Before You Cut Bangs
Hosted by Laura Quick and Claire Fierman, “Before You Cut Bangs” is full of hilarious conversations about real life, common and uncommon crises, and possible cosmetic errors that come along with it. Through storytelling and therapeutic wisdom, Claire and Laura share how to NOT fuck up your hair (and life) while walking through similar situations,
Produced by Will Lochamy
Before You Cut Bangs
2.4 True Crime and Why We Love It, with Documentarian Matthew Galkin
We're all fascinated with true crime and documentaries in general, but why? Filmmaker Matthew Galkin joins us for a fascinating conversation about the incredible influence of documentaries, highlighting how they transform perspectives and ignite important discussions.
Matthew opens up about his shift into the true crime genre, a transition he never anticipated but found fascinating due to the genre's combination of mystery, voyeurism, and the pursuit of justice.
Welcome to, before you Cut Bangs. I'm Laura Quick and I'm Claire Fehrman. I am a professional storyteller and I'm currently working on my first book.
Speaker 2:I have worked in mental health for many years in lots of capacities and this is a really important time to tell you our big disclaimer this is not therapy. We are not your therapists or coaches or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you shouldn't really trust us very much at all. Unless you want to and it turns out well, then you can trust us. That's great.
Speaker 3:We're recording this on my front porch. It's a new front porch, so apologies that it's not painted or stained.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, stop being weird about it. I know, I'm just saying Disclaimer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but either way also, this means like you're going to hear birds and you're going to hear neighbors walking by and coming up on the porch or whatever.
Speaker 1:It's just we're going to do this every now and then A little neighborhood show right, I love it Right.
Speaker 3:I'm into it, all right. So here's the deal. I'm looking really forward to this one, because we have matthew gawkin here, who is a documentarian, and claire, and we've talked about this laura, we've talked about this a little bit, but, like, documentaries are my thing oh, you and shane, quick, good lord yeah really excited about this and so I want to start off.
Speaker 3:matthew, first, thanks for like hanging with us, but also like we do an opening question and we kind of go around the room and we can start with me. Porch, also I'm nervous that I've set you guys up on a swing.
Speaker 1:We love it. It's great.
Speaker 3:Swinging right around those mics. Yeah, it'll be good though.
Speaker 2:I've engaged my core.
Speaker 3:You got it, you got it. So the question today, to start the episode, is what's your favorite documentary? And, like I, probably this is a tough one because I have to go through a lot, but one kind of came to my mind initially, which was Paradise Lost, the West Memphis three documentary series really, but that was one of the first I really got into and it's been such like an actual game changer and I think in my life even now, like some of the nonprofits that I work with and about justice and whatever. I think a lot of that stemmed from Paradise Lost.
Speaker 4:So Matthew, hi, hey, what's up? It's great to be here. Thank you, um, what can I ask you? Why Paradise Lost? What about it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was just so impactful, I think. Uh, initially I was young, youngish, you know, probably 19, 20 or something when I first saw it. And I think for most people, like when you hear like oh, somebody confessed to something, it's like, OK, well, yeah, why would anyone ever confess to something that they didn't do? And that was my first ever example of like oh, here's why people will confess to something they didn't do. I don't know, I think you just grow up unless you're exposed to it, thinking well, if someone went through a trial and is in prison, of course they did it, like they did it. And that was the first like eye opening thing of like or not. And then, of course, we've seen you know how prolific that is throughout the country. But that was the first thing for me that was kind of eye opening and also like it was just something you could follow for years I mean like 20 years kind of followed that story.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's like one of the OG true crime films. I mean, I love that film Funny, you bring that up. Not necessarily my favorite documentary, but the very first documentary that made me want to make documentaries is a film called Brothers Keeper. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's the same director as Paradise Lost. It's his first. It was a guy named Joe Berlinger and he had a filmmaking partner named Bruce Zanofsky and those two made this incredibly compelling film about five inbred brothers in deep upstate New York. They all lived in a one room shack together their entire lives. They were in their 60s, I want to say, and one of them dies and another one of them is accused of his murder and it becomes a murder trial with the. I mean I'm probably not doing it justice. It's an incredibly compelling film. It was the first one I went to a movie theater not knowing anything about it. I was in film school at the time studying to be like a scripted filmmaker. I wanted to be a director and that just completely spun my head around.
