E66 • Finding the Soul of Your Film • J.M. HARPER, dir. of ‘Soul Patrol’ at the Sundance Film Festival

Documentary filmmaker and editor J.M. Harper discusses Soul Patrol, his six-year journey telling the story of the first Black special operations unit in Vietnam. What began with reading Eddie Manuel’s book grew into years of weekly conversations, slow trust-building, and eventual access to never-before-seen Super 8 footage and photographs shot by the soldiers themselves. Harper also reflects on how his work editing Jeen‑Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy sharpened his instincts around character, structure, and letting footage reveal meaning over time.

We talk about point of view and theme as the engine of a film, not ideas layered on afterward. Harper frames Soul Patrol around a central question: whether speaking openly about acts committed in war, long buried and rarely acknowledged, can offer any form of healing. Drawing on Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, he discusses how cinema can confront violence without glamorizing it, and the ethical tension of rendering horrific experiences with clarity, restraint, and intention.

He reflects on editing as discovery, assembling a team of editors with different strengths, and shaping a film that moves between memory, present-day reckoning, and historical record.

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Acclaimed documentary ROADS OF FIRE is now available on Amazon, iTunes, and Fandango at home. Directed by Nathaniel Lezra, the film won best documentary at the 2025 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The film examines the migrant crisis here in the States all the way down to Venezuela, and Academy Award nominee Diane Lane calls it "a must-see journey of human dignity." Roads of Fire - now on Amazon, iTunes, Fandango.

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Chapters

• 0:33 ROADS OF FIRE is now available on Amazon, iTunes, and Fandango at home. Directed by Nathaniel Lezra
• 1:07 Past Present Feature, Hosted by Marcus Mizelle
• 1:27 J.M. HARPER, dir. of ‘Soul Patrol’ at the Sundance Film Festival

Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:56)
Documentary filmmaker and editor J.M. Harper discusses Soul Patrol, his new Sundance documentary, about his six-year journey telling the story of the first black special operations unit in Vietnam. What began with reading Eddie Manuel's book grew into years of weekly conversations, slow trust building, and eventual access to never-before-seen Super 8 footage and photographs shot by the soldiers themselves. Harper also reflects on how his work editing Genius, a Kanye trilogy,

sharpen his instincts around character, structure, and letting footage reveal meaning over time. We also talk about point of view and theme as the engine of a film, not ideas layered on afterwards.

J.M. frames Soul Patrol around a central question, whether speaking openly about acts committed in war, long buried and rarely acknowledged, offer any form of healing.

can confront violence without glamorizing it, and the ethical tension of rendering horrific experiences with clarity, restraint, and intention.

He reflects on editing as discovery, assembling a team of editors with different strengths, and shaping a film that moves between memory, present-day reckoning, and historical record.

Marcus Mizelle (02:02)
How you doing? Are you excited for Sundance? It's like two weeks away.

J.M. Harper (02:05)
I am. Um, leaving in, yeah, a little less than a week. Premieres next Sunday. So I'm looking forward to it. Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (02:12)
This

is your second time in Sundance?

J.M. Harper (02:14)
Yeah, this is my second time as a director. I've had, two or three films ⁓ there previously as an editor, but this is my second time as a director. ⁓ if you hear a baby.

Marcus Mizelle (02:28)
No worries, I thought it was a dog next door, because the dog next

door loves to chime in right when I push record on this thing, it's funny. No, no, no, wait, you got a baby back there then. Let's go, okay. Congrats. Is it your first baby? Just like Sundance, dang, as a director. Nice, yeah, I got a six-year-old right here.

J.M. Harper (02:34)
Okay, gotcha, no, it's just... My newborn, yeah, yeah, it's that time. ⁓ Thank you, thank you. No, it's my second. I have a four-year-old daughter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

⁓ great, ⁓ cute, cute, yeah, they're the best, right?

Marcus Mizelle (02:54)
Man, yeah, that

just flashback here in that ⁓ here in the crying.

J.M. Harper (02:59)
Yeah, yeah,

he's gonna chime in every now and then. Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (03:04)
No, no, no, no worries. That's good. That's good. Good energy. All right, cool.

So ⁓

as a filmmaker. What was that?

J.M. Harper (03:12)
Yeah, well, I actually answered a Craigslist ad after I graduated college. This was around 2009, 2010 when I answered the ad. Just somebody asking.

if anyone would go shoot a youth culture documentary in West Africa and ⁓ no pay or anything, but before I knew it, I was on a plane flying ⁓ to Senegal and shooting for 60 days at the public university there with a bunch of the students. There was a student revolt going on. And the second day we were there, there was tear gas, the military. ⁓

sort of invaded the university to quell everything. We just started talking to people and so that was my first experience at documentary and ⁓ leaving that experience I knew ⁓ that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life so that's kind how I got into it.

Marcus Mizelle (04:14)
Nice. And you edited Genius, huh? Love that one. Love that one. How'd you get involved with that? How'd that work out?

J.M. Harper (04:16)
That's right, Yeah.

So Kuti and Chike, ⁓ the directors of the film, I had cut two features for them before that, and they had always sort of mentioned here and there that they had kind of grown up with Kanye ⁓ and had filmed him. And I was always like, yeah, cool. ⁓ But it wasn't until the pandemic happened that ⁓ Kuti contacted me and he just had this duffel bag full of DV tapes. And I was the

one to see many of them in 25 years, 20 years. And so myself and my co-editor, Max Allman, he and I just sort of powered through it. that was our experience during the pandemic, was just sitting, just being with Kanye. Yeah, was well timed and that project changed my life in many ways. yeah, cutting that was a real adventure.

Marcus Mizelle (05:07)
Not a bad, not a bad way to do it, I guess.

J.M. Harper (05:21)
you know, when it hit the world, was, I think, a perspective on him that had never before been seen. So it was a special experience. Thank you. Appreciate that. Appreciate that.

