Revelations Designed By Julie Cohen

Meet Academy Award nominated documentarian Julie Cohen. Julie’s revelationary body of work has helped the world discover divine truths in films like RBG (2018), My Name Is Pauli Murray (2021) and The Sturgeon Queens (2014). Julie’s artistic craft adds a unique dimension that helps society challenge assumptions with dialogues about passionate pursuits of dreams, love and resilience that instill hope for a better tomorrow.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

I couldn't be more excited to welcome Academy Award nominated documentarian, Julie Cohen. Julie's Revelationary Body of Work has helped the world discover divine truths. For example, one of my favorites is R B G , the documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or the Sturgeon Queens American veteran Julia. And now one of the most inspiring stories I have seen about building resilience is Gabby Gifford won't back down. Julie , your work has inspired so much of my personal exploration and self discovery . You have this innate ability to immortalize people's stories on film, bringing really special revelations to us all. So where does your story begin? Well , my story begins in the DC suburbs , uh, falls Church, Virginia. Um , I guess my story begins in , uh, in Washington DC where I was born at , uh, George Washington University Hospital. But , um, my , uh, childhood was in the Virginia suburbs , um, where I grew up with , uh, mom and dad and my brother , um, went to the great , uh, Fairfax County Public Schools. Um, I feel like I had the nice benefit of growing up in a community where I had a fairly, like I could , you know , everyone , kind of people knowing each other. I wasn't one of those families that moved around a lot, so I really knew my elementary school and then junior high school and high school , uh, friends, quite , uh, quite classmates quite, quite well. And uh, that , that's kind of it. I mean, I have, suburbs are very much on my mind cuz I've been a city girl for most of my adult life. But my husband and I moved to Bloomfield New Jersey two weeks ago. Uh, so that feels like a somewhat of a return. I hear you. I hear you. I , you know what , I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and , um, and San San Antonio outside of the downtown area is very much like one big sprawling suburb. Um, a part of that growing up, you know . Where was it that you found your love for film ? Sorry, filmmaking or even documentaries? Yeah. I can't say I really f that that wasn't something that I developed in, in childhood. I certainly loved movies from the very start and , uh, was a big reader. And I think that , uh, there's more of a connection between books and documentaries than most people think. I actually like to start the making of every documentary by reading one really good related book , uh, just to get some grounding in one subject matter, sometimes more than one. But I think, like, I think reading is not kind of enough of a discussed part of the filmmaking , uh, process. Um, you know, writing too. I think writing and filmmaking are so closely connected, and I certainly know some filmmakers who complain about all of the writing you have to do at the beginning of the process, like writing treatments, writing funding, proposals. I actually find that part of the process extremely useful. The only way to gather your thoughts in a deep way is to write it down rather than, you know, it's just a different kind of thinking than the off thec cuff thinking that you do when you're pitching something verbally. So , um, I always welcome the opportunity and when I'm working with executives on a project, I often offer to write them up memos every, you know, month or so, letting them know what progress we're making and what , you know, what we've been filming, what we're working on with the structure and stuff. Because I find it a really helpful way to organize my own thinking . I, I , that's , I love that because I think you're absolutely right. It's , um, not just a part of that research process, right? It's the , the reading piece of this. But I've always found that I , um, often feel like I, my, my own writing is influenced and gets better the more I read. There is this interesting symbiotic thing that goes on, I think, in our brains that we don't really capture , uh, about that importance of the reading and then trying to , um, relay that into something new or an idea as a kid. So did you find, did you find that as a kid is part of that reading? You know, was it something kind of that came naturally to you, or what were the kinds of stories that you, you ended up really loving? Hmm . I loved all kinds of stories, but I do, I am , I'm an animal lover, so I did love some animal stories, watershed down. I don't know if that's a book that modern day younger readers are gonna be familiar with , but it's like a really interesting intense book about like a war warring Warrens of rabbits. It was a book that like, just completely entranced me as a , as a kid. Um, there's a lot of, there's like action and adventure and romance, but it's all rabbits. Um , there's some, there's actually a fair amount of violence in it . Um , but , uh, it's a , just a really spectacular story and one that I remember being , being , uh, really engrossed in as a kid. I also loved and read several times at different phases of my life, starting in sort of , uh, late childhood , uh, 1984, the George Orwell , uh, future Dystopia book. And I think there's something really important for storytellers in that book because it's a book that you can connect with on all kinds of levels. I first read it when I was 12, even though it has sort of mature themes, but my family had this little thing we did where we would do, we had like a family book group, like this was before book groups were a thing, but when we would go on vacation, we would have , we , my parents would pick out books and then my dad would read it, then my mom would read it. Then my older brother who was two years older than I would, would read it and then I would read it. And that , that was how I first read 1984. And