Speaker 4:About documentaries, favorite documentary probably is a film called Give Me Shelter. Have you ever seen that? It's about the Rolling Stones. Sure, it is specifically about the Rolling Stones playing a concert at the Altamont Speedway 100%. So have you guys ever seen this film? Yeah, incredible, incredible A because the music is amazing and there's. You know they were on tour with Tina Turner, so there's just like incredible footage of them in concert and that was like peak rolling stones, um. But the most amazing thing about it is these famous documentarians named the mazel brothers.
Speaker 4:Mazel's brothers captured the rolling stones were playing a free concert at the altamont speedway, which is in california, at the end of the summer. Basically, the woodstock started that summer and Altamont was like the bookend. It ended that summer and Woodstock was all you know love and hugs. Altamont ultimately became like you could see the summer of love end and all of the darkness kind of rolled in. Because they captured on film someone getting stabbed to death, like right in front of the stage, like total, like crazy lightning in a bottle moment. Like in right in front of the stage, like total, like crazy lightning in a bottle moment. The Rolling Stones then like become kind of detectives, filmmakers. They're starting to figure out what happened, but it's like like literally on film, they captured the moment that like the Summer of Love ended and for me that is like the essence of why I make documentaries. It's like to find these things you're never supposed to capture on film.
Speaker 3:And no spoilers, but the Hells Angels were. I can't remember this, though. Were they hired by the Rolling Stones to be security, or did the promoter hire them? But either way, the Hells Angels were the security, which is what started all of them.
Speaker 1:That's pretty gangster. I'm just thinking. My husband's literally in the music business and does huge festivals, so, like I mean, hundreds of thousands of people come to his festivals every year. And I'm thinking about the Hells Angels being security and how crazy that would be.
Speaker 4:And because they hated the hippies. It was just like it was just instant tension and there was just darkness. Yeah, it was fascinating, I don't know the Central Park five.
Speaker 1:for me, I mean, it was really heavy but really necessary. It's like such an eye opening the same thing Will was talking about just like seeing how it happens, like not knowing but almost feeling like a curtain was pulled back and going like, oh my God, this is so devastating for me as a mother to watch that back and going like, oh my God, this is so devastating for me as a mother to watch that. For me as like a human, to understand that I really have no idea what that would be like but to feel so much empathy and the pain and the like riding the wave. It was just heavy and enlightening and I feel like it changed the world and how the world. Because it went so mainstream. It felt really good that so many people had access to hear that story.
Speaker 4:And it's a story that people maybe thought they knew but didn't know at all. Right, it's like you've heard of the Central.
Speaker 1:Park Five yes. I mean because I live in New York, but like it's yeah To see an authentic narrative around, like really what happened, like whoa, these were little babies, I mean I can't, I couldn't even and like on the ava front, like 13th as well, it's also just yeah insane, yeah clear um, so I'll go old and new, so for sure the last waltz that was.
Speaker 2:I can remember watching that with my dad and having this moment of like oh, like this is this is it for me. And then music has impacted my whole life with my family, like that's how my dad, if something bad happened or good or whatever he's like, well, this is the song that goes with it.
Speaker 1:So that's such a therapy family thing that has ever been said in the history of families. Go on, I love it.
Speaker 2:I mean he read me Bob Dylan's Forever.
Speaker 1:Young, when I was 14.
Speaker 2:And. I was like you know. And then, when I drove my little Subaru to Colorado, oh my God, of course you had a Subaru. I opened my glove box and it was the music and the lyrics to Truckin' by the Grateful Dead and it said read this on the way to Colorado, and on the back it was. And then, when you decide to come home, read this and it was the last part. So sweet, I won't sing it for you. And then recently I watched Will and Harper.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I finished that two nights ago.
Speaker 1:I haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 2:It should be appointment viewing it got me good oh yeah it got me good and I know spoilers. Every human should be required to watch it, no doubt. Okay, good question.
Speaker 1:I didn't see it coming, honestly so we're as, as you mentioned will. We're talking about our obsession with true crime. We've got documentaries. We talked about that. We talked about podcasts, we talked about movies. We talked about culture and how we're obsessed with them. And really what I love about Claire the most is that Claire's always got a guy for that. Literally, Claire's got a guy for everything. You need Botox she's got a guy for that. You need some sort of B12 shot she's got a guy for that. You need. You need some sort of B-12 shot she's got a guy for that. And, of course, we want to know about obsessions with true crime. She's like I got a guy for that.
Speaker 2:So tell us about your guy. I do get Botox and lip filler in a man's home His name is Dr Carl and he's not fucking around.
