for example,
and the scenes in India. I mean, talk about sort
(11:55):
of the challenges of shooting these stories and so many
different places.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, so most films of this size that look around
this size would be I don't know, maybe ninety two,
one hundred days something like this. We shot this in
thirty seven days. I went to three continents, so we
were you know, in Delhi, in Berlin, in our domestic
(12:23):
base with Savannah, Georgia, and so, you know, really thinking
about the finite amount of money we had, I could
never go back to the studio and say we're a
little over, we need to pad that, or the crane broke,
no problem we'll send over another one. Or you know,
we're in India now, in the middle of the street
(12:44):
and there's no electricity and we thought there would be
a generator here. What should we do? It was Paul
Garns and me looking at each other saying, we're going
to figure it out. It's just the two of us,
the man who was on the stage at the top
of the and so you know what an adventure want
to ride? It's addictive. I want to do it again
(13:05):
and again.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
You like to have to be really careful with money.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
I like, I like to be able to spend the
money in service of the vision and not in service
of fear, you know what I mean, and not and
not to be thank you, and and I think so
much of in my industry, in a different industry than
many of you, but it is fear based. So many
(13:30):
of the decisions that are being made are being made
because a boss's boss or my boss won't like that,
or just everyone's doing their little bitty piece. And the
idea that we as filmmakers, as artists, as producers, as friends,
you know, catalyzed by the great work of Regina Miller
who raised the money and just like side by side
(13:51):
with me a partner, and in putting this model together,
we envisioned a new world, a new way to make
this kind of scalable. You know, a film that felt
intimate but also had epic pieces to it, that was international,
it was global in scope, that was about serious subject matter,
subject matter that you know is less attractive to studios
(14:14):
to make. Imagine the pitch. I go in and I say,
they say, hi, Eva, gosh, we haven't seen you in
a while. Miss you. Guys, how are you? And so
what are you thinking about? We just want to hear
we're going to work with you. Yeah, no, I want
to work with you all too. So my next piece,
I'm really interested in making a film about cast. Cast.
(14:37):
You want to have a cast in it? No, cast,
the social phenomenon of the hierarchy of human beings. Like
that's not They were like, I didn't, I didn't even
do it. That would have been the pitch. And so
we saved ourselves a year of going through and doing
that and try and we just spent the time instead
building something new.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Talk about the Trayvon Martin of it all. And you know,
as a black woman writing and directing this film, what
it was like, and I think you did that so
beautifully with the nine to one one tapes, and I
know that was choreographed exactly really how it happened with
(15:21):
George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. Can you just talk about
sort of the importance of that scene, eva, juxtaposed with
so many of the historical moments in the film.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yes, yes, Well, in my conversations with the author, she
had shared that I asked, where did this idea of
cast count come from? A lot of it, she traced back.
Her early thoughts about it were around the Trayvon Martin case.
She was she was writing about it, she was thinking
about it, and so I was trying to, you know,
(15:56):
find a way to interpret that and put it in
the in the film. And it took me a while
to decide to actually show what happened. But what was
important is if I showed it, I had to show
from his perspective too, And I wanted you to see
him first. It's just a kid talking to a girl
on the phone. He went to get some candy. But
when you hear the killer's version, he was a sinister guy,
(16:21):
looked like he was on drugs, walking around the place.
What is he doing here? They always get away? That's
what George Zimbers and Zimmerman says on the tape. That
was the real tape that you heard on that tape
on the second nine one one tape where you hear
the woman and she's calling in the real woman, you
can hear Trayvon Martin screaming in the background, and so
you can hear the gunshot, right, and so you actually
(16:44):
have that murder caught on tape. And so to think,
how can I honor this Instead of just doing the tape,
I wanted to do the kid, the kid that he
was just before, so that when you hear the tape,
when you see what the reenactment of what had happened,
you know him already. You know what he was doing.
He was talking about breakfast, he was talking about whatever
(17:04):
they were talking about. His mother was kind enough to
I called her before I did anything, and I asked her,
I was so nervous to talk to her. She was like, girl,
are you nervous? You know, just talk to me. She
was so lovely, Sabrina Fulton, and she said, do it,
you know, do it.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I've interview.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Isn't she wonderful? Yeah, she said do it, and she
so you know that was done with her permission and
book ended. Now that you've seen it, you know the
first image of the film is him, and the last
image of the film is him. And there are many
parts of the film that are tough to watch and
that I've cried over, whether I was writing it, filming it,
(17:42):
or editing it. And I'm all cried out on the movie.
There's nothing that I cried anymore except his last look.
Sometimes when I'm doing a Q and A, if I
catch it, I get very emotional. His last look right
at her. It's a really shot where he's looking down
the barrel. The camera's always looking at you, and he's
(18:04):
just something about it that gets me every time. Now
I don't look at it because I will start to cry.