Marcus Mizelle (05:27)
for sure, for sure. And the editing was a standout ⁓ aspect for sure. Yeah. Nice, nice, nice. I see

here that you studied German media theory, is that correct?

J.M. Harper (05:37)
Yeah, that's what said. didn't study film. I studied German. Yeah, yeah, I was studying a lot of like German Jewish thinkers who had been exiled from Germany in the thirties and basically moved all moved to not all of them, but many of them moved to Los Angeles, moved to Hollywood about.

Marcus Mizelle (05:40)
Interesting.

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

J.M. Harper (05:57)
the same kind of methods of kind of cultural control that they saw in Hitler's Germany, they were seeing in America, but it was a totally different way of controlling people through movies, music, and advertising. And so that's what they writing about mostly, and that's what I studied.

Marcus Mizelle (06:16)
German film in general, it's such an interesting thing that I think maybe a lot of American filmmakers, well, I'll just say, I'll speak for myself. I wasn't thinking much about until I kind of stumbled upon and then like got really kind of obsessed with the history and with the new German cinema and all this. mean, what a heavy hand they've had in just filmmaking in general, right? Film language and I mean, you

J.M. Harper (06:39)
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

Marcus Mizelle (06:41)
the

Fritz Langs of the world. Fritz Lang, mean, damn, like, sci-fi, film noir, this dude contributed so much, the style of shooting.

J.M. Harper (06:44)
Right.

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah, they... Even, you know, even some of the, let's say, the complicated, to say the least, filmmakers like Lady Reif and Stahl, ⁓ you know, they brought a lot of the challenges of film and documentary to the forefront ⁓ because you can make beautiful images about really horrific things. And... ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (07:13)
Mmm.

J.M. Harper (07:14)
And so, I mean, that was part of the journey of making Soul Patrol 2, you know, when people get to see it. ⁓ Just, you know, if you're...

Ed, the main character in the film, is a machine gunner, so he's on this M60 machine gun. They called it the Pig. was incredibly heavy. And I wanted to express that one of the moments in the film, they come into an ambush, or they're ambushed, to Ed it felt like hours, but the ambush probably only lasted for minutes, but I decided to shoot it in super slow motion at, know, 1,000 frames a second.

Marcus Mizelle (07:52)
Hmm.

J.M. Harper (07:53)
to

really slow that experience down and to just to see the bullet exit the gun, to see the shell, the casing just turning at a thousand feet per second to really get a sense of what it felt like in the moment. That's what I mean by you sort of filming ultimately horrific things the way that gun tears somebody apart, but filming it in a way that that frankly can look quite beautiful and stunning and sublime. It's really, yeah, it's one of the powers of

Marcus Mizelle (08:12)
Sure.

J.M. Harper (08:23)
film but yeah the Germans definitely definitely those those films you watch and all these like media theoretical things really come rise to the to the top.

Marcus Mizelle (08:35)
The juxtaposition is just ironic, I guess, yeah, which works for film. And that was part of a reenactment for Soul Patrol.

J.M. Harper (08:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we actually shot in the jungle in South Carolina. I'm not sure where are you exactly? ⁓ OK. OK. All right, great. You might know that. And so in South Carolina, there's this island called Frip Island. It's like in the Huntington State Park area. a massive jungle. Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (08:46)
Okay. I'm from North Carolina. I live in LA now, but I'm from North Carolina and I was there this past weekend. Yeah.

I don't actually. mean, let me, is it near Charleston

at all?

J.M. Harper (09:04)
⁓ It's near, ⁓ it's a drive from Charleston, a few hours from Charleston. ⁓ But it's where they shot all the Vietnam scenes in Forrest Gump. so we originally, we were going to shoot in ⁓ Thailand, but then basically we realized that there's this jungle in our backyard.

Marcus Mizelle (09:11)
wow.

Okay.

Okay, it's near Hilton Head, okay,

yeah, yeah.

J.M. Harper (09:26)
Yeah,

that's right. And it just so happens to be very close to the cemetery in ⁓ Buford or Beaufort where one of the guys is buried.

Marcus Mizelle (09:35)
I don't

know how they pronounce that one in South Carolina. We got a Beaufort in North Carolina. Depends. But either way, I know the area. Carolinas are beautiful.

J.M. Harper (09:39)
I've heard it both ways. okay. Okay. Okay. Maybe. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It was, ⁓ it was pretty, yeah. A wild and very difficult experience shooting in the jungle. ⁓ and you know, battling the tides coming in and straining us on the island. was, ⁓ was ⁓ just torrential rain. It was, ⁓ yeah, it was, it was difficult, but we, but we, I think we came out with some pretty staggering images.

Marcus Mizelle (10:07)
Soul Patrol, Wars first black special ops to share their untold story, revealing hidden military history and exploring whether confronting the past can heal old wounds. You're premiering at Sundance January 25th.

yeah man, it looks good. So is this film, comprised of ⁓ past archival footage with new footage shot by you?

J.M. Harper (10:27)
Yeah, you know, like teenagers these days, really anybody would run around with your phone and just kind of record everything. So these guys back back then, the Super 8 format was relatively new. So they had these handheld Super 8 formats that they would get and just record each other. And then they had they had cameras. This specific unit were giving cameras for their surveillance work. They'd pick up cameras and they just they'd film each other the same way that you and I might might film our friends or teens like they were.

They were, you know, 18, 19, some of them 17 years old. And so they were just, you know, sometimes goofing around, sometimes, you know, recording each other. And we're just really extremely lucky that one of them held on to that footage and he had these film, Super 8 film reels that had not been digitized. so we got those. then, you know, as soon as we had scanned them, we were like, oh my God, we had something incredible here. So we have that.

Marcus Mizelle (11:06)
Wow.

my gosh, could only imagine.