Speaker 4:Has he been on the podcast?
Speaker 1:We are going to have him on after the Halloween costume. I think it's time, but we can't share it. But go on.
Speaker 2:Well, I do have a guy or gal for most things. This was wild and Matthew contacted me and asked me to work on a documentary with him or be a part of it, and I was incredibly hesitant and this is going to be so vague for y'all listening and I'm sorry, but when I can talk about it, I'll talk about it. So when Matthew asked to chat with me, he asked if we could get coffee, which was really nice, and we're going to be talking about some really vulnerable things, which is laughable for what I've disclosed on this podcast, but they're usually pretty funny or embarrassing or humiliating. But this was like a heart and soul project and we sat down for coffee and talked for a really long time and I trusted him.
Speaker 2:He asked the right questions and we connected and then I asked him to do a favor for me Because I had some questions.
Speaker 3:Because he makes incredible documentaries about stuff that we really want to talk about. Like dude, we could go for hours about jack of work in, right, I mean like that alone, but also just like a lot of kind of you know on that verge of like crime or not, happy subjects, right, stuff is tough to dive into, which is what we want to dive into okay, so state of the union.
Speaker 1:Matthew, who are you?
Speaker 4:um, I am a I'd like to say new york-based filmmaker, but I actually live in new jersey's, which sounds much lamer no, that's totally still cool you're in alabama right now calm down there's like a coolness to Alabama that Jersey will never have.
Speaker 4:All right. I have been directing documentaries for about 20 some odd years now and have made all sorts of projects Like. My first film was about the Pixies Huge fan, awesome, they're great. Huge fan, awesome, so great. I made a film about PETA, the animal rights group, and the woman that founded it. Her name is Ingrid Newkirk. That was for HBO. And then I made another HBO film about Jack Vorkian. As Will said, I was Morgan Spurlock's producing partner. Do you know him?
Speaker 3:I don't, he made Supersize Me, yeah, passed away this last year and he died of cancer this past year.
Speaker 4:Um, I was his partner until 2017 and then I left company and started my own company. Okay, um, I had no interest in like crime as a genre. Really it wasn't like. I don. Even now I don't think of them as like crime projects. It just so happens that that became quite popular, like, I mean, crime has always been popular, but like there has been really since Netflix came along and a lot of the streamers started, you know, expanding the pipeline of projects.
Speaker 4:Tons of crime. Crime has just just like flooded television, obviously flooded podcasts. So I haven't done a ton of crime but the you know I think maybe for the last six years or so it's, it's been primarily what I've been focused on directing so why are people obsessed with?
Speaker 1:what do you think the obsession is?
Speaker 4:with crime. Yeah of an age-old narrative trope. People like to, people like mysteries, they like a nice tidy ending, they like a conclusion. Beginnings, middles, ends, twists and turns, I mean that's sort of the underpinnings of most movies and television shows. I think there's a there's a sort of voyeuristic draw in the idea of like watching you're sort of it's participatory and voyeuristic in the sense that you're watching someone or something terrible happen.
Speaker 4:You're in the safety of your living room with a bowl of popcorn, but like you can kind of live out this thrilling like holy shit, asshole clenched.
Speaker 1:I'm not. Not, by the way. I'm the girl who literally would be like sorry, I can't do this unless there's lots of people and everyone's sleeping in my bed tonight. Okay, I can't, I'm too scared.
Speaker 3:True crime stuff.
Speaker 1:Even true crime. I can't do it by myself, I've got to have a group. It's a group project. Guys, go on, don't watch the menendez press. Oh, I've literally yes, my husband's been watching it. I'm like, okay, I'll be inside reading of something that's like half true, that series that's out.
Speaker 3:Now you're talking about the, the scripted one that's the scripted one. Yeah, yeah because that's like a dramatization of yeah yeah, but it is tough.
Speaker 1:It's tough to watch. So it's solving the mystery.
Speaker 4:It's voyeurism yeah, I mean, I think that there's, there is a, there's a real pull in, like the having the distance but also like feeling participatory at the same time, like it's not your life and you can kind of place yourself in that position, whether it's like the main character is a detective or if the main character is like a you know, a grieved widow trying to figure out who killed her husband. You can. It's like playing along at home, to like in the darkest, most macabre kind of way.
Speaker 1:The group watching session settings always have somebody who's vocal I'm always like no, why you know better. Why are you this way?