Unlike Katie, who was crying in the background, like literally
came out of our little holding areas in Katie Kirk
and she's just very much crying. And like I said, Katie,
who I know a little bit what is going on.
(18:25):
She's a out right the albright.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I think it's so honestly heartbreaking and upsetting and so beauty.
I mean, that little boy is so precious and the
man who's recounting the story. I didn't want to ask
Ava backstage because I wanted to hear her true response
is I wondered, you know this idea of the documentary
meets a feature if the man telling Isabelle's character in
(18:53):
the movie was actually his teammate. Was he Albright's redheaded
teammate or was he an How.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Many people think he was a real guy, okay, the
real man, and how many think he was an actor? Okay,
more people think he was real. Okay, he's somewhere in
the middle. Okay, he's not the real man. He is
not the real man. He's also not an actor. Okay,
(19:22):
let me tell you who he is. When Regina Miller
was talking before an answer to your question, Katie of
what are the ways in which you've included your ideas
about social justice and social impact into the filmmaking, one
of the ways is to try to eliminate as many
hierarchies as we could on set. So when I walk
(19:43):
through the set, I'm the boss, and the way it
usually goes is, no one talks to me unless you're
in my inner circle. And when I say me, I
mean the director. No one talks to the director unless
you're asked a question, or unless you're the DP or
the production designer in that top top circle. It's very
rare that folks are just coming up to you because
(20:03):
you're the director and you must see your unwalking leave
her bee, right, It's ridiculous. So one of the things
that I like to do, and when you look at
the who would be considered the bottom of the hierarchy
of a set, it's the extras. Okay, the extras who
I call background actors, but the extras they're put off
(20:26):
to the site. They have a different place where they eat,
they have a different place where they sit.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So there's a cast system, the cast.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
System right on every single set. They're kept away from
the rest of the set. It's like bring them in
and they come in like cat and they're like, you
go over there, you go over there. They're not treated well.
They're not treated well. And I think the reason why
I have such empathy for them is because one day
my mother said, I want to try to be an extra,
and I was like, I don't think you're going to
like it, and she's like, I just want to. I
can make one hundred and fifty dollars for the day,
(20:53):
and I'm just gonna do it. She came back so devastated.
She was just so I was like treated like a
subhuman And so I thought, as we started to think
about the different ways to break down casts, the idea
of really talking to the actors and background actors and
really including them in the process became a part of
our process. So on this particular day, I'm walking across
(21:16):
the set where the pool is and one of the
background actors who had been free. I talk to them
all the time. I set up the scene with them.
They know what they're doing. They can eat regular food,
they can be with the regular people. Like we're trying
not to segregate the set. He stops me and he says,
Miss Duverne, I just want to tell you the scene
we're doing today. It really I feel emotional about it
(21:36):
because something like that happened to me when I was young,
And I stopped and I said, tell me, and he
told me a story that add some similarities to the
scene that we were shooting. Now, the background actors are
so segregated, they don't get a script, so they don't
ever know what we're doing. Because you can't give like
a thousand people the script end up on LinkedIn. I
don't know whatever you yeah, and so we just kind
(21:59):
of don't give them pages. But I like to at
least describe it to them. So he says, I'm not
sure what's going on here, but this reminds me of something.
He tells me what it reminds him of, and I said,
and he's almost has tears in his eyes as he's
telling me. I said, you know, if I give you
the pages of this script, you can go over there
and read them. Do you think that you could tell
the story of the pages with the same emotion that
(22:22):
you're telling me your own story? He said, I'll try.
So he goes over he's reading the script. I'll go
over to Andre Newellis. She's about to go to lunch.
I said, just give me one more second, just one
more second. She said, oh, did we forget a scene?
I said, it's a new scene. It's a new scene.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Just come here, and said, I was going to say,
what happened to the actor who was supposed to it
was never scripted?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Okay? Good felt that for no, No, that guy.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
She sits down, he comes over. It was I said,
you think you can do it. He said, yeah, I'll try.
So he sits down and without a script, he's he's
he's interpreting the story of al Bright that he read
in the script, and he's saying he's putting himself in
the place, and he's saying, I was I was a
little boy. And he tells that story one take, Wow,
(23:08):
one take. He told that story with such love and
memory and just all that you see on the screen.
Real heck, tough. Grips on the set were like, I'm
not crying. It's fine, it's fine, it's no big deal.
