Making Sense - Sam Harris - #300 — A Tale of Cancellation

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris well there's been a lot of chatter online

00:00:28.820 about ukraine that is new many people are concerned that we could be edging closer to

00:00:35.700 nuclear war with russia anyway i reacted to some of that online but i think i'll do a podcast on

00:00:43.220 ukraine in the next couple of weeks today's episode is a tale of cancellation for anyone

00:00:52.120 who has any doubts about whether cancellation is a thing this episode is for you in particular

00:00:59.680 it's a tale of a truly ridiculous cancellation as you'll hear the mob pick the wrong target as it

00:01:07.780 often does today i'm speaking with meg smaker meg is a documentarian with a very interesting and

00:01:16.800 unusual backstory in the first half hour or so you'll get a sense of just how intrepid and

00:01:23.500 resilient a person she is there's been some important coverage of her and her story michael

00:01:29.740 powell wrote a good piece for the new york times i believe graham wood might be doing something for

00:01:34.060 the atlantic but what there's been much more of is noise on social media among the whinging hysterics

00:01:42.860 and malcontents and grievance entrepreneurs briefly what happened is that meg made a film

00:01:51.120 originally titled jihad rehab about a program in saudi arabia that seeks to rehabilitate former

00:01:59.440 terrorists and her film was accepted at the best film festivals like sundance and south by southwest

00:02:06.600 and then it was hurled from the ramparts of those festivals which is to say disinvited she even had an

00:02:15.400 award rescinded and positive reviews changed after the fact all in response to an utterly dishonest

00:02:26.180 campaign of defamation and intimidation so this is a story of what happens when a creative person

00:02:34.340 has her dream come true because for a documentarian to get her first feature into sundance is a

00:02:42.440 truly wonderful thing it more or less guarantees distribution and future work as a filmmaker but it's also

00:02:49.880 a story of what happens when that dream is maliciously turned into a nightmare by the woke mob as you might

00:02:59.720 expect this bothers me for many reasons first it hits close to home is the kind of thing that has been directed at me but when it was i was lucky

00:03:10.720 enough to have already built a platform and an audience that makes me more or less impervious to these kinds of attacks meg

00:03:17.720 wasn't so lucky but as you hear the injustice of this episode is really compounded because meg is absolutely the wrong target i mean the

00:03:29.700 i can understand many people being upset by what i have to say about islam because my view really is

00:03:37.700 condemning of the faith at least in part obviously i don't think i or anyone else should be canceled

00:03:45.140 for honestly discussing the link between specific doctrines in islam and much of the pointless misery we see

00:03:52.020 leaking out of the muslim world jihadism especially although we might currently note what's happening in iran

00:03:59.700 with social protests bordering on revolution in defiance of the hijab but this is just to say that in my case

00:04:07.300 the offense and even outrage isn't totally surprising and illogical right because my view really is that

00:04:15.620 islam has to be dragged kicking and screaming if need be into the modern world but in meg's case there is

00:04:24.500 literally nothing in her film for people on the left to honestly find offensive she doesn't share my

00:04:32.740 view of islam at all and there's no criticism of the religion in the film as i make clear in our conversation

00:04:40.900 this is an utterly humanizing portrait of men who we have every reason to believe have been treated

00:04:48.100 terribly in guantanamo by the u.s government so what's happened to meg and her film is quite perverse

00:04:57.940 it's just a spectacular own goal for the far left and it's perfectly emblematic of the moral and

00:05:05.060 political confusion that is screwing up everything now and as you'll hear at the end of the podcast

00:05:11.780 there's also a call to action here meg is still struggling to get her film distributed and she

00:05:17.540 has set up a gofundme page for that purpose which is accessible at jihadrehab.com and i would really

00:05:25.940 love it if our community could help meg so if you find this story compelling and you want to help

00:05:32.420 right the wrong that was done here i would greatly appreciate it and now i bring you meg smaker

00:05:41.780 i am here with meg smaker meg thanks for joining me thank you so really nervous but i'll try to do

00:05:51.780 my best no no well it's um it's really great to talk to you i i so we were thrown together by um

00:05:58.260 i guess a mutual friend i mean she's she's a friend of mine i don't know how well you know her but uh

00:06:02.340 melissa chen put you on my radar and um i'm glad she did because it's a fascinating situation you're in

00:06:10.020 i i'm sure it's an uncomfortable one but i want i want to get into it and and it pulls together so

00:06:16.260 many issues that we're dealing with collectively and culturally there are several things to talk

00:06:22.580 about you've made a film originally titled jihad rehab which i've seen and which is uh really quite

00:06:30.180 wonderful and and um the the irony of its cancellation will be quite evident to to our audience but

00:06:38.020 but so we want to talk about the film and its reception perhaps above all but before we do you

00:06:44.260 have a very interesting and counterintuitive background so let's just uh summarize uh who

00:06:51.060 you've been before you ever thought you might make documentaries and then we'll we'll get into the the

00:06:56.580 film and the current controversy what i mean i don't know how far back you want to go but i i want

00:07:00.740 to go back at least as far as september 11th yeah um well i'm currently a filmmaker but before and

00:07:06.580 you know documentary filmmaker journalist but um before i was a filmmaker i was a firefighter and

00:07:12.260 if you asked me back then what i wanted to do for the rest of my life without hesitation i would

00:07:18.100 have said be a firefighter i mean i love that job every day was different you got to work in a team

00:07:23.540 and it was just such a really really great job to have and the people that i worked with were like

00:07:29.140 family to me all that kind of change though on 9 11 and the reason for that is but like the day before

00:07:38.260 9 11 i would describe my firehouse as a place of like family of like supportive caring people who you

00:07:45.940 know were very yeah they're just like family a place of love and support right and within 24 hours

00:07:52.660 that place turned from a place of love and support into a into a place that had a lot of like vitriol

00:07:58.340 and hatred and and bigotry and none of the things that i was seeing on mainstream media kind of answered

00:08:04.900 those questions of that like that were generated from that day and my dad always told me that there's

00:08:11.780 only three types of people in the world right those that when you hit them they hit you right back and

00:08:17.940 those that when you hit them they run away and those that when you hit them they asked why'd you

00:08:22.900 hit me and i've kind of always been in that third camp so after 9 11 my initial response was to try to

00:08:30.740 like understand so i watched a lot of news and i read a lot of books about islam and i read um you

00:08:38.420 know some books about arabic and the history of the middle east and what was really interesting to me was

00:08:44.340 because the things that i was reading about islam were directly contradicting what i was seeing on

00:08:50.900 the news and the only way that i can think of at that time was to basically go to afghanistan on my

00:08:56.660 own and try to find those answers for myself and so it was a little bit after six months it was around

00:09:02.260 six months after 9 11 i traveled to afghanistan on my own and after arriving there i was immediately

00:09:10.580 humbled by my own ignorance of the world i mean i don't know if you remember what you were like when

00:09:14.820 you were 21 but i was very self-assured of my life worldview and that was came crashing down after

00:09:21.220 my time in afghanistan okay but before we get into your experience there there's a um there's a bridge

00:09:28.100 we have to attempt to build i don't know if it's possible because it could be mysterious even to you but

00:09:34.100 you have just described your um sudden interest in why they hate us and which was shared by you know

00:09:43.220 many many millions of people in our society at that point and your response to it is so peculiar and

00:09:51.460 extreme compared to what what everyone else did that uh you know if there is an explanation for it

00:09:58.100 you know it'd be it'd be great to have have it insofar as you can provide i mean how is it that you

00:10:03.300 you a solitary woman uh who happens to be a firefighter suddenly decides to go to afghanistan

00:10:12.180 solo in the more or less immediate aftermath and an ongoing chaos of the beginning of our war on

00:10:21.620 terror based you're saying why did you do this like crazy thing of going to afghanistan right yeah

00:10:26.820 i mean it's it is fairly bonkers if you just if you look at the average i will completely admit to

00:10:32.580 that if you don't know me it sounds like a fucking crazy person like does some shit like that sorry

00:10:38.180 am i allowed to swear you are yes okay cool cool cool that makes this a lot easier for me um

00:10:43.620 yeah i think how do i put this so i remember when i was a firefighter for me i would i love doing it

00:10:52.100 but there was one call there's one type of call that whenever we went on it i would always be really

00:10:56.740 nervous about it and that was any calls involving hazardous materials because every video we saw

00:11:03.220 in training where firefighters died it was because some kind of chemical or a gas asphyxiation or

00:11:09.700 something like that and so it always kind of scared me right and it was the only calls that i went on that

00:11:16.340 i would hesitate and it was the only calls that i went on that i would second guess myself and i don't

00:11:21.540 know how you're wired but for me when when i don't understand something like i didn't really understand

00:11:29.460 how chemicals and hazardous materials work it it scared me and so for me diving deep into that and

00:11:38.340 understanding it is a way of kind of like a safety blanket so when i realized that this was one part of

00:11:44.500 me being a firefighter that i just needed to overcome that fear i went in and i started training

00:11:50.900 as a hazmat specialist and it's really like it involves a lot of chemistry a lot of like you know

00:11:56.580 on the fire grounds work type drills and stuff like that and it's a pretty involved process to become a

00:12:01.940 hazmat specialist but then after i got that the next call that i went on that was for a hazmat call

00:12:08.500 i didn't hesitate i was super comfortable and super deliberate and i think for me it might kind of

00:12:16.260 my friend thinks it's a little bit obsessive compulsive but like if i don't understand a thing

00:12:20.660 like i have to understand the thing like i can't let it go i can't be just like oh that's going to be

00:12:25.140 a mystery and i'm just going to keep on you know living my life does that make sense at all yeah although

00:12:32.740 i mean there's a there are you know there are many many things to understand and on paper at that

00:12:39.540 point it must have looked you know if not to you to others fairly crazy to that shit crazy is what my

00:12:46.260 dad said yeah because literally we have journalists you know seasoned journalists getting decapitated at

00:12:51.940 that point i mean you know daniel pearl got murdered i think in february of 2000 yeah i was yeah i was

00:12:58.580 i actually had a knock on effect of that is when i went back to pakistan i was going to afghanistan so

00:13:04.500 i went back to afghanistan i went to afghanistan right after 9 11 and then i went to back to

00:13:10.020 afghanistan in 2004 and when i went back i actually had the secret police there weren't so secret

00:13:16.500 actually because i knew they'd follow me in pakistan because they were they were worried that i was going

00:13:21.540 to get kidnapped and it was funny because i wasn't there as a journalist who had loads of resources so i

00:13:27.940 was staying in the really cheap part of town which also was the very dodgy part of town

00:13:32.180 and when they found that out they were really scared that something was going to happen and

00:13:35.620 they sent this like caravan of like armored cars to literally remove me and they like put me up in

00:13:41.860 the marriott it's like what is going on guys and i think the marriott was bombed shortly after that so

00:13:47.620 i don't know that was the best decision but yeah i think that listen i my experience has been

00:13:53.700 that most of the people that i meet are good people and that goes for every country i've been

00:14:00.820 to i think through different cultures and different traditions and you know religions it's most of the

00:14:06.340 people i've met have been good i think if i had never left the united states and i didn't have that

00:14:12.260 experience i would feel very fearful of the world because i know that before i started traveling and

00:14:19.860 before i started really doing a lot of reading ferociously the world seemed very scary because

00:14:26.500 imagine if you never left your hometown and you just you know watch the news all day that's

00:14:33.060 fucking terrifying and i think when i the way that i describe yemen and afghanistan to people because

00:14:40.100 inevitably they always think that it's so dangerous and there's explosions going off all the time and

00:14:44.660 then i'm like you know running for my life but the way i describe it to people is imagine that you knew

00:14:48.980 absolutely nothing about the united states you didn't know it was located on a map you didn't

00:14:54.660 know who the president was you had never seen any movies from there the only thing that you knew

00:15:00.340 about the us was what you read in the new york times and about like the rapes and the robberies and

00:15:07.540 the killings and you would think that america was like mad max on crack and you're like that place is

00:15:11.700 dangerous i'm fucking never going there and i feel like a lot of the times like living in yemen

00:15:18.420 most of my friends and family were like and then initially they were super scared for me but you

00:15:22.980 know when you live in a country like that or you know even going to israel or or other countries that

00:15:28.660 i've been to that are portrayed on the news and kind of like this hectic chaotic way i think the

00:15:33.540 majority of the population the majority of the time does not experience that yes there are you know

00:15:39.540 explosions here and there of like violence but you also have like school shootings here like i remember when i was

00:15:45.220 in saudi arabia at a taxi driver and he asked me where i'm from and i told him america and his

00:15:51.220 first thing was like oh it's so sad about your crazy schools over there like you must be so worried

00:15:56.420 for your children going to school and i was like i don't have kids but yeah i think that's something

00:16:01.540 that people do think about but it's interesting that that's our view of the states over there so

00:16:07.700 yeah yeah sorry i ramble on a lot so just tell me to shut the fuck up if i go on too long sorry um

00:16:16.100 no it's great so yemen obviously there's a significant civil war and a humanitarian crisis

00:16:24.260 happening there now was any of that going on when you were there or is that pre-chaos

00:16:30.500 i mean the well it really kicked off in there so the houthis have been were definitely an issue

00:16:38.020 when i was there like there was bombings in the outside the city ali abdul salah who was the president

00:16:42.500 at the time it was it was a definite issue there and we had lockdowns sometimes when things really

00:16:48.340 kicked off and and there was riots sometimes for um i remember this one time it's one of my like so when

00:16:55.540 you live in yemen you have to have clan and what i mean by that is when i moved there as a single

00:17:02.580 person um i would like move into an apartment and then this happened to me a handful of times i'd

00:17:08.980 move into apartment and then i would like repaint it and like do the you know redo everything and make

00:17:13.940 it nice and then inevitably my landlord would come a couple months down the line to check the place out

00:17:18.980 and then he like oh it really looks nice in here i was like yeah thank you and then about a month

00:17:22.660 later he's like i've decided to move back in and i'd have to move out and i uh i realized after a

00:17:28.980 while that i just had no recourse to any of this and then i met there's a huge diaspora of iraq iraqis

00:17:36.500 in uh in yemen because of what happened with the war in iraq a lot of iraqis moved to yemen to kind

00:17:41.780 of get away from that and escape that at the time and i'm what met and befriended this family

00:17:48.260 and they kind of took me in and adopted me and one of the one of the women i consider her like

00:17:53.700 a sister to me she actually helped me on the film and did some translations and looked at gave some

00:17:58.820 story notes but yeah she's like she's like a sister to me and um so when they adopted me um

00:18:07.620 the next time i got messed with like the whole crew came down and we're not talking about like

00:18:12.900 two or three people we're talking aunts uncles cousins and then as soon it was as it was clear

00:18:17.380 that i had clan that i had like people i was left alone and then they found me this place to rent

00:18:25.380 in hada which is the newer part of uh of sana and uh it was this really old gabili guy sorry

00:18:31.860 a gabili is um a bedouin with a lot of money from selling cot which is a drug there and um he

00:18:38.980 was a huge fan of mine because um i was always put the rent on time really really low maintenance

00:18:46.980 and when the riots kicked off this is very yemen when the riots kicked off he sent two hylix trucks

00:18:56.420 with toyota hylix trucks with each of them had a 50 caliber gun in the back and right outside my gate

00:19:03.460 to like protect me and then he dropped off an ak-47 for me to have just in case just in case

00:19:08.980 and i was like oh i love yemen it's this hospitality it's great yeah well yeah i'm

00:19:14.020 seeing the hospitality although the the safety is looking questionable at this point well it's you

00:19:19.060 know what i like i said it's if i was by myself at that time and i didn't have a clan i didn't have

00:19:25.620 a very well-known and and uh influential powerful gabili as a landlord i would be like yeah it's very

00:19:32.420 dangerous oh here's okay here's how i describe it right like i don't know about you but

00:19:38.820 i like puzzles not puzzles as in like i put together puzzle pieces so that shit drives me

00:19:44.020 nuts but actual like human culture or cultural and and political puzzles and so for example it was

00:19:51.140 2004 and so growing up my dad was a firefighter but he he had this knack of like he did he loved to

00:20:00.100 read he read a lot of textbooks um in his spare time that was one of the things that i picked up with

00:20:04.980 from him and so i was reading about laissez-faire economies and it was this theory and they'd really

00:20:13.540 never been in practice but at that time because this collapse of the small estate i was like this

00:20:17.620 would be a really cool thing to go find out about because technically this is a laissez-faire economy

00:20:22.900 there's no government there's no rule of law so i was in northern somalia small land and i was trying

00:20:30.180 to figure out how i could go to mogadishu because mogadishu at that time was absolutely chaotic and

00:20:37.060 if you can picture mogadishu as a pizza each slice of pizza is a different clan or different like

00:20:44.420 faction rules and you can't cross over that without permission if you do you can you'll you'll be shot

00:20:51.380 and killed so i was trying to figure out because i wanted to basically be able to go all over mogadishu

00:20:58.100 freely and i was trying to figure out how to do that and i realized that in mogadishu they had you

00:21:05.780 know marble cigarettes and coca-cola and other kind of products and it occurred to me that they have to

00:21:12.500 get that from somewhere because that's there's no factories that make that kind of stuff at that time

00:21:18.420 anyway in in somalia and mogadishu so even though the somali state collapsed in 1991 that means and

00:21:28.020 as did the post office that means someone has picked up some kind of and made a private postal business

00:21:34.100 and my theory was that if i can befriend that guy that would be the person who would be able to get me free

00:21:42.420 access because even if you're if you're a warlord if you're running a pirate piracy ring or you you need to

00:21:48.900 have your supplies right you need to have for your men for your family like you don't want to get cut off and

00:21:54.660 that's the one guy no one wants to piss off is the guy who brings you that stuff so i found out who ran the

00:22:01.060 private postal service in somalia i met with him i befriended him and then i went to mogadishu with him

00:22:08.420 and when we walked around everyone saw me with him and just figured that i was his friend or that we

00:22:14.580 were you know i was doing a business deal with him and then once he left i was able to go all around

00:22:20.420 mogadishu and no one messed with me and it was like pretty night and day and it was just figuring out

00:22:27.540 the puzzle of this place and how you're able to navigate it so i guess the answer to your question

00:22:34.580 is yes going to mogadishu as a six foot tall uh albino godzilla uh on the surface is not smart

00:22:43.860 nor is it safe but it's all how you do it and by doing it that way it actually was quite quite safe

00:22:51.220 does that make sense yeah yeah well i think you've just further confirmed that i want to be with you

00:22:55.700 in a crisis uh if i have to be in a crisis i'm on a lot of people's like topless for if the zombie

00:23:02.020 apocalypse actually comes i was really disappointed because i honestly thought that when this all

00:23:06.500 started i was expecting like mad max fury road i'm like man i'm gonna be i'm gonna rock in this

00:23:11.220 new world i got this great skill set and then it wound up being like the big lebowski apocalypse we're

00:23:15.780 all home in our robes so i didn't get to use my skill set unfortunately yeah kind of went stir crazy

00:23:22.260 actually so how long were you in yemen uh a little bit under four five years so like a little bit over

00:23:29.300 four and a half years yeah and and was somalia just a did it punctuate that time or did you go

00:23:33.940 to somalia after yemen so somalia i went in twice once when i was in yemen and then again

00:23:39.860 when i went back to school i wrote a paper based on my time in somalia called the advantages of

00:23:46.740 anarchy and i turned it into one of my professors and the paper basically said that somalia was in this

00:23:52.500 unique position because somalia land had declared itself independent but was and had its own currency

00:23:59.540 it has elections and president but it was not recognized by the international community and

00:24:04.820 because it wasn't recognized it wasn't able to get money from the imf and and things like that which

00:24:10.180 on the outside people thought was a bad thing but what actually happened was because they didn't have

00:24:16.020 international recognition they also didn't have international in like influence and so the

00:24:21.460 government didn't go abroad for money it had to go to the local populace and the local business

00:24:26.260 leaders and so it created a very healthy relationship between the local business and the politicians

00:24:31.860 where it was more organic and they were responsible to the local populace where a lot of countries in

00:24:36.820 africa receive a lot of their budgets and funding from you know the imf and so they're okay pissing off

00:24:43.460 the locals because people that they don't want to piss off are these foreigners in these foreign

00:24:47.140 countries so it actually created a very healthy economy and a very healthy political system in

00:24:52.340 the north in somaliland and so the paper that i wrote was kind of like about the advantages of the

00:24:58.260 anarchy that happened in somalia and i turned into my professor and she called me into her office and i