J.M. Harper (11:27)
then we have just hundreds, thousands of photos that they took of each other. And so that archival is the basis of the film. It's just never before been seen. yeah, the specific unit, so they were called LERPs, long-raised patrol. So they would go out in teams of five or six, for five or six days at a time, small teams. They were sort of the beginning of this special operations style of warfare.

Marcus Mizelle (11:44)
Mm-hmm.

J.M. Harper (11:55)
documented themselves in this way, but they're not very well known at all. Eventually they were folded into the Rangers, they existed. JFK kind of instigated the creation of this unit, and they existed for this short period of time. So yeah, that's what the story's about, the long-range patrol.

Marcus Mizelle (11:59)
Mm.

Wow, so when you saw this footage, like, were you pretty much immediately like, ⁓ boy, there's so much good stuff here.

J.M. Harper (12:19)
You know, I didn't even know the footage existed. It's pretty late in the journey. I just was talking to a lot of guys, Long Range Patrol LRP, they call them LRPs. So I was just talking to these LRPs, as many of them as I could, who Ed would introduce me to.

So Eddie Manuel wrote the book Soul Patrol. I read the book, got in touch with him and just started talking to him on phone calls over the course of six years. just talked to him basically weekly for hours at a time and just earned his trust over those years until he started introducing me to his veteran friends and that circle started to widen.

Marcus Mizelle (12:51)
I love

that. So, okay, so you read the book and then you took it upon yourself to say, wanna do a documentary on this book. I love that so much. You sought it out. just kind of came to you and said, hey, do you wanna direct this? You were like, nah, you manifested, you forced it.

J.M. Harper (12:56)
Exactly, that's right.

No.

No, I

did this to myself. It was hard. a long journey. But for Ed, it was harder. He had to live it. And being 18, 19 years old in Vietnam was no joke.

Marcus Mizelle (13:09)
Haha.

I got two questions. how do you know when, because I asked myself the same question. How do you know when you are, when you've found that next project? Like I have to do a documentary on this. Because sometimes I feel like you can be lukewarm, you can be really hot on something and then that could go away and you could have something that's like, my God, I'd be jealous if I didn't make this movie. For you, how do you know?

J.M. Harper (13:43)
Yeah.

Well, that's a great question. I think you have to have a personal angle in if you don't if you don't have a personal.

point of view, then you don't have it. shouldn't do it, really. Point of view is everything. ⁓ that means point of view gives you access to a theme, which is basically a statement that can be disagreed with. ⁓ so for example, Spielberg, somebody might look at the film, ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (13:59)
Mmm.

J.M. Harper (14:23)
being a brothers, but. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (14:26)
Schindler's List?

J.M. Harper (14:27)
No, not Shindel's, that's why I'm just completely blanking out. The war film with Matt Damon with... ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (14:35)
Saving

right, Nice.

J.M. Harper (14:36)
Yeah, Saving Private Ryan.

So that film, you might say it's about brotherhood or patriotism or any these things, but those things aren't themes. Those are just kind of concepts. For Spielberg, the theme of that film was, is it possible to keep your dignity while doing totally undignified things, i.e. killing another human being. And so that theme is kind of expressed throughout the film.

Marcus Mizelle (14:55)
Hmm.

that

thematic question, that right kind of thing. Yeah.

J.M. Harper (15:03)
Exactly. And it's in every scene,

it's a good back and watch, it's fascinating. that having a point of view saying like, yes, I think you can keep your dignity while killing other people. ⁓ The characters ask that question. Some of them think yes, some of them think no. Like even the lead character, he's not telling anybody that he was a school teacher because he's trying to hold on to that. ⁓ Exactly.

Marcus Mizelle (15:07)
Nice.

It's like the soul of the movie really. Yeah. Even if it's

such a wonderful magic trick in a way. I think about the first time I watched Saving Private Ryan and how there's our past film, one of them, and how I'm not thinking in terms of that or any of these past great films, you know, as far as why do care so much? But these are the wonderful ingredients, right, that make you feel.

J.M. Harper (15:38)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Mizelle (15:50)
It's like a thread that you feel throughout and it gives you this fulfillment whenever you get to the end of the film.

J.M. Harper (15:50)
Right. Right, right, right.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

I like to call it a story engine. so really figuring out that question that keeps getting asked throughout the film and then answered until ultimately the lead character comes to terms with it. Usually they're trying to refuse what that theme is. And then that moment you get that you're talking about is when they come to terms with it. They accept the theme that they've been rejecting the entire film. And that produces this incredible emotion usually. ⁓ In good films, it does, yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (16:23)
What is

the thematic question for Soul Patrol?

J.M. Harper (16:29)
Yeah, I struggled with that for a long time. ⁓

But ultimately, ⁓ it came down to this fact that for me, it's the people who have been asked to do the most difficult, sometimes horrendous things. we, as a society, with these guys, I mean, they were assassins, period. ⁓ And in a moment ⁓ where we live in this age of AI and we're always on our phones and we're so kind of separated from each other,

in society and like forced into these silos, it's very hard for us to kind of recognize what is really human anymore. Because there's so many kind of proxies of human and open AI and all these things that are kind of like quasi-human or we're social. Exactly, yeah. So basically we're social creatures.

Marcus Mizelle (17:18)
Scary time.

J.M. Harper (17:23)
but we're being kind of fragmented into these fake experiences of connection. And so it's really important for us these days to hear stories from people about what humanity really is, what the limits of it are, and when do we cross that threshold, what is inhumane. we have to, interestingly enough, think look to some of the people who've been anointed with, and I say anointed, use that in the sense of like we put the kind of mantle of killing and death on them as soldiers.

Marcus Mizelle (17:27)
Mm.

J.M. Harper (17:53)
and as a society we send them out to go and kill on our behalf and it's those people I think who then test the limits of what it means to be a human and come back and report. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (18:05)
Mm.

Mm.