Ange New starts to cry in the scene. She starts
to interview him. In the scene, they get to the
part where she says how old were you? And I'm like,
(23:31):
oh gosh, he's not gonna know how old. I didn't
put the age in the script. I know that Albright
was nine and the man said I was nine, nine
years old. Paul Garns is like, what's happening? And that's
what's there. A little maze, a little bit of actor,
(23:51):
a little bit of magic, a little bit of the unit.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
That's such a great story.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
We need to take a quick but when we come
back some audience, Q and A for Ava, and of
course I have some more questions of my own.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter,
Wake Up Call by going to Katiecouric dot com. We're
back with the one and only Ava DuVernay. I wanted
(24:34):
to just have you say a couple of the acting
was so superb, So talk about Angeenue Ellis Taylor, who
played Isabelle.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
She was in King Richard, Right.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
She was nominated for the Wasn't she fantastic?
Speaker 3 (24:46):
She played the Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
She was nominated for the Oscar Best Supporting Actress for
King Richard Y Right, she played the Williams the wife.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah and all right, anything you'd like to say about
her other then she was fantastic. I mean, she really
carried the whole movie.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Right, he's her movie. You know, it's the first time.
She's a woman close to my age, in her early fifties,
and she'd been working Love Carecraft Country. She was in
my film when they See Us, so many incredible parts
and had never been the lead in the film, and
so it really speaks to the disparity and opportunity for
black women actresses of a certain age, or of any age.
(25:26):
And so she took the She she took it, and
she ran with it. She was incredible to work with.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
She was amazing. John Burnhal, who played.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
John Burnhal, who I had only known as the Punisher,
and had such a when I met with him, such
an intelligence behind his eyes, a real passion for the
subject matter. He really cares about this. We could have intelligent,
thoughtful conversations about the subject matter, about the world. And
(25:55):
so we really connected. And he and I was looking
for someone who had enough wagger to play that crossing
the street scene of Hey, hey didn't did you? Didn't
you hear her? She doesn't want to put the thing
in the front yard. I needed that guy and so
and who could also say it's my birthday, Yeah, it's
(26:17):
my birthday.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
The guy who could do both of those.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
He was really He did it. Not as cute as
my husband John, but he.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Is really cute. I wanted to A fun fact though,
John Bernhal, which is so interesting, is the brother of
Ryl Samberg's husband Tom. I think bumper anyway, little trivia
for everyone. Niss Nash bets what I mean. Good lord,
(26:43):
she was so great, so funny, so movie y.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
She always says, when I gave you the script, I said, yeah,
read the script, and I want you to bring a
little lightness, a little levity to it. She said, with
this script, she's like, girl, I'm gonna have to go
off book of places here or there. So she's one
of one of my dearest, dearest friends. And she actually
was shooting a television show that she's the lead on
and at the same time that we were shooting the film,
(27:11):
and she was able to get them to let her
be off every Friday, so she would work all week.
On Thursday nights, she'd take a red eye, she'd land
in Atlanta and then take a puddle jumper to Savannah.
She'd get into Savannah, she'd work all day, late night
until like three o'clock in the morning, and then she'd
fly back on Saturday and do it all again. She
(27:31):
did that for four weeks.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
She was amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
And I asked David backstage, but she told me she
would tell me out here about Nick Offerman, who's one
of my favorite actors, because I thought in what was
the HBO series that he was in with the rest
of us. Yeah, I thought that episode so incredible. It
was one of the best piece of pieces of acting.
I've ever seen that episode, and if you all haven't
(27:54):
watched it, it's just amazing.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
I hope they won an Emmy for that.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
But anyway, we'll find out in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
What did what did he think about playing a guy
I got plumber with him?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Maga hat.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah, he had to tell this audience they're they're not
like us where they know the details of who every
actor is. You say, Nick.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Offerman, which Nick's Plumer? And how did he feel about
that role? I actually loved that scene.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
I know a lot of people love that scene. A
lot of people really love that scene. He I'd worked
with him on a on a show I did for
Netflix called Colin and Black and White about Colin Kaepernick.
He played the father. Thank you. The one person who
watched it, thank you, thank you, ma'am. It was all
for you, mam, thank you. And and I loved him
and we got along so well. And the last thing
(28:41):
he told me after we left the set on the
last day of shooting Colin Black and White. He said, Hey,
if you ever need me, call me, and so he's like,
I'll be there, And so I called him. I said,
I need you, I need you one scene, just one scene.
Will you come in and do it for me? So
he he came. He did the one scene. He was incredible.
(29:02):
He didn't really get that I was going to put
the Maga hat on him until he had arrived and
he said, do you really want me to wear this?
I said, I really. I want to do some takes
with it and some takes without it. And he said,
does do the letters have to be this big? He's
very funny. He's very very funny. That is funny. It's
(29:22):
the next thing to say. And he put it on.
He got a little bit uncomfortable about it, but he's
an actor, so he figured it out.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
But I did love the interplay between, you know, between
and Nick and they had a fun something really beautiful
that and how it brought everybody down to a level
just talking about parents and.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Talking about loss. Yeah, one thing we're all going to
have in common.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Right, How about any questions from the audience. I have
a few more, but I've gone way too long. But
here's one right up there. Do you see it?