00:25:05.860 thought i was in trouble because i mean you don't know this about me but i have learning disability and

00:25:09.540 my spelling is a fucking atrocious like really bad so i thought i was gonna get in trouble and so she

00:25:15.860 called me in and she said you know i read your paper and i was wondering if you would be interested

00:25:20.580 in writing an academic article about it and i you know we could co-author it and i didn't know what it

00:25:27.620 took to write an academic article i thought it was gonna be like a couple weeks of my time so i was

00:25:31.460 like sure it like took two years so then i applied for some grants to go back to somalia and

00:25:37.220 actually do real field field research and so then i went back in um 2010 and went all over somalia kind

00:25:44.740 of doing field research on state building and piracy and using piracy as a way to measure stability

00:25:54.660 and state building fascinating sorry like again just tell me you shut the fuck up this is all great

00:26:01.780 so but yeah i do want to get to the present uh concern so so you i guess one more step along the

00:26:07.940 way so you're you have created this still by my lights fairly insane cultural exchange program for

00:26:14.740 yourself and it's all working out you've gone to you've spent years in yemen uh you've had adventures

00:26:21.940 in somalia at what point do you decide to become a documentarian that actually happened while i was living

00:26:31.140 in yemen so when i was in yemen i was teaching fire i was the head instructor at a firefighting academy

00:26:36.580 so i taught yemeni men how to fight fire and um which that's a whole different story how i got that

00:26:42.820 job that's i don't know if you know this but women aren't firefighters in yemen i can imagine yeah

00:26:48.340 i remember my first my first day i walked into the classroom and they didn't know i spoke arabic

00:26:53.700 um i walked in the classroom and i can hear them whispering and they thought i was the secretary for

00:26:57.220 the instructor and i started right on the board and they're like wait a minute this is our instructor

00:27:01.860 and they completely ignored me like completely and that you must have been in many situations where

00:27:10.100 people assumed you could not understand arabic and they're talking about you in front of you and

00:27:14.740 then you disabuse them yeah i love i love that i absolutely i love it because i mean i don't look like

00:27:20.740 yeah i don't look like i would you don't look like you speak arabic

00:27:23.700 but that for you so first day i literally went home i was almost crying because i thought oh my

00:27:28.500 god i'm gonna get fired from this job and then the second day the same thing happened and so you

00:27:34.260 know firefighting we have this saying like improvised adapt and overcome and it's something that we just

00:27:39.780 kind of go to all the time and uh when you become a firefighter the your fire academy is about 20 weeks

00:27:47.060 long it's probably more than that in some cases and you do all this classroom work where you study

00:27:53.540 fire science and safety equipment and you know you know standard protocol and you know chain of

00:27:59.860 command all that stuff before you ever do live field drills and what i mean by that is we have

00:28:04.980 something called the burn building when you're training and it's a house that basically you can

00:28:09.380 set on fire multiple times to kind of do live fire drills but you wait until the very end to do that

00:28:15.860 so what i decided to do was to take them because i figured that they looked at me and didn't see me as a

00:28:22.020 firefighter and that they just thought i was this woman to teach them stuff and i knew that i had

00:28:27.940 to change that perception so on day three i took them out to the fire ground and we did a live fire

00:28:34.820 drill and i taught them what an scba is it's a self-containing breathe apparatus that firefighters

00:28:40.260 use and i taught them about how to don it and i and my goal that day was to teach them skip breathing

00:28:47.060 skip breathing is a very advanced technique that firefighters use that when your air runs out

00:28:51.780 this alarm bell goes off and it basically tells you you have like a couple minutes left of air

00:28:56.580 and you if you're an experienced firefighter you change your method of breathing that you make that

00:29:01.700 last longer but you have to remain calm and you have this huge alarm going off in your ear it's really

00:29:08.340 really really hot all around you there's fire there's smoke and unless you have a lot of experience and

00:29:13.860 a lot of training you tend to freak out when that alarm bell goes off and you suck your air down

00:29:18.100 even faster and i knew that so there's all these cadets and i took them in two by two to the burn

00:29:24.020 building and i would shut off my air and shut off their air and then the alarm would sound and to the

00:29:29.540 person they all freaked out this one guy tried to pull off his mask and i had to slam his body against

00:29:34.980 the wall like on his mask and yell at him arabic i'm like if you take this off you will breathe in

00:29:40.660 superheated air and you will die so don't do that and then this one guy he like almost passed out and

00:29:46.900 i had to basically drag him out of the building and then we did that and it was about like i think i

00:29:52.500 had about 40 cadets and they all went in two by two and at the very end of it i came out and they're

00:29:56.900 like all on the ground like breathing really heavily and this one guy looks at me he goes

00:30:02.180 teacher you are a man and then after that that was it it was it was fine and we got along great and

00:30:09.300 they just looked at me as like a man dressed as a woman teaching them firefighting and that was fine

00:30:14.420 that was the end of it and so yeah it's definitely not the first time that that has happened but i do

00:30:20.020 think that like being able to understand kind of where people are coming from like these men i think

00:30:27.380 most of them had around a third grade education because firefighting is very different in yemen it's

00:30:32.980 not seen as a desirable job so you know people aren't people who have really well educated aren't

00:30:39.060 aren't going after that and so a lot of them were from the rural areas and this was a huge thing for

00:30:45.220 them and so it's like realizing that you know there's people who are maliciously sexist and there's people

00:30:50.820 who just have not been exposed to women in different positions like that and so once you're able to show

00:30:56.820 them like hey like i can do this i'm actually pretty good at it but it shifts their paradigm and then

00:31:02.340 we were able to work no problem one more firefighting question that just occurred to me because you know

00:31:07.780 9 11 was you know it was a um an atrocity when viewed from one angle a a certainly a tragedy when viewed from

00:31:18.020 another another and it was especially so i can imagine from the point of view of of a firefighter

00:31:27.860 what happened to the firefighters in in new york that day and you know the kind of the heroism on

00:31:34.420 display and the doomed nature of it was so acute i have to imagine that these events hit the

00:31:43.060 the firefighting community generally in an especially hard way i think you alluded to some

00:31:50.900 of that when you talked about how riven your firehouse was with with hatred of of islam perhaps

00:31:58.260 or or at least uh jihadism at a minimum is there more that you can say about that i mean how did this

00:32:04.660 land for firefighters so in california we have a fire season and back in the day it used to be

00:32:12.260 actual season not year round and um we have uh these things called strike teams where during fire

00:32:18.500 season when there's huge fires there are five engines that are sent out by different departments

00:32:22.900 and to as resource allocations and so i was on a strike team so i was on a different unit and

00:32:28.580 that morning we were at a station that had another engine on it so there's sometimes stations have two

00:32:35.620 two or three engines on that are stationed there and that engine had been out the whole entire night

00:32:40.420 running calls and my guys i was a senior firefighter at the time and my guys got up early and started

00:32:46.340 to get ready and um there was making a lot of commotion in the tv room and i was in the bathroom

00:32:52.740 and i came out to actually yell at them because i was like hey the other crew's still sleeping like keep

00:32:58.420 it down so i i walked in the tv room and i kind of gave it to one of the firefighters and he pointed

00:33:04.980 in the tv and i and i saw one of the trade towers on fire and i turned to him was like i don't

00:33:12.340 fucking care what movie you're watching because i thought it was i literally thought it was a movie

00:33:15.700 because i didn't i had just i just thought they were watching a movie or something and he's like no

00:33:20.260 this is the news and i looked at it and the one thing that i remember most of that day was the shift

00:33:30.100 shift and when the when the first plane hit at the firehouse it was more like oh shit like

00:33:38.420 that's gonna be a crazy call because normally you have a either a plane crash that you go on or like

00:33:44.180 a high-rise fire that you go on but that was like two so we all as firefighters we were all talking about

00:33:49.540 how what kind of call that would kind of be on how crazy it would go go to do something like that and

00:33:54.100 what you have to understand is before 9 11 all the training that we got was that steel reinforced

00:34:02.180 buildings don't collapse yeah so when you went to a high-rise fire you sent up you set your incident

00:34:07.940 command system at the bottom floor right so we knew there's loads of resources and loads of firefighters

00:34:13.700 and chiefs always were going to be at the bottom floor and so we knew that and so when the first plane

00:34:19.460 hit it was the shift that i'm talking about is like it was more like thoughts and prayers and

00:34:25.460 concerns and talks about how to be blunt how cool of a call that would that would be to go on right

00:34:31.220 like how cool would we do a plane crash into a high-rise and like we were all talking about

00:34:36.180 kind of being jealous of that going on a call like that and then there was a palpable shift when the

00:34:43.620 second plane hit because it was very clear when the first plane hit we thought it was some kind of

00:34:50.500 accident and when the second plane hit it was that the shift was so palpable because it went from

00:34:58.180 concern and thoughts and prayers to rage yeah and vengeance and it was interesting to me because

00:35:07.460 the facts were the same plane hit at the building people had died and it was tragic those those those

00:35:14.900 facts were the same but because the perceived intent had shifted from accident to this is an attack this

00:35:23.140 is on purpose yeah that shifted the whole paradigm at the firehouse and so that to me is one of the

00:35:29.140 things that i remember so vividly from that day and also that and then when the towers came down everyone

00:35:37.860 in the firehouse was silent because we all knew where all the firefighters were because the incidents

00:35:43.220 command system was had to be on the bottom floor and so we knew that probably before the rest of the

00:35:47.940 nation did that hundreds of firefighters had died and so the the um the reaction was so firefighting is not

00:35:56.020 like normal jobs it's not like you go to an office and you just do a nine-to-five with someone it really

00:36:03.300 is like an extended family and so i trained with guys in my department i trained with guys from fdny i

00:36:10.500 trained with guys from louisiana because i was i did a lot of search and rescue training and and usar

00:36:17.060 training which is like when the oklahoma city building exploded they'll send a usar team and it's basically

00:36:23.460 i think it's 72 firefighters who are trained in different things hazmats a low angle rescue

00:36:28.500 confined space different specialties and they'll send a team to that site to manage it and so you

00:36:34.260 get to train with other departments and it's i think it's also like a like when even when i was traveling

00:36:40.100 in pakistan i brought some shirts from my firehouse with me and i actually stayed at a firehouse in

00:36:46.500 pakistan and i gave them some firefighting shirts and it was yeah they just welcomed me in they were

00:36:52.260 very curious about women firefighting in america but it is an extended family that actually goes

00:36:57.460 beyond the borders of the us and i've it's just a different kind of profession because the way i

00:37:02.580 describe it is it's a very unique job when you're exposed constantly to other people's like the most

00:37:11.860 traumatic moments and it attracts a certain person and it kind of develops a certain personality to where

00:37:18.500 when you meet another firefighter there's this kind of look of like yeah you know you've been to the

00:37:24.100 ship you've seen it all does that does that make sense yeah yeah yeah so so there really was no

00:37:29.700 expectation on your part when you saw the fires burning out of control and in both towers that the

00:37:36.420 buildings themselves were going to start to pancake and come down oh absolutely no absolutely not that's

00:37:41.700 the thing like absolutely not because that's not what we're taught like literally it was when they

00:37:47.140 started to collapse it was shock because you know i i was not stationed in a place with high rises but

00:37:55.460 i knew firefighters who were and part of the training that you do is setting up on that ground floor for

00:38:02.340 your incident command system and so like and again they would part of firefighting is you have to learn

00:38:07.380 about building construction you have to learn about hazardous materials you have to learn about medical stuff

00:38:11.220 like it's a pretty great job if you're a person who gets bored easily because there's always new stuff to learn

00:38:16.260 about but yeah we all the building construction training that we had it was like steel reinforced buildings

00:38:22.580 don't collapse yeah and then that was the golden rule and then and then they did and then the whole world kind of

00:38:28.420 shifted yeah well in defense of our erroneous assumptions no one had ever flown a fully fueled

00:38:36.420 passenger jet into a high rise this is yeah this is true um jet fuel burns really hot and hot enough to melt those

00:38:45.380 kind of steel reinforced beams that and no matter how thick they were so yeah it was yeah it was

00:38:50.500 something that was hadn't been tested before yeah well you'll get a few emails from 9 11 truthers

00:38:56.580 after this so okay i'm gonna go on a tangent can i just tell you this in the middle east there's a lot of

00:39:03.620 conspiracy theories that's it just that's just part of the there's a lot of conspiracy theories also around

00:39:10.100 9 11 and almost to a person people that i talked to in saudi arabia all thought 9 11 was an inside

00:39:18.260 job either done by the israelis or done by the united states as an excuse to go to war right and i

00:39:25.060 remember there was there was a guy that i'd met there really nice guy abdullah who would i would

00:39:31.140 classify super conservative very very religious but salt of the earth fucking good human just a great human

00:39:38.020 being and uh he would he was adamant he was adamant that it was like an inside job and america did it

00:39:45.620 and xyz and i remember i like he he acted as my driver sometimes and i went to go interview khalid you

00:39:54.180 know the guy who opens the film the bomb maker so khalid was his interview was 10 hours long he was just

00:40:03.380 such a fascinating person and he was with assam bin laden on 9 11 and so we talked a lot about that

00:40:09.460 in his experience and um abdullah was in the room for part of the interview and that part it was

00:40:15.540 about khalid talking about you know 9 11 and the attacks and being with assam bin laden and the plan

00:40:23.380 and all the other stuff and i remember leaving that interview and i got in the car with abdullah

00:40:29.380 and this is from the horse's mouth the guy that was next to assam bin laden on 9 11 telling how

00:40:35.300 i was like abdullah like after hearing that 10 hour interview like have you changed your mind

00:40:42.020 about this being an inside job and he's like you know mike yeah i think uh i think maybe maybe you

00:40:48.420 were right and i was like yeah it only took like 10 hours like assam bin laden's best friend telling you

00:40:53.540 this so i was like okay but yeah that was that was pretty funny you just have to do that a few million

00:40:58.580 more times yeah and uh change opinion yeah right yeah i think you know khalid my hope someday is to

00:41:06.340 take his interview and do like a podcast of it because his interview was just amazing like for

00:41:11.380 example there was so much that couldn't go in the film but i was talking to khalid about just small talk

00:41:16.820 and asked him you know do you do i am documentary filmmaker do you ever watch documentaries he's like

00:41:22.260 yeah i watch a lot i was like oh what's your favorite one and he said oh it's the one that we

00:41:26.740 that was on the syllabus at al-faruk i'm like wait a minute you guys had a syllabus at the al-qaeda

00:41:31.860 training camp that had documentaries that were assigned watching material he's like yeah i was

00:41:38.660 like well what's your what's your favorite documentary and i was kind of wracking my brain

00:41:42.100 i think what would what would al-qaeda assign for homework for these these these guys in training he said

00:41:49.380 you know my favorite one was the one about the man he's always looking in the camera and he's talking

00:41:54.580 about the war in vietnam and i was like wait fog of war by errol morris and he was like yeah he's

00:42:01.780 like we watch that film and we know all we need to know about america i was like this is crazy someday

00:42:07.380 i i want to tell errol morris that his uh yeah his movie was on the syllabus at an al-qaeda training

00:42:12.580 camp that was great i would bet they've got a few michael moore films too yeah yeah okay so let's

00:42:20.420 jump in we're just going all over the place i apologize i see the through line it's working

00:42:25.140 but let so you are um you are steeped in the culture at this point and you have decided to make

00:42:32.500 a film which sends you to saudi arabia you know perhaps you you want to say how you got pointed in

00:42:39.940 that direction and heard about this the phenomenon of jihad rehab but um perhaps you can just briefly

00:42:47.380 summarize the film i want to talk about the film but i really want to talk about what has happened

00:42:52.580 since the release or attempted release of the film yeah because that they're they're in some powerful

00:42:59.220 ironies await us so what is jihad rehab the place the phenomenon and and give me the the elevator summary

00:43:07.700 of your of the film you made yeah so i'll take those in reverse so jihad rehab now retitled the

00:43:15.620 unredacted is about a group of men who after spending 15 years in guantanamo are sent to the world's

00:43:24.900 first rehabilitation center for terrorists which with terrorists which are located in saudi arabia

00:43:30.340 i first heard about the center way before i was a filmmaker i was living in yemen and i was teaching

00:43:38.500 firefighting and i kind of overheard a conversation from some of my cadets and they were talking about

00:43:45.060 a terrorist attack that had taken place in saudi arabia i think it was around 2007 and um they said

00:43:53.060 that the perpetrators had been caught and that half the perpetrators were saudi and half the perpetrators

00:43:59.300 and their half of the other half was uh yemeni and that the yemenis had been tortured and killed but

00:44:06.020 the saudis had been sent to something that they referred to as jihad rehab and at the time this was

00:44:13.540 really interesting to me because saudi arabia was and also is not known for its human rights record or

00:44:22.180 for being very progressive and so always kind of perplexed me why this very conservative country

00:44:27.940 was running some kind of progressive rehab program for for terrorists and it always kind of stuck with

00:44:34.500 me and then my last film i made in cuba and my spanish is not great and when it came time to do my

00:44:43.220 next project i wanted to do something where it was going to be easy it would be easier because i spoke

00:44:48.580 the language it was way not it was so hard to make this film um yeah and so i originally wanted to do this

00:44:57.780 and i didn't know the kind of access i could get i was pretty sure i could get enough access to at

00:45:01.860 least do a short documentary that was definitely within my i think powers but i wasn't sure if i was

00:45:08.980 going to have enough access or the kind of access that i wanted to do a feature-length doc and um but

00:45:15.380 it took me like a year to get access at least the kind of access that i have to to make this film

00:45:20.740 like full transparency they there are reporters that visit the center before me but they're given

00:45:28.820 like a two-hour you know powerpoint presentation and then they're shown around and then they're

00:45:34.740 really really kind of escorted everywhere and very curated and they might be able to talk to maybe one

00:45:41.380 or two people there but the kind of access that i was asking for they had just never given ever

00:45:46.740 right i think i can't remember is is it the same place that graham wood the atlantic writer went to

00:45:51.860 when he yeah he interviewed mbs yeah so he full disclosure i listened to his podcast with you and

00:45:59.780 actually it's the only reason why i i really wanted to hear that full interview so i paid for

00:46:05.700 your subscription for that month just to listen to that and then i had to like i had actually like

00:46:10.180 stopped my subscription that same month because i'm when you get canceled like i did you're really poor

00:46:15.460 so even though i loved your podcast so with graham was like i can't afford to keep on doing it well

00:46:18.980 i've got some connections over here i'll let me hook you up yeah can you talk to the person in charge

00:46:24.900 um you know i listened to that it was really it was really great yeah so i spent some time at el

00:46:29.540 hire which i think graham talked about in his podcast and i spent obviously a lot of time at the

00:46:33.620 center so just to give you some context here i interviewed or talked with i would say around

00:46:39.860 probably over 150 of these guys of that 150 around 30 were interested in doing the project

00:46:48.660 of that 30 only 12 were interested in doing the project without their face being blurred or disguised

00:46:54.100 in some way and for me it was really imperative for the audience to be able to see these guys and

00:46:58.820 look them in the eye because i think that's how you kind of are able to like see someone's humanity but

00:47:03.780 yeah yeah so and they were were they all yemeni in the end or were three of the the four yemeni what

00:47:11.380 was um so in the film you have khalid and he's saudi and then abugan abuganam ali muhammad and

00:47:19.380 nadir are all yemeni right right yeah okay so you make this film which i've seen and um which few other

00:47:26.980 people have seen given what happened upon its premiere let me say maybe i'll just i'll just

00:47:33.140 say this at the outset i mean just to set people up for to understand what you saw the film like

00:47:37.940 what when you before you saw it you heard about it what did you think you were gonna what did you

00:47:43.140 what were your expectations before you watched the film well i was because melissa got in touch with

00:47:47.620 me i i was set up to understand it appropriately you know i just i sort of knew what i was getting into

00:47:53.060 but nevertheless i was surprised upon watching it how insane its reception was you know that what

00:48:04.420 you've produced in this film apart from it being just a a very professional and well-done documentary

00:48:12.180 and this is the kind of thing you'd expect to see on frontline or netflix or you know any place that

00:48:18.820 hint hint hint distributors yes um but it's it's just a remarkably compassionate and humanizing

00:48:27.620 document right i mean so to give people a heads up here i mean i want you to run through

00:48:32.820 everything that happened once it premiered at sundance but one would think this is precisely the

00:48:39.140 kind of film that people who have criticized me for islamophobia would want people like me to see

00:48:47.380 right i mean it's literally impossible to watch this film and not have serious misgivings about