Speaker 2:People love that dopamine hit too, of like, and then it's like I can wash my face and put my night cream on and go to bed and come down from it. I think you can totally dissociate when you're watching some any documentary, I think you can, but then true crime, you're just like out of your own stuff. Well, I'm gonna save my question around it, but yeah, that's my other perspective and I watched the most disgusting, dark, fucked up stuff and you think, bobby, you think something's wrong with me I don't.
Speaker 1:I am like pollyanna all the way.
Speaker 2:Unless it can happen to me, then I can't do it. But if someone's shooting their mom because they were an asshole, I'm like I'm for sure I'm not gonna do that and I'm a really nice.
Speaker 1:I'm nervous. It's a slippery slope.
Speaker 3:Anything could take me backwards where do we feel like dateline falls in this? I'm scared of that shit too because it's my like yard work podcast okay, I mean, I think I was on it you're on, you're on daylight, I think totally if
Speaker 1:you really google claire that would make sense.
Speaker 3:But I mean, that's my kind of go-to, like if I'm gonna do a long project for an hour or two, whatever, like that's a good go to podcast.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and because they're. They're all tidy like it's it is. They fit in that space. They don't leave anything unresolved. They pick cases that are adjudicated. So they're like are you know? They know who's you know who's the bad bad guy is? There's also that element of true crime that I think people are drawn to, which is they want to see bad guys go away. So the idea that you're going to catch the perpetrator and there's justice at the end, I think is quite appealing for most people, which was the justice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it brings me to my question I want to ask, like have you ever taken on a project where you didn't know the resolution? No, Like where you were going to figure it out throughout the process.
Speaker 4:Yes, I have a couple. I did a series. I did two series for Showtime, sort of back to back. One is called Murder in the Bayou and the other is called Murder in Bighorn. Neither have actual closed endings. Murder in the Bayou is about eight women in a small town in in louisiana who were all murdered. They all knew each other. The cases were never investigated and never solved. Ultimately it became clear that these eight women were informants for crooked police in the small town. So as a five-hour series for Showtime where we sort of uncover this whole thing, there is no closure. No one has ever been, and when I say closure, I mean no one has been arrested or convicted of any of these cases. We make it very clear like who did it? It's very clear. We have documented proof. These people just weren't ever arrested, which is a little dicey to make, I mean legally, but also because we were shooting the series did you ever feel unsafe?
Speaker 1:yes I was gonna say like that feels sketch, I'm definitely I would not be on that team you have to zoom me in bro zoom me absentee Absentee.
Speaker 4:Absentee producer. Absentee producer Y'all are going to be great.
Speaker 4:You haven't invited me yet, but just in case you were thinking of it, I'm probably not going to be able to come Crooked yeah, so there were. There were crooked cops that were on the force they're still on the force and we were like in this tiny little town there was a maybe serial killer, a maybe serial killer. He had killed multiple of these. He had killed numerous women whose story we were telling Did, like you know, 10 hours worth of interviews with this guy who was still on the loose, loves cameras, wanted to be on camera. Totally crazy.
Speaker 4:Murder and Bighorn is a series about missing and murdered Native American women that I co-directed with a great Native filmmaker named Rizal Benali. So she and I made this series focused on the Crow Reservation in Montana, which is sort of the. There is a huge issue in the Native community that I was completely unaware of before 2020, which for centuries, you know, native women have just either gone missing or have been murdered in like astronomically high numbers. So Showtime approached me. This is a very long me. Am I interested in maybe like taking this very big idea of missing and murdered Native women and seeing if there's a series to be made out of it? What they really wanted was a true crime series set on a Native American reservation. They wanted something like juicy and twisty and turny and because you know it is a, it is a fascinating world that I think most non-natives just know nothing about 100%.
Speaker 4:So, but they also gave me like a very wide swath to kind of make the thing that I wanted to make and ultimately what we found. We used the true crime aspects as a sort of point of departure, the true crime aspects as a sort of point of departure, and ultimately the series becomes about centuries-long relationship between, like, the non-native community and the native community and why native women have become so vulnerable, and it's this sort of accumulation of many, many different issues. So we sort of used true crime in order to tell another story. It was a bit of a bait and switch. I bring that up only to say there's no ending, because it ultimately like it wasn't really about solving cases as much as it was like solving an issue and kind of giving and giving an ending, not an ending, giving an answer to why this keeps happening. And it's very complicated answer and it's not like there's a white boogeyman running around killing everyone. There are those, but it actually is much more complicated than that.