Speaker 2 (29:55):
You all?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Can you raise your hands so that people with the
mic can see you?
Speaker 4 (29:59):
Thank you? My question.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
I don't know how involved you are with the fundraising process.
I know we've talked a lot about the virtues and
how it allows you to do some of the great
work that you just displayed for us today. But to
the degree that you were involved, I wondered if you
can maybe tell us a little bit about the lessons
that you learned, maybe for others that might be considering
going down a similar path, and anything that you might
(30:23):
have done differently.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Thank you well. Like I say, I have to make
sure that I mentioned Regina Miller, who's the executive director
of Ray Alliance, who's really you know, the architect, along
with with our colleague Erica of of bringing it in.
You know. The idea for this came very simply. I
(30:45):
always watch PBS documentaries and I see at the end
of the documentaries with the support of the Ford Foundation
and the Da Da Da Da Da, and I always thought,
since I was in college, I wonder if they would
ever fund something else, a narrative film, and so, in
wanting to veer away from the studio system. We just asked.
(31:05):
The first place we went was a Ford Foundation and
we asked Darren Walker, who was one of our funders
at ARRAY, and he said, yes, we would consider that.
And that gave Regina and I the courage to continue
and to ask other funders and other like minded individuals,
and the process began very personal. It was very one
to one. It wasn't a submission of grants. So that
(31:27):
was a privilege that I enjoyed that a lot of
people wouldn't and that I was able to reach in
and speak with the women. Maverene, pal Jobs and Melinda
could speak with these people directly. But the paperwork and
the ninety thousand calls in ninety thousand meetings and it
was actually ninety thousand I counted that Regina Miller and
(31:48):
her team did to bring that to a bank account
that Paul Gardens could then write checks to make a
movie was an extraordinary amount of heavy lifting. I think
as we look back, we think it could have actually
been about half of that in the future. We just
didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know because
it hadn't been done, and the entities that we were
(32:11):
dealing with had never done it, So everything had to
be thought of anew, how does this work? What is
the structure? Who do we even ask? Can we say
yes to this? Did you say yes?
Speaker 3 (32:20):
No?
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I said yeah, no, he said yes, No. Run it
through again, you know. I mean it was just a
lot throughout the companies, and so I think now we
have much more of a handle on it. We can
probably cut down to forty five thousand calls. But it
was a lot of back and forth. I would just
say it was personal relationships, you know, and it was
cultivating those. And one of the things that I say
(32:41):
is you have to be prepared, you know, you have
to prepare the soil for when the moment comes that
you can ask and be so fully formed that the
ask feels logical. Like I had a non profit making
films and distributing films for the last decade. I mean,
we had the muscles. We were ready to do it.
If anyone was going to do it, it was going
(33:02):
to be us. And so when we asked or when
we offered the opportunity, it was too a company that
was strong, and so I wouldn't suggest that anyone just
jumps into what we did, but prepare the soil, and
you know, maybe folks come up with another model that
I can use, but I think this is a model
(33:24):
that eventually will get easier, and I think some of
the companies are even looking at ways to streamline it
and offer more of the star artists.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Do you all mind if I asked two more quick questions?
Is everybody okay? Because I just have? Well three?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Really?
Speaker 3 (33:39):
So.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
One of the things that struck me, especially the second
time watching this, is how relevant so many of the
scenes were and how they kind of how much they resonate.
I was thinking about the book burning, and I was
thinking about book banning.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Also when they were in the library in Berlin, I
was thinking about the anti semitism that was so you know,
heartbreakingly portrayed with the couple in Germany. I was thinking
about the Indian scholar. I'm sorry I forgot his name,
but Raj who was talking about sort of cast systems nationwide,
(34:17):
he mentioned or worldwide, He mentioned the Palestinians, and I
was just thinking, did that strike you Ava as well?
As these historical references had so much relevance today, all.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Of them done before before our current times. I mean,
we wrapped this film in till August, and so yes,
I think it really you know, people say, oh, this
this film is coming out the perfect time. You know,
it's meeting this moment. There's really not a moment. And
there's no moment. There's no time when we're not not
(34:53):
treating each other well, you know what I mean, there's
no moment. There's not been a time traced in the
last one hundred years where there hasn't been a war
happening somewhere in the world. Where there hasn't been there
haven't been people who are being treated unfairly, people who
are dying at the hands of terrible events and regimes.
(35:14):
So this work was going to meet I thought it
was going to be about the books, you know what
I mean. I thought, oh, this is about education and
withholding of education. I really thought that was going to
be the moment that it met, having no idea that
references or things that were in a film about cast
would meet another moment. And so I just feel, you know,
we had a similar thing with Selma. We made Sema.