00:48:54.660 how we've conducted our side of the war on terror and you know serious misgivings about guantanamo

00:49:00.420 for instance and i mean you totally humanize these guys and if anything i could imagine the concern for

00:49:09.620 criticism uh you know going into this would have been that you'd be worried you were perceived as being

00:49:16.580 soft on terrorism right or just taken in by the humanity of these guys and not really getting

00:49:23.220 you know the nature of the evil we had to deal with and still have to deal with out in the world

00:49:28.900 right so like you would imagine if anything you could imagine some criticism from the right or from

00:49:34.980 even someone like me i mean i'm not i'm not a creature of the right at all but i'm someone who

00:49:40.500 you know like you 9 11 had a an instantaneous impact on me but the direction i took it is

00:49:49.620 a real focus on on the problem of jihadism and you know that that focus is often misunderstood

00:49:55.700 it's not at all unanimous against muslims generally as people and it's not it's certainly not a any

00:50:03.140 symptom of xenophobia on my part and you know i'm not at all surprised at the humanizing story you're

00:50:08.820 able to tell in this film i mean my problem with jihadism is that and and just with bad

00:50:14.980 contagious ideas generally is that you know bad ideas get good people to do bad and and otherwise

00:50:21.780 unthinkable things it's like it's the bad idea problem that i'm most worried about and jihadism

00:50:27.620 is one species of you know very bad ideas that has religious roots but it's not the whole story

00:50:33.700 and again watching your film what comes through very clearly is the rest of the story right like

00:50:40.900 so you see these guys as truly ordinary men who are faced with various life challenges like you know

00:50:48.500 earning a living and getting married or you know how to get married right how to even get a woman's

00:50:53.780 attention and and you see this quite standard set of social problems and you see the way in which

00:51:01.460 you know jihadism can capture that and leverage that and you know you know ideology and religious

00:51:07.220 belief aside you see other variables there and and that really is your focus in the film so

00:51:13.460 the irony and we're again we're going to talk about what happened you know once you made this film

00:51:19.140 the irony is this is you know from my view this is like it's almost the perfect rejoinder or would

00:51:26.180 it should be i mean again it's not a true rejoinder because you know i i don't i don't reject anything

00:51:31.780 in your film but it should be perceived as the perfect rejoinder to everything i've said about islam

00:51:40.100 and jihadism right it's like it is the thing you should want me to see if you hate what i've said

00:51:45.220 in yeah i honestly thought you wouldn't like the film right i mean i don't again i don't listen to

00:51:50.260 your podcast religiously because i'm poor but i the few things i have you know seen the clips online

00:51:55.780 and stuff i was like oh yeah i'm sure intellectually i say i think that you would have like been fascinated

00:52:01.860 by it but i i was prepared for you to be like i watched your film meg and i didn't like it and hear

00:52:07.300 all the things i think you did i should be the person who should be criticizing you for this film

00:52:12.420 and certainly anyone to the right of me that's where you would think it would come from yeah and

00:52:17.620 honestly we i say we i always say we i should say me more often um but um i thought and believed

00:52:25.780 that this film was going to be atrociously attacked by the alt-right and because of that i took a lot of

00:52:35.220 steps both pre during and post production to buttress up against those what i mean by that is

00:52:43.220 i knew that if like so typically when you make a film and it's in a most of the films in english but

00:52:49.380 there are places where it's arabic you hire like a translator student initial ones and then you hire

00:52:54.500 one translator to go in at the very end and make sure and spot check and make sure everything's on

00:52:58.500 the up and up because i knew that this film was going to be just ripped apart we didn't hire one

00:53:04.820 or two we hired three different translators to go through the entire film before we picture locked

00:53:11.380 to make sure that every single word that was in there was correctly translated because i thought that if

00:53:18.100 something was off or wrong that they would use that one thing to say see this isn't right and therefore

00:53:22.660 the whole film isn't right and so i went through the film with a fine tooth comb and as did our

00:53:28.500 lawyers and we have this law firm called donaldson caliph and there you never heard of them but they

00:53:33.940 are the top lawyers for documentary films like they've represented all the oscar award winners going back

00:53:39.300 like 10 15 years and they're really well respected and uh they went to the film and they kind of was

00:53:46.260 like yeah you kind of like went way in beyond what you really needed to do to clear this film like

00:53:51.060 yeah because we're gonna get ripped apart once this thing gets out there and um i just you know

00:53:56.260 i am also an ex an ex competitive boxer and so i'll use that metaphor and i was expecting the

00:54:02.820 the right hook and i wasn't i wasn't prepared for the left cross you know so there therein lies the

00:54:09.540 problem yeah yeah okay so what happened and and what what did the left cross actually look like well i mean

00:54:17.300 before we get to that i want to back up because you mentioned something about these guys and their

00:54:22.420 motivations and i will say i wanted just to add to that because you know like i said i interviewed

00:54:27.860 over 150 of these guys and some of the interviews lasted 10 minutes some of them lasted like call it up

00:54:34.500 to 10 hours and after a while i began to see this pattern of that they would fall into one of four

00:54:42.660 categories not all of them there was exceptions but like one of four categories in terms of what how

00:54:47.220 they got into this this this lifestyle or this this world and i think what was really interesting to me

00:54:54.740 was that of the four there was only one that actually had to do with religion and the other

00:55:00.180 three had nothing to do with religion so when you were talking about like jihadism this like bad idea

00:55:04.740 thing i actually that wasn't a universality from the people that i talked to and again i only

00:55:09.140 i only talked to like you know i didn't talk to thousands of them but it was you know a little

00:55:14.260 bit less than 200 right and so also i should just know you have performed a kind of psychological

00:55:19.780 experiment in making this film and what you got is a the very definition of a self-selecting

00:55:27.700 group of people who were willing to talk to you right oh yeah well i will say that the people

00:55:31.540 that were willing to talk to me so i should let's back up so how i got access originally and the

00:55:38.020 reason why i was able to talk to so many of them was so when you when you when you operate in a in a

00:55:44.420 regime a dictatorship be it yemen with ali abdul asala or you know anytime that there's an authoritative

00:55:50.580 regime going through official channels is always in my opinion kind of the worst thing to do the way to

00:55:58.420 get access in those kind of places is by building relationships and back channels and whatnot so like i said

00:56:05.940 before it took me a year to get access and part of that was building relationships with people who

00:56:11.620 were influential and who could who had friends and and powerful places and the one thing you have to

00:56:20.100 understand about saudi arabia and and other dictatorships is they'll never tell you no but

00:56:25.380 that what they will do is they'll throw hurdle after hurdle after hurdle after hurdle in front of you

00:56:31.220 until you kind of just give up and there are a lot of things that i'm not good at i'm a horrible

00:56:36.340 speller i'm very very bad when it comes to like directions but i got tenacity for days so it was

00:56:43.380 i was up for that challenge so we'd been going back and forth for about a year i remember at one point

00:56:49.380 they said you know what we went to the prison and we went to the rehab center and none of the men want

00:56:53.380 to talk to you so that's the end of it and i said well why don't you let me just just let me talk let

00:56:58.900 me just go to the rehab center and to the prison and talk to these guys and they were really reluctant

00:57:04.340 to do that and so we were going back and forth for a long time and so finally i was able to put

00:57:08.100 enough pressure on the right people to where they acquiesced they said okay we will let you physically

00:57:14.660 enter the prison and the rehab center with one caveat and here's where the hurdle comes in they said

00:57:21.860 you're not allowed to film one frame of video unless these guys agree from the jump to be part

00:57:30.260 of your project meaning i couldn't spend months trying to get to know them and make them comfortable

00:57:34.260 with me they had to like agree from day one which they knew was never gonna fucking happen because a

00:57:40.420 lot of these guys were either fresh off the plane from guantanamo where my country had just tortured

00:57:46.020 them for a long period of time or they were like fresh like for back from syria and fighting with

00:57:52.500 and fighting in in isis and so and they were right when i first they so they let me in the center and

00:57:59.140 they let me in al-hayr and when i sat down with the first batch of people there was the older al-qaeda

00:58:03.460 guys and i started talking in arabic and they wouldn't even acknowledge my presence they wouldn't even

00:58:08.020 like answer any of my questions some of them wouldn't even look me in the in the eye and then i went to the

00:58:12.500 the next group which was like the younger isis guys and same thing there but what had serendipitous

00:58:19.620 serendipitously happened was that was also the same time that saudi arabia took its first batch of

00:58:27.060 non-saudi nationals through the program and they just happened to be from yemen and i learned arabic in

00:58:34.420 yemen so i have a very thick yemeni accent when i want to and so i went in and i and there was nine of

00:58:40.340 them and i sat down and i started speaking and their heads popped up and they're like why the

00:58:45.460 fuck do you speak our mother tongue they didn't say fuck but i'm going to add that for dramatic

00:58:49.860 flair and i told them i used to live in yemen and they want to know how long and where i lived and i

00:58:55.700 so i lived in the old city um near the sila and they want to know like oh like the near that is a

00:59:02.260 very famous fossa restaurant down there and i was like yeah best fossa on all of all the old city and we

00:59:06.180 we just had this immediate rapport because they hadn't been back to their home country in over 15

00:59:10.980 years and so we just started talking and we talked for hours and then at the end of it i said i would

00:59:17.700 really love to talk to you guys more individually about your stories and learn about you know who you

00:59:24.020 are and as people and you know would anyone here be willing to speak with me individually and a couple

00:59:29.460 hands went up and then i met with those guys individually and then kind of word spread throughout the

00:59:36.020 rehab center that like meg wasn't a journalist because i didn't really ask him where the bodies

00:59:40.260 were buried in the beginning it was more like you know tell me about your childhood like tell me about

00:59:44.580 like your favorite sports teams is very benign stuff initially because i knew i was there for the

00:59:49.620 the long haul which is great one of the things i love about being a documentary filmmaker is you're

00:59:53.700 given like the time and the space and the grace to explore a story where i think feel if i was a

00:59:59.940 journalist on assignment i'd have to ask those hard questions from the jump because i'd only be there for

01:00:03.860 for a week or two so yeah word spread around the rehab center and throughout like the staff that

01:00:09.300 you know meg was like basically a white yemeni is what i was told and so i was able to talk to a lot

01:00:15.540 of the guys that initially wouldn't talk to me and even though a lot of those guys didn't want to be

01:00:20.580 part of the project with the exception of a handful of people al-hayr who just would not meet with me

01:00:25.860 at all they it was pretty it was self-selecting for the project but i think i spoke to most people

01:00:32.260 and i don't know i mean i would say i probably spoke to maybe there was like i'd say 10 to 15

01:00:39.540 people that i met that absolutely wanted nothing to do with me but other than that i was able to

01:00:44.820 talk to quite a few people but getting back to the original thing after talking to all those people

01:00:51.380 and yeah it is self-selecting in a way i started to notice a pattern and so it came down to like

01:00:57.780 four different motivations and that's why there's four different characters in the film so the first

01:01:02.420 one and i think this is the one that most americans are familiar with is the cause right like i see muslims

01:01:10.820 being persecuted or being oppressed and i want to go and defend them and it's my religious duty right

01:01:17.620 and so that's like abu ganem where he talks about going to bosnia when he first got into this to go

01:01:23.460 defend muslims in bosnia so that's the one i think most americans are familiar with but the other three

01:01:29.060 have nothing to do with religion so the next one is economic necessity right like you have someone

01:01:35.780 like notter who was he says in the movie just to be clear i would put a a 0.1 cause ahead of that

01:01:43.060 first cause because i mean there there are many jihadists they may pay some lip service to

01:01:48.980 defending their fellow muslims but in many cases that's not even the rationale it is much more about

01:01:55.460 paradise i mean you literally we've got people who dropped out of medical school in london to go

01:02:01.060 fight for isis and they're fighting other muslims for isis i mean it's got nothing to do with

01:02:07.460 saving the bosnians who were who are left yeah but i mean it that's that's a that's an interpretation

01:02:12.820 of the cause right so like i spoke to a lot of men who do subscribe to a certain ideology right and so

01:02:21.220 it's like unless you're this specific type of muslim this salafi type of muslim who describes to this

01:02:29.060 these certain rules and ways of living then you're not a real muslim right and in their mind if you're

01:02:34.180 not a real muslim then you're like an infidel and you can be targeted and so i think that's that's

01:02:38.500 definitely an ideology part of it for sure but it's still like them thinking they're doing the

01:02:43.700 just and right thing and it's a cause like so it it's just a different version of like where it's one

01:02:49.620 where you know i would gone and went to bosnia because that's what he thought his religious duty

01:02:55.620 was where i'm sure the guy you're talking about in london thought his religious duty was to go and

01:03:00.820 join isis and and and do that that stuff there does that make sense i i put those in the same

01:03:06.020 category okay yeah i didn't mean to derail you so so the second one was that i found a lot of men

01:03:12.820 talk about was economic necessity right so in the film you have not or saying that his life was hard

01:03:18.980 before and that he needed money and i think the exact quote is you know um you want money you need

01:03:25.140 money you go do the jihad and in his mind it became a way to make an income and it became a

01:03:31.380 career for him because he did this for a really long time he started out i think when he was 16

01:03:35.700 and i think he was doing it till he was in his late late 20s early 30s and uh so that's motivation

01:03:43.380 number two motivation number three would be pure pressure right so your family's into it your friends

01:03:50.100 are into it that's ali right his brother was really high up in al-qaeda and in the middle east

01:03:56.740 your older siblings or your fathers or are very influential in terms of your life trajectory and

01:04:02.740 your path and your decisions and so ali went to afghanistan to an al-qaeda training camp because his

01:04:09.780 brother was an instructor there and told him that he should go there and ali didn't really want to but

01:04:15.300 he was just like you know he's my older brother i gotta do what he says because that's the respectful

01:04:19.460 thing to do and then the last one the fourth motivation that i found was more age dependent

01:04:26.360 more of the younger guys and that was sense of adventure right so that's muhammad he said you know

01:04:31.320 i was i was i didn't want to i didn't want to go to school i thought it was boring i didn't want to work

01:04:35.340 this guy offered me a free ticket to go shoot rockets in afghanistan like heck yeah that's i mean

01:04:41.580 you're 19 years old you want to blow some shit up cool travel awesome and i think that like

01:04:47.200 what was really interesting to me is when i realized that i also realized that like i had a

01:04:53.020 lot of friends in the military and i'd heard similar motivations from them right like i had a lot of

01:04:58.040 friends who joined up for the military after 9-11 that's the cause right they're like like we want

01:05:04.760 to join up we want to defend our country so they that's cause number one i have a lot of friends who

01:05:09.600 you know sometimes the best job in the state is with the military you know economic necessity that's

01:05:14.960 job number two a lot of friends who come from military families and uh you know that's just

01:05:21.080 what their family does that's motivation number three and then a lot of my friends who joined up

01:05:26.760 who don't come from money but wanted to you know see the world and travel and have those adventures

01:05:30.840 join the military and that's you know number four and a lot of people who join the military to go to

01:05:35.180 school right as well so it's kind of a monetary incentive and what i realized after a while

01:05:40.180 i'm talking to the guys it wasn't never really about good and evil it was more about time and

01:05:46.200 circumstance and even though like i will say universe not university almost university a lot of

01:05:52.080 these men were younger and they were searching for purpose and they were searching for belonging and that

01:05:59.260 also played a big role as well but i think those four motivations are the reason why we have four

01:06:04.720 different characters in the film because they all represent the nuance and the complexity of this

01:06:10.000 thing and so i think when people talk about terrorism and they equate it to islam i think that and

01:06:17.680 and just strictly religion i think that's it's a misrepresentation of the actual at least at least

01:06:24.340 my experience in interviewing these guys does that make sense yeah yeah i mean i think there's probably

01:06:29.060 more to say on that subject but it's not important here and but the most important thing to emphasize is

01:06:35.660 that you know anyone who has attacked me or anyone like me for islamophobia should want me to

01:06:45.980 contemplate a document of the sort you have produced right i mean you have you have produced a

01:06:52.300 nothing like an echo of any of my diatribes about islam and jihadism and my specific criticisms of

01:07:01.280 belief in paradise and when what work that does for suicide bombers and terrorists and in certain

01:07:08.320 contexts and so it's just it's none of that right and yet you have been attacked explicitly as an

01:07:17.280 islamophobe upon the release of this film so that that's um and i think there's probably uh you know

01:07:23.920 perhaps you know more about this than i do but i i think it's a fairly organized campaign again of

01:07:30.260 you know counter pr against your film and it's it has worked oh yeah it's it goes way beyond that like

01:07:36.260 it there's there's things that you see in public but there's private stuff so there's been lawyers

01:07:41.020 that were hired to send threatening letters they're like like just the we got initially we got loads

01:07:48.000 of universally positive reviews from all the major trades like the hollywood reporter and indie wire

01:07:52.820 and then right after that this group sent letters to all the places that gave us positive reviews and

01:07:58.940 threatening lawsuits and then subsequently a lot of those publications changed the wording of their

01:08:05.300 reviews which i thought was quite shocking wow but yeah so it was a very coordinated you know like i

01:08:11.620 just want to be clear on something here i think that whenever you make a piece of work be it a book

01:08:17.300 or a movie and you put it out into the public space being criticized is part of that process

01:08:24.860 and i i think that is a good thing i think criticism is something that is helpful for dialogue and also

01:08:33.340 sometimes can make you a better writer or a better filmmaker however i differentiate between criticizing

01:08:39.540 a piece of work and orchestrating an actual attack to take it down and there's difference between

01:08:49.000 tweeting i don't like this film and then hiring lawyers to try to scare people off the project or

01:08:55.440 or scare buyers off and or harassing people online like so for example sundance announced a lineup

01:09:03.420 of the documentaries on december 9th and the film would have its world premiere on january 22nd so

01:09:11.800 this is 2021 into 2022 yes correct so the but the announcement was around the 9th but the attack started on the

01:09:19.340 10th so the attack started way before anyone had actually seen the film right and initially if we're

01:09:26.880 being completely honest here initially the amount of like rage and anger that was directed at a film

01:09:38.520 that no one had seen and a filmmaker that no one really knew i think a lot of people their initial response

01:09:45.220 would have been to either attack back or been like you know you haven't even seen my film so screw you but

01:09:50.900 that was not my initial response i actually in the beginning but this is before i found out some

01:09:58.140 information later but at the beginning i actually understood it and here's why when when i was a

01:10:04.960 firefighter i went on a call once where this kid had been seriously injured and would probably lose his hand

01:10:11.880 and when we showed up on scene you know the mom was crying and the kid was bleeding out and the father the father

01:10:20.160 he was fucking pissed like we showed up and he was just like where the fuck have you been you're so

01:10:26.460 incompetent like what's taking so long and he was had this anger and rage that was directed at us

01:10:33.360 to the extent that i was looked at my captain like are we safe like is this guy gonna come after us

01:10:39.020 physically so we got the kid bandaged up and packed him up in the ambulance and right after the family was

01:10:46.080 out of earshot uh one of the other firefighters said that guy's lucky i didn't fucking deck him

01:10:51.580 and my captain because he's older and wiser turned around with this is a this is about to be a teachable

01:10:57.840 moment look on his face he said listen what you have to understand is that in this job you are

01:11:04.120 interacting with people at the most traumatic moment of their lives and trauma is a very tricky thing

01:11:11.040 people respond very very differently he said and it's very unpredictable some people cry some people

01:11:17.120 laugh and some people get angry and that guy even though he was angry at you it is not about you

01:11:25.220 that guy doesn't know you he's never met you before but he has just seen his kid seriously injured and

01:11:31.740 probably maimed and the way that he's dealing with that traumatic moment is through rage and even

01:11:37.840 though he's yelling at you even though he seems like he's just has this rage towards you you have

01:11:44.960 to understand that it has nothing to do with you and so when the film we started getting the attacks

01:11:51.280 before anyone had ever seen the film initially i thought like oh this makes sense to me because

01:11:57.600 number one what you have to understand is like every other film before this film that kind of talks

01:12:05.240 about terrorism is very sensationalistic is very kind of fear-mongering and so if i was a documentary

01:12:12.440 filmmaker and a muslim and i saw that sundance had programmed a film about terrorism done by this

01:12:19.240 white lady uh who's not a muslim i would think too that like oh like not another one of these these

01:12:26.040 films right and so also because like my sister who i told you about that kind of adopted me in yam and

01:12:32.680 she now lives in in the states and in texas and we talked quite a bit and she's told me over the

01:12:39.860 years about her experience in this country being a muslim woman who wears the hijab and so for example

01:12:45.740 she landed in america from yemen when she moved here after so she was living in iraq and then we