when I read it as a kid, I was sort of following some very broad <laugh> , some very broad themes. You know, it's kind of a romance story. I got that part. There's some like mean, you know, there's good guys and bad guys. I got that. Then I had to read it like as a senior in high school for a class and sort of got some other themes. And then I read it again as an adult and it's sort of like each time, like I didn't even notice the politics when I was reading it at age 12 , right . But like, later you get into that. And I think that's , um, I think actually the best films and documentaries should be like that. They should work on all kinds of levels. A lot of people , uh, we , we were my directing partner on some of these films, including RBG and Gabby Giffords of , of the ones you mentioned , um, Betsy West . Like she, and we had not intended our Rrb g film about Justice Ginsburg to be a children's documentary, but we ended , it ended up that like a lot of kids were going to it like, and, and really enjoying it, particularly the little girls. Um, it just, and, and we were like, wow, we didn't really set out to make a children's documentary, but we were so pleased that children found something to connect with in this character in some like, very deep way that was probably not so much about the sort of, you know, legal constitutional issues that touched on. It had more to do with the love story. It had more to do with this. Like we , we kind of felt like the little mess of our character had something to , you know, this very tiny person who can , who in a quiet way was very tough and strong. And like a lot of kids seem to really relate to that. I, I totally agree with you. I think , um, I remember sitting actually all of the family down to , uh, see it when it came out. Um, that's the kind of family we are. We would, you know, just sit down and say , what, what is it that this person gets or this person's life gets to teach us? Um, and I remember walking away from it, it didn't matter. We have four children and there wasn't one of them that wasn't, it didn't have something unique taking away from it. And you're absolutely right. So much of your work does that, where do you think you began to, to hone that craft of being able to tell people's stories , uh, in this multidimensional way? Yeah. Well, you know, in my case, I mean, first of all, I appreciate the word craft cuz I do feel like that's what I am in the deepest way as like a crafts person . And it's not like, it's not like you just have this gush of inspiration and then everything just magically happens. Like the project of any big, like quote unquote artistic endeavor is really a craft practice is really just a matter of a lot of hard work and a lot of shaping and reshaping and a lot of trying something one way. And if that doesn't work, trying it another way, it's not like, oh, you just sit back until you know, lightning strikes and then it all comes together. So , um, but in my case, I really honed the craft in a pretty , um, you know, one path for a lot of people into documentary film is journalism. And I was a j broadcast journalist for a long time. I did actually, I did some print, I did radio, I did television. I worked at NBC for a long time. I was a producer and writer there. So, you know, I was put in a very good position to have to create a lot of stories and write a lot of stories very rapidly cuz that's what you have to do in the TV business. And it actually helped, it helped break some of the habits where you get sort of stuck. Like if something is gonna be on television next week, you can't really, you can't really get stuck. You have to move forward. And I actually often find that the product that you would create in two weeks, if you have two weeks is probably the same. Is is it clo is maybe close to the product you would create in eight weeks if you have that amount <laugh> , if you have that amount of time. So it was, it was actually very helpful to me to have a background professionally where I was forced to think and write and structure stories very quickly. And then that kind of opened the door to doing , um, things where there's a little more time to work on it. Gotcha. In doing some of my research for today's , uh, conversation, I noticed you also worked at court TV and I began to thinking like , Hmm , do I see this thread on that legal piece here? Because I also noticed that you have a master's , am I correct in law? Yes. Um, yeah, so those things are all connected, certainly and are connected to some of the work that I've done more recently. Um, my dad is a lawyer and okay , one of those lawyers who actually really enjoys the law. Like he , um, he represented labor unions and had lots of really interesting cases, did a lot of kind of appellate law stuff. And unlike, it wasn't until, it wasn't until I was already a grownup that I started to understand that lot of lawyers really disliked their jobs cuz my dad seemed to love being a lawyer. And , um mm-hmm . <affirmative> definitely always talked about it very positively. So I had , um, you know, <laugh> positive associations , uh, with the law. Um, in my early journalistic career, I found that I really enjoyed covering trials. I was a news reporter for a radio station for three years , um, in New York. And that job entails, like, basically every morning you're getting assigned something different. It's like stuff's going on in the city. They're like, oh , you do this, do that. You get assigned to , to different things. And I really found that my favorite stories were covering criminal trials at that point. There were some very, this was like in the early 1990s, and there were some very high profile trials. There was a racially motivated murder , um, that led to a case that was widely known as the Bensonhurst case. A very mm-hmm . <affirmative> tragic story of a black teenager who had gone into a white neighborhood to , um, rent, to , to , to buy a used car that had been advertised. A classified a just like a completely random situation. Like he, he , you know, went to buy a car, he shows up , uh, in this neighborhood and a group of white