(35:37):
It was about a small black town that was fighting
for their rights and at the same time Ferguson was
happening a small black town fighting for the rights. But
there's always a small black town fighting for the rights,
you know what I mean. And so it's just the
work is speaking to the culture, and the culture is
speaking to the work.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Do you hope that this you know, I noticed both
times that Isabelle Wilkerson are on news character talked about
how subjugation really isn't about race, which I have to
think about some more because to me, I think in
many ways race probably exacerbates or amplifies that kind of
(36:15):
need for the fact that some groups try to dominate others.
But I'm going to have to actually readcasts which I
haven't read. But do you think this will open up
a different conversation about race in America? And how do
you think it will will do that? Because this, to
me is about dominance and superiority, And how do you
(36:38):
think it will reframe these conversations?
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Ava, I think you're exactly right. It's about dominance, It's
about power. It's about the hierarchy of human beings, so
that some are dominant have power and some are subordinate
and don't. And that is goes far beyond race, you know,
it goes far beyond race. You can apply that to gender.
You can apply that to sexual you can apply that
(37:01):
to physical ability, You can apply that to so many
ways that we create hierarchies for human beings based on
a random set of traits that we have no control over.
If you have no control over the circumstances of your birth, none,
but our society says, because you were born that way,
(37:21):
you go in this box and I label that, and
I know what you are and who you are inside.
You would look at me as a black woman from
Compton and wouldn't possibly think that I'm the world's biggest
you two fan. I mean, no one's bigger than me.
There is no one who loves Bono in the Edge
and Larry Moans Junior more than me. But you think
you might know me because of who I am and
(37:43):
where I'm from based on a random set of circumstances.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
That's cash and what you look up and what you
look like.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
And what I'm looking like. I don't look like a
YouTube fan. This is what it looks like. You look good, yes,
but you know so. I hope to your question, I
hope that it opens up people's thoughts about way more
than race. Yes, absolutely, thinking about race and new ways
and thinking about the things that race is built upon.
Why haven't we been able to solve the race question?
(38:10):
Are we asking the right question?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
And the social constructs that maintain a cast.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Stem absolutely across the board.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Before we go, tell me about Seat sixteen, which is
the impact campaign that's happening alongside the film.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, Seat sixteen is what that is up there, And
basically it is, there's four million, four and a half
million sixteen year olds in the country right now, I think,
and I believe, and there's a lot of data that
suggests that sixteen is the sweet spot. That's the age
where you start to organize your thoughts about who you
(38:45):
are in the world and what your place in the
world is, what the world means to you. You start
to open up and it starts to become a little
less about only individual thoughts and more about, you know,
the way that society is organized. And so I feel like,
if we can get that fifteen sixteen year old to
see the film and we can plant some of the
(39:06):
seeds about cast and get this terminology, the language into
their thinking, now the earth might tilt a little bit
towards justice. If you have a whole generation of people
who can speak about our ills in a different way.
So set up with things called seat sixteen, not sweet sixteen,
isn't it cute? Seat sixteen? Because they're not going to
(39:29):
pay for it on their own. So you can buy
a ticket for a sixteen year old and we'll give
a free ticket to the kid and they can go
see the movie. It's really really simple. So it's sixteen dollars.
They get the ticket, they get a learning companion, and
hopefully they have a new vocabulary to think about the
things that we're leaving them with. You know, our generation
(39:49):
is leaving quite a mess. They're stepping into a lot,
and so I hope that this film can give some
organizing principles to young people as to how to think
about proceeding Set sixteen, Bye kids, sixteen dollar ticket.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
That's a great idea.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Hey, simple, David DuVernay, thank you so so much.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Congratulation, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
After this quick break, more from the amazing team that
helped bring Origin to the big screen. That's right after this.
We're back with more from the amazing team that helped
bring Origin to the big screen. Please welcome to the stage,
(40:39):
Paul Garnes. He's President of Array film Works, Tom Hall,
Global head of Social Impact in Philanthropy for UBS, and
Regina Miller, executive director of the Array Alliance, the nonprofit
arm of Array film Works.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
So here they are welcome. Hi.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
All right, So Paul, let's start with you. I know
that you have been working with Ava Dubernet since twenty eleven,
and over the last twelve years you've witnessed some pretty
significant shifts in the way Hollywood does business and the
way films are financed. So can you set the stage
and explain to everyone sort of the position that filmmakers
(41:25):
are finding themselves in in the current streaming environment or
the entertainment environment rit large.
Speaker 7 (41:32):
Sure, I mean, I'm sure many people here have heard
about the recently resolved labor contract that crippled the entertainment
industry for the last eight months. It's indicative of an
overall trend as we've tried to figure out new ways
and new business models to produce content deliver it to
(41:54):
an audience for a price, and streaming has really challenged it.