Speaker 2:That's so hard to not have that resolution exposing this thing so people have this greater understanding of what's happening within our country. When is there a line of of service interesting to exploiting somebody in the documentary world? I don't know if you've had that experience and had to say no, I can't do that. Or even with things that have been made unrelated to you, where you feel like that was wrongdoing to you where you feel like that was wrongdoing.
Speaker 4:That's a great question. I mean, I feel like intent is part of it. Although probably no filmmaker has ever like truly honest with their intent, I think exploitation is part of it, like I feel like everything I do you could look at as exploitation.
Speaker 1:And it depends what side you're on right, Correct I? Mean depending on where your perspective is coming from, is going to determine if you see it as exploitation or not.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean extractive filmmaking was a term that we had used a lot while we were making Murder in Bighorn. I'm a white, jewish, non-native filmmaker. The wrong person to be making a series about native american women, right, couldn't be further from my lived experience. So I always I do feel sometimes like, regardless of the project, I am exploiting them. I do think it's if it's, if it's mutually beneficial and I approach it in the most sensitive, trauma, informed way. I feel like it can mitigate most of that. But I just feel like I mean you could argue this forever the relationship between, say, a journalist and a subject or a documentary filmmaker and a subject. It's so complicated because I need you. If I'm making a documentary about you, I need you to help me tell your story Right, and it's a transactional relationship in some respects, Not us.
Speaker 2:Matthew, not you no.
Speaker 4:And when I say you, I mean the collective.
Speaker 3:My anxiety lies with like confrontation, and so always when I think of like documentary makers that are tackling these tough subjects, or podcast, you know, producers that are going after unsolved mysteries. Maybe not the interview process, because that I'm all about, it's the cold calling, right like reaching out to people that don't expect you to reach out. You mean like Claire.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but even like Claire had a bit of a buffer, I did.
Speaker 3:And also, like in Claire's story, she's not like under any kind of investment, like she has nothing to stress about on her end, but people that do have something hidden and distress like cold calling them. How do you approach that? Because for me that's always what gives me anxiety uh, gingerly, I would say uh, it's, it's hard.
Speaker 4:I mean, many people have said no and meant it, and then you have to go away and back off, and you know, I mean okay, see, put me in coach.
Speaker 1:This is the part I could be into oh yeah, I'll totally handle all that for you and I'd get them all they'd love it. Now they would have no idea where the fuck they were coming to. They'd be like I thought we were here for cocktail party, but they'll be there, don't worry. I got you, matthew, call me white lies.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you heard this podcast, but white lies incredible. And so the npr podcast about the murders in selma, like, like way back in the day and they're unearthing, you know murders, that the murders are still alive, and like approaching these people 40, 50, 60 years later.
Speaker 4:Like it's crazy, yeah, but also like exciting, and I mean that's the weird.
Speaker 2:Do you ever get your feelings hurt when people say no?
Speaker 4:No.
Speaker 2:Just part of the job OK.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, if they saw my work and they're like you fucking suck, and that would hurt your feelings making documentaries like I don't want to be in your thing because I think, you're a terrible filmmaker.
Speaker 2:That would hurt my feelings. I would have said yes.
Speaker 1:The research that I've done, though, has really upset me.
Speaker 4:I don't take it first. I never take it personally, but it's, it is, it is, it's not. It's not the part of the job that I enjoy, it's just a necessity, yeah, and you have to figure out a way to make it appealing for them. You have to show them the value of what you would like to do with the story. Yeah, but it's, it's. It's hard and a lot of you know, when I make a series or documentary, I'm interviewing like 40 people, 50 people. All of those people need to be reached out to at some point and convinced to sit for an interview, and it's like that's the whole thing. And out of those 40 people that have agreed, there are probably 40 people that just said fuck off.
Speaker 3:You spent time with Jack Kevorkian. I spent a year of my life with Jack kvorkian. I spent a year of my life with jack working. Uh, here's a thing I I think of him as like having done really great service for a lot of people, but also just a very conflicted character. Is that a good like assessment of kvorkian?
Speaker 4:completely. I mean, that's why I was so interested in making a film about him, Because it's, it's, it's like. You know, the sort of thesis question is like is he the right, is it the right message with the wrong messenger?
Speaker 3:You know, it's like that's exactly how I've always kind of looked at it.