J.M. Harper (18:06)
losing that humanity often. ⁓ And so the central question at the core of the doc is whether speaking about those experiences of doing that, that they've been silent about for half a century, whether that would bring healing, whether reckoning with that truth and sharing that truth would bring healing rather than keeping it inside, which they'd done for so many years. And the doc, I think, is a proof of that question. Does it bring healing or doesn't it? ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (18:08)
Mm Yeah.

Got

you. Did you go and interview the ones that were still alive? Yeah. Because I haven't had a chance to see it.

J.M. Harper (18:38)
Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. yeah,

yeah. So I put on a reunion where I brought the guys back together, of, and reunited the team for one last time. So it was their final reunion. And ⁓ you'll see in the film. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (18:46)
Mm-hmm.

J.M. Harper (18:56)
without spoiling it what happens, but it is truly the final reunion in the sense that ⁓ I'll just say, an event like that can never happen again. But fortunately we were there to capture it when it did.

Marcus Mizelle (19:11)
time capsule. Yeah, that's what's so amazing

about documentaries. Let's gush about documentaries real quick, because I'm in love with them. I was making fiction for a micro budget fiction and then I'm like, wait a minute, I got a little taste of documentaries and it's been documentaries ever since. just ⁓ the, there's such a wonderful like peripheral gain to it all in so many ways where I, know, for example, if I'm going in and I want to make a documentary similar to how you pursued this, sounds like, which is like I, the last documentary, the one I'm doing.

J.M. Harper (19:15)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (19:40)
It's about private and private investigator. And I'm like, where is the cool documentary, verite documentary following around a private investigator in Los Angeles? I wanna make that. So I emailed every private investigator in LA County. And the idea was to be able to have someone that I could just grab my camera bag and just go to, know, whenever. And then so anyways, that led to finding my guy and... ⁓

J.M. Harper (19:48)
Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, right, right.

Marcus Mizelle (20:04)
And it's just been, it's not only just of course having something fun to do, but like, let's find what is the real point here, you know, as far as what are the thematic questions here, et cetera. And I guess I'll just share that it seems like I have subconsciously, my stuff has always seems to be about like colorful underdog stories up against, you know, oppressive systems.

J.M. Harper (20:11)
Red. Red.

Exactly.

Marcus Mizelle (20:28)
But like subconsciously that then comes out to the forefront. So I guess so therapeutic I found something that I needed to say and I just have this like, it's like journal entry where you learn about yourself after you've done the act of writing it down or filming.

J.M. Harper (20:39)
Right.

Right,

right.

Marcus Mizelle (20:43)
And

so with docs for me, it's not just a career or something fun to do, but like it's therapy, it's so fulfilling. And I don't know, there's just so much peripheral gain as far as ⁓ you can also capture things in a moment in time, which goes back to, you're talking about the reunion that you put together, which is an amazing thing. You capture it in that time and it's there forever. And then you apply these cinematic techniques or whatever.

J.M. Harper (20:50)
We're in.

right

Marcus Mizelle (21:12)
to it and it's just, it's magic. It's crazy, so.

J.M. Harper (21:15)
Yeah, yeah, it's a, does take, like you say, it takes, it takes time to find what that theme is. Sometimes, sometimes you have to find it in the edit, you know, you can't, you can't always set out with what that idea is. You have to just get into it and then it reveals.

Marcus Mizelle (21:29)
You gotta feel it, you

gotta dance with it, you gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them.

J.M. Harper (21:35)
That's true. That's absolutely true. Yeah. It's a long journey to, you know, average doc probably takes five years to make. you know, that's five. Yeah, that's the expectation I've learned over the years. I don't know who told me that, but they were accurate. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (21:36)
Yeah.

Okay. Is it five? Okay, yeah. Yeah, sure.

seems to be about right. I'm on my third

one, fourth one now, and this one's five years in now as of this month, I think.

J.M. Harper (21:56)
Okay.

Yeah,

and you're right on target, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a journey. It's a journey.

Marcus Mizelle (22:02)
Yeah. Well, I got spoiled

because I did one that took like two years from start to finish. I'm this is great.

J.M. Harper (22:08)
Yeah, yeah, sometimes

you get lucky. Sometimes you get lucky, yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (22:12)
Yeah, but so okay, so let's talk about Soul Patrol and like the production of it, more of the production of it. kind of how did this like two part question, what was kind of the beginning of the production? What were the first few things you did to kind of just jumpstart it, you know, get it out of your head and on, you know, on the, in camera and then also ⁓ kind of pair into just like what was kind of the most difficult part maybe that you had to experience during production.

J.M. Harper (22:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Well, we started, ⁓

We started back in 2022 just recording Ed doing a kind of master interview for a few days and then took that, used that to make a sizzle. And then it took a few years to put together financing to be able to do the reunion and then shooting that and then kind of taking that into the edit. And then we drew storyboards for the adaptations, the stories from the book that we wanted to shoot because obviously they didn't shoot in the, they were filling themselves everywhere.

where they were fighting because they were the long-range patrol that had to be dead silent. you out in the field that's where you you ⁓ you're if you get seen you're that usually means you're gonna get killed ⁓ and so these guys were were ⁓ incredibly quiet and so there's no possibility of filming themselves out there so we had to shoot that so we storyboarded all of those ⁓ sequences and then you know actually going out and shooting them

Marcus Mizelle (23:26)
Hmm.

J.M. Harper (23:42)
the cast together to go and then just being as close as we could to the details and the production design and down to the know every detail of the uniforms and the grenades they wore not just what they wore but where they wore it where were the nice position these guys would tape the tops of their their rifle barrels so that things wouldn't get inside of it they'd tape down the grenade pins that didn't get caught on an elephant grass they'd take their foods to keep the leeches out there's

Marcus Mizelle (23:47)
you

Hmm.

tricks of the trade.