It's really rode it away what has historically been the
independent film model, where in the past we would go
out raise money, make a movie and then you end
up in this marketplace where you're just kind of dealing
with bidders and people try to get your product. Streaming
(42:16):
really has changed that because they don't buy just a
bit of the rights. If you go to a streamer,
they take all the rights forever. And so it makes
it very difficult for an independent film, which is usually
make on pure speculation, to really make its money back
and or give it an opportunity to move forward into
(42:39):
another production right after that. And so a lot of
times we end up in the studio system, which is,
you know, the normal way to make movies. The challenge
is when you want to make a movie that has
a particular statement and you want to do it in
a particular way. The strings that come along with that
process is that there's a lot of input on what
(43:01):
you show, who you hire to show it, who the
person that should be the one to say it. It's
all about the cooks in the kitchen, the cooks in
the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
And also streamers currently are contracting, right they were buying, buying,
buying suddenly, yeah, and.
Speaker 7 (43:15):
The industry is shrinking right right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
And I know initially this film was with Netflix, but
you all decided you wanted to take it back at
full control, and you noticed that Netflix were kind of
that the folks at Netflix were slow moving. So what
was the rationale and how much courage did it take
for you all to say, wait a second, we're going
to take this project back and we're going to run
(43:41):
run with it.
Speaker 7 (43:41):
Yeah, when we first started, we thought it was going
to be a traditional like it's going to Netflix, and
we had done projects with Netflix before and so as
a partner, we thought this would be a good place
for it. But as you mentioned, the industry started to
slow down last year to a point where shows that
would have been greenlit, which means that they were given
to go to move forward, we're getting now the flashing
(44:04):
yellow And from our standpoint, and what Avera really wanted
for this film was for it to be out now,
to be in the marketplace, to be in theaters for
people to see and talk about, far before the election
cycles and all those things.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
So, Regina, I know that you all raised thirty eight
million dollars from philanthropists and various foundations to get this
film made, And why did you think approaching these stakeholders,
if you will, would be your solution? To getting this
movie made.
Speaker 5 (44:42):
First of all, philanthropy is changing, and the philanthropists of
today are looking for innovative ways to invest, both through
program mission related investments PRIs or MRIs through their endowments,
and then they're also looking to put their philanthropic dollars
(45:03):
to work in meaningful ways. And we have a visionary
and Ava DuVernay is extraordinary, and she had a clear vision.
And fundraising is easy when you can go to funders
with confidence and clarity of what you want to achieve,
and she was clear. And it was impact from the
(45:24):
beginning to the end, not just a marketing campaign for
two weeks. It was infusing that into everything we do,
how we treat communities when we go in there, how
we leave them better than we found them, and also
how to put philanthropic dollars into action to really have
change immediately, because we can't wait.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
And the film is really just the beginning. You know,
it's community screenings, it's education conversations. Is this really that
new a business model or is this similar to what PBS,
for example, has been doing for decades.
Speaker 7 (46:00):
Certainly, I think philanthropic relationships in creating documentaries has been
a very known model, but when you cross it over
into the narrative feature world, it is unique, and so
it's exciting to see kind of what the take is
from that experience.
Speaker 5 (46:17):
And also, when everybody comes out to see this movie
and the box office does well, not only WOUL the
social impact investors make their money back and then some
but philanthropy will be reinvested in through our grants that
we put into the movie. And now those grants can
keep generating more and more towards impacting our mission. So
the way that the synergy between social impact investing and
(46:40):
philanthropy is going to keep feeding the mission is beautiful
and it's continuous.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
It's like a virtual circle, right, And Tom, can you
break down this concept of catalytic capital and what that
means exactly?
Speaker 8 (46:57):
Yeah, maybe, just before I do that, I think just
to kind of fried context to why UBS is sitting here.
And you know, we have a million oworth clients around
the world, and that's also a million philanthropists. We know
that ninety percent of our clients are already involved in philanthropy,
and in fact they say that they want to try
and solve the pressing social and environmental problems the world's facing.
(47:19):
But the reality is that philanthropy on its own can't
do that. Forbes estimated that philanthropy are about ten trillion
dollars by the mid twenty thirties.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
That's a really big number. That's five times what it
is today.
Speaker 8 (47:30):
But if we take the sustainable development goals as a
proxy for solving these big social environmental issues, we need
thirty trillion. So if we try and give people free
healthcare or free education, the money is just going to
run out. So we have to use it catalytically, which
is why I fully agree with you.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Philanthropy is changing. It's innovating.
Speaker 8 (47:46):
People want to see their capital innovating first and foremost,
but then those innovations going to scale, and there's really
only two pathways to scale.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
You can use your philanthropic dollars.