Speaker 4:Like, yeah, and he is, and I didn't know. You know, I knew about Jack of Orchid. What I think most Americans knew about Jack of Orchid, which is he sort of came into prominence in the 90s. He kind of put doctor-assisted suicide on the map. But there's this whole history to him that I found so fascinating, which is that you know, he found this cause in his mid-60s Like he was almost through his life by that point. He was a failed musician, he was a pathologist by trade but didn't do it for very long. He tried to be a movie director and he failed. He painted, he wrote books, like there was some part of Jack that wanted to be famous. So then you have to then factor in, when you factor in the doctor assisted suicide. It's a real issue and what's so funny?
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm just saying like we're we, this is what the podcast is about really. Like this mental health segue into like, like Claire always likes to say, like, like, if you're, if you're sitting with a great therapist and you tell them the darkest, craziest shit you've ever done and you and they understand your story, their response is of course. Of course you got there yeah so like there's probably a lot about his story, even though you know all of those things that we'll never know and that I'll never know yeah, exactly certain things I'm sure he kept for me.
Speaker 3:So you probably took a deeper dive with kvorkin than anybody anyone almost anyone, I would say that's probably true.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, and I had. I mean, I had the luxury of time. It's like if you make a quick 60 minutes piece on him, it's like you're gonna spend a week on his story. But I was on that film for two years, so that's crazy.
Speaker 1:How do you take care of yourself, like when you're, if you've had a heavy interview or you just learned something that you're like, damn, how do you, how do you take care of yourself? Mental health wise yeah, and, like you know, you've got to go back and be a dad and a husband and all those things, it's a great question and it honestly, until about a year ago it never even crossed my mind.
Speaker 4:So I didn't take care of myself for a long time.
Speaker 1:What happened when you didn't take care of yourself, Matthew?
Speaker 4:Depression, high blood pressure, it's just like it was. My body was like revolting against me. So you know I'm in therapy, I'm on there's a sort of a support group for people that deal with these kinds of films or shows you know where.
Speaker 4:You're just like constantly exposed to people going through trauma or going, you know. And it's funny, like it never crossed my mind that that might actually affect me mentally. And maybe that's screwed up, like I think, because a lot of people wouldn't even do it. They wouldn't even go there because it would be like too intense. And sometimes I feel like there maybe there's something wrong with me. That it's not, like it didn't ever slow me down, like there aren't dark topics that like are too dark for me, and it's not that I seek them out, it's just sort of like, oh, that's interesting. Like let's talk about death.
Speaker 2:Well, I told Matthew yesterday. I was like we do the same job, basically Like you have to ask the right question. We both have to ask the right question to get to the story right. And his just shows up on a screen.
Speaker 4:And yours is far more important because you're actually helping humans. That's what I'm saying, I mean.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think documentaries help a lot of people.
Speaker 2:But I think we both probably nobody made I didn't read a book to become a good therapist. Ok, I grew into it. I truly believe I was meant to do it. Probably the same for you. No one was like I think you'd be great. Here's a book, figure it out, like. Probably the same for you. No one was like I think you'd be great. Here's a book, figure it out like it just comes through you.
Speaker 2:So I think, with with that, I had this gift, because people ask me all the time like, how do you hold all of that? You know, and to be fair, it's not like I'm going home crying about clients, I just don't. And it's like this switch happens I I'm on, then I'm off, and then I change clothes and I make my kids a PB and J like, and I can and I will tell you, yes, I've heard horrible things that have stuck with me or sunk in. But the body will revolt right first, even if it's not stuck in my head. My body will tell me this is too much, you're exhausted, you got to move it.
Speaker 1:Move, move it through what was the tipping point?
Speaker 4:you said until about a year ago the tipping point was um, I went to a cardiologist because I felt like I was having sort of rapid you know I've had panic attacks since I was 18, um. But I went to a cardiologist because my heartbeat was kind of rapid and I had crazy high blood pressure, like stroke level blood pressure and the doctor was like what the fuck are you doing in your life? Like they probably thought I was on coke or something.
Speaker 2:You know, it's just like off the rails.
Speaker 4:So you know, he, he sort of did a whole workup on me and he strapped, he kept trying to take my blood pressure and it was just like all over the place. It's like he did like three readings in like 10 minutes and it was like just totally different scores. And he's just like I, you're such a mess I can't even like, I can't even understand what's going on inside your body. Here's a. Here's a blood pressure. What do you recall it? The?