guys who are mistaking him for someone else who was dating somebody's girlfriend or whatever , um, very , uh, you know, brutally , uh, killed him. That led to an extremely contentious , um, not just a trial, but a set of trials because a number of this white gang who had, who had committed the crime , um, were tried separately. So there were a number of trials. Um , I was a radio reporter covering that, and I found it very interesting. It was kind of a little bit more interesting than some of the other stories that you're sort of thrown in for a day. You don't really understand it. I was like, you know, that these trials were lasting three or four weeks and when you went every day and listened to all the testimony or doing reports, you, I felt like you could sort of get a little bit of a deeper, deeper sense of things. And I just really, you know, I really found , um, uh, criminal, you know, criminal law, just a pretty interesting subject for journalistic coverage. And that's what led me when , uh, the network that later became court TV that much later became something else called True tv. But when court TV started up in the early nineties, I actually wrote to the head of it saying like, oh, I, you know, I hear you're starting this network about trials. Like, I , I love trials. Like I love covering, I've been a journalist, I love covering trials, like, can I come work for you? And it was a startup , so they had some positions for junior level people, and I got a junior level job there and kind of worked my way up to being, to being a producer there and ultimately starting a show that they did about the Supreme Court. So , um, okay . And then that led me to the, the law school program that I did wasn't for people who wanted to be lawyers, it was for journalists who wanted a real background in the law. So I went and I , I left court TV thinking that like, if I'm gonna try to market myself as a journalist who has a specialty in law, I should maybe get some formal education. And I went and did this, this yearlong master's program. Um, and then I went right from there to NBC where they were in fact , um, expanding their coverage of, of criminal trials. Wow. That's a, that's a pretty amazing transition. And it's also kind of a scary thing to leave a what feels like a budding career at a startup , um, to , uh, you know, to go back to being a student. Uh, and what did you see in the , some of the risks? Or was it just natural like, wait, if I really wanna do this and I wanna do it well, I I better go sharpen this muscle I have between my ears? Yeah. You know, the, the, the program that I went to was a very specific program for people in that, in, in my position. It wasn't like they were, it wasn't like, wow, that's weird to go to law school. It was like, we have , we have this program for people that are already journalists that want some background in the law. There was a foundation that funded it, so it wasn't like, I , I didn't need to pay the very expensive , um, you know, lost school fees. It was just a , it was just a year through through this program. And I thought I would probably come out of it in a better situation than just having had my job at court tv. Um, so I didn't think that much about the rest when I was doing it. I loved doing it. It was really fun to go back to school as a 32 year old. I feel like I got more out of that year of school than any other schooling I did because I was kind of more ready to just, I was really there to learn. It wasn't, it was just a little different than my, my previous , uh, academic experiences. So I liked that a lot. But , um, but truthfully, like you say, what were the risk at , I was like , oh , there's no risk . But truthfully, then when I got out, it did take me , uh, about four or five months to get a , it's not like I got , and I actually didn't even get a job. What I got at NBC initially was some freelance assignments, which ultimately worked their way into a job. So it did turn out to be risky, but I was not thinking about that. Um, you know, I was not thinking too, too heavily about that , um, at the time. Gotcha. Um , you know, we talked a little bit about , uh, really your college formation of years . What took you, like, what was the thing that went , gosh, journalism and , and , uh, and writing , uh, is potentially a path. Like what was it that inspired you to take that path amongst all the paths that were available to us? Yeah , I mean , we , you and I are, I, I feel like we might be of the same , uh, age genre. And so I would say that if we were to think about it, our moms probably had lesser opportunity to like select from an array of career paths, right? And I often think about it as like, wow, I, we could have been anything. Yes. Yeah . So, absolutely. My mom certainly was in the generation where women's career paths were really constrained, you know, and the , in fact, my mom, when she came out of college had an internship at the labor department and, you know, and then when she, you know, she married my dad and that was all going great. And then when she got pregnant with my brother, it was like, okay, that's, you know, like, that's it. Like, so okay, that's basically the end of your career. Like, everyone understood that. And while I don't think she mi I don't think she minded that hugely at the time , um, because it was so accepted and she did, she wasn't going into motherhood in a resentful way. She really particularly seemed to enjoy having little kids. But like, ultimately I think it really made her angry. Now interestingly, she became an artist when, when , um, she, although she hadn't had any artistic training at all when she was pregnant with my brother, she started art as a hobby. She got more and more into it and she became an artist , uh, professionally. But that said, like later in life she would talk about how her father, who had been a lawyer, had told her that she could, she would be a really good lawyer and like, it, like she wouldn't have said it this way, she's passed away now. So I'm speaking of her , she wouldn't have said this way , but I think she really, she really resented , um, the