01:12:52.680 fucked up iraq and she moved to yemen and then yam went to shit and now she moved here she was she was

01:12:58.520 born in the states but um she grew up in iraq and uh so she came here and she said that she went

01:13:04.540 through customs and immigration and she took three steps out of the airport and she was three steps

01:13:10.980 into america and someone walked up to her and spit in her face and told her to go back to where she

01:13:17.020 fucking came from and that was her introduction to this country and so over the years i've talked

01:13:22.520 with her about her experience and i have a lot of friends who are muslim i'm really close with my

01:13:27.160 i'm executive producer muhammad he's yemeni uh muslim and uh we've talked about his experiences as

01:13:34.380 well although they're not as harsh i think is as rugged's because she wears hijab and a lot of people

01:13:40.260 mistake muhammad he said for for being mexican so he's like i can pass as mexican sometimes it's better

01:13:44.780 but i think that like knowing the amount of just i don't want to say tacit bigotry that

01:13:55.700 they have to kind of experience on a pretty regular basis like post 9 11 muslims were treated very

01:14:04.300 differently in this country and i think unless you're in that culture or you have really close

01:14:09.840 friends who are in that culture you're unaware of the toll that takes like for example imagine being

01:14:18.180 a person where everywhere you go you're treated with suspicion or you're treated in a way that is

01:14:28.400 different than the other people around you or you're having to deal with things like stepping

01:14:35.040 out of the airport and just being spit on i mean that is not one incident that's over years and over 20

01:14:41.900 years of experiencing that in this country that causes somewhat of a trauma traumatic effect right

01:14:49.640 so that is in itself i guess a type of trauma to endure that over two decades and so when this

01:14:56.140 originally happened because that amount of rage was directed at a film that no one had seen it reminded

01:15:04.420 me of that call where even even though the rage was directed at me and at the film because no one had

01:15:11.900 seen it yet or met me i kind of figured oh this is not about me or my film this is about the trauma

01:15:18.220 that these people have been through for the last 20 years and the assumption that this film is going to

01:15:23.480 add to that and be add to the problem of the stereotypes that are you know propagated in this in this

01:15:30.740 country about muslims and about islam and so it was really interesting so the imam that helped us on

01:15:36.320 the film he told me that when he was first told about the film his first response was like oh not

01:15:42.160 another one of these films about islam and terrorism and jihad and then he said once he saw it though

01:15:47.700 he goes meg if if you're going to watch any film about terrorism this is the one people need to watch

01:15:53.360 and i was like thank you and so he actually went from being very skeptical of the film to then

01:15:58.100 coming on as kind of a consultant and helping us with with some stuff and and in the film and still

01:16:04.080 is a really big champion of it for today and he's really well respected imam and he actually studied

01:16:09.780 in saudi arabia as well so he knew a lot about the kind of stuff that we had to do to make the film

01:16:14.040 get it done in saudi arabia funny enough his brother was also a firefighter on 9-11 but because of

01:16:19.740 the bigotry that he faced post 9-11 he actually left the fire service so we had a lot in common it was a

01:16:27.480 really interesting conversation but this is to say that before i got information down the line

01:16:33.880 my initial response to the hate that came with the film at me pre pre premiere was understanding yeah

01:16:43.780 was understandable well so i have a reaction to that i don't want it to take us too far afield

01:16:49.460 and it will sound perhaps cynical because it's a or i mean in reality it's probably i just i have more

01:16:57.440 experience than you had at that point being targeted by dishonest morons um so i i i would have viewed it

01:17:07.480 differently but the way the fact that you viewed it the way you did proves yet again how ironic it is

01:17:15.560 that you are being targeted as an islamophobe as someone who's totally inappropriate to bring us

01:17:23.020 this kind of you know analysis of the phenomenon of terrorism and our response to it it's quite

01:17:29.400 insane what is now about to unfold for you but i want to be clear that i i felt that initially but

01:17:36.220 then things happened that made me change yeah and you like so for so for example before before the

01:17:42.220 premiere it was a couple it was like less than a week after the announcement i was got a very

01:17:48.180 distressing email from a translator that we worked with in 2018 so even though my arabics it's pretty

01:17:56.660 rusty at this point so we i couldn't translate the film myself so um we hired a bunch of translators he

01:18:01.560 was one of them really good guy and he sent me an email that was really disturbing basically saying like

01:18:06.720 so this guy was so excited when the film got into sundance and that he translated a film that was

01:18:12.380 going to premiere at sundance that that same day he bought a ticket to park city because initially

01:18:16.680 sundance was supposed to be in person but it went virtual basically because of omicron and so he bought

01:18:22.420 a ticket to park city that day and then he also posted on all his social media about you know having

01:18:30.340 translated this film that was going into sundance and soon after he was contacted by one of these people

01:18:36.220 who were attacking the film and they messaged him and they basically said like you have to come out

01:18:41.900 publicly against this film and tell people it's islamophobic and he responded you know actually i

01:18:47.660 haven't seen the film yet um but i don't think that that's this film because the footage that i saw at

01:18:53.600 least i translated was very humanistic and very like character driven and and not like that at all

01:19:00.000 and then she messaged him back and basically said this was kind of the gist of it i'm

01:19:06.220 summarizing you're either with us or you're against us and if you don't come out publicly for this film

01:19:12.120 we're essentially going to blacklist you and you'll never work as a translator in the documentary

01:19:16.900 community again and this is a muslim to another muslim and when when he told me this because he

01:19:23.020 sent the initial email and i was really worried for him so i called him he was very shaken he was

01:19:27.100 really shaken by this and i felt like i felt like absolute shit because here's the thing when you're

01:19:32.700 when you're a director you're responsible for your crew and at that point the crew was starting

01:19:39.500 to get attacked and i didn't know how to protect them and i didn't know how to fix this i didn't

01:19:44.360 know how to make it stop and i just i was really taken aback because on the one hand i wanted to be

01:19:50.500 super empathetic with these people who had experienced these last 20 years of trauma in this country and

01:19:57.400 viewed my film as a threat to that but the other hand it's like you don't fuck with my people

01:20:02.700 you want to come at the film you come at me but to come after my fucking translator no that's

01:20:08.560 fucking bang out of order like i i was irately pissed i made sundance aware sundance didn't do

01:20:15.580 anything in fact i think that like they handled that quite poorly and so for me i started to shift

01:20:21.740 there when i saw some of the tactics that were being used by this main group and then i shifted again

01:20:28.800 in march so up until march i was trying to be i was trying to take what they were saying as face value

01:20:38.620 right because i come from a place where i look at documentary filmmaking in some ways as a calling so

01:20:46.840 when i was a firefighter it's definitely a profession that's a calling what i mean by that is there's a

01:20:51.620 specific culture when you're doing something that is a a calling so if i work at google i don't think

01:20:58.880 that's i don't think most people would call that a vocation of that's like a calling or whatnot but

01:21:03.280 when fire in firefighting we have very strong culture of loyalty and honesty and sacrifice and duty

01:21:10.880 and even the shittiest firefighters that i that i had to work with sometimes they might lie about how many

01:21:18.380 women they slept with but they would never lie about doing an equipment check and so there was a

01:21:24.480 baseline of like you don't lie you tell the truth you take the hit for the team if you're if you're a

01:21:31.700 captain you take the hit for your your firefighters if you take your chief you take the hit for the

01:21:35.700 captain it was this chain of command if you're a leader that's what you do and so for me what was

01:21:42.660 i think i naively went into the documentary profession thinking that that same culture

01:21:49.860 existed and was part of what we did so for example when you're a journalist you and a doc and a documentary

01:21:58.620 filmmaker i would hope you favor the truth above all else even if that's inconvenient for you you know

01:22:06.600 and what i mean by that is there's a lot of people who during the whole me too movement were like

01:22:11.760 believe all women and there there's some women who lied about stuff and it's very inconvenient to tell

01:22:19.620 those stories about women who were deceptive and that stuff when you're trying to further a cause

01:22:24.180 and if you're an activist you don't highlight those stories you don't you ignore those stories but if

01:22:29.020 you're a if you're a journalist yeah it's inconvenient to talk about that but that's just the fucking truth

01:22:34.640 so to ignore that i think if you're if you're a journalist and you ignore those stories then you're no longer

01:22:40.780 you're a journalist you're an activist who writes so in the beginning when this all happened and we

01:22:45.020 were getting all this like hate before anyone's seen the film but take me back so you get accepted

01:22:49.360 to sundance yeah and then sundance goes virtual um you're getting this hate even before the film is

01:22:57.260 broadcast virtually at sundance take me from there but i guess i i'm interested to know when the wheels

01:23:04.680 really start to come off and and you just have the time course of that yeah so what you should know

01:23:11.140 and probably most of your audience doesn't know is how pivotal and important sundance film festival is

01:23:18.100 in the documentary world so in the independent documentary space there is no better festival to

01:23:24.620 premiere at than sundance like it it literally can make your whole entire career and it can launch your

01:23:31.180 film and what i mean by that is in the category that i'm in which was in competition for the u.s

01:23:37.520 competition they only took 10 films that year they took less than they normally do i think normally

01:23:41.900 they take 16 but because of the pandemic they took less and um so the competition is really high

01:23:48.120 and also the year that i submitted to was supposed to be the first year in person since the pandemic

01:23:53.780 so a lot of people had held off and then submitted to that year so they got twice the amount of

01:23:58.800 submissions but took half the amount of films i think they get like i was told like 15 000 or on

01:24:05.120 a normal year and like so twice amount would be 30 000 and uh submissions and so when you're talking

01:24:10.780 about my category they're only taking 10 the competition is quite fierce and so when those films are seen as

01:24:17.360 the it films of that year and usually when you get to the oscars which is about a year later

01:24:22.520 most of the films that were nominated premiered at sundance so it is a place to launch your career

01:24:29.380 and it is a place where your film will get a springboard and a platform and an audience that

01:24:35.260 it would never get anywhere else and so to get into sundance is like winning the filmmaker lottery

01:24:41.560 on steroids and i cannot stress that enough because i think most women like maybe i'm being a little

01:24:50.280 sexist here but most women think about their fantasize about their uh wedding day right what

01:24:55.180 they're gonna wear and like what it's gonna be like i throughout this whole entire process in the

01:25:00.080 back of my brain i was fantasizing about the premiere of this film and i never thought i would get into

01:25:05.000 sundance but that was the fantasy i had of like yeah what my premiere would look like the q a and and

01:25:09.820 and it's just it's just it's the thing that people go their whole entire careers and they never get a

01:25:14.320 into sundance and so yeah it's competition is fierce so shit i forgot yeah and you and you could

01:25:23.600 have so the wheels are starting to come off even before the film is shown yeah but what i was saying

01:25:28.880 the wheels were starting to come off before the film was shown and at that point because like i said

01:25:33.720 before i was coming from it from a place of oh this is this is from a group of people who've been

01:25:39.160 traumatized believe all muslims oh i just i i thought that everyone was acting in good faith so

01:25:43.620 what i did is i assumed that this was just a misunderstanding because we had done so many

01:25:49.960 screenings before sundance with people all across the board we did a screening with the yemeni community

01:25:55.900 and muslim community we had guards from guantanamo in the audience and a couple of them we had maga

01:26:00.480 people we had super activist liberal people and we had never gotten any feedback at all that was even

01:26:06.220 like a sliver of this is olomophobic so i thought this was just a big misunderstanding that because

01:26:10.980 these people hadn't seen the film they just assumed it was like every other terrorist film ever made and

01:26:15.960 so what i did was i said okay like if this is just a misunderstanding let's show them the film because

01:26:22.220 we were still editing at that point because we weren't done done yet with the film and so i went to

01:26:26.380 sundance and this other organization called mpac i think it's the muslim public affairs council

01:26:31.440 and through each because i didn't know who these people were because a lot of this was anonymous at

01:26:35.800 this point i invited them i invited them to to come and meet me and meet muhammad and talk to us and

01:26:43.400 ask us any question they wanted and then screen the film and if they had really good notes and that were

01:26:48.740 made the film better of course i would have taken them and so we extended that offer and what to why

01:26:55.400 i got with sundance they said in the history of sundance no one has ever offered to show the people

01:27:00.760 attacking their film before the premiere and i was like because i truly believed that this was just a

01:27:06.700 misunderstanding but then we heard back from both those entities and they basically said you know

01:27:14.320 they told us they don't want to meet with you they don't want to meet with muhammad and they don't

01:27:18.800 want to screen the film and they also were really offended that you asked them to sign an nda we thought we

01:27:23.860 have everyone sign an nda like before the premiere this is not just this group so like in in my

01:27:29.260 profession before a film premieres you do test screenings and you have to have everyone in those

01:27:35.120 test screenings sign an nda so for example my boyfriend went to a test screening of jordan peele's

01:27:40.340 get out and he had to sign an nda so it's like it's just industry standard so at that point i was like okay

01:27:46.440 well there's really much nothing more i can do and i thought at that point i just interpreted it as oh this

01:27:52.120 is not about me or my film this is about sundance and they're angry that because i knew it was muslim

01:27:57.500 documentary filmmakers that much i did know about the group so i was like okay this is probably like

01:28:02.980 anger at sundance for programming one of the few films that got in is is a from a non-muslim

01:28:09.940 person telling stories about muslims so i i was like okay this is this is sundance issue not mine but i

01:28:16.340 think the problem was and when i say sundance i i want to differentiate between sundance the institute

01:28:23.360 and sundance the festivals because they're two different things and i guess we can talk about

01:28:26.640 that later but i think the wheels came off partly because of how sundance handled it and partly because

01:28:34.600 it was just kind of so instead of sundance saying just watch the film and after you watch the film

01:28:41.500 then we'll talk it was like sundance taking some of their demands and giving up to us so for example

01:28:47.940 we were given this list of the questions about the film that we they demanded we answer which we'd

01:28:54.400 already answered to sundance and so it was weird that they wanted one of these in writing and it was

01:28:58.200 pretty clear that this is what what the they're going to give to the group and i was told by the head

01:29:02.760 of sundance at the time that she had met with the group personally and had a long meeting with them

01:29:06.780 and took their concerns seriously and i at the whole time i was like how can you take their

01:29:12.480 concerns seriously because they haven't seen the film so for example what you have to understand is

01:29:16.940 the accusations that were initially being thrown the film again this is before anyone had seen it

01:29:23.180 was that this was saudi propaganda and that it was funded by the saudis and that my co-producer was

01:29:29.540 the saudi government because we have an anonymous co-producer on the project and um and so then sundance

01:29:35.360 gave us a list of questions that had to do with like who funded our film and all that stuff and i was

01:29:41.180 like you guys have seen the film you know that this is horseshit and so but i mean i think sundance

01:29:47.360 definitely placated to i shouldn't say placate i think at the time the head of sundance was trying

01:29:53.320 to make everyone happy and that it caused people to be more emboldened about going after the film

01:30:01.180 well also that criticism is ridiculous on its face because the film doesn't make saudi arabia look

01:30:08.460 especially good i mean it's one thing that happens in the middle of the film is that there's this

01:30:13.240 regime change and now mbs is running the place and your access gets curtailed and it's everyone gets

01:30:22.560 quite paranoid and the problem of saudi authoritarianism becomes a character in the film

01:30:31.080 there's no way someone could look at this film you know especially not someone at sundance who's

01:30:37.100 actually you know in the business of watching documentaries and think this is saudi propaganda

01:30:43.520 yeah i mean anyone who has actually seen the film would definitely have that takeaway and what i what i

01:30:50.340 mean by that what the reason why i'm bringing that up is because instead of sundance saying hey watch

01:30:55.280 the film and then we'll talk it was meeting after meeting with these people and with me getting me and

01:31:01.660 my film team to jump through some hoops like that they'd never asked anyone to jump through before like

01:31:06.640 they wanted us to have an outside review board look over our film and so in contrast to sundance right

01:31:12.980 so we got into a bunch of festivals other than sundance most of them pulled the film after the

01:31:17.260 controversy one of them didn't and there's it's a film festival called dock edge in new zealand

01:31:22.400 and when it got out that the film was going to play there there was a professor at san francisco

01:31:28.020 state university that decided that this was such an egregious thing to play my film that she had to

01:31:33.300 write this festival that was halfway across the globe yeah new zealand being in her dressed in her

01:31:38.720 backyard yeah but this i gotta i gotta read you this and i don't even know if you can use this or not

01:31:43.080 but this is this is the exchange and this is what i think sundance should have done so this is her

01:31:47.200 writing to the festival i'm kind of disappointed that your festival decided to program the now

01:31:53.240 renamed jihad rehab seems pretty disrespectful to the muslim community to which they reply have you

01:31:59.740 watched the film question mark if so we'd love to hear which part of it is disrespectful to the muslim

01:32:06.500 community to which she replies i haven't watched the film but many members of the muslim community

01:32:13.440 especially filmmakers have and have been critical of it i think your team must be aware of the

01:32:20.220 controversy in the discourse the criticism from the community members seems valid and thoughtful so i'm

01:32:27.600 listening to them and i'm respecting their opinion so that's why i'm so disappointed that this film is in

01:32:34.660 your lineup to which they reply we highly suggest that you watch the film before expressing any

01:32:43.740 disappointment with our decision to screen it we know that many many people who've commented on the

01:32:51.700 film haven't seen it either we are more than happy to discuss any concerns with anyone who's actually

01:32:59.440 watched the film now even though that seems like a very simple thing to do i think if sundance had

01:33:06.280 done that this might have gone a lot differently right and but they didn't they really wanted to

01:33:13.000 again keep it make everyone happy and i i understand that like you have a group of people who've been

01:33:18.200 marginalized for a really long time and it's all it's very hard to be a filmmaker in general it's hard to

01:33:24.120 be a filmmaker and be female it's hard to be even more hard to be a female filmmaker who's muslim and

01:33:29.320 so i i get sundance's propensity to try to you know be empathetic to these people's concerns however

01:33:38.300 i think that you can't address people's concerns of a film they have not seen um so i think the way

01:33:46.160 that sundance dealt with this in terms of having us jump through all these hoops and it cost us an

01:33:53.740 extra twenty thousand dollars to clear the film for the specific requirements that sundance wanted

01:33:59.700 us to have that they didn't ask any other film to do so i think the wheels came off once sundance took

01:34:07.660 that stance and they were wavering like they there was a time when it was clear to me well i interpret

01:34:14.580 anyway sundance set us a bunch of demands and they gave us 48 hour working days but over the if you

01:34:20.800 count the weekend four days to do it in and it was simply i mean i remember talking to my producer at

01:34:25.780 time he's like there's no way we can do this and i was scared because i was like they know that there's

01:34:31.260 no way they can do this and they're looking for an excuse to pull the film and so i basically was

01:34:34.940 like we got to do this no matter what because any excuse to pull it they're going to take and so for

01:34:40.700 example typically you have your film run through like errors and omissions and you're through your

01:34:47.200 lawyers once your picture locked they wanted it done in 24 or 48 hours working days our lawyers

01:34:54.000 couldn't do that so we had to pay them to work over the weekend which is really expensive we're talking

01:34:57.740 like when your lawyers cost a thousand dollars an hour and you have them work over the weekend it's

01:35:01.760 not cheap and so so they went through our film with a fine-toothed comb we should have been given a lot

01:35:07.600 more time to do this you always have to do it but to do it that early on was really expensive and to

01:35:12.340 do in that time frame we also had to have someone who was an outside person review the entire film

01:35:20.220 and interview me and interview my producer about how we made the film and consent forms and if the

01:35:28.040 consent forms were in english and arabic and if they were understood and how we basically got

01:35:34.420 informed consent and so all that stuff we did and it was instead of finishing the film in terms of

01:35:41.700 editing it we were doing all that kind of stuff and i think that it was alarming at the time i think

01:35:48.700 looking back it's even more alarming because it wound up setting a precedent that i think is very

01:35:55.220 worrisome going up going forward meaning that if the most prestigious film festival in the world

01:36:00.140 had a small group of people who were protesting a film they hadn't seen and then that film festival

01:36:06.380 required special audits for a film i did it just it just to me it was just so unusual and when i talked

01:36:17.440 to other people who had a lot more experience they were also alarmed by what was happening and kind of

01:36:23.600 the because you don't have review boards like this this is it's the point was one of the people who

01:36:30.380 kind of came to our defense at the time said who is better positioned to kind of tell like what is on

01:36:38.820 the up and up in the film people have actually been to that country and spent years with these

01:36:42.640 protagonists or someone who's never stepped foot in the kingdom and just is reviewing a film that they know