J.M. Harper (24:11)
you know, all these on the wall was taped to dog tags that didn't make noise. So we had to get all those details right because it was important that when the guys watched it, we wanted them to see themselves and they hear like meticulously about details like that. So that was a huge amount of research that went into that.

Marcus Mizelle (24:21)
Damn.

Yeah. Well,

can I ask you too? So it's given me kind of vibes to Saving Private Ryan again, where, you know, veterans were talking.

J.M. Harper (24:35)
Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (24:39)
talk about the moment where you went from the idea and the prep and the development, guess, and then into what did the financing look like? Who did you bring on? How did that get into bringing it to life?

J.M. Harper (24:48)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean.

I basically, did what they say don't do, which is to put your own own money into it. I mean, it was basically, it was a partnership between myself and park pictures who, who I direct with it's Lance, Lance accords production company, working with my fantastic producer, Sam Bisbee and his partner, Danielle Matthew. And basically just, you know, just moving the ball forward, you know, 10 yards at a time kind of thing. by the time we got a couple of fellowships that were incredibly helpful, ⁓ working with

Marcus Mizelle (24:56)
yeah, nice.

Mm-hmm.

Nice.

J.M. Harper (25:22)
Concordia, were ⁓ just absolutely, absolutely. ⁓

wouldn't trade them for the world. They were early believers in the project. So we got some grant funding from them. Film Independent, we got some grant funding for. And then as the thing just kind of built and the edits started coming together, we could show clips and such. And ⁓ we were fortunate to be nominated for the Ken Burns Library of Congress, ⁓ David Levine Prize. And then we won a fellowship with them as well. ⁓ And so we, you know, as you, we had to kind of get the train moving.

Marcus Mizelle (25:36)
Nice.

A word.

J.M. Harper (25:59)
and then gradually people.

Marcus Mizelle (25:59)
Yeah. Did you have

the sizzle before the Concordia, before the grants? Okay. So that, yeah, you did self financing to get the sizzle and then from there, yeah, okay. Yeah.

J.M. Harper (26:03)
Yeah, we made the sizzle. Yeah, yeah, because...

Yeah, the

original idea was that we would take it out and try to get the money for it before we made it. And when that didn't pan out, we just knew there was a time we lost one of the vets. One of them died. And at that moment, Ed called me and he told me that he died. And I knew that, it's now or never. And so we just had to find a way to do it. And just went out and shot what we could while we could. And then as you kind of push your will into these things,

Marcus Mizelle (26:20)
Okay.

Got you.

Mmm.

J.M. Harper (26:38)
know the world starts kind of moving in your favor that's how yeah you gotta you gotta push really hard you gotta make it happen yeah

Marcus Mizelle (26:41)
That's where you do have to push instead of chill, right? A little bit sometimes. Yeah, this this shifting of gears constantly.

But then, and the sizzle, I love the sizzle process. It's such a fun checkpoint, initial checkpoint to try to get, well, it can't be fun. But you know, it's just as far as like, okay, cool, no matter what, we're gonna have this thing that we can see and hold and hear, right? And kind of, and you learn what you're trying to do more so too, right? By ironing out the kinks, yeah.

J.M. Harper (26:54)
Yeah, true. Yeah.

Right.

Right. Yeah,

that's true. Yeah. I liked it even while we shooting. Somebody said, who is it?

director was that, he said that when he's shooting, he's always thinking about the trailer. It's Tom Cruise and his directing partner, now, the guy, Chris McCrory. Yeah, they're always thinking about the trailer when they're making the film. And so I bring that thought into it sometimes, which is for us to sizzle more often than the trailer. But what are going to be the hallmark moments of the really memorable visual moments?

Marcus Mizelle (27:20)
McHugh. yeah.

Interesting.

Because it's such a crossing of the threshold as a filmmaker too, because you do understand more so what you're doing and like the bigger, like you just said, bigger points.

J.M. Harper (27:45)
Yeah, that's true. That's

true. Yeah, what is the story? know, like that question and sizzle.

Marcus Mizelle (27:48)
Yeah, nice. Okay,

so production, the backend of production or any other notable ⁓ moments that you could, that you wanna share. ⁓

J.M. Harper (27:57)
Yeah, mean,

we you'll see in the film, we shot in a grocery store with with all the guys because I mean, the film we never mentioned, we never say the term PTSD, but most of these guys suffer from it and they get revisited by the past on some of them a daily basis. And so I had the thought to set one of the scenes to really set the entire film in a grocery store with Ed seeing his past self and in that trigger happening. And so we returned to the grocery store.

Marcus Mizelle (28:12)
well.

wow.

J.M. Harper (28:27)
over and over, these guys, their 19 year old selves are walking around that grocery store. the whole film is kind of Ed's encounter with himself in this modern day environment. And a lot of these guys, they, they, that pass revisiting is a thing. that to answer your question about what made it difficult, we went into this grocery store with, you know, we've got five guys with, with, ⁓ 16s with a machine gun, with grenade launcher and real, like these, you know, we had an armorer and like, but these were

were, some of the weapons were operational. Blank firing, but operational.

Marcus Mizelle (29:00)
Yeah.

J.M. Harper (29:06)
got to the grocery store. couldn't afford to shut down the whole grocery store, but we had kind of made a deal to shut down part of it. And then all of sudden, all these cop cars start pulling up after our crew loaded in. And long story short, the chief of police ⁓ was ⁓ shutting us down before we'd even shot a frame. What was like the most, maybe the most essential scene of the film. And then my producer, Lane, bless his soul.

Marcus Mizelle (29:17)
wow.

Damn.

J.M. Harper (29:37)
convince them to let us shoot there. We had to pay more money to clear out the whole grocery store. Their argument was that in South Carolina, if somebody walks by the grocery store, looks in the window, sees a bunch of people carrying guns, they're probably carrying, they're gonna run in there, be a hero, and actually start shooting people. And so, yeah, exactly. That was a fair, it was a fair conclusion.