Speaker 4:cuff um, wear this for 24 hours. You know, there's a little machine. Every 30 minutes it's going to take your blood pressure and after 24 hours it's going to give me a median read of, like, what your actual blood pressure is over the course of a day, and what he found was my blood pressure was insanely high when I was awake and when I was sleeping it was 120 over 80. And so he's just like you have an anxiety disorder, like you need to get your head checked, basically, before I like give you any medication what a good doctor yeah, really he's actually an asshole.
Speaker 4:Okay, um like I hated his bedside manner, dr lux, if you're listening, if you're listening uh, he's a, he's a dick I think his advice was was nice.
Speaker 2:It was good advice.
Speaker 4:He just delivered he delivered it in the worst possible way because I was already like out of my mind and he was such a dick, um, but uh, that's, that's what. That was the tipping point for me and I was just like oh, jesus and I'm, I'm 51, um, and it's just like.
Speaker 1:Oh, like people die at my age, like it's like you know, like people just drop dead at my age, like, yeah, you know like people just drop dead at my age like a wake-up call too, because we're old enough now where you've had a friend that just like randomly, was on a jog and then had a heart attack and you're like what, what? Exactly yeah, it's really scary.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so, matthew, you look good for 51s but the only reason that I brought that up was to get that yeah it was not even like a nonsense.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I just assume after the age of 30, we're all the same age and so like learning people's ages. Okay, I don't know who's.
Speaker 1:I do have a friend that literally says that all the time she's like well, we're all 40. And I'm like you're 36. Stop trying to pretend you're 40.
Speaker 2:Thought I was the same age as a 24 year old the other day and I was like there you look, 18.
Speaker 3:Are there topics like you want to go after. That are your passion projects that maybe wouldn't even be like the biggest hits ever, but you really just like, want to make documentaries about them. I like music right, you've already done some of that I love music films.
Speaker 4:I would love to do nothing but make music films. I've never out after my first film. I've never made another music. Actually I lied, that's not true. I've never directed another music film. I produced a film about one direction, um the boy band we are familiar um the 3d one direction movie, when that was like a big like in the in the way this was like 2014, I want to say there were like all these felt like the bieber film and like katie perry they're all 3d and like they all came out sort of in the same five-year period, I produced the one direction one.
Speaker 3:So what was that? I mean? Because those dudes were young. They were.
Speaker 4:It was like when they were the, the most famous five dudes in the world.
Speaker 3:yeah, uh, and course this has been in the news recently, obviously with Liam's passing Like so let's just kind of talk about that and how they were at that point and now like what your feelings are on what's happened.
Speaker 4:Well, it's totally tragic.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I mean and I think there was this feeling even back then that like get it on tape now, because the shelf life is very short, especially when you're like at that end of the market where you're so popular. It's like it's almost like you can't sustain it. And so I really got a peek of like the machine that is around a band that famous, where it's like these kids had binders of their schedules like two years in advance, like wow, like down to like the 15 minute increments like per hour. It was insane. They had their whole lives planned out for them. It's like it was just.
Speaker 2:It made me a little depressed, I have to say I felt bad for them and, yeah, it's terrible about you if someone approaches you with something, what's like a no for you, what won't you take on? I mean, you said there's nothing too dark I don't there's.
Speaker 4:I don't think there's anything I'll always like listen to, like if I'm there has to be a spark of like intrigue there for me and then I have to spend time with it and figure out like my way into that idea, like, but I wouldn't. I usually wouldn't dismiss anything out of hand unless I'm like that in no way interests me. There's no topic I don't think that I would just dismiss out of hand.
Speaker 2:Have you ever interviewed someone where it was so like their life was so painful you wanted to like pluck them out of it and just take care of them.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 1:Aw Example.
Speaker 4:I just finished a series that will be out on Amazon Prime next year about the four students that were stabbed to death at the University of Idaho.
Speaker 1:Do you know this story?
Speaker 3:Yes, Brian Koberger Brian.
Speaker 4:Koberger, brian Koberger. So I've spent the last year and a half two years working on this project, basically since like February of like two months after the murders happened, and filming with families of these victims and they're the most incredible people, but it's so raw. They've never talked to the media before. Some of the families that aren't part of our project have done a lot of press and are sort of out there doing like Nancy Grace kind of shows. The families that we're filming with just don't. They've never engaged with the media and so they don't. It's like they didn't know how to tell the story in a, which I'm so honored by, but it was. The interviews are incredible, but they're so it's like almost like more raw than almost any television interview I've seen, because it's it's hard to explain. They just there's no. People tell a story over time and it sort of becomes hardened and like this is the way you tell that story and there's none of that. So it's like it's they're almost hard to watch in in a very moving way.