01:36:47.560 nothing about like it just seemed like they wanted to check a box um rather than actually kind of like

01:36:54.580 taking the film and talking to people who actually knew like we worked with experts on the film we had

01:37:00.540 like people in the state department people in the department of fence people in saudi arabia like we had a

01:37:06.520 lot of people who knew a lot about this subject that i consulted with and i think that if they just said we

01:37:12.260 want we would like to talk to some of your consultants that would have made sense to me but

01:37:15.780 i don't know it was just a very it definitely felt like they were looking for an excuse to pull the

01:37:23.480 film because they were getting so much heat from this group so i think that's when the wheel started

01:37:28.220 even not to come off yet but that's when the wheel started to get a little bit loose and it was also

01:37:31.920 pulled from south by southwest right it was accepted there and then yeah that was wasn't it was not

01:37:38.720 it was disinvited so that was really hard for me because you have to understand that i have a special

01:37:43.740 relationship with that film festival like my last film premiered at south by and it won south by

01:37:50.060 southwest won the top award and that kind of launched my career and i had become friends because

01:37:55.720 of that with some of the people who work there and some of the programmers and this was my first

01:38:00.220 feature-length documentary and when i submitted it there one of the programmers called me and was

01:38:06.480 just gushing about it and she's like hey like i wanted to call you earlier but we were waiting on one

01:38:10.720 of our last programmers to see it we all were curious what he was going to say because it was

01:38:15.040 really important what his opinion was because he's actually a vet and so before we extended the

01:38:20.420 invitation we wanted to see what he thought about the film he said it was extraordinary and they were

01:38:25.820 so excited about the film and they were really really like she was really nice on the phone she's

01:38:30.540 like it's so great to see you do this project after your last one and see how much you've grown as a

01:38:35.420 filmmaker and it's a storyteller and uh yeah and i and i remember telling them you know i couldn't

01:38:42.360 accept the the world premiere but i would still like to premiere their accepted sundance and they

01:38:47.500 were like sure we would love to have it and we when you go to a film festival like south by you have

01:38:52.540 to sign contracts that basically is a screening agreement and so they signed it and you sign it and

01:38:57.000 you both agree that you're going to play there and yeah it was really really hard for me because i look

01:39:01.620 at i looked at south by as kind of going home right like this is a place that made that that launched

01:39:08.240 my career and the person who runs south by is this very like ball busting independent woman who's a

01:39:15.400 force of nature and um to have so how does a ball busting independent woman who's a force of nature

01:39:21.200 cave to this pressure which upon examination is obviously in bad faith i mean what was what was that

01:39:29.640 interaction with her like well i think you had one yeah no i had i had many interactions i think there

01:39:36.080 was like on the record off the record type stuff right not like in terms of on the record off there's

01:39:40.020 the emails that are in written form and then there's conversations we had on the phone early on before

01:39:45.540 they actually pulled the film i talked to someone who worked at south by and they expressed worry about

01:39:53.460 the film because of all the controversy and all and all the attacks that sundance got and they

01:40:00.100 basically said listen sundance has one of the most diverse programming teams in our industry black white

01:40:06.080 straight gay i mean it's they're really diverse we are an all-white programming team and if we we're

01:40:13.340 gonna we're gonna just take a really big hit if we program this film so that was that was a conversation

01:40:17.180 that i had and then later on when they were wavering they basically said like you know for us to

01:40:22.180 even consider this film we need you to have a crisis pr team which cost a lot of money and we

01:40:28.400 didn't have that money and so i went to one of our investors and we literally hired someone

01:40:32.200 for two weeks because that's all we can afford to force for south by as like okay this is some this

01:40:38.300 is a hoop you wanted us to jump through we're gonna jump through it i was really looking forward

01:40:41.760 to south by because it was going to be in person and being in person is way better when you need to

01:40:47.640 have those complicated and really hard discussions after a film so typically you premiere a film and

01:40:52.960 afterwards there's a long q a and you talk about your film and how it's made and then you take

01:40:57.580 questions from the audience and you're able to look someone face to face whereas in sundance was virtual

01:41:02.040 this was all on twitter and twitter is a fucking cesspool of like horribleness like i just i don't i'm not on

01:41:08.680 twitter but i the way i would describe it to people is it's like it's like a lunch cafeteria lunchroom

01:41:14.660 at a high school but instead of one table being mean girls they're all every fucking table's mean

01:41:21.540 girls right so it's not it's not a place to have nuance and complicated and human conversations and

01:41:28.060 so i think that added to the vitriol of the film at sundance and so that's why i was really looking

01:41:32.720 forward to south by because it was i felt it was an opportunity to really have an open dialogue and

01:41:37.720 conversation about this film that had caused so much controversy and so when before we get

01:41:44.660 to that other shoe dropping let's just run through what the criticism was up to this point and who

01:41:51.720 it was coming from you know if you could discern different uh actors here i mean so you've talked

01:41:57.900 about one allegation that it was saudi propaganda that's just ridiculous on its face what else was

01:42:04.860 coming at you so initially it was saudi propaganda funded by the saudis and then people and then people

01:42:11.280 saw the film and that one went away and then it was the filmmaker is racist and the film is islamophobic

01:42:16.640 and it was made by an all-white non-muslim team but then we're like well my executive producer is

01:42:21.640 muslim my co-producer is muslim our assistant editor is muslim and we worked with two islamic scholars

01:42:25.820 and an imam on this film and then we had prominent muslims like lorraine ali who works for the la times

01:42:31.920 she's a film critic for the la times and she came out saying that she really liked the film and she'd spent

01:42:37.120 time in saudi arabia and and really really kind of said it was extraordinary in terms of the access

01:42:42.640 and filmmaking that i was able to pull off and we've already established that you're not your average

01:42:47.960 white chick making this exploitative act of cultural appropriation yeah well i think yeah so so that was

01:42:55.600 one and then and that was one for a long time and then and there was like you know just basically

01:43:01.400 equating that that these guys didn't give consent the next one was they didn't give consent they were

01:43:07.900 forced to do this by the saudi government and again if literally if they just talked to me i could have

01:43:14.180 told them how i got access and how i talked to like over 150 of these guys most of them didn't want to do

01:43:20.160 it yeah but uh so they didn't give consent and they didn't sign release forms and all stuff and so

01:43:25.800 you know and then we're like no everyone signed release forms both in english and arabic and

01:43:31.400 informed consent was something that i take very seriously so let me back up here so informed

01:43:36.420 consent is something that in the documentary community is something where when you're working

01:43:40.860 with someone who's a subject of film before you can start that film you basically sit them down and

01:43:46.960 say like here's who i am here's the project i'm making and so with these guys specifically

01:43:53.120 it was important for me to explain to them how a documentary was made because most people don't know

01:43:59.160 and so i told them like this isn't going to be one interview i'm going to be with you for a very

01:44:03.500 long time i'm going to be following you home to your family i'm going to be maybe interviewing your

01:44:08.760 family and your friends i'll be filming you when you're in the streets like this is not a one and

01:44:13.820 done thing i'll be in your life for quite a long time and the way that i do informed consent

01:44:20.260 i think everyone's different but when i approach a subject for a film i always meet them first

01:44:26.540 without a camera and i tell them two things i say you know this is a very long process and i want you

01:44:33.480 to feel comfortable with me and comfortable with what we're going to do together and so for this first

01:44:40.020 meeting you can ask and throughout this process that i'm going to be filming you i'm going to ask you

01:44:44.920 a lot of questions and sometimes those questions are going to be very personal and you don't have to

01:44:49.540 obviously don't have to answer them but like what this first meeting that we have i was like i you're

01:44:54.700 allowed to ask me anything you want anything and i will answer honestly and it can be anything from

01:45:01.500 my favorite color to like one guy asked you know first date or why i wasn't married why i didn't have

01:45:06.400 kids and it's basically i flip it around that first time and allow them to be the interviewer to me to

01:45:12.160 say like who is this person that i'm going to be sharing my life with and so we do that and then at the

01:45:18.540 very end of it i say listen if you are not if you don't feel comfortable with me i actually do not

01:45:23.380 want you to do this project for two reasons number one it will show up on camera and that won't look

01:45:28.940 good number two i've had a documentary made about me that i really didn't give my permission for

01:45:35.060 and it was a very bad experience and i wouldn't wish that on anyone else so sidebar here when i was

01:45:40.540 23 or 23 22 23 i was kidnapped in columbia and then later on national geographic made a

01:45:47.500 docudrama about it and the woman that played me was super hot so i'm not too mad at it but like

01:45:54.540 it's definitely not very accurate but yeah and so i i tell that to all the subjects the the films that

01:46:00.300 i've made and and if they agree then before we ever film with them you give them a piece of paper

01:46:05.760 and it's it's in their own language but it's also in english on the same piece of paper let me just

01:46:10.000 get this straight for a second so you you went to afghanistan having already been kidnapped in

01:46:16.420 columbia no i was i went to afghanistan before going to columbia i went to afghanistan in 2002

01:46:22.980 i went to columbia in 2003 i went back to afghanistan 2004 though so okay this was like a

01:46:28.940 sandwich between afghanistan i'm just trying to figure out just how unusual a person you are

01:46:33.180 you know if i had gone to columbia and gotten kidnapped i i don't think i would be um quite as

01:46:40.160 carefree in my subsequent travels solo across the war-torn reaches of the world well if we're being

01:46:46.720 honest i think one of the reasons why i made this film is because not the only but it's one of the

01:46:54.040 reasons why i made this film is because what went down in columbia like the the group that kidnapped me

01:46:58.960 was called the auc and their reputation is they're known as the headhunters and they have that

01:47:05.500 reputation because they disembowel and decapitate their victims in front of their family to kind of

01:47:10.060 send a message so they're they're pretty they're they're a pretty gnarly group so long story short

01:47:16.340 you know being kidnapped is not like what you see in the movies like there's there's not huge explosions

01:47:24.180 and men dressed in all black going on long diatribes it's more it's actually quite boring sometimes

01:47:29.280 because you don't have any like internet or forms of distraction or you know cell phones or anything

01:47:34.040 like that or music so a lot of times you're just sitting around and you're just talking to your fellow

01:47:39.140 captives and eventually you talk to your captors and you have these long conversations and for me

01:47:46.400 you know i was kidnapped for a little bit under two weeks i think it was around 10 days give or take

01:47:50.060 and um the thing that was most unnerving to me was not what these men and women did like they

01:47:57.200 disemboweled and decapitated seven people that i knew and then they also shot one guy as well

01:48:02.520 these are people you were traveling with or just people you knew because they were fellow captives

01:48:07.220 while you were there so basically where this is this is probably a different podcast but uh

01:48:12.660 i was traveling through panama and was going overland into columbia through the daring gap

01:48:18.080 and to go through that it's basically the daring gap is like 250 mile stretch of virgin jungle that

01:48:26.240 straddles the border and to navigate through there like the jungle is so thick gps doesn't work and so

01:48:32.280 to navigate through that space you need to have the local kuna indians basically who know the

01:48:39.240 landscape and otherwise you'd just be lost and so we had befriended some people at one of the

01:48:44.320 villages and they were taking us through the forest and the jungles and then we went to another village

01:48:49.240 so it would be like we started at one village and then they would drop us off at a different village

01:48:52.680 and then that village would guide us to the next part and so the people that they killed were people

01:48:57.540 that had been in the villages that we met that were like elders and and leaders and and they'd taken

01:49:03.640 us in and and uh yeah and it was yeah it was pretty they killed seven people and then they basically

01:49:11.160 pillaged and burned the villages to the ground because the the auc so i don't know how much you

01:49:17.800 know about columbian politics but the farc farc is the only one i know okay yeah so the farc is like

01:49:23.120 marxist right so let's for example if you're a farc person and you want to take a big stretch of land

01:49:30.160 and cut it up and give each person one hectare right that's your that's your kind of marxist mentality

01:49:36.100 type thing if you're a landowner you really don't want that and you want to keep your land and so

01:49:41.280 basically the farc is out there and this kind of like you know for the people type group and and

01:49:48.080 their i guess their strategies and tactics and the the the the auc is actually a group that was

01:49:53.580 used to be in the military but then because of their antics they quickly got disbanded and they i think

01:49:59.840 i think i remember reading they were actually trained by special forces in the columbian military

01:50:04.620 by us and then um they got disbanded but then the landowners kind of were like oh this group is

01:50:11.700 kind of great for us and so the the landowners kind of pay the auc and and help that group to kind

01:50:17.240 of fight the farc because the farc's the more more well-off people's enemy and so as one of the

01:50:24.460 things the auc did is it would kill the farc and then kill any farc sympathizers because it's kind

01:50:33.040 of like send a message right so a lot of places the farc can't operate can't really operate that

01:50:36.880 well unless they have like local support and so one of the things the auc does is you know really

01:50:41.380 devastate these villages by disembellying and decapitating their leaders in front of their

01:50:45.280 people and then also they burn them to the ground and so if they catch someone and they think they're

01:50:49.420 a farc sympathizer that's what they do to try to like send the message and so so yeah so that's

01:50:53.940 that's how i knew those people and then while i was kidnapped i i got i got beaten up one time

01:51:00.100 but that was my own doing i don't know if you've noticed from this conversation i sometimes you

01:51:05.500 might have said something that's considered inappropriate maybe yeah my dad always said

01:51:10.740 the the squeaking wheel gets old but the screaming wheel gets changed and when we were kidnapped they

01:51:15.780 wanted us to do something that i did not want to do and i was trying to distract them with something

01:51:21.560 else so i could continue to do what i wanted to do it worked in the end but it cost me a ak-47 butt to

01:51:28.400 the to the head and i bled out all the all over the place and but other than that i was pretty

01:51:33.960 unscathed so i i think i derailed you you were about to say that you talked to these maniacs and

01:51:40.020 they proved to be normal human beings with whom you could share some well no like the thing is yeah

01:51:44.940 we were we i talked to these people and one of them was this like 16 year old girl and she would

01:51:50.220 you know talk about her high school crushes and um you know things that 16 year old girls talk about

01:51:56.360 and uh it was so alarming to me because you know when you're a kid you're read stories about you

01:52:06.360 know the good witch and the bad witch like the good people and the bad people and i think a lot of us

01:52:12.060 when we get older we don't actually leave that world view and we see the world in that very simplistic

01:52:19.880 view of good and bad and i think i was guilty of that before i got kidnapped and when i got kidnapped

01:52:26.260 and i met these people and they had done by all accounts probably the most some of the most evil acts

01:52:32.380 you can do and but they weren't these bloodthirsty psychopaths that i had imagined they were just a run-of-the-mill

01:52:40.320 normal young men and women and then when you got to talk to them like this girl that i was talking

01:52:46.040 to her her her parents had been killed by the fark and so her logical solution to that was to join

01:52:54.040 the rival group and go after the fark and so she joined the auc and the thing that was so that shook

01:53:02.580 me so much is how normal all these people were and i think that was the the catalyst that sent me on

01:53:09.160 this trajectory to try to understand the other you know the the the evil doers in quotes of the world

01:53:16.640 because it was such a like i said before with firefighting and not understanding hazmat and then being

01:53:24.480 an expert in it it was kind of like after i had that experience in columbia it was really unnerving to

01:53:30.360 think that the people in the world who did the worst deeds were no different from me and that was

01:53:37.600 very unnerving and so i kind of sent me on this trajectory where i sought out those kind of

01:53:46.160 people so i interviewed lots of pirates in somalia warlords in afghanistan arms dealers in in pakistan

01:53:53.460 in the in the province there in the tribal territories on the border and and uh you know terrorists in

01:54:00.040 saudi arabia and i think for me i if you're going to look back i think the original pebble that set

01:54:06.820 that ripple off was probably being kidnapped and i i know that you said like your reaction would not

01:54:12.220 be to go just wash the blood off my passport and then go to mogadishu yeah but i think for me it's

01:54:19.200 the opposite it was just like this is something that i clearly did not understand this is the people

01:54:25.340 who do evil deeds weren't born that way i for some reason in my brain thought they are fundamentally

01:54:31.400 different from me but becoming face to face with someone who had just performed a horrific deed like

01:54:39.420 disemboweling decapitating someone and then sitting down and talking about makeup and your favorite

01:54:46.900 football team was very very unnerving especially for a 23 year old at the time i think it was 23 at the

01:54:54.860 time yeah so yeah that that that i think started the shift to really try to understand that part of

01:55:01.440 the world does that make sense yeah yeah i would just add as a footnote uh my view here which is that

01:55:07.420 there are many sources of human violence and they're distinct but they can be you know violence can be

01:55:14.420 over determined right so there you know i i think uh you know i differentiated this in a blog post

01:55:19.820 somewhere but i mean i think there really are psychopaths who are different from you and me

01:55:25.400 and then there are quite normal people who based on their beliefs about the world and about the moral

01:55:32.360 imperatives of certain ways of living they are just like you and me but they believe different things

01:55:38.300 and they do by our lights horrible things in the service of those ideas and then there are people who

01:55:44.460 have who get caught up in some kind of spiral of vendetta like violence of the sort you just

01:55:50.400 indicated where you know they they have a story about why certain people are worth targeting because

01:55:57.360 of what they did to people close to them right and so it's you know there's just this cycle of hatred

01:56:03.040 begetting hatred and they're in there and then there's just frank mental illness where people are

01:56:07.980 delusional and they they don't even know what they're doing but they're doing something horrible

01:56:11.620 right so there and and all of these can be overlapping right you can be you can check a few

01:56:16.220 of these boxes and have your have your violence be over determined yeah i would i would say i would

01:56:21.500 add so i would add to that in terms of like that was my initial exposure but over the years of

01:56:26.480 interviewing people and talking to people like like i've heard before like the pirates in somalia

01:56:30.740 and some of the warlords in afghanistan and the fighters in afghanistan i would say that there

01:56:35.420 there were a they're the exception to the rule but there were a handful of times where i

01:56:40.020 talked to someone that gave me and i call it the ibbajibbies where you're like oh like you are

01:56:46.620 you like to hurt people you you derive like you're doing this and the excuse is you know piracy but you

01:56:55.380 like to you do you're off there's something a bit off about them the majority of them know though i

01:57:00.380 would say that my experience has been that there are people who are i would say a very scary

01:57:08.780 kind of psychopaths but those are the rare rarity in my in my experience not the rule but more the

01:57:16.700 exception no i would agree yeah yeah i mean it's the difference between someone like abu musaba zarqawi

01:57:22.300 and osama bin laden right i mean insofar as i feel like i can know these guys from a distance

01:57:28.220 everything i know about zarqawi is that he was a proper psycho oh you'll love this i was living in yemen

01:57:34.240 and one of the people i knew that was working at the british embassy who like i for embassies they

01:57:41.420 have people fly in if you're like going on leave and they'll have someone fly in from the home office

01:57:45.040 for like a week or two to look after your post who isn't really familiar with the country and there

01:57:50.400 was this woman i met and apparently she was just going over that day's like you know intel rundown

01:57:56.160 and then she goes and it's like this is a direct quote she goes that's a coward not a nice man not a

01:58:02.040 nice man it's just like yeah that's that's a good way to put it yeah okay so back back to your film

01:58:09.140 and uh i guess uh we were we left you at uh getting ejected from south by yeah so that was that one

01:58:16.140 really hurt and then and then there was another film festival the san francisco documentary film

01:58:22.900 festival and this one really really hurt because one of the programmers had reached out during sundance

01:58:28.500 and not only invited the film to the festival but he also had offered me the vanguard award which is

01:58:36.480 a huge honor and so basically the vanguard award usually goes to people who are like well-known filmmakers

01:58:42.160 who have a catalog of work that have just been kind of groundbreaking and the fact that i was offered

01:58:46.900 this award after my first feature was super humbling and the vanguard award is a the way they presented

01:58:53.760 this film festival it's a whole weekend event so they screen your film and then there's a q a and

01:58:58.580 then there's a panel discussion and there's a huge gala and there's a dinner and it's it's a huge huge

01:59:02.680 deal and uh you know he said to me like i i have i've been doing this for a while and i've never seen

01:59:09.400 a film like this and i cannot believe this is your first feature-length film and we want to give you

01:59:13.820 the vanguard award and and i was really there was a different there was another festival in san francisco

01:59:18.780 that was probably a little bit more prestigious that also invited us but because they were this

01:59:24.680 other festival was offering the vanguard award to decide to go with them and i was really looking

01:59:28.640 forward to it because i'm from the bay area and a lot of people who helped on the film from the

01:59:35.040 yemeni community also live here and i thought it'd be great to have to be able to have them come to the