lack of opportunities for women. And I will say that she had a very strong sense of the possibilities for me being different and wanting me to explore that. And one good , um, example of that. So when I was in high school , um, one of the one elective course you could take was typing. And I wanted to take typing cause I thought it'd be useful for like, you know, at that time , you know, you had to type all your papers and whatever, it's before laptops, right ? But they're like , they're all typewriters, young people , us explaining it to you. I , IBM electric was what I got to work on . Exactly. So , um, my mother vetoed my taking, typing in high school. Okay . She said, no, no, no. If you like, I don't want you to be a secretary. Like you shouldn't learn to type now. Actually this was a little ridiculous cuz there's all kinds of reasons to me . Like I, you know, like I need , I , while I didn't work as a secretary, nor did I have a secretary, so actually I do need to type and, you know , in a period before I went to, I went to a graduate program in journalism at a , like, early soon after college. And there was actually a requirement that you typed 40 words a minute and I didn't know how to type to get in. So I actually took a summer class at a secretarial school to learn to, cuz I'm like, okay , I guess I need to type. And I actually, I like typing anyway. But like, she really, my mom really did , um, want me to be a professional person. Gotcha. And so, ha you know, in terms of that exploration of kind of that early, what helped you, I always think about this is that often in those years that you are going into college, that you don't necessarily have an idea. You may have a dream, but maybe not necessarily understand the path that might be in front of you. Yeah. I didn't have a clue, I would say. Um, and in terms of getting into journalism, well, first of all, I'll say that my maternal, no, my paternal grandfather, my dad's father was a newspaper reporter. He was a sports writer for the New York Post. Um, and that was always presented to us as having been like a pretty cool career. Like, he didn't make a lot of money, but he knew like, he like knew the New York Giants and he had like great Knicks tickets and he had like, we got Billie Jean King's autograph. Like, like it was sort of, and you know, going to sports events with him in the press box was like incredible. It's like, what? And he, you know, he, he was what you might think a , um, a, you know, New York post sports reporter in the 1960s and seventies might have been. He wore a little hat, he smoked a cigar <laugh> . Um , he was like a really, he was like a really fun, kind of salty old , lovely Jewish man. I don't know . He, he, he really was sort of a character . So I had that view of journalism , um, but not , you know, but really not much else. And , um, I was at a point in my life where I thought like, oh, maybe I should go to graduate school in something. And really the impetus for going to journalism school was how much I wanted to move to New York. And I, I went to Columbia, which is in New York. I just like, was like, oh, I should go to New York <laugh> . Like, I, I'm, I'm, I can't say that I, that these things were like deeply, deeply thought out. But I will say that from the very first week of journalism school, I was like, oh, this is , this is amazing. It's a Fanta like what a , what a interesting, I mean, you know, things have changed a lot and journalism Yeah . That , the journalism that exists now is not what it was in 1989 when I was studying journalism. But part of the, you know, the program that I was in was, you were going out there and writing stories and you got a little press pass. And , uh, you know, within my first week I was sent down to City Hall to cover a story. And you know, the mayor at that time , who was Ed Koch at that time, was giving a press conference. And I had my little, you know, as a student at Columbia, like you had a little press pass. And I raised my hand and I asked him a question and he answered it. And I was like, this <laugh> the coolest thing in the world. Like, here I am, like, no , like I'm this young, tiny person and like you , you're telling me I could just go to city hall and ask the mayor a question just because I have a press pass. Like, this is the coolest job in the world, most powerful positions to people to ask that question. <laugh>. That's fantastic. Um, in , in that journey of kind of taking you through there , um, what were some of the things that you learned? I mean, obviously the , I think there's always the academic version of school, but to that point around like the actual practice of what it means to be a journalism. Cuz I think there's, to your point around the craft of writing, right? And the craft of filmmaking is one aspect, but I also think that there's a practice , uh, that makes you a , a , a better questioner , uh, a better , uh, interviewer. What were some of those things that you did that helped , uh, hone that ? Yeah, I mean, I think a big part of it was , um, listening. You know, having a conversation that involves listening. Not so much having a charted out list of everything that I wanted to ask, but more just listening to what the person was saying and go going from that. And even more today as a documentary filmmaker, when a lot of what you're doing is spending time filming and watching people and like, trying to not be so nervous about like, all the things that can go wrong with your filming and is the, you know , is the cinematographer like in the right position. They can be worrying about all these different elements that take you out of the present moment. But if you're like, watching very carefully what your subjects are doing, you'll learn all kinds of things about them, which will lead to interesting questions and ways to engage. So, you know, I do think the , some of the things that make someone a good documentary filmmaker would be like the same qualities that might make you a good friend. Like trying to pay attention to someone else and listen to what they have to say and try to set yourself aside for long enough