Marcus Mizelle (29:52)
my goodness, Don't tread on me, man. Shoot, yeah. South Carolina, whoo.

Yeah, the South.

J.M. Harper (30:01)
So basically,

by hook or by crook, we ended up clearing out the entire grocery store and getting a few hours to shoot what became just the most, I think, magnificent beginning and end of the film. That was pretty harrowing. We ran into so many challenges, but I thought we weren't going to get that one. And then when we did, was a massive relief, because you'll see that opens the film and closes the film.

Marcus Mizelle (30:16)
Yeah.

That's AM,

yeah. I'm glad you didn't get any over reactors. That AM is crazy. That's a cool device too. I love that story device as far as it reminds me a little bit. It reminds me of the device in Saving Private Ryan where he's standing by the grave with the whole kind of morphing. It gives you this anchor, right? And this memoir kind of.

J.M. Harper (30:32)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. They got there in time to stop that from happening.

Yeah, yeah.

yeah, and they kind of go back in time. Yeah,

Right.

Marcus Mizelle (30:56)
genre beat, genre aspect, yeah, which is powerful.

J.M. Harper (30:59)
Yeah,

Back to what we were talking about with point of view, all of sudden you know whose perspective is the film being told from. And it's deceptive too. It's a really beautiful way they do that. And they have him turning into basically the wrong character. It's not really the Tom Hanks character.

Marcus Mizelle (31:19)
Right, ⁓ yeah.

J.M. Harper (31:20)
And so it's a little bit of a bait, not a bait and switch, a, you know, a twist. sets up this beautiful twist where you realize when the Tom spoiler alert, but when the Tom Hanks character dies in the end, you realize that, yeah, you realize that, uh, yeah, okay. It's not, it's not actually told from that perspective, but they, but then he sees himself mirrored in that person, you know, um, or he hopes that his life was, was kind of a completion of what the Tom Hanks character could not do. And all of that is in that image.

Marcus Mizelle (31:23)
Wist.

if you haven't seen it.

Yeah.

J.M. Harper (31:50)
That's where you see Spielberg as, know, that's what makes it a great film. It probably happened in the edit too, I that kind of move. You never know where that was created, but that was, you know, that was everything.

Marcus Mizelle (31:53)
Gilbert is a bad boy. He's so bad.

sure.

So the grocery store, that's just a place where you would kind of, you would say to yourself, maybe this is like a common everyday place where you would tend to daydream as anyone, kind of.

J.M. Harper (32:13)
Well,

Well,

grocery store is a very specific place. Some of the vets who are in the dock, they know, so they walk into the grocery store, it seems empty, but they get to the end and the checkout line is there and there's a crowd of people. They know they got to set down that basket and walk out because the crowd is a trigger point. ⁓ They walk into a restaurant, they know they got to sit at the table with their back to the wall. Still, this is 50 years later. The grocery store, I saw a clip online of an Iraq war veteran who just had his hand in his

shape of a gun like that and kind of up against a car. it was clip from this reality TV show, kind of like a cop's show. And they showed up and he's in his head, he's in Iraq and he's looking down range. And so he's got, and they're trying to talk him out of, talk them back to our reality. But he's, he's just there. And it wasn't until a cop who was a veteran came by and told him, you know, like the sector's clear, it's safe. That he, kind of gradually work him out of it. So I, that.

really stuck with me and that was outside of this kind of strip mall grocery store and I thought I want to know what that felt like and I wanted to pick that kind of subjective experience. What does it feel like to be in his head and think you're there and that's why I decided to put it in the grocery store as a combination of those things.

Marcus Mizelle (33:26)
.

It's

like they're locked into the survival mode. Like, yeesh, yeah.

J.M. Harper (33:32)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they're

way back there. Most of these guys, these guys are like 77 years old, 78 years old that we talked to, but they're still 19 in their head. They're still, you know, they'll tell you they're still in Vietnam.

Marcus Mizelle (33:40)
Dang.

As far as building that relationship with these veterans, ⁓ documentaries involve deep trust with the subjects, especially something like this. What did that look like as far as, you have to warm up to them? Were they open from the beginning or what?

J.M. Harper (33:51)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, it

was, you know, six years of...

⁓ Every week on the phone for hours like that that that earned trust because Ed had wrote the book soul patrol But you know, it was basically it detailed the mission kind of the mission and mission process But there was so much more beyond that that had a massive like where was his head, know that psyche of that that emotional Transformation all that came through the phone calls and then after several years after I'd earned his trust He'd say I think you need to talk to this person and you call him

up. I remember one guy I talked to and it was like he had just walked out of the jungle talking to him. And you know, he's probably in his early seventies by that point. And you see how these guys, they left a part of themselves in Vietnam and

they still feel connected to that person. so that took the trust of just like showing up, being there, listening consistently and saying, I'm not here just to kind of like grab a story and go direct something that I wanna do. It's about, I wanna get to know you, I wanna understand you. And only then can a film emerge from that understanding. But the understanding takes time. can't just, they used to call these, late in the war, these lieutenants would come in

Marcus Mizelle (35:12)
It ain't easy.

J.M. Harper (35:18)
who had never been, who had never fought before, but had just been trained as lieutenants. So they were the ones in command, but they used to call them shake and bake because they just, you know, shake, shake them bake them and then you get like, like a quick, a readymade meal. Um, those guys were, would consistently get them killed. And so I say that to say, you can't, you can't kind of microwave the process. It's going to take the time that it takes since the marathon.

Marcus Mizelle (35:29)
Yeah.

my god.

Nice tie-in. Yeah, that's crazy. I would be infuriated if that were me with somebody coming in You've seen that character and it's quite a bit of films, too I feel like as far as lieutenant wake up or like come on. We're going this way. Yeah

J.M. Harper (35:44)
Yeah, yeah, they were. They were. Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Exactly. Yeah.