01:59:39.760 theater and see on the big screen and see like all their hard work put in and then be honored at a

01:59:44.980 gala and you know i thought it was gonna be such a great event and um about a month or two before it

01:59:53.100 was supposed to take place he reached out to me and he was pretty devastated and he basically said

01:59:59.700 i'm gonna have to revoke the vanguard award and i was like what what did i do like why and he's like

02:00:07.220 i talked to the other programmers and they felt that by giving you this award now with all the

02:00:14.000 controversy it would be sticking the thumb in the eye of the people protesting your film and they

02:00:19.640 don't want to do it and i was like uh well i mean you know you did offer me the award you saw the film

02:00:27.760 i'm like has have the other i know that you saw it have the other programmers watch the film

02:00:31.520 and he said no i was like wait a minute you're telling me these other programmers

02:00:36.180 have not seen the film but based on twitter and social media they want to take away this award and

02:00:42.960 he's like yes he's like i know it makes no sense he's like i feel so bad about this it's not my

02:00:48.080 decision we have to come to consensus and he's like if we play your film i'm like whoa whoa whoa

02:00:53.440 if you just talked about like taking like you offered me the vanguard award and now we're talking

02:01:00.000 about the film being pulled and i was kind of pleading with him not to do this because we

02:01:05.480 hadn't had an opportunity because we had all it got pulled from other places too we had all this

02:01:09.520 you know we we didn't have a chance to screen the film and have the dialogue that i really think we

02:01:14.500 needed to in order to turn the kind of tide and actually have the difficult discussions that

02:01:20.060 needed to happen with this film and so but but honestly from my point of view those discussions

02:01:27.180 wouldn't have even happened because there is no difficult discussion to be had about this film

02:01:32.480 i mean again the the difficult discussion if there is one would be had from the other side like from

02:01:38.500 the the neocon uh we have to be hard on terrorism side right i mean this is like the the donald rumsfelds

02:01:45.180 of the world would have a problem with your film but i mean there is no problem to be had with this

02:01:51.540 film that when i say difficult discussion so i don't i don't know how much you know about the

02:01:55.400 documentary community but there there is a big conversation that's been happening for the last

02:01:59.800 couple years about representation and who's telling whose story and why and that's been a very hot topic

02:02:04.780 and also um well that's actually my next question so all of this pushback so it's the pushback is

02:02:11.340 coming from the muslim community no it's not coming it's coming from the i want to make this very

02:02:17.000 clear because we had a lot of people who we've shown the film to a lot of groups so we've shown the

02:02:21.820 film to pre and post sundance that were from the muslim community that have that love this film this

02:02:27.980 was a group of not the muslim community is a group of muslim documentary filmmakers specifically

02:02:33.180 so it's a muslim documentary filmmakers are playing the islamophobia card on you again quite inappropriately

02:02:41.340 but then how much of the rest of the pushback and pressure on these on these festivals is coming

02:02:47.820 from not from muslims of you know any description but just from allies what woke activists who think

02:02:56.820 that you are guilty of cultural appropriation or you know whatever the other sin is here yeah there was

02:03:04.080 there was a lot of that and a lot of that that was pretty pretty harsh and pretty um

02:03:11.340 i would say one of the hardest things about this whole entire i hate the word cancellation because

02:03:17.160 it's such a loaded word and it means different things to different people but i don't do you know

02:03:21.780 of a better word to use i'm not sure your film was canceled as far as i can tell i mean that's once you

02:03:27.100 have festivals withdrawing awards and withdrawing invitations and i mean that is the very essence of

02:03:33.100 cancellation and it's not you know or de-platforming i mean that's another term of modern jargon here

02:03:39.540 which which is also not a great word i mean censorship is the wrong word because it's not

02:03:44.980 government yeah yeah it's the government is not doing this but it's you know i i'm sure it's an old

02:03:50.480 phenomenon but the modern variant is to have completely disingenuous uh hysteria directed at you

02:03:58.040 largely on so and and anyone who would collaborate with you uh largely on social media and just watch

02:04:04.760 the failures of moral courage play out before you where you know everyone begins to fall like dominoes

02:04:11.680 in the uh indicated direction you find out who your friends are well it's yeah i will say this i think

02:04:20.140 louis ck had it in his special after getting canceled he's like when you're canceled you find out real

02:04:25.960 quickly who your real friends are and sometimes it's not the people you are yeah exactly that was a

02:04:31.700 very funny bit yeah yeah i was like i i was like oh my gosh i feel seen um no so for me there was the

02:04:38.960 two of the hardest things were i'm not on twitter at very much at all i mean i have an account but i

02:04:43.840 never check it and mostly because like we've been talking now for for a while and i like having these

02:04:50.100 in-depth conversations where you can go on tangents and talk about things in their complexity and

02:04:55.500 all the nuance and twitter for me has always been a place where you know it's very black and white

02:05:00.960 it's very either you're a good person or you're a bad person you're a person we should be attacking

02:05:04.800 or villainize or you should be a hero and i i just don't think the world works that way and um so i

02:05:09.720 avoid twitter like the mean girl cafeteria that it is but the the thing for me that was the hardest part

02:05:17.640 of this was twofold one was there were people that i considered friends like true friends

02:05:26.320 that when this happened they either completely turned on me or they stopped talking to me

02:05:34.460 or they just flat out lied and kind of threw me under the bus in order to i'm not sure what their

02:05:42.560 motivation was i don't want to speak to that but i'll give you an example there was a there was a

02:05:45.880 woman who she was a friend of mine and she's a documentary filmmaker and she was also trying to

02:05:53.080 establish herself as a story consultant and basically what a story consultant is is someone

02:05:56.580 who comes in and watches your film and gives you notes and and kind of helps you work out the kinks

02:06:01.300 and so we had just got some funding and we were in the editing process and so i was like you know i

02:06:08.740 want to do my friend is solid and hire her as a story consultant and we worked with her for five days

02:06:15.080 for a week and after we worked with her she wrote this really sweet post on social media

02:06:22.380 about working with me in the film and i'll read it to you now it says you know a director who gives a

02:06:28.440 damn megan didn't just take on any story for her first feature this is one of the most important

02:06:35.160 films i've ever worked on thank you for your trust your vision your guts make you are the perfect

02:06:41.940 person to be telling the story and i'm so fucking proud of you for never backing down i'm in awe

02:06:48.700 rooting for you and i took a screenshot of that because i would it just made me feel really good

02:06:53.460 so i was like oh yeah it's such a hard thing to make a film in general but this film is particularly

02:06:57.480 hard for a plethora of reasons and so i took a screenshot of it i had in my phone and then you know

02:07:03.960 when we got into sundance uh we were making the credits of the film i took a screenshot of

02:07:10.480 her name and the credits as a story consultant and i texted it to her like you know look you're in the

02:07:16.480 credits it's like awesome and i and she's like oh clap clap clap emoji congrats and so that's where

02:07:23.580 you know that's where we're at and then the controversy hits and this person who you know i i considered her

02:07:33.960 like a true friend not like a like a film friend but like actual friend without talking to me and

02:07:39.020 according to my producer she actually hadn't seen the final cut of the film before she posted this

02:07:43.040 online so the controversy hit people are kind of going really furious at me in the film and then

02:07:49.360 this person posts on social media again without according to my producer having seen the film says

02:07:54.380 this i've been taking time off of social media for the last few months but wanted to post something

02:08:01.140 about my involvement with jihad rehab as my name is listed predominantly in the credits as a story

02:08:07.660 consultant i have not had any involvement in creating and the crafting of this film's story and

02:08:14.900 i haven't seen a cut of the film in over two years i was brought on as a story consultant in the fall

02:08:21.100 of 2019 and saw a rough cut to give notes on i voiced serious concern around the ethics of the film

02:08:29.200 and the general approach to the story i was insistent that the title should change and was led to believe

02:08:35.460 that it would be in the session it was clear that my notes and concerns were not being heard

02:08:41.120 i left the consulting session extremely frustrated and concerned i was shocked that the film was accepted

02:08:48.720 to sundance and then shocked again when i told my name was in the credits again i'd sent her a screenshot

02:08:55.060 of it i strongly feel this criticism from the muslim arab and our film community is valid and needs to be

02:09:02.880 heard i'm in full support of the filmmakers voicing their outrage about the film and i am disappointed

02:09:09.300 and disgusted by the response of the filmmakers so far if you'd like to learn more about the important

02:09:15.620 conversations around the film there are many articles by respected filmmakers and voices of

02:09:21.100 our community and then she lists a couple of them now this person never said any of that like they

02:09:26.500 never said they had a problem with the title they never voiced anything about the film being

02:09:30.240 islamophobic they completely rewrote history and lied and the thing that's alarming to me is this

02:09:36.620 did she delete did she delete that effusive tweet that you took a screenshot of or is that still in

02:09:42.140 her time all that's still online yeah so i'm the only i'm okay reading all that is because it's

02:09:47.480 public there's a lot of people who've did a lot of other stuff behind the scenes but i think that if

02:09:52.000 you're going to publicly lie about the film and about me and about working with me then it's okay

02:09:57.460 for me to publicly call you out on it and especially if you're claiming to be a documentary slash truth

02:10:01.820 teller like for me like once i read that i was like okay we're done you're no longer my friend i'm

02:10:07.120 going to waste any energy on you because i didn't need to know why she did it the fact that she did

02:10:12.420 it was just reprehensible to me yeah yeah so now where does abigail disney come into the picture

02:10:19.160 so abigail was one of she wasn't our first funder she was one of the earliest i think it was the first

02:10:27.460 year after the first year i think she came on as an investor um i will say this like i see abigail's

02:10:35.360 kind of getting dragged through the mud by some people right now but i i want to say that this

02:10:39.900 film she was in the beginning she was a filmmaker's dream investor she so i had spoke this is a how do

02:10:50.300 we put this for a filmmaker like me who doesn't have a huge track record to take on a subject like this

02:10:58.180 i got laughed out of the room majority of the time when i pitched this film for funding in the

02:11:03.600 beginning i probably had 65 75 meetings with potential investors those first two years

02:11:11.120 and i met with a lot of people and for the first two years i think only the only people that invested

02:11:16.560 in the film were all women it's not till i got a proper like cut and a bunch of footage the men

02:11:22.700 started investing in it because i get it though i mean like there's a limited amount of funds in the

02:11:27.200 non-fiction world and if a first-time filmmaker looking like me came to you and said i'm gonna make a

02:11:32.120 film in saudi arabia at this center that no one's been able to get access to my first time out of the

02:11:37.660 gate you'd be like i'm not gonna waste money on that project but i remember i showed the the some

02:11:43.720 footage to abby's people at fork films and then i kind of told them about my background cliff note

02:11:49.700 version not the version we're talking about today and they were really into it and they said you know

02:11:54.460 but ultimately the decision comes down to abby and then i met with abby and you know a lot of the

02:12:01.340 other investors were looked at me and basically said like you know you don't really have a track

02:12:06.740 record you don't have this and that and the other but abby sat down with me and to her credit she was

02:12:10.500 like no i you're gonna do this i can tell like she was she knew that i was a tenacious motherfucker

02:12:16.660 and that no matter what this was going to get done and she didn't need a track record to tell her

02:12:22.040 that she just is really good i guess at reading people but she was on board and so she became

02:12:27.440 one of our what an investor about i think it was the first year that we were doing it without her

02:12:33.560 she was our first big investor without her first initial kind of you know funds this film would

02:12:41.440 i'm not saying this film would never got made but it would have taken a lot it would have been a lot

02:12:44.440 harder and so what was the budget what was the budget on the film i think so or how much did you

02:12:50.740 have to raise we had to so i'm i'm going to include the the things that we didn't pay because

02:12:57.640 we have a lot of people and one of the things i hate about this film being canceled is most of the

02:13:02.740 people who worked on this project worked either for free or deferred or at a reduced rate where they

02:13:09.040 were going to get paid back after we sold the film right so i'm going to include the money that we

02:13:13.300 actually have not paid out yet to into that number so it's it's over it's over a million dollars

02:13:19.860 and what did abigail give to you can you say that i don't know if i can't i i'm not sure it

02:13:26.400 it was not it was not a i would say this it was it was less than a third of way less than a third

02:13:35.680 of the budget way less than that so i think some people think she came in for the full amount but it

02:13:39.680 was like i don't know it was it was not a huge it was not a huge amount for the whole budget but at

02:13:45.440 that particular time it was it was fucking quintessential for us to move forward so the

02:13:51.680 thing is i think a lot of people when they date people and they break up with them they're like

02:13:57.640 oh that guy's a fucking asshole it's like i've always kind of come to the view of like i'm friends

02:14:02.640 with all my exes and you know i dated you for a reason you're a great person we just went great

02:14:08.040 together and i try to be fair with people and so i know a lot of people are kind of coming after abby

02:14:13.500 and right now and i think i mean you know this but being canceled is kind of like having kids

02:14:22.300 in the aspect of when you you can read books about being parent about parenting and you can see your

02:14:29.640 friends raise their kids but until you push that watermelon through that cheerio and you're responsible

02:14:36.760 for human life you have no fucking clue and i had seen joe rogan get you know air quotes canceled and i

02:14:45.480 had seen dave chappelle get canceled and i was like those people have fuck off money like it's gonna

02:14:51.660 they're gonna take a hit but they'll be fine but i what i didn't realize then and what i realize now

02:14:56.420 is just the extent it of it and how the the mental and emotional toll it takes when you have people

02:15:04.720 that you trusted turn on you when you have your reputation being unfairly besmirched and people

02:15:12.020 taking it at face value and how isolating it can be and how just devastating to be and i and i say this

02:15:20.180 as someone who has lived quite a full life where i've been in situations that most people would say

02:15:26.300 would be very full-on insanely kind of like stressful throughout my whole entire life

02:15:34.720 i've had a lot of i mean being kidnapped to being a firefighter i've had a lot of really intense

02:15:41.220 experiences and i've never had bouts of depression and i've never had suicidal tendencies and i did with

02:15:52.260 this and so i know people will probably listen to this and think being counsel is not a big deal but

02:15:58.220 i'm not i don't have a lot of resources and i come from working class my dad was a firefighter i was

02:16:03.920 a firefighter i don't come from money i'm not a trust fund kid so it was emotionally and mentally

02:16:09.700 devastating but financially just wrecked me and um so when i see people kind of going after abby right

02:16:17.700 now i think a lot of people would think that i'd be like yeah but i'm the opposite i i worry about her

02:16:23.840 because i know the toll it takes and i don't think that anyone anyone deserves this i don't fucking care

02:16:30.260 who you are like people are human they make mistakes and the reason why initially when abby

02:16:38.440 put out of the film the reason why i was pretty i didn't i wasn't angry at her initially because

02:16:44.000 i knew what we were all going through emotionally and initially i was a little upset and my best

02:16:51.640 friend pointed out and she's very good at this she said you know most people are not wired like you

02:16:55.940 meg you're very good under pressure and you got to be patient with other people and abby will probably

02:17:02.460 come around but like you know give her some space and maybe she'll come back to the film but most

02:17:06.500 people don't handle things like you do so like have a have a bit of grace and a bit of kindness and just

02:17:12.760 give her some space and maybe she'll come come back to the film but then she issued that apology and

02:17:17.340 that was kind of the nail in the head or the nail in the coffin and also i guess also nail in the head

02:17:21.020 my point would be that abigail disney invested in this film when no one else not no one else did

02:17:27.800 no no everyone else kind of told us no and gave this film life and for that i will always hold her

02:17:35.400 in high regard and i i don't like she's not a bad person she what she did i think was very cowardly

02:17:43.760 and i think a lot of people in her position would probably have done the same thing because they don't

02:17:48.320 know what it's like to have that kind of pressure on you so i understand it i don't agree with it and

02:17:53.740 i think if you're an industry leader like sundance and abigail disney i guess i just expected more

02:18:01.220 of sundance and more of some of our industry leaders and i've just been disappointed and but i also don't

02:18:09.480 think that those those institutions or the people that work there or abigail deserve the treatment that i got

02:18:16.860 because i think that some people are starting to kind of go after abigail like that and i i just

02:18:21.180 would stress that please don't for me like just no one deserves this kind of shit it's really

02:18:26.520 you have no idea what it's like and unless you're until you're in the eye of the storm and then it's

02:18:31.080 it's fucking shit it's really shit well let me demur however slightly from that incredibly patient

02:18:38.520 and compassionate response to the um this fake controversy that has been aimed at you i mean we've

02:18:45.940 already established in your world there are not a lot of bad people and i basically agree with that

02:18:52.140 but you know that in in in your experience that extends even to people who are decapitating and

02:18:57.340 disemboweling innocent villagers by day and then keeping you captive at night so yes you know i don't mean

02:19:05.060 to um somebody said they told me my film was if if what they say if empathy was an extreme sport

02:19:13.160 that is jihad rehab yes that's really great yeah yeah so yeah i'll put you into the the empathy

02:19:20.500 olympics you're my athlete well at least i get some award i'll take i'll take it i'll take it i'll

02:19:25.300 take it when i can get it so i read abigail's apology letter and people should know there's a there's

02:19:32.500 a new york times article on you i think uh is it michael powell who wrote that yeah michael powell that

02:19:39.280 dude solid fucking dude like here's the thing i throughout this whole process i don't know if

02:19:45.340 you've experienced this but when when i was initially being attacked the journalists i put this in air

02:19:51.000 quotes you can't see but i put just it in the journalists that were writing about it would

02:19:57.740 contact me and with like two or three questions they wanted written answers to and it was like

02:20:03.160 now that your film's been canceled do you like consider the fault that you did or wrong and it

02:20:09.440 was clear that they were had already written a narrative that they just wanted a soundbite for

02:20:14.360 and for me it was an experience of realizing that most people that i had to deal with i wouldn't

02:20:22.580 consider good journalists yeah and you and you could well you really kind of got lucky at the times

02:20:29.120 in my view i mean you could well have suffered that fate from the new york times so here's what

02:20:33.660 happened with the new york times so i had a friend who used to be the head film critic at the atlantic

02:20:38.820 and before sundance while i was still editing the film i sent him a copy of the film and i said

02:20:44.820 chris i want you to rip my fucking film apart because i don't want to hear any of this shit after

02:20:49.340 the premiere so i want you to rip it apart now so i know like where the holes are that i can patch up

02:20:54.120 that's why i sent him the film and he wrote me back and he was like a i can't believe this is

02:20:59.280 your first feature film because it's fucking extraordinary he's like b i have like two

02:21:02.300 small small notes but that's about it um but he was really impressed by the film and really taken

02:21:07.860 back by it and then about two months after sundance he called me and he said it always always makes me

02:21:16.360 laugh he's like so are you counting your millions from your sundance sale and swatting away jobs

02:21:21.260 i was like oh clearly you haven't been following this story so i told him what happened and i told

02:21:27.720 him about all the stuff that wasn't online like the lawyer threats and the you know writing to

02:21:34.380 the reviewers threatening to not to sue them unless they change the reviews and all that kind of stuff

02:21:39.140 and and i told him you know i said everyone wants me to like do an op-ed to address this but honestly

02:21:45.400 i just don't think that's the right thing because no one is believing anything i say and i tried to

02:21:50.760 talk to journalists before and everyone just wouldn't listen to me and i'm and i just you

02:21:55.160 know i don't think an op-ed's going to change that and chris was like you need like a proper

02:21:59.740 journalist to investigate this like someone who is a actual investigative journalist who is like old

02:22:07.260 school og journalist and um i was like cool but i don't fucking know anyone like that and i doubt

02:22:14.000 anyone because like the problem that i ran into and i tried to do that before is every journalist told me

02:22:19.320 the same thing they said we can't write about a film that is no one can see like that just doesn't

02:22:25.300 make sense like what what are what are what are our readers gonna go watch like this doesn't make

02:22:29.220 sense we can't write about this film and so chris said he knew a handful of people and he said but

02:22:34.800 there's one guy i think would be probably the best to tell this story because he is very just the facts

02:22:40.220 he's not an opinion writer he's very like he's a pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist

02:22:45.480 and i was very hesitant and i kind of said like well i'll just see what he says you know maybe i'll

02:22:53.980 do it maybe i won't so chris introduced us and i sent him a link to the film and then he didn't watch

02:22:58.840 it i sent him another link to the film and he didn't watch it because there's a time expiration

02:23:03.940 on the on the on the links and then i sent him a third one and if i remember correctly i said something

02:23:09.480 like you know because i felt like when i sent him the third link to the film yeah i was like i feel