Speaker 8 (47:56):
For example, many people might not know we're all sitting
back here in this theater because the rn D for
the vaccine development the COVID vaccines was done with philanthropic capital.
It was a risk that the market would never have
taken on its own, but that was then scaled through
investment capital at the right time for all of us.
So that's one pathway that you can be truly catalytic.
(48:16):
The other is that you can also you know, idea
new business models around maybe early child development or children
learning more efficiently, more effectively, and then you can get
governments to adopt that. In fact, just earlier this week
we I was at cop and we had several global
governments agreeing to fund some treatments around neglected tropical diseases
(48:37):
that have been ideated with philanthropic dollars. Then we raised
just under a billion dollars as announced last week. So
you can really move huge amounts of capital into things
that work by thinking catalytically, thinking with scale in mind,
and that's what it's all about. And that's obviously very
exciting for philanthropists to be part of really solving issues
at scale.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
So you sort of start micro and then expand it
to on a much scale. Paul, how do you measure success?
You know, when it comes to the impact of this film.
I mean Regina mentioned box office, but is that really
how you're going to measure success? I mean, how much
of it is returning capital and how much of it
(49:16):
is changing hearts and minds and just having a huge
impact on attitudes.
Speaker 7 (49:22):
Sure, yeah, I think impact and success really go hand
in hand in this case. Obviously, the traditional successful conversation
after a movie comes out is how much money it makes.
That's what everyone you know, focuses on. But at its core,
one thing that we are really excited about with this
(49:42):
particular movie is this is a movie based on a
book called Cast that is banned in many states. And
so the idea that you also now can introduce a
movie that won't be banned, and kids in high school
who go to a school whe they can't read the
book Cast to understand the complexities of this conversation could
(50:05):
go to the movie and see it and still have
that conversation. And so I think when you look at success,
it is really for us based on the impact the
film can have. And you either walk away thinking, you know, wow,
this really means something to it, or you walk away
and say, you know, not even realize that you've planted
a seed there. And when someone gets into a situation
(50:25):
where the idea of Cast comes up in their regular life,
it's there. It's planted, and it can come out and
hopefully grow into something useful to society.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
But how important is it, Paul that this film makes money?
Speaker 7 (50:39):
It's very important that it makes money, you know, not
because I mean the good news is we've made the movie,
not because the return helps us make the movie, but
making money means that people are seeing it, and so
for us really pushing it out there, it helps recoup
the investment for our investors, but it really does fulfill
(50:59):
the other side of it. They go hand in hand,
the impact.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Tom, I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
You know, my husband and I started a media company
about five years ago, and we work with global purpose
driven brands. So it's not just sort of the philanthropists
who are or the you know, the private wealth folks
in a bank like UBS or a financial institution like UBS.
Companies are now getting much more involved in putting their
(51:26):
sort of mark on big, thorny social issues because consumers
are demanding it, their employees are demanding it. So do
you think that this model where corporations get more involved
in things like a film that has such an important
social message will continue and even grow in the marketplace.
Speaker 8 (51:50):
I mean, I think it's essential that that's what corporations do.
And ultimately, you know, when we think about impact, you know,
it can sound like we're trying to talk about doing
the right thing because it's the right thing do.
Speaker 4 (52:00):
But actually there's another way to frame it.
Speaker 8 (52:02):
If we meet the sustainable animal goals again, which I
use as a proxy for really addressing these issues around
social and economic inequality and making sure people can achieve
their potential. We're talking about adding three hundred and eighty
million new jobs the global economy and twelve trillion of
global value.
Speaker 4 (52:17):
Right.
Speaker 8 (52:18):
The growth is going to come from us actually finding
ways to finance and really enable people to get something
like education. I mean, actually just really interested in the audience.
Maybe raise your hand if you went to college or university. Yeah,
probably most of us would think that that was contingent
on our success. And then again, maybe raise your hand
(52:38):
if you had to take some kind of student loan.
Did anyone pay more than twenty percent on their loan?
Speaker 4 (52:44):
Anyone here? Just one person?
Speaker 8 (52:46):
So today globally, right, there's about five one hundred million
people who can't.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Get access to basic student credit.
Speaker 8 (52:54):
Their only option is to if they're not lucky enough
to be one on a million to get a scholarshi,
the only option is to take a loan that's priced
at forty percent APR. Young women from Rwanda maybe you know,
and we know that if she can get into not
even college, like a six month coding course, she's going
to ten exer income.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
This can be fixed by companies like UBS.
Speaker 8 (53:14):
Our purpose is to reimagine the power of investing and
connect people for a better world. Connecting philanthropists like you
guys are doing with investors in these blended finance instruments,
you can solve this. We just did a fund recently
of small fund twenty two million dollars. Instead of doing
sixty scholarships, which is the traditional model, it's going to
do ten thousand students in the next ten years. And
that capital will be repaid and recycled again and again.