to look at what their experience might be and get into their mind a little bit and then try to come at it from that perspective. I love that. Cause I think that so often , um, I often think that so many of us come into the , uh, into that space sometimes even in journalism with maybe a predisposition of what the outcome should be as opposed to enabling the story to go work really is supposed to go right . Cuz often when you are so occupied with a point of view, you tend to miss those little nuggets , um, that make people incredibly human or humanize the story or the subject matter. Um , and I think that's such an important part of, I think your work today is that it's so clear to me that one of the gifts you bring to the table is active listening. You know , it isn't , it isn't passive at all, like it's actually looking for those nuggets. Yeah. And I think, but I think a big part of that is trying to get out of your own , trying to get out of one's own nervousness. Like there's kind of a lot to be nervous about when you're making a film and you can get so caught up in everything that could be going wrong that that makes you not pay attention to what's actually happening. And yeah , learning to set aside like all those anxieties that people have when they're doing what , what I do and what a lot of jobs entail, like it's a lot of it is just like, like, you know, I've worked as a teacher advising people making documentaries also. And I, I really think so much of the process is just the psychology of it all. Like getting so worried about it going wrong that you don't notice what's hap , that you're not listening to what's happening or, you know, in the case of our work, there's so much that you're filming and people, if you're worried that it didn't come out, that that , that you know, what you're filming wasn't exactly what you were trying to get, then people become like afraid of their own footage. And actually delving in and looking at the footage that's been shot as soon as possible is like really key . Because until you're seeing, you know, until you're forgetting the expectation of what you promised, whoever was funding the film, what it's gonna be, it's , don't worry about that. Like, the morkey is like, what am I getting? And like, what you're getting often is really good and you can build a lot out of it. Well , that's beautiful. I think those are words of b wisdom that I think everybody in who is exploring this space. You know, so often you get wrapped up in the, the minutia and as opposed to just , uh, enabling the story to reveal itself, right? And just learning that, you know, the , the, the first attempt at something is really just the beginning of the process. And you can get, I, I had a student once actually very talented , uh, young woman who , um, showed me a rough cut of something, of a piece that she had created and just said with a really deep despondency. Like, it's just, you know, it's just not what I imagined in my head that it was gonna be like, I, you know, I had this idea like, it's just not what I imagined it's gonna be. And I said, poppy , her name is Poppy . I feel I have felt that way every rough cut of every film I've ever done and I've been doing this for 25 years. So don't worry. Like that's, that feeling is actually good. That's the feeling that's gonna propel you to now make it better. Yeah, that's the rough part, <laugh> correct . Exactly. That's why they called it a rough , it's too bad it's always , look at it this way, it's really too bad that we don't dream in rough cuts. Cause it would make sometimes the so much easier. I guess that's one way of lowering the bar if you started training in rough cuts, right ?

Speaker 2: 29:08

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Speaker 3: 30:01

Hi, I am Mandy Kramer, the host of The Last Generation, a podcast about profound conversations between Holocaust survivors and their grandkids. As the grandkid of a holocaust survivor, I never got the chance to have that conversation, so I wanted to encourage others to do so. This new season, it's available on all platforms.

Speaker 1: 30:21

Listeners, be sure to check out Julie Cohen's latest documentary, Gabby Gifford Won't Back Down. It's streaming right now on Amazon Prime Video, apple tv, Redbox and Roku. Was it, did you feel like it was a natural , uh, kind of transition from the world of journalism telling often 32nd stories, you know, two minute stories, two long form stories? Well, you know what, I was actually in the long , long form journalism. I mean , you know, well I did some shorter stories when I was in public radio, but when I was in at nbc I was working for Dateline. So I was doing mostly hour and two hour stories. It's just that they were about murder trials, you know, not the , and and I will say, I actually don't think it's a coincidence that since then I've grabbed in my documentary independent work, I've gravitated towards like much more positive subject matter <laugh> . Like I like , you know, pride . The nineties were rough. I really , nineties were rough. Yeah. I really prefer, I really prefer, like, you know, and not that I mind what , you know, I think there can be some very, you know, tough material that can make quite a good story. But that's for the most part, I wanna tell stories that have a lot of love in them . <laugh> . Well you're definitely doing that now. I, I just say that , uh, I took an opportunity to go and explore something as simple I that , and it's not simple. It is so rich. The sturgeon of queens, right? That actually had to take , I had just like, so , um, that there was just so speaking of love, so much love in the craft of , uh, not just the story of this family that I believe four generations in this family , um, Russ and daughters, but, but also like these nuggets of things that I loved that you were able to kind of tease out was what made them different. You know, the , the dad being an early feminist to, you know, really this big , almost very much a woman owned and woman run business that, you know, I think tactically you could say, oh, they , you know what, you get your bagels