02:23:16.140 like that really geeky girl in high school that keeps on asking out the captain of the football team

02:23:20.140 like at some point this is going to get fucking awkward so he finally watched it and then he and

02:23:26.480 then i think he went online and looked at all the vitriol against the film and then he kind of

02:23:29.620 contacted me he's like his first sentence was like i don't understand this and so he jumped on a

02:23:34.220 call and i gave him a little bit of background and he said i really want to do a story in this i

02:23:38.620 really want to dive into this this is very interesting to me and i said i'm not sure i

02:23:42.860 want to do this and then i basically said like i need to know who you are as a person and so i did

02:23:47.940 the thing that i let my subjects do to me i said i need to interview you and looking back now i feel

02:23:52.740 like i'm completely asshole because i had no idea who michael powell was and i didn't know his like

02:23:55.860 esteemed like it's basically like saying like you don't trust woodward and bernstein or

02:23:59.380 walter cronkite like i was just like i don't know the fuck you are you could be another journalist

02:24:03.320 gonna fuck me over so yeah i interviewed him and i was like you know why did you get into journalism

02:24:07.540 journalism and um what did you what do you think about xyz and i talked to him for a really long

02:24:12.520 time and then he just he's just a real stand-up dude he is like i mean i know a lot of people have

02:24:17.720 issues with the times and i think there's reporters over there that are questionable but he's definitely

02:24:22.440 one of the good ones and he he interviewed me he flew out to california and he interviewed me

02:24:27.940 for i think total of 18 hours because obviously this is a very long story and every time i said

02:24:33.920 something he was like do you have proof of that and it was very thorough like he wanted the receipts

02:24:40.880 like he was like i'm not gonna write anything that i can't prove and um so yeah talked for like 18 hours

02:24:46.800 and then he like went away and that was in may and he just took a really deep dive into this and i think

02:24:53.660 they published it in late september so he's working on this for a pretty long time and that's why a lot

02:24:58.860 of people like oh i think they're acting like he just met me yesterday and wrote this thing but it

02:25:03.800 was like it's pretty involved yeah yeah yeah so so he's a solid dude for sure yeah and you so you got

02:25:09.420 lucky there i recommend people read that article and that's the first thing i i saw about this

02:25:15.260 controversy uh but then it links to abigail disney's apology letter which originally was an email she sent

02:25:23.340 privately to a bunch of people who who were uh aggrieved or pretending to be aggrieved by your

02:25:30.740 film and then it then she made it public at a certain point and it is i see why she's getting

02:25:37.520 attacked because you know it's it's a fairly abject capitulation to the mob especially given

02:25:46.300 what your film is i mean this is just this is not even a close call right i mean it's just like i could

02:25:51.580 imagine some film where in in response to blowback her letter could be appropriate right i mean like

02:25:59.500 but yeah she's you know she has just caved so fully in the face of what is upon analysis a completely

02:26:08.480 dishonest campaign against your film and in addition to that she's essentially vowed to fund

02:26:17.320 the projects of the people who you know canceled yeah yeah that's that's that's what i last time i

02:26:23.260 last time i heard that's what she was doing yeah it's just so that part's amazing so and it's you

02:26:28.220 know in her case it's not i don't know if she's a billionaire but she's she's at least a couple

02:26:33.340 hundreds a millionaire she's she's wealthy you know she's a disney air and she's spoken about that

02:26:39.240 and so if if that kind of wealth doesn't give you courage right i mean it's like she's she's not in

02:26:45.380 the position you are in where getting besmirched in one way or the other stands a chance of having

02:26:54.100 catastrophic financial impact on you right yeah i mean i put her in the same categories like joe

02:27:00.720 rogan dave chappelle where it's like they they will definitely be hurt by being canceled but they're

02:27:05.900 not going to get be like homeless for being like i have to i'm and i'm i'm moving from i live in the

02:27:10.800 bay area now and i just haven't been able to get work since sundance and the bay area is a very

02:27:16.200 expensive place to live so i'm i'll be moving in january because i just can't afford to live here

02:27:21.280 anymore unfortunately i really love it here but there's just if i can't work i can't i can't live

02:27:26.100 in this expensive place so yeah well so i want to talk about that because these are the consequences of

02:27:31.240 being a normal person yeah yeah hurled from the ramparts of the sundance film festival right it's like

02:27:38.940 you it's in another universe you your film went to sundance and it may have even won the top prize

02:27:47.100 there right yeah you know it's certainly that was possible um but just amazing to have been

02:27:53.160 a sundance selection and you were almost guaranteed to have your film distributed after sundance yeah and

02:28:02.020 i remember talking to our pr guy at the time and he watched the film and he said um because he's he's

02:28:07.900 one of the top pr guys for documentaries and he does all the oscar campaigns and he's basically said

02:28:12.420 i've watched all the films at sundance because everyone's trying to get him to rep their film

02:28:16.400 and he only takes on a handful of them i watch all the film at sundance and yours was the one that

02:28:21.500 actually has has just stuck with me i just i still think about it now and he was talking about like

02:28:26.800 you know this is going to be an oscar film you're gonna you're gonna be we're doing an oscar

02:28:29.940 campaign for this film and it's that it's that kind of like it's it's a kind of film that you watch

02:28:35.140 and you just it just sticks with you which is the kind of film that usually gets at least shortlisted

02:28:39.940 or nominated for an oscar and it was at the time i was like this will never get nominated for an oscar

02:28:45.060 because i'm sure there's a lot of people aren't gonna like this film but again from the right

02:28:48.500 it was funny because like when that same guy who was our pr guy about four days after the announcement

02:28:58.080 at sundance when when the initial vitriol started he called me and he said i think you should pull the

02:29:03.940 film out of sundance and this is the very very very beginning and i was so taken aback by this i was

02:29:08.460 like what are you talking about like this is this is the golden ticket like we can get through this

02:29:12.740 and he was like my advice for you is to pull the film from sundance and at the time i just thought

02:29:18.260 like like you're my pr guy your job is to help me handle this and then months later i talked to him

02:29:23.840 because obviously hindsight's 2020 and i was like what did you know then that i did not know because i

02:29:29.820 didn't know it was going to get this bad and he said something to me he said these last couple years

02:29:34.060 i've worked on some films where they were directors who weren't of the community that was the film was

02:29:41.760 about and i've seen them be attacked and it's relentless and i just didn't want to do it again

02:29:47.240 he worked on a film i guess and an activist group went after that film just for the whole entire year

02:29:52.800 was on the film festival circuit and he's just like i didn't i didn't want to do that again it's

02:29:56.280 fucking exhausting he's like and your film really did change the industry to where the conversations

02:30:02.060 that i'm having now is both film festivals and buyers are very hesitant to take films

02:30:06.720 that are directed by people not from that community because of the jihad rehab effect is what he kind

02:30:12.600 of termed it as and i was like wow that's pretty alarming but yeah yeah that is what's so insidious

02:30:19.060 about this it's just i mean there are people walking around thinking that cancellation really isn't a

02:30:24.320 thing right that it's it's always i i was one of those people like i'm i feel like shit now because

02:30:29.080 i definitely heard people talking about before this i heard people talking about cancellation

02:30:32.840 and i having not been through it i was just like oh like some people are mean to you on twitter

02:30:38.760 you know broke like thick in your skin and i only thought that cancellation happened

02:30:44.660 to famous people because that's the only people i heard about right i heard about joe rogan i heard

02:30:49.040 about dave chapelle you know louis ck and all that kind of stuff and uh i i did not know i didn't

02:30:57.720 know what it was in its entirety and i didn't know how devastating it is if you're a working class person

02:31:05.640 right like if you don't have a war chest if you don't if you cannot hire the pr team and do all

02:31:12.100 this like it's impossible to fight like everyone was just like why don't you put your story out there

02:31:16.300 why don't you tell your side i'm like i've been trying for fucking months but no journalist will

02:31:21.540 talk to me and no one will publish anything and unless you have the kind of war chest where you

02:31:26.400 can hire a crisis pr team and lawyers and whatnot you can do like so for example there was a in

02:31:32.720 initially there was a uh an article in documentary magazine that was written by one of the people

02:31:37.820 attacking the film and there was i counted there was 42 factual errors in it and i send that to our pr

02:31:43.840 person at the time and they're like you cannot cannot put all these in the request to change

02:31:49.020 because basically they would have to change the whole entire article so like pick the 10 most

02:31:52.260 egregious things and we'll send them the stuff to like either retract it or correct it and one of the

02:31:57.860 lines in the article was and i quote the men profess their innocence throughout the entire film

02:32:04.620 and i was like dude if you watch the first two minutes of the film you know that's not true

02:32:10.380 and because you have khalid talking about building bombs for al-qaeda and teaching people how to make

02:32:15.020 bombs and so we wrote documentary magazine to correct it and they didn't and it's still in

02:32:22.260 there today and so we made them aware of this factual inaccuracy and to me that said one of two things

02:32:26.940 the writer either didn't see the film or pretend they did or they did see the film and again they're

02:32:32.680 not a journalist they're just an activist and they're trying to paint a picture of the film that's

02:32:36.820 not true and the thing that was really harmful is those publications are taken at face value with

02:32:41.300 their facts and so when you have a publication like that writing about your film in that way

02:32:45.800 i think that was one of the huge things that was the nail in the coffin of this film to where you have

02:32:51.580 false things being written about the film putting out on blast and email blast on these publications

02:32:57.260 and then you have an entire community come after you because they think that you've made a film

02:33:01.780 that is one thing when it's actually not and so fast forward a couple of months we had an article

02:33:08.480 done in the guardian about us that was completely false and like they said you know the men's lives

02:33:15.200 were in danger and that the um that i had done all this really unethical stuff like they said in the

02:33:21.740 article that i i hadn't contacted their lawyers first of all they don't have lawyers why they're in

02:33:25.460 Saudi Arabia but i actually did reach out to all three of the men's lawyers and i heard back from two

02:33:31.120 i had long conversations with two of them but there was always really inaccurate factual things i

02:33:36.180 made i told the guardian like listen i'd really like to have a conversation with you the journalist

02:33:41.820 and the editor-in-chief because you're writing things that aren't true and i'd like to give you this

02:33:47.120 interview so you get all the facts and the guardian said no like literally they said we want you to

02:33:55.440 answer in writing these like six questions we're not going to give you the interview and if you don't

02:33:59.380 answer these six questions within 24 hours this is the paragraph we're going to put out

02:34:02.940 what was the organization cage at all involved in engineering yeah so there are two yeah there's

02:34:09.740 two people attacking the film one is a group of a handful of oh i didn't say this i should have said

02:34:13.800 this before but later i found out through sundance that the people who were initially attacking the film

02:34:19.340 the there was like six muslim filmmakers and they had written letters to sundance kind of like

02:34:24.780 pushing them to to pull the film from the festival those people were also people who had applied to

02:34:31.140 sundance and not gotten in and so there was a little bit of that going on and it was like

02:34:35.800 you know they they think i'm sure the thought was like and there i shouldn't say i i'm sure their

02:34:40.680 thought was because there's people tweeted this basically saying like how dare sundance program

02:34:45.340 this person's film when my film is a muslim would be way better to be programmed there so i think

02:34:50.860 there's but that that's related to cage or that's related to so yeah the other group is cage so i

02:34:56.860 didn't know anything about cage i never heard a cage before this whole entire thing oh cage cage has

02:35:02.380 covered itself in glory um they they were i mean they're essentially a kind of stealth islamist

02:35:09.540 organization i mean pretending to be a muslim civil rights organization but they have said basically

02:35:16.500 they keep alleging that you know every time a jihadist a local jihadist in in the uk becomes

02:35:25.100 prominent in the news the cause of that person's derangement is how they have just what sort of

02:35:32.960 mistreatment they've they've received at the hands of british society or the british government

02:35:38.480 right so you have like you know jihadi john the uh the poster boy for isis for a while who was

02:35:45.740 you know beheading westerners in in orange jumpsuits uh he was a he was british and you know

02:35:52.280 speaking with an english accent and i think was the head of cage or certainly somebody from cage at the

02:35:57.280 time was on television talking about what a wonderful person this this person actually was

02:36:02.660 and the only reason why he was standing in in the desert in syria or iraq wherever he was

02:36:08.300 was because he had been so mistreated by the the british the the odious uh and islamophobic

02:36:13.740 british government and so yeah so these are the these are the people who are now condemning any film

02:36:21.480 that even discusses the phenomenon of jihadism however sympathetically as your film does the way

02:36:27.380 i think i think the way it was described to me so i i didn't know about cage at all before this and

02:36:32.040 when when they initially started going after the film i didn't i couldn't understand it because i was

02:36:36.080 like why would a group of ex-guantanamo detainees not be in full support of this film because it really

02:36:41.640 does not make guantanamo look great in fact my front one my one friend told me they're like if

02:36:45.700 any film can get guantanamo shut down it's this one yeah so uh i didn't understand it personally i

02:36:51.320 started doing research on them and then part of that research was i mean i'd sent the film to a lot

02:36:56.160 of experts like lawrence wright and people who are really really know this subject quite well

02:37:02.080 my understanding after talking to them and doing a deep dive on the internet was

02:37:06.560 cages pushing a narrative that basically says anyone in guantanamo or sorry every sorry everyone

02:37:14.340 in guantanamo is completely innocent like they never did anything wrong and they are completely

02:37:20.900 just normal people who are just caught up in this and that is true for some people there are definitely

02:37:25.560 people who were sent to guantanamo who were just wrong place wrong time and completely got fucked over

02:37:29.080 by everything but there are also people who weren't and one of the things when i was interviewing all

02:37:33.620 these guys i did speak to people in saudi arabia who were in my opinion from talking to them wrong

02:37:41.260 place wrong wrong time but i specifically like chose people in my film who from their own volition

02:37:47.400 talk about their involvement and with these organizations and so it was told to me that cage

02:37:53.580 kind of pushes this narrative right that's saying everyone in guantanamo is completely innocent and never

02:37:58.800 did anything wrong and it's true like no one in guantanamo has actually been convicted

02:38:02.120 i think that's pretty common knowledge but then he said that any any kind of narrative any book

02:38:09.140 or movie that challenges that narrative they attack ferociously and he said what's so damning about

02:38:17.980 your film is all on all these other documentaries and whatnot you had people who were experts talking

02:38:24.220 about you know these people in guantanamo but your film it's kind of from the horse horse's mouth these

02:38:29.300 from men from their own like mouth tell you what they did and so it's really hard to argue that and

02:38:35.240 so how they're kind of like shaping the narrative they're saying oh these men were forced to say

02:38:39.360 that or like they didn't really do anything they're just being forced to to confess to these things and

02:38:44.180 and so so yeah so cage kind of came they went really hard in the paint against the film

02:38:49.920 they did a lot of very shady things including like putting out lies about the film and about how the film

02:38:56.940 was made and about the people in the film and it's it's been very successful it's been very successful

02:39:04.000 campaign so when i talked about like i think right now you know the the criticism of the film has

02:39:10.580 evolved over it's over a course of time and right now it's all about like the the men are in danger

02:39:15.980 because of the film now the the film premiered in january it's now october i've been in contact with

02:39:24.480 the guys throughout that entire time i literally just got a message from one of them the other day

02:39:28.860 yesterday and if i i don't know if you know about the saudi government if the saudi government was

02:39:34.360 going to do something they wouldn't have waited nine months to do it and also these men are actually

02:39:39.980 in a different class than your normal saudi citizen so what i mean by that is when they're

02:39:44.640 released from guantanamo my understanding from talking to a lot of people who deal in this area

02:39:49.940 and who are guantanamo experts are if the men who are released from guantanamo are sent to third

02:39:55.880 party nations meaning their countries that are not their own there are some stipulations that have to

02:40:01.200 be agreed to contractually between those two governments one is you have to have a way to

02:40:07.020 monitor these people right we just don't want to send them away and then release them back into the

02:40:11.200 wild and let them do whatever they want not know about it the second thing is they have to have a way

02:40:16.960 to reintegrate them back into society whatever that is if that's counseling if that's job

02:40:21.900 opportunities or whatever that whatever form that takes and the third thing is they have to that

02:40:27.280 country has to promise not to torture or kill these people once they're handed over because it would be

02:40:32.060 really a bad look if we just handed someone over to like let's say saudi arabia and then they just

02:40:37.220 beheaded them next day it wouldn't look wouldn't look good on us so these guys are actually given a

02:40:41.100 little bit more protection than your average citizen because they're not really allowed to torture or kill

02:40:46.560 them contractually i'm not saying that that that's not possible but it's just something that is

02:40:51.540 actually part of the agreement of taking these men in so what are the options for the film going

02:40:58.260 forward i mean like you've hit several brick walls but what can you do to get this film distributed i

02:41:04.780 mean there's one option presents itself you mentioned louis ck at one point and you know he's quite

02:41:11.180 famously rebooted his career by simply releasing his material on his own website right he just he had

02:41:19.380 a sufficient platform from which to do that but you know you're you're now on this podcast you know

02:41:26.180 i know people uh you you i'm sure know other people i know i'm i know no sam i'm very i'm a nobody

02:41:33.480 i know i know i know a handful of well there's yeah so there's there's some scenario where you

02:41:39.280 could get just a grassroots response by just releasing this film for you could sell it from

02:41:45.320 a website for 9.99 and some considerable number of people would download it that's one way to

02:41:52.560 distribute it without relying on a distributor and there's everything from that to eventually getting

02:41:58.960 it on netflix or some other platform by just persuading the people who need to be persuaded

02:42:04.500 that they should take the film what doors are are ajar for you at the moment right yeah i think

02:42:12.120 when the new york times came out my initial hope was that this story being on the front page

02:42:21.400 of the biggest newspaper in the world that that would maybe give some of the distributors like netflix

02:42:28.400 or hulu or hbo that would maybe give them the courage they need to maybe not buy the film but

02:42:34.800 at least give it give it a fair shake or you know a second look or first look if they didn't see it

02:42:40.240 already at sundance unfortunately that has not happened and that's been pretty devastating because i

02:42:47.540 because when you're talking about because the second option is like okay if if a traditional distributor

02:42:52.600 with those kind of resources is not going to pick up your film then the backup plan would

02:42:58.360 be self-distribution and i have since talked to some people in the film industry who've done

02:43:04.080 self-distribution and they all kind of said the same thing they said that you need a team to do it

02:43:10.400 it's quite involved it takes a couple months to pull off and you also need resources so for example

02:43:16.480 one of my friends that i talked to he said if you're doing self-distribution the first step and the

02:43:21.040 most important step and what's going to bring the most people to your film is going to be having

02:43:26.180 a badass trailer which costs anything between 12 and 25 000 to get made and then you're going to

02:43:35.280 have to have a poster and you have to hire a legal team to basically put all these contracts together

02:43:41.560 when you're doing self-distribution and then it's it's it's quite involved with both people and

02:43:48.640 resources and it's definitely been done before by a lot of people self-distribute but it's not something

02:43:53.960 that's cheap and when i ask when i ask some people just the numbers that they were giving me for like

02:43:59.120 the trailers could be 25 000 the posters a couple thousand dollars and so that is all quite prohibitive

02:44:07.020 to me because i don't have like i don't have disney money i don't have a war chest that i could just

02:44:12.520 self-distribute this and pay for all that myself especially with all the credit card debt that i've

02:44:16.900 managed to rack up but i also feel like for me this film is so important that it needs to get out

02:44:24.600 there so i'm still kind of trying so like the other day i made a go fund me page for the film to try to

02:44:30.080 raise money for a trailer and a poster and just doing all this stuff because i do think that the

02:44:36.960 film has had such a impact on people so that's one thing i'm like i haven't given up i'm still chipping

02:44:43.120 away at it like so for example when a film gets into sundance because it's considered the it film

02:44:48.760 festival it gets into almost invited invited to just loads of other ones and to oscar qualify a film

02:44:55.480 you need to do one of two things need to win an award at a film festival which we were probably

02:45:01.680 going to do because most films that get into sundance wind up winning awards at some festival

02:45:05.460 and so they're automatically qualified to be considered for the oscars the other way to do it is

02:45:09.660 a four wallet which costs a lot of money it's basically you have to play the film and rent a

02:45:13.800 rent a theater out for a week in one of i think it's like four or five cities and you have to play

02:45:19.760 the entire week at that's in that theater has to play three times a day and that could be anywhere from

02:45:25.500 like 15 to 20 000 which again i don't have but for me it was imperative to oscar qualify the film

02:45:32.720 because i hate rewarding bad behavior and i hate bullies and i didn't want to cede any ground to