(53:36):
And models like that are scalable. That would only require
about half a trillion dollars to give finance, fair price
financing for education to every child in the world who
needs it. And these are the kinds of big ideas
that not just we as corporates need to have, but
as communities need to come together and build together.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Why has this film, Why does this film align so
well with UBS's values? You know, why was this you
know a good exam sample of this kind of partnership.
Speaker 8 (54:02):
Well, I think, ultimately, if you really want to solve issues,
you're always going to end up in pockets of inequality
and inequity, and in the US in particular, that has
this kind of dimension around conversations around racial inequality and
being able to and obviously I don't want to give
it away. I've seen the film. It was a paradigm
shifting experience for me. Gives us a new language to
(54:25):
be able to talk about things perhaps we haven't been
able to talk about, and dialogue is essential, right, I
was a cop earlier this week. We're not going to
address the issues of global climate change without working with
local communities well, helping them feed their families and really
understand what they're doing. We're not going to address issues
around inequality without working with local communities, entrepreneurs, and this
(54:45):
is something you know, Jamie, who was applauded earlier, which
she should be, has been working on this topic along
with our social impact team for a decade because we've
identified this as a key area that's critical to see
both the economic and the social benefits. And we've been
working with Black Innovation Alliance, for example, who we recommend
to our clients. Of our clients give we do a
ten percent match and it's not just about capital for
(55:07):
black entrepreneurs. It's also about mentorship and about actually just
trying to address some of the historic issues in this area.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
So this film will have a long tail, hopefully, and
it's going to reverberate as you continue to show it.
Hopefully it'll be on a stream or at some point
so that even more people can have access to it.
But Regina, can you just tell us briefly about some
of the programs and Paul you too, that you hope
to implement that. Will you know it will have a
(55:36):
ripple effect all across the land.
Speaker 5 (55:40):
Well, I already think it has because thousands of people
and in different communities worked on this film. Literally, it
feels like and it has changed hearts and minds. When
people walk out of this movie, they're change agents. They
want to even made the movie? Now, what are you
going to do with it? And I hear that all
the time, And I think I win the award at
(56:02):
Array for seeing the movie the most. I think I've
seen it ten times, and every single time I walk out,
I just love hearing the conversations. And this wonderful gentleman
that's in the audience today came up to me and said,
how do I do this in my community? I want
to bring this to San Francisco. I want to people
want to gather, I think, especially around important issues, and
(56:24):
they want to heal, and they want to have smart
conversations and they want to be educated. And I think
that with the work that we do our wonderful team
at Array. Mercedes Cooper, who's here tonight, is our senior
vice president of Programming. We host public, free programs around
the movie that will be incorporated by the large release.
(56:45):
Tammy Garnes, our director of A senior director of Education
and Understanding, is launching a beautiful digital learning guide that
is a masterpiece that I actually think schools can use
this learning guide for a year. It's a coursework. It's
not just a couple of prompts. They're extraordinary. Go to
Array one oh one and look at some of our
(57:06):
other learning guides, but there's nothing like it out there
in the education market. And then, of course, we have
a podcast that's coming out that Paul is going to
be moderating and leading, and we're constantly innovating creative partnerships
with Expedia. How do we create travel experiences around this
content and around the movie, how do we gather in
(57:28):
small groups and have meaningful conversations with each other. So
there's so many layers to array of how we approach impact.
But the other thing that we're so proud of is
you'll see it at the end of the movie. We
got the highest seal for environmental justice on a movie
that we also the way that the movie was made
and the way we cared about the world and the
(57:50):
community and the environment when we made it, So there's
impact on every level. And I just also want to
thank ubs because as a fundraiser, it's really really hard
to raise money and it's so beautiful when someone comes
to you and says, I have five donors that I
want to introduce you to and you didn't have to ask,
(58:10):
and that really shows the collaboration and leadership when you
don't have to ask, but somebody gets your vision and
Mark is like, we're going to get out there and
do it.
Speaker 3 (58:19):
We're going to help you.
Speaker 5 (58:20):
So I just really want to thank you because not
a lot of companies do that proactively, and it means
the world to every single one of us that are
trying to make and fuel dreams. Because a lot of
people have dreams, but you have to fuel them, so
thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
I think that's a great way to end the conversation.
So ladies and gentlemen, Regina, Tom and Paul, thank you.
Speaker 3 (58:54):
Thanks for listening. Everyone.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
If you have a question for me, a subject you
want us to cover, or you want to share your
thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world reach out.
You can leave a short message at six h nine
five P one two five five five, or you can
send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to
hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia
(59:18):
and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric,
and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and
our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller
composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call,
(59:40):
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Two
Host
Katie Couric
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