in your locks and there are really wonderful deli. But in reality when you walk in and what the story revealed was that they , you know, it was like these little blessings, these little, these little like love notes to every one of their customers. Um, how is it that you go about picking your subjects or your subject matter? Yeah, I mean, you know, often there's just a threshold question of is this some , is this a story you wanna spend a number of months or years kind of delving, delving into? Um, and beyond that, it can kind of go in all different directions. Um, you know, it helps if the story is like not just one note, if there's like a different layer to it. I mean the, the sturgeon queens, as you mentioned, has like these, you know, four , you know, it's these generations of, of a , of a Jewish family. But then there was this incredibly interesting twist story starts in 1914, but then in the seventies , um, there's the twist of some Dominican immigrants to New York moving, you know, you know, a new generation of immigrants moves to town, starts working at the store. One , uh, one employee in particular, Herman Vargas, who's a major uh, character in the story ends up learning not only to slice locks , but also to speak Yiddish because he understood that that would connect him to , uh, to the customers in a way that was gonna be helpful for his career. And his family's immigrant story in the seventies is so similar to Joel Russ's immigrant story from the early 19 hundreds. And it just sort of reminds us what brings us all together and is just kind of unexpected. I also kind of loved, you know, the, the some of the edgy, some of the conflict within in the family, a lot of the arguing <laugh> , I think is all, is all good. And , um, Julie , that one of , uh, most of your work, that one I have to say it felt so familiar to me, <laugh>, and I don't know , it was like the Jewish thing. It was like , for us, you know, we , we are Latinx Jews, so for us our language is , you know, is Spanish. But I will tell you from that it was like, oh wait a minute, the things that we talk about in Spanish, this is the Yiddish word for them . And like, I had those connections between it and, and it was just , um, uh, it , I don't know , it felt like such a gift to, to feel like you got to know the family so well. Yeah. Yes. Well that's, yeah , in some ways I feel like that was different than some projects that I've done cuz I often feel like I'm delving into worlds that are very new to me. And whereas the family like just I like felt like, no , this is subject like herring . Like these are subjects I'm very familiar with <laugh> . Um, and definitely felt , um, felt a connection , uh, to, to them. So, you know, but also I was actually surprised how many fans that film ended up getting who weren't Jewish. Like, I just didn't, I didn't really expect that, but just, I certainly ran into a lot of people who said that the two sort of grandmotherly characters, the sisters who were at the heart of the story, like reminded them of people in their own family. And I've very much absolutely in my, in my documentary life gravitated towards older characters. I love interviewing people in their eighties and nineties. I think there's so much , they're better interview subjects than younger people. It was an opportunity that I didn't have when I, you know, when you work in network news, they're always trying to appeal to the key demographic, which is 18 to 49. And the belief is that people in that demographic don't want , like, once anyone turns 50, like nobody wants to hear from them anymore. Um, my first project in my independent documentary world was something I was commissioned to do for New York Public Television, which was , um, called New York Goes to War. It was about New Yorkers who served in World War II and New Yorkers who kind of served at home like Rosie the Riveter type people, like what New York was like during World War ii. And so for that project, by definition, I was interviewing people who were in their eighties and nineties and it was just such a revelation cuz they were so, you know, first of all, people are pretty honest by that age, just more honest than, than younger , um, characters. But I also think the difference wasn't just age, it was also kind of generational because mm-hmm . <affirmative> , that was kind of the last opportunity to be interviewing people who didn't grow up with television. Um, oh wow. And as a result, I mean, one thing I always found, interestingly when I was working for Date Dateline, is people that are in a Dateline story all end up talking like people that are on a Dateline story, because they've all seen Dateline , like even the people who like were , are the murderers. Like you go to prison and you start interviewing them and they sound and they start sounding like every other, like they, they kind of know the conventions of the story and they'll be like, oh, we had such a fairy tale wedding. Like, it's all kind of odd. Whereas the older people are just yeah , tended to do interviews in a much more individualistic way and like, they might say anything. So it just now on the other, the other flip side of that is the connection between my question and their answer was often <laugh> not so tight. Like people would like, not, not that, you know, I , you know, was talking to people who were totally cogent, but like, they were gonna say what they were gonna say. They'd like to , you know, like, I like . So the more of the trick was to not get in their way to let them say what they wanted to and to coax and to coax out more when something seemed really fruitful. And as you've seen in a bunch of the films that I've worked on solo and a bunch of the films that I've worked on with Betsy, we really enjoy interviewing people in pairs. Um, because it, just seeing the relationships between people is like so interesting. And when you put two people together in front of a camera, especially if they've known each other for a long time, you often get a really, something magical happens that's very different from inter interviewing individuals. I love that because I