They know, listen to the sergeant. Like the sergeant is the guy who's usually, who's been there for a while. He's not, he's not a commissioned officer, but he's, he's, you know, below, below the lieutenant. But

what knows what's going on. And so the smart lieutenants would listen to the sergeant. But this, I should say that these LERPs, they had a really unique structure where they didn't have any lieutenants. They only had a colonel. So they had the spec force and sergeants, and then they had one colonel, and then they reported directly to the Pentagon. So it was a very special, special. ⁓ Yeah, I think, I hope you enjoy it. Yeah, it's a...

Marcus Mizelle (36:20)
Okay.

I'm excited to see this film.

I'm sure I will. Okay,

so the edit, the post-production process, taking the footage. I'm sure you were editing as you were filming and stuff. But I mean, I don't know. How did it come together? How did it shape up? guess highlights and maybe a challenge that you learned from?

J.M. Harper (36:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean

Well, we worked with the Library of Congress, so we had a bunch of footage there, and then we'd gradually get that footage in from the vets. That's when it really started really activating and then filming the reunion. So we had the reunion, we had all these individual interviews with the guys, we had the archival footage, and then we knew we were going to shoot the adaptations, which we storyboarded. So we cut the whole film with the storyboards, so we could have a complete film. And then started doing like test screenings with that and kind of refining from there, then went out and shot the adaptations and brought those and cut that.

Marcus Mizelle (36:50)
That's so cool.

time.

J.M. Harper (37:17)
And so, ⁓ yeah, my editor, Byron Leone, cut most of it. And then I hopped in and cut and then brought on two other editors, Niles Howard and Gabriella Tessitore. But every, when you're an editor, you just know that every editor has a different quality and they have different personality. And sometimes you need three different or four different, ⁓ you know, skill sets to combine into one really powerful, you know, four.

Marcus Mizelle (37:23)
Hmm.

Totally.

For sure. Some people are good

at macro, some people are good at micro, some people are good at like, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, like fast cutting stuff, right?

J.M. Harper (37:49)
True. Yeah. Some people

are better stories and people are better style. ⁓ and rather than force one person to be everything, you know, sometimes it's best to lean into the qualities that they haven't really let them be themselves in that way that they're great, you know. Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (37:54)
Yep, yep.

And you're an editor, but when you direct

your projects, you find that it's very smart to, or do you find it's better that you need, you don't edit your own stuff that you direct. I mean, I'm sure you do editing, but like you bring on a team.

J.M. Harper (38:14)
I end up,

like, can't, I can't kind of like, I can't keep from not editing it, but it is very, it's impossible. It would be impossible to, not impossible, it just take forever. It would have been 10 years instead of five to cut it yourself. And you want to invite the creativity of strong editors into the fold. They'll see things that you don't. They'll restructure the film. had Gabby, Gabby, one of the editors she cut, or was one of the editors on one of my previous films. And she accidentally, when she came on board, the film had been cutting for like six months, but

Marcus Mizelle (38:26)
Right.

J.M. Harper (38:44)
she watched it in the wrong order accidentally, just the way that we had the acts separated. And I think that caused an idea in her head to restructure the whole film, which we did and it worked way better. And so yeah, just, yeah, exactly. So, you you never know what other people will see. it's, I think.

Marcus Mizelle (38:57)
Love that happy accident.

I just saw something

yesterday on Instagram, so it must be true. Scorsese being interviewed. Somebody was interviewing him about the taxi driver scene. You talking to me? And the only reason they got that shot is because they were being rushed out of the location and they had like five minutes and I'm gonna butcher this story. It was pretty much like a De Niro just did it on the spot. You talking to me? Talking to me? And it was like because of that situation of like them having to get out.

J.M. Harper (39:19)
Really? They did it as a warner because of that?

I'm not surprised. Yeah, I'm not surprised. Yeah, that film at that point in his career, yeah, he was still on the way to being who he is today. ⁓ Yeah, that's wonderful. The best things happen that way. You're just forced to make the decision and you make the right one on instinct. I love that.

Marcus Mizelle (39:31)
I love that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

And a lot of times,

yeah, because we have this sense sometimes that control is the thing that needs to be focused, right? But a lot of times control or creating something from your brain is not necessarily the best thing, right? lot of the answers are just right there in front of you and you just need to like notice them.

J.M. Harper (40:05)
Yeah, that's, I think that's true. It takes, it's weird. takes, it takes like an incredible amount of control, but also like when I'm editing, I'll often like you want to pull clip in, I'll throw it in as opposed to just like placing it. I'll throw it in and see how that plays down without having total control over where it has landed. And often that'll create an opportunity that I wouldn't have, you know, and maybe sometimes it's right. Sometimes I just move it to where I wanted it, but those, you've got to force those accidents, but then

Marcus Mizelle (40:25)
Mmm.

Yeah, that's cool.

J.M. Harper (40:34)
and have total control over the process of that. then so there's a, you know, it's two, it's got two sides. Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (40:37)
Yeah It

totally balanced double-edged sword da da da that's that's a cool little extra little mind tricks little exercises little things that you can kind of like Yeah, yeah, yeah nice cool. Okay, so Sundance What are you looking forward to the most besides of course just sharing this to a big audience I mean last last Park City ⁓ Yeah, what do you

J.M. Harper (40:47)
Yeah, you have to lose control a little bit. You've to force it in there. Yeah.

Yeah,

I think that's really special to have a film in competition for the last Park City Sundance. Honestly, I just want to in the guys, the vets who are there to ⁓ get that applause. I want them to have the welcome home that they never got. I think that this is one of the only times I'll be able to get that. That's what I want the most out of that experience.

Marcus Mizelle (41:08)
Totally.

That's cool.

Nice.

That's great. What does your preparation look like for Sundance? You got your publicist, you got your sales, what's going on?