02:45:39.480 these people who had taken away the film's festival run i.e then it's oscar qualifying chances so

02:45:45.440 i was able to find a theater in la who i think took pity on me and it's like some obscure place

02:45:52.760 like i think glendale or something and they agreed to rent me the theater for a week for four thousand

02:45:58.400 dollars so i was able to raise that money to do that to oscar qualify it so i'm chipping away

02:46:03.380 at this but it's like what's that triad it's like cheap fast good pick two and right and so

02:46:13.760 to self-distribute a film when you're talking about oscar qualifying it when you're talking

02:46:18.860 about posters when you're talking about hiring lawyers when you're talking about building a

02:46:22.940 website all of these things take time and resources and bodies and right now pretty much

02:46:30.400 everyone's left the project and it's just me so like the other day i made the website for the

02:46:36.260 film and then i the other day i made the gofundme page to start try to start raising money to where

02:46:41.980 is the gofundme page i just want to look at that too yeah it's if you go to my website um jihad

02:46:47.740 rehab.com and you click donate it then takes you to the gofundme page and we have three thousand

02:46:54.840 dollars so far which is that's enough for a put we can get a poster made basically is what we're at

02:47:00.500 so we're chipping away you can hire someone to design a poster for the film and then so here i

02:47:05.920 have like what happened to the like a little bit about the film a link to new york times article and

02:47:11.060 then i have my director statement which is why i made the film which i wasn't really sure i wanted

02:47:15.480 to put up there because it's pretty personal but i was like if i'm asking people for money i should

02:47:19.320 probably tell them who i am because i'm this it literally is sam it's just me like i'm literally

02:47:25.880 taught myself how to build a website like a couple weeks ago let's just assume those problems could go

02:47:31.380 away quickly then what do you want to do are there any reasons not to self-distribute if all of the

02:47:38.700 hassle can be removed the only the only big thing about self-distribution not being louis ck like he has

02:47:46.740 a built-in audience that will religiously buy his stuff and and and uh view it as as does andrew

02:47:52.940 schultz has quite a big following now and i am no one's ever fucking heard of me i have zero following

02:47:58.620 other than like my grant like my uh uncles and aunts they're there i'm sure they donate to the gofundme

02:48:03.160 page but you're never gonna get as many eyeballs on a film that's that's self-distributed unless you're

02:48:09.900 like the kind of louis ck name and that's the one downside and does it prevent later distribution

02:48:15.840 on netflix or some other platform i mean is there any negativity there so basically like

02:48:21.400 the the gofundme page i made was for to be able to self-distribute the film to at least a

02:48:30.280 couple of cities and theaters because twofold number one when i was talking about oscar qualifying

02:48:37.000 the film you have to you have to oscar qualify the film and run it in a theater before you put it

02:48:41.640 online if you put it online before you put it in the theater then it disqualifies it for the oscars

02:48:45.600 that's one which i'm doing in this month anyway so this month there's it's going to play for a week

02:48:50.540 in glendale okay two is i wanted to be able to have people go see the film for themselves in a way

02:48:57.600 that like i could do like i didn't building a website and putting all that stuff up it makes

02:49:04.200 it more accessible but being able to just put it in theaters and if you still keep and let's say it

02:49:10.540 does really well in theaters and you still keep the streaming and broadcast rights then maybe

02:49:15.200 a distributor like netflix like oh shit a lot of people are seeing this maybe we do want it on

02:49:19.880 our site and so to kind of keep that hold that close to the chest strategically that's what i was

02:49:25.840 thinking but seeing the people's reaction to the new york times the kind of silence that has come from

02:49:32.580 the distributors made me lose i'm starting to lose faith that that could be turned around but i don't i

02:49:38.500 don't know i think for me the reason why i'm going to self-distribute now is because i think that's

02:49:45.200 the only way at this point to get out there unless something changes but if this goes into theaters if

02:49:50.480 i'm able to like let's say play it in like five or ten cities and it does really well then typically

02:49:57.300 the eyes and the ears of the bigger distributors where it could get a bigger audience will perk up

02:50:02.320 but yeah i mean i i just my goal with this film is to twofold number one to get my investors back

02:50:09.200 their money and two more importantly for me though is to have as many people see it as possible and

02:50:16.260 the reason why i'm still kind of holding out for like a netflix or hbo to take it is because i know

02:50:21.460 it's going to 10 100 times more people will see it on netflix than if i have it on my own website

02:50:26.640 unfortunately okay well i really do want to help you it's still not totally clear how i should go

02:50:34.300 about doing that but because you have this gofundme page and this process has started a very clear way

02:50:41.160 i can help you is just to give you money there which i'm going to do and i'm going to advocate that

02:50:47.800 my audience do likewise if they have found this conversation compelling i'm already kind of like

02:50:54.120 really humbled that you're even talking to me because i know the people that you talk to on

02:50:58.920 your podcasts are really well known very respected people in their fields and i feel like uh i'm like

02:51:04.980 a street urgent compared to them so just coming on here and talking to you has been a really very

02:51:10.900 humbling experience and so yeah thank thank you for that that's really touching thank you yeah well

02:51:16.180 i mean you're obviously an extraordinary person and uh you know but i i didn't quite know that until

02:51:21.420 we had this conversation but there's the film itself and the extraordinary injustice of its

02:51:28.740 cancellation and it just there's just so much about this situation that reveals what is wrong in our

02:51:37.760 culture at the moment i mean there's just the failures of courage great and small the righteous

02:51:44.460 dishonesty that is being aimed at you and you've got people changing movie reviews that

02:51:51.400 were once effusive and now no longer are you've got supporters who are defecting and giving no

02:51:57.700 rational account of what has changed to explain their behavior it is the whole shebang in microcosm

02:52:04.780 that people have been worrying about for years now can i can i say something about about that about the

02:52:10.620 worrying for years thing is because i i did see that some of this a little bit of this in the broadcast

02:52:16.820 world and in the studio world when it came to like advertisers being skittish about certain topics

02:52:22.620 and one of the reasons why i operate in the independent space is because i believed that we

02:52:29.340 were above that and immune to it because just the fact that we're independent and like sundance has

02:52:35.280 garnished a reputation for playing films that are hard and difficult and controversial

02:52:40.500 and platforming those films be just for the for the main reason that they would never get made in a

02:52:47.300 studio environment and so for me i mean sundance has been around for decades and for sundance to

02:52:53.140 apologize for this film not once but twice yeah it's it's a kind of a come to jesus moment for me

02:53:02.340 to be honest because they are the premier institution in my little world my fishbowl of independent

02:53:10.520 documentary films and people like abigail disney are leaders in that world and there's been films that

02:53:17.460 come before me that have been done by filmmakers who have felt the pressure and apologized and kind

02:53:24.160 of did the mea copa and moved on and some of them should have apologized and some of them definitely

02:53:29.000 shouldn't have but it was always perceived that that's what you do and i didn't realize i think

02:53:33.740 the extent of it until i felt it and then i think for me because i had a lot of people on my team

02:53:40.420 pressuring me to apologize and when i asked them what am i apologizing for they said it didn't matter

02:53:44.900 but you need to show some kind of apology and humility otherwise they're just going to keep on

02:53:50.680 coming after you and at that time i was just like listen like when you're a firefighter and you

02:53:57.440 arrive on scene you don't just run into the building you kind of have to assess first and at the time i

02:54:02.760 was trying to gather information because what was happening was completely didn't make sense to me

02:54:07.000 because of all the screens we'd done before the festival and so originally i didn't apologize because

02:54:12.520 i was trying to understand and grasp what's what was happening and then when i kind of did really

02:54:17.860 understand it i thought no like i had sent my film to lawrence wright and ali soufan i had screened my film

02:54:26.260 post sundance with muslim people leaders in the community in the bay area i screened it with a

02:54:32.240 yemeni student union and they all had pretty positive reactions to it so i was like what am i i don't think

02:54:37.380 i've done anything wrong here because i did vet it post sundance because when you got that kind of

02:54:41.520 reaction unless you like i just thought i have to do my due diligence maybe i did miss something and it

02:54:46.960 was the same kind of reactions we got pre sundance and so when it came down to it it's like okay you took

02:54:53.980 my film's premiere away from me you took the film's trajectory away from me you took my reputation

02:54:59.960 and my name and my career away from me like fuck am i going to give you my integrity the one thing i

02:55:07.500 have left and apologize for this film and basically read and reinforce the lies you're telling about this

02:55:13.520 film and it literally was the reason why i didn't apologize is because after i did my due diligence

02:55:19.020 it was the only thing i had left i didn't have money i didn't have my reputation i didn't have my

02:55:23.640 career the only thing i had was my integrity and for me it was worth holding on to for that and i think

02:55:29.800 someone told me you know about like all these big institutions like sundance and abigail disney

02:55:37.600 kind of bending the knee to this angry mob and to the pressure and that then it falls on like i hate the

02:55:46.880 fact that i'm the first one in my industry not to apologize like i it should not be a first time

02:55:51.520 feature filmmaker that is doing this it's really hard i don't have the resources i don't have the

02:55:55.440 track record i don't have the kind of like cool and i i am like the least least powerful person in my

02:56:04.300 industry and least amount of influence and i hate the fact that other people before me who had way more

02:56:09.460 resources and way more power could have could have done this before me and hopefully set the

02:56:14.560 groundwork for other people to do it but unfortunately it falls on me and i think i'm

02:56:19.860 reminded of like i heard this somewhere and they said the only thing more dangerous than a man with

02:56:28.920 limitless resources and more money than god is a man with nothing to lose at this point i got

02:56:36.540 fucking nothing to lose so so i guess i'm like i'm not apologizing what are you gonna take from me i'm

02:56:42.700 literally moving out of my house in a couple months because i can no longer afford it so

02:56:46.340 i i just i don't want this to be like a woe is me thing because i do think the film for me is

02:56:51.560 something i'm super proud of people who worked on it super proud of and i want to pay those people

02:56:56.840 back and also those people's careers like the animation in the film i mean we didn't talk about

02:57:01.560 that but it's fucking awesome yeah like if you if you watch other documentaries they there's they

02:57:07.300 don't have i mean it's a really good animation and all the animators in the film were women we we

02:57:13.240 didn't have a lot of resources so my co-producer literally went on instagram and i said my only

02:57:18.420 stipulation is i want all female animators i don't care where they're at what the background is but

02:57:24.700 i really wanted all female animators because our production team in the field had to be all male

02:57:29.500 because of just the there were certain things that i couldn't shoot on my own like so for example the

02:57:33.780 wedding that you saw wedding the wedding scene the film weddings in saudi arabia are segregated

02:57:39.220 so i wasn't allowed to film the wedding so i had to be in the parking lot in a car with a remote

02:57:45.880 director's monitor and a walkie-talkie and directing the cinematographer and the sound guy remotely on like

02:57:52.000 who to film and who to zoom into and so because we had to have an all-male production team it was

02:57:58.280 imperative to me to have more females involved in post and so we had all i think we had six female

02:58:04.440 animators two were from they had they just started this animation company in brazil called hilda motion

02:58:09.860 and it was the one year of their opening their company these two girls from brazil was going to be

02:58:16.680 the premiere at sundance and it was going to launch their company and launch their career and they were

02:58:21.260 so excited about it and they were just like you can't believe that we did an animation piece that's going

02:58:26.040 to be a film at sundance and it was going to you know launch their business because it's really good

02:58:31.740 animation in there and there was another woman who she's a trans woman in london who does animation

02:58:37.000 on the side and she did the the the line animation and all these people there was one of my favorite

02:58:43.100 stories about the animators is there was one woman that i interviewed and then months later we were

02:58:50.620 talking after the animation with us and she did she did not her animation the one that's kind of like

02:58:54.400 charcoal hand-drawn type stuff and when i interviewed her she made she made it seem like she'd been in

02:58:59.900 the industry for a while but i was mostly sold on her pitch and her she got the characters like so for

02:59:06.800 me it was more important they understood the psychology of the characters and they were able

02:59:09.980 to express that visually than like any kind of awards they won and so later on after the film was done

02:59:17.980 she's like meg i have a confession to make and i was like yeah so do you remember when did the

02:59:22.700 interview and i was telling you like you know how i was a professional animator and i was like yeah

02:59:27.640 i was like okay and she's like well you remember that time when you were trying to get a hold of me

02:59:32.720 and you couldn't it took me a long time to get back to you i'm like yeah she goes well it's because i'm

02:59:37.200 actually still in school and i mean and i had finals week and she's like i've actually this is my

02:59:42.320 first paid gig i'm like i don't fucking care dude it was great i mean so it was the moral of the

02:59:47.980 story is like it was a lot of people's i mean i am not i am not a big wig in our industry i'm not a

02:59:55.480 gatekeeper but i was a gatekeeper for this film and it was imperative to me to find other people

02:59:59.320 that were also talented that just hadn't got the recognition yet and this was going to launch their

03:00:04.260 careers as well and so one of the cinematographers i worked with like literally i saw him the other day

03:00:09.180 and he was saying like you know a bunch of the people who were on this film who've moved on like

03:00:14.180 you know bigger wigs where he was hanging around the other day and he's just like you know they all

03:00:18.400 moved on to the other projects he's like this was supposed to be my big shot like this was like the

03:00:21.840 the one that was going to put me on the map and so i'm really sad because by going after me i don't

03:00:28.520 think they realized they really hurt other people who would be in the minority camp right the like

03:00:34.460 trans woman in in the uk the the brazilian couple in the couple in brazil the women in brazil and

03:00:42.960 there was one in poland as well and i think that like all these people were at the nascent stage

03:00:47.300 of their career they just hadn't got the acknowledgement yet but they're all super

03:00:50.480 fucking talented and it's just really sad to me because it's not how it's supposed to go this isn't

03:00:57.620 how you know and i think for me it's hard because it's the hardest thing about this whole whole ordeal

03:01:06.760 was this was a project that had no resources for what we actually pulled off and there was a lot of

03:01:14.120 people who worked for free or deferred or for a huge discount and they followed me down this path

03:01:20.620 because they believed in me and they believed in this project and what was absolutely devastating for

03:01:26.500 me is when this all started kicking off and they were attacked on social media and they were bullied

03:01:31.660 and harassed and like we had like we had people who so just to let you know they took screenshots of

03:01:39.420 our credits at sundance and they reached out to a lot of the people at our credits and they threatened

03:01:45.900 them and they like let me see if i don't know if i have it here yeah so here we go so this is one of

03:01:51.580 the emails i got from one of the people in our credits so basically somehow they got her phone number

03:01:57.200 and they called her and this is the email she said she's like oh i'm sorry if my tone was harsh because

03:02:01.160 she sent me an email before and she said my phone was blowing up with strangers asking me about the

03:02:06.420 film which i haven't seen yet saying that i supported islamophobia and endangered people

03:02:10.980 i felt as blindsided as it sounds you are now and now i'm hearing people are being fired and resigning

03:02:17.780 i'm so sorry about all of this for everyone i've been in firestorms before and you will get through this

03:02:24.680 because you're talented resilient and not ill-intentioned i'll i'd never survive in your industry that was

03:02:30.740 just one person on our credits that they reached out to and basically on the phone was like you're

03:02:35.300 a racist and you're islamophobic unless you take your name off the film and so she asked me to take

03:02:39.900 her name with the film and we had like i think it was like 35 people or something in total that reached

03:02:45.080 out and said please take my name with the film i literally got one just yesterday from a guy who's

03:02:49.540 pretty high up in the industry and these people aren't in the credits they're in our special thanks

03:02:53.640 and he said take my name off your special thanks and it's not like we're giving you a credit that

03:02:58.860 you didn't do it's just like hey thank you for working on our film and they reached reached out

03:03:04.000 to all those people and and harassed them and and bullied them and then they contacted me and said i

03:03:09.380 i don't want to be associated with this film anymore because it's just causing me too much of a headache

03:03:13.020 and that's hard when you're like the captain of the ship right and people trust you and they follow

03:03:18.820 you down a path and then you lead into the path where it devastates their career it caused them

03:03:23.500 emotional strife like i had one of my editors calling me on the phone and she was just like she

03:03:31.160 was distraught and she was crying and i felt like like i don't know if it's the firefighter in me but

03:03:39.640 they were like my team and i couldn't protect them and i felt responsible for that because like

03:03:49.180 they'd followed me down this line shit sorry hold on

03:03:53.160 they'd followed me down this line um this path in this film because they believed in me and they

03:04:00.540 trusted me and because of that their lives were kind of blown up too so that was the worst part

03:04:07.880 feeling responsible for other people's for other people like that translator we attacked or like my

03:04:13.320 editor or my cinematographer or my you might the guy who did our score he said he had five different

03:04:19.900 people call him encouraging him to take his name off the film and he didn't he he asked he asked each

03:04:26.680 one of them what they thought of the film he said none of them had seen the film every single person

03:04:30.220 that called him had not seen the film so it's just been this total avalanche and wave of it's like i said

03:04:37.320 before i didn't understand what cancellation really was until i went through this process and that's why i

03:04:42.680 i wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy the people attacking the film i wouldn't wish this on them

03:04:47.860 i wouldn't i no one deserved this and i think that the documentary field is filled with a lot of really

03:04:53.940 good intentioned people and i think that it's also really easy to weaponize empathy when you're when

03:04:59.640 you're in that kind of field and i'm sure there are people out there who saw the film and genuinely

03:05:04.980 didn't like it and that's fine and i'm open to criticism but there's a difference between

03:05:10.620 criticism and bullying between criticism and and harassment and you know threatening lawsuits and

03:05:20.620 things like that so i'm hoping that if i can turn this around that it will kind of be a moment in my

03:05:29.900 industry where we can take a step back and say hey we need to kind of re-evaluate how we're dealing

03:05:35.660 with all this and the knock-on effect is if you have a film festival as powerful as sundance

03:05:41.560 capitulating then eventually what's going to happen is people are only going to program safe films

03:05:47.400 which don't talk about the issues and don't talk about the stuff that's actually hard to talk about

03:05:52.600 which we need to do and that's why we all operate in this independent space because we're able to

03:05:56.940 i don't know have you ever seen that film act of killing yeah yeah yeah brilliant film brilliant yeah

03:06:02.520 in fact i i had the director on the podcast okay yeah yeah he's so sweet he's such a nice man but

03:06:08.440 but that that film would never have gotten made in a studio no fucking way yeah but the great thing

03:06:14.720 about the independent space it used to be that there people were realized that this was the space where

03:06:19.160 you made challenging work so you can have those difficult discussions but if if this space now has

03:06:25.160 been infected with this kind of propensity to play it safe and to avoid conflict then i don't there's no

03:06:32.000 other space for it like there's no other plan c like this was the space where films like that got

03:06:37.340 made and got platformed and without that i'm very fearful of moving like where my industry is headed

03:06:45.720 yeah the avoidance of controversy is just a it's a disaster for honest inquiry and entertainment

03:06:53.860 and we all make mistakes and you and then when you do actually make a mistake and it's brought to

03:06:59.260 your attention you should you sure shit should apologize and do it in a very genuine way and for

03:07:03.240 me that's face to face for me that's in person it's not performative and the fact that there i've seen

03:07:10.260 other filmmakers apologize and i see the work that they're apologizing for and i just it baffles me

03:07:15.140 but i understand i understand why now because the well they just want to make it stop yeah you just

03:07:20.280 want you yeah you want to get your life back and as you say your reputation back and but um you

03:07:26.660 certainly have your integrity and your intentions are so obvious and obviously good you know let's

03:07:34.840 see if we can get the other stuff back because it's you know what's happened to you here is is deeply

03:07:40.240 unfair and i want to help i want my audience to help and um well you and i'll stay connected and just let

03:07:49.160 me know what happens but one thing that's potentially confusing is you've changed the

03:07:52.920 name of the film in the meantime yet so you it's now called the unredacted but the website is jihad

03:07:58.640 rehab and that's not going to change yeah the website's jihad rehab.com if you put in the

03:08:04.120 unredacted film i think it will still take you there but there's a lot of websites with the unredacted

03:08:09.540 in it so okay we didn't want there to be confusion but the title yes the title is the unredacted but

03:08:14.140 it's jihad rehab yeah so jihad rehab.com donate and um i hope people do because um we should help

03:08:22.340 you meg thanks for your time and and please keep your chin up it's not over thank you i appreciate

03:08:27.760 it and uh thank you for i don't know how long we've been talking but it's been a while it's been a joy to

03:08:32.180 have this uh long overdue conversation with so i appreciate it thank you

03:08:36.420 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - October 12, 2022

#300 — A Tale of Cancellation

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