think that you, one of the things you capture , um, and I think is it , you've captured it in R B G , the sturgeon of Queens , um, and even in the way that people talked about Julia Childs , um, was there is a, there's the beauty of hindsight and wisdom and you just don't have that. I , you know, I'm nearing my, my fifties and I don't think I have enough of it. Julie . There's like times when it's like, huh , you know, I can reflect back on that , but I would imagine, I know when speaking with my mom who was in her seventies, you know, there's a lot of hindsight in the wisdom, and I think a part of it is that you also become a little bit more comfortable in yourself and that that filter, I guess maybe this generation's filter might be the Twitter filter , um, or the , um, or even the TikTok filter right, at some point has to come off. Right. I think there is something to that. So in this world of te uh, telling long form stories, what has been , um, the thing that you're most proud of? Well, that's, that's kind of hard to say. I mean, almost, you know, sometimes it's really, it's not even the product so much as the connections with the human beings that are in the stories. I mean, you know, our current film about Gabby , Gabby Giffords , the member of Congress who was shot in the brain and had to work her way back from a coma to a fully functioning, incredibly engaging and charismatic and tough activist , uh, that she is today. Like, getting to know her has been amazing. Like, she's just the most, she's just the most incredible person I think I've ever met. And I , I think that, you know, from what we know from people who've known her for, for much longer than we have, she was a really intense and charismatic person before she was shot as well. But she's just like, it's just like, so, like I don't , so I I don't even know how to exactly describe it, but it's like I'm, I think we're really proud of the film, but I'm also really proud to be friends with this incredible person. Um, well, I , I had to hone in on it . I think one of the things that's, first of all, I have not seen the Gabby film yet. I am so excited to, to go and and see it. I think we're , we're talking about it's in theaters now, is that correct? Right . That's right. Okay . Um, I remember exactly where I was on January 8th when that news flesh came across. And something about Gabby is , it's someone who, I wouldn't say that I, you know, overtly political fact , but there was something about her and her , um, uh, I would say almost her, her rise to celebrity was something that there was something special about her and her, her desire for public service. It wasn't as if she was going in and she was in the form of politics. I think that she was giving definition and rise to , um, to public s the public service aspect of it. So on , I remember standing in my looting room , um, and I on January 8th and our kids were out and it was kind of our, our typical, I wanna say it was a weekend, if I remember correctly. And I remember that news flash coming on. It was just, it felt like a , a shot that was aimed at hope. Um , because my takeaway from , uh, you know, who she is , uh, through her acts , uh, and, and her beliefs and why she went into public service was one of giving hope that, that the world could get better incrementally. Yeah. And there's something that we said that I think in those nuggets of your film, you bring these people that are larger than life often that have these remarkable stories , um, tell that you bring them into our living rooms or into the, the theater in such a way that , um, that friendship that you've created with them, because I felt that way , um, with your Ruth Bader Ginsburg work was that we felt like we knew them. Yeah, well I think, you know, trying to create a personal, that personal tone is certainly part of what we've been doing with these films. It's in some ways, I mean that's why , like I talk about my journalistic training being so much a part of my filmmaking and it is , but that's a part that's kind of new that the, you know, I will say when I first watched a cut of the film that , um, we had created about the New Yorkers who served in in World War ii , like we had been working on it in like these little tiny chunks, myself and the editor, and we hadn't really been watching large stretches of it and it was a two hour film and at one point we sat down and watched everything that we had at a certain point and I just, I just like looked at it and I was like, wow, what I said to the editor, I was saying , a great guy named Carrie Soloway . I said, wow, it's so loving and because like that, like, like that wasn't what I've been doing at nbc . And I'm like, I just, so like , and , and like I did love these amazing like, you know, 92 year old veterans , um, like the they their , and like, what, but what was it like, I hadn't really set out to make that the center of the film, but when you watched , I mean one thing that um , that we did in that film and actually comes up in the Gabby Gifford people in the Gabby Gifford film too , is like , uh, letting characters sing. Um, and for these veterans that I was having recall what was sometimes really painful parts of their lives, cuz a number one of them had been a prisoner of war and one had been shot kind of severely, but yet they also had really fond memories of, of their service in the way that, you know, veterans of that war in particular , uh, due , they were proud of the role they had played in stopping something horrible as they should be. And part of the process of them recalling was like, I just have them sing songs to the camera of like that they, that they loved and they have these beautiful voices and they're singing and I just, I just felt like, you know, like, wow, I like that you can sort of feel that there's some love there when you're training to be a journalist. They don't really tell you you should try to create work that's loving. But like, I'm like, that's kind of how I want things to be going forward. Like, you know , you get, you go through life and like, there's all kinds of phases to it, but like I am