J.M. Harper (41:32)
You know, you have your team because

you want to get the film distributed. you know, you have your team of people on the PR side and sales side and, ⁓ you know, and then your whole crew who haven't seen the film, but they gave so much of their blood, sweat and tears to it. So having them there just for the specialness of that experience. so, ⁓ yeah, preparation is just like and getting the film done. Like we're doing captions now. We just finished our DCP, like we're right up to the last minute. So you're still watching the film.

Marcus Mizelle (42:01)
Mm-hmm.

J.M. Harper (42:02)
over and over again and making these tiny tweak catching errors. So that's what this last stage is like. Yeah. Yeah.

Marcus Mizelle (42:07)
marathon. Where are you screening?

What venue are you screening?

J.M. Harper (42:10)
We are screening ⁓ on the 25th at, that's a great question, at the Ray. And then we play, we have five other screenings. I think we're all sold out except for ⁓ two screenings, which I haven't checked since yesterday. It's gonna be good. think people are really eager to see the film and as a filmmaker, that's what you want. I'm in Brooklyn, I'm in Brooklyn.

Marcus Mizelle (42:36)
hell yeah. Where are you located by the way? You're okay

cool nice.

you doing next? What you doing now slash next? What's up for you?

J.M. Harper (42:44)
Right now I'm working on a three-part documentary series for Netflix about People's Temple, Jim Jones. So the, Jones Town massacre. Yeah. And so I'm finishing that up actually. I'm going to sort of deliver that in February or March. then sort of, yeah, have feelers out with a couple of different things for what's next, but yeah, I'm really attracted to these military stories, stories that haven't been told, you know.

Marcus Mizelle (42:51)
⁓ some cult stuff. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

J.M. Harper (43:14)
And so I'm talking with a couple of other people who've written books and just keeping my ear to the ground basically. ⁓ But very much looking forward to what this next year and the year after will bring and just if it takes five years, what's that next journey? So yeah. ⁓ cool. Great.

Marcus Mizelle (43:30)
as long as you're making progress, right? And you got that traction. I just got off a call with Campfire actually right before this interview. Yeah,

yeah, and they were, we had a conversation about cult. I was like, what's still hot? Like tell me the reality, you know? And they're like, well, still true crime. Cause they're interested in helping with the PI stuff. Cause it's got some true crime to it. you know, but then we're also, they were talking about cult stuff.

J.M. Harper (43:43)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I could see that. I could see that.

Marcus Mizelle (43:54)
cult, know, and they were like, it's still, if it's quality, it's like, there's a lot of people trying to get through the door, but if it's quality, then it rises to the top. So I'm not surprised to hear. Jim Jones, that's like a the cult that comes to mind.

J.M. Harper (44:00)
Yeah, yeah, people...

⁓ It's a story that I think a lot of people think they know, but they don't. ⁓ In the sense that... ⁓

the way that we're telling it is unique and new and it's bringing in people who have never spoken before. And I think it's deeply misunderstood what happened. And so, yeah, I'm looking forward to that premiering, because think it's gonna, everybody has some level of familiarity with it, know, the drink to...

Marcus Mizelle (44:27)
Interesting.

But yeah, I let you say

that. like, just think I don't really know much about it. The name and the, it's the Kool-Aid, right?

J.M. Harper (44:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, that's how most people know it.

Marcus Mizelle (44:43)
Don't drink the Kool-Aid.

J.M. Harper (44:45)
Yeah, the thing that wasn't even Kool-Aid is for one. ⁓ it's, you know, basically it was not a mass suicide. It was a mass murder. ⁓ And the how and why that happened has, you know, you have to know about Vietnam. have to know about CODENTELPRO. You have to know about the black, ⁓ the great migration. You have to know about like so much to understand how people end up on the door of that church. ⁓

Marcus Mizelle (44:49)
Okay.

Wow, this was like a

branching story kind of that leads into a trunk.

J.M. Harper (45:15)
It's just a total story

as opposed to just obsessing over what happened at the end. Of course, we cover that in detail that has never been done before. ⁓ But we also give the context surrounding it. so, yeah, I think people will see something new in a story that they thought that, yeah. I don't know when it comes out. It was just announced by Netflix last month. And so there's probably some time later this year.

Marcus Mizelle (45:34)
That sounds really cool. When does that come out?

Amazing, dude, congrats on that. ⁓ Okay, last could tell your younger filmmaking self anything that you've learned up to this point, what would that thing be?

J.M. Harper (45:45)
Thank you.

So much. ⁓ I would say, I will just repeat something that somebody told, that I read from this guy Ed Catmull, who used to run Pixar. And he said that, craft is what you're expected to know.

There's lots of craftspeople, millions of craftspeople who just kind of, you can do the work for hire. You can be replaced, but like you know the craft, you can be an excellent craftsperson. That can be all you are for the rest of your life and you can be wonderful and you need craftspeople.

As a director, craft is what you're expected to know, but then art is the unexpected use of the craft. So you only become an artist and may cross that threshold when you can do something unexpected with the craft. But you have to learn the craft first, that 10,000 hours. So when I was younger, I spent a lot of time thinking about what am I going to do to be unique and different? again, you can't microwave that process. You just have to live it. You have to learn what it means to be a human being. You have to observe human behavior.

Marcus Mizelle (46:46)
Mmm.

J.M. Harper (47:00)
for years and learn through the process, learn the craft, and then only then once you've learned the craft can you then do something unexpected with it and then that crosses over that starts to transcend into art. And so I would tell myself just to be patient and keep and trust the process.

Marcus Mizelle (47:18)
It's

nice. I appreciate you man. You got a full plate over you got a baby you got Sundance premieres you got Netflix things you got other god bless you. I appreciate the time Yeah, dude.

J.M. Harper (47:23)
Yeah.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Marcus. Thank you.