Speaker 3:So that was a lot of words for that no, that was just perfect yeah, also, like we don't say that it sucks to immediately know oh yeah, you're talking about the brian coberger situation as opposed to immediately knowing maddie, like all the kids names. That's a great point. All right, you know the killer's name and these four kids, like those, aren't household names but brian's is, which is a. You know, there's that whole like westboro baptist church, right, louis through did that documentary about them, and so then I end up interviewing a few of the people that now run that church, which is insane. These are the people that hold up.
Speaker 3:They're, like you know, gay yeah yeah, god like all the stuff, yeah, but it's almost comical yeah, awful right, like it doesn't even seem to be real.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they're like they're like fake bad people because they're like you're so evil that you're like not even you're not scary, you're so evil.
Speaker 3:And so the interview they're like that my brother and I did with them was pretty much just like why are you this way? And it was civil, right, it was a very civil just like. Tell us about. Like okay, what, what do you think? Like, here's how I would answer this for my kid what would you say? And a lot of people like you're, like I can't believe, like you're giving them any airtime, but at the same time, for them I was like they're not convincing anyone, right, like if the KKK probably can convince people to join their club, westboro Baptist Church, maybe not so much. But at the same time there is that like who do you want to lift up and give airtime to? Probably doesn't deserve it. Which Brian Kober. It's a very interesting subject, but that dude doesn't. We don't need to know his name it's actually it's.
Speaker 4:It's it's why we made the series in the first place. To be honest with you, we made a victim focused series about that crime, but like how that cataclysmic event has, like shattered families, families, a school, a town, like so we keep the mentions of him to a minimum and we really put the families first.
Speaker 3:When there's like school shootings and stuff. I do have to do the news every morning on my show and I just will not say the person's name. I think we're kind of past that anyway.
Speaker 1:I mean, most of the times those people aren't getting like huge recognition, but that's because there are so many of them, parents and teachers and I was with her, maybe a week at like, when right after at a conference and she was sitting, we're sitting at a dinner table and barely holding it together because of everything she had seen and heard. And you know, those kids have just gone back into that school Like, and it's like to your point. It's the fact that they're everywhere, it's happening all the time. It's like this is where our culture is, that we are enamored with these really horrific things because they're happening so much and we have so much more access to hear about them. I think that you know, like, how do we make a good, how do we turn it to something good? Like, how do you see purpose coming out of these stories that you're telling?
Speaker 4:At the end of Murder and Bighorn. You know there's a website for an organization. We did a whole outreach program. You know it doesn't. I feel like the work doesn't stop at the once you complete the film there's still more stuff to be done.
Speaker 2:I have two more super quick questions. What have you learned about the concept of forgiveness?
Speaker 4:And the people that are able to actually forgive.
Speaker 4:This is a sweeping generalization, so I'm sorry. They seem at peace in a way that it's the living in the grief that they made to move on. Not move on, but to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other and like just they went to pieces for months and it's like you have that you either sink or you swim. It's like you have that moment, that reckoning moment, where it's like I need to move forward in life or I'm never going to sort of claw my way out of the abyss forward in life, or I'm never going to sort of claw my way out of the abyss. And I feel like forgiveness is similar. It's like if you're faced with something horrific and there is a human at the center of that horrific thing maybe someone has killed a loved one, you know it's like you either hold on to your anger or you forgive and you find inner peace and you move on, and that's. I feel like that's a personal choice for everybody and some people make it and some people don't.
Speaker 2:All right, I need, like, as honest as you can be, what did you think of Alabama? I love it here.
Speaker 4:Okay, this is not the first time I've been here, um, I I really love it and I love Birmingham. I actually think this is a great town and I look it's not. I travel a lot. I pick a lot of projects and places that I don't really enjoy going to, but this is a place that I really like and I look forward to coming back.
Speaker 1:Hey, thank you guys for listening. We love having you here. We're so happy to be back for season two. Please give us a review, share us with your friends and if you ever want to reach out and you have a topic you want us to cover or something that you're just wondering about, let us know.
Speaker 3:Before you Cut Things is hosted by Claire Fehrman and Laura Quick and produced by me, Will Ockamy the best.