also, the characters were older at a time that I was sort of getting heavily into middle age and thinking about that. You know, there had, this was also at the early stages of filming in high definition, you know, where the, you were not even 4K yet, although now we film in 4k, right ? The first time we had gone from standard definition to high definition and there had been a fear, particularly in the broadcast news world, but there , but , but all throughout the industry of people that make real, that visual stuff of real people, there had been been this fear , oh , high definition's gonna be terrible cuz everybody's gonna look terrible. Like if you're not 23, you're gonna look like crap. You're gonna see the lines, you're gonna see. And that, that , uh, world War II piece was the first thing I'd done in high death and it was like the opposite. You saw the people's wrinkles, but they were beautiful. Like you saw, like, you just saw like the real beauty of the people. Like, and you know, just sort of allowing that to come through seems, seems like a really worthy thing. It's interesting how those, each one of those, those lines, we say wrinkles, but Right . Each one of those lines probably has a story behind it altogether. And I think that's a , I think that's a really interesting insight into , um, all the things that we tend to fight, <laugh> , toying , things that we tend to fight. Right . Um , you know, that we're often fighting the, the storytelling or even the wisdom that comes with Right . What it means to have lived that long. Yes. Right. No, it really, it it , it made really changed my own view of aging to like have that experience and that point I was like , oh no . I was like, well , although I was like, okay, well I'm in this uncomfortable middle period, but like, gimme a couple decades and then like when I'm 80 I'm gonna look , I'll look really cute again . So wait , we have to , I think that we have to redefine, like I think we're really cute in this middle age too. I'm, I'm falling in love with my elevens , which is fine <laugh> . Um , so, you know , what were some of the barriers that you've kind had to overcome throughout your career? Cause we all, like none of this happens overnight. Um , it doesn't have , you know , making a film , uh, about, you know, one of our most beloved , uh, Supreme Court justices or American veteran. I have to say that that one also , um, was an eye-opening, you know, beautiful story again about love , uh, clearly the , the two , uh, the the love but the , you know, what it meant for an American veteran , um, to be blown up in Afghanistan and to come home and refined life. Right. Um, in , in such an inspiring way. None of that is easy. What are some of the hurdles that you've had to overcome , um, to tell these stories? Yeah, I mean the hurdles are you often, you know, in the case of American veteran, like getting the funding to, to do the story or you know, or even not getting fully funded but just going , uh, you know, I think in earlier stages because of R B G being more of a commercial success that sort of opened the door to more recent things being easier to get funding. Um , you know, just honestly. But, but in, you know, just a few years ago the , the issue was really figuring out how I could do some things that did bring in an income even while I was doing some projects that seemed really important to do, but that I understood weren't gonna be big money makers . And, you know, and because they're not that commercial, it's gonna be a challenge to get them funded. And I just kind of chose at that point to try to split my life and my projects to try to have a c do a certain amount of work that was just meant to generate some income that could help to do the projects that were kind of like more my dreams to do. Gotcha . Can you gimme some examples of the , the , it's because there's , there's always that balance and it's interesting cuz it's Oh, sure. I find that also in my own work. So Yeah. You know, when I left NBC and I did it like by choice and very consciously, like I understood that I was about to go into a situation where I wasn't gonna have the same stability. I'm fortunate to be married to a lovely man who has a job and has health insurance for us both. And I understand that not everyone has that same good. I mean, that's one of <laugh> like where there's a myriad of ways in which I'm a privileged person and that's one of them . So, you know, but I had a job for quite, for quite a while and that's good and had helped me save some money. And then when I left , um, nbc um, along with the documentary stuff I was also doing , um, you know , I did a lot of like public relations videos. I made a video for , uh, the hospital for special surgery, like a , like a 30 minute film about their history. It was quite interesting. It was done under, they commissioned me to do it. They paid me to do it. Like, like that's how I was making a living. I , I also did, I also did sturgeon queens cause I wanted to do it, but like, I was making my living making , uh, doing like public relations videos and also doing just other commissioned projects for , I did a lot of , um, programs for, for New York p b s that just like a a half hour project would come up and they would ask me whether I would, whether I would do it. And if I was available, I'd get, you know, they would, I'd get paid to do that. Julie, thank you so much for coming here today and sharing your story with our listeners who are change makers in their own right. You see, the power to dream comes from the ability to see an interest or yourself or a passion in how somebody else has carved a path for you. So I wanna personally thank you Julie for carving that path for these future change makers . Listeners, this is my dare to you. I want you to take these revelations revealed in this episode and dare to design an inclusive and equitable future today. Designed by.show is written and produced by the design Core at Aurora 21 Studios podcast producer, audio engineer, and original music by Rachel Bickley, commercial Voice Talent by Angelo. And I'm your host, Joanna Pena . Bickley .