Raising Mentally Strong Kids, with Dr. Daniel Amen, and Inside the Tragic ＂Rust＂ Set Shooting, with Rachel Mason ｜ Ep. 1039
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 13 minutes
Summary
Dr. Daniel A. Amen is a double board certified psychiatrist and author of the book, Raising Mentally Strong Kids: How to Combine the Power of Neuroscience with Love and Logic to Grow Confident, Kind, Responsible, and Resilient Kids.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We're going to talk
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parenting for a minute. How do we raise confident, able kids in our post-pandemic, always online
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annoying society? My next guest may be familiar to you if you spend any time on Instagram,
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which is where I found him. He's got some amazing advice for all of us. Dr. Daniel Amen is a double
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board certified psychiatrist, including of child psychiatry, and author of the book Raising
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Mentally Strong Kids, how to combine the power of neuroscience with love and logic to grow confident,
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Welcome to the show, Dr. Amen. Great to have you.
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Hi, Megan. What a joy. I followed your work for a long time. I'm a huge fan.
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Oh, gosh. Thank you for saying that. Likewise. So I always love your posts. They always make
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sense to me. I always get like an additional pearl of wisdom that I didn't have before.
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But the one that made me say, could we please book him, please get him on the show,
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was one in which you were talking about. This is the condensed version. Today, parents do way too
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much for their children and they steal their self-esteem. You are making the point that you
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may think you're doing all the household chores or whatever it is. In our neighborhood, all the
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parents drop their kids off at the bus stop. Like what? Right? Back in my day, we had to walk to the
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bus stop and wait for the, like they sit in these beautiful SUVs and whatever. You may think you're
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helping or being kind to your child and you are making the point that's a you thing. You're doing
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that to make yourself feel good and you are stealing something important from your kid in the process.
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Let's kick it off there. Well, because parents are working so hard, they often have this tremendous
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guilt about not spending enough time with their children. And so they do, do, do, do thinking it's
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somehow benefiting them. But really, it's building the parents' self-esteem by stealing your child's.
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There's this great study out of Harvard where they followed kids literally over 70 years looking at
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what goes with health, success, and longevity. And the only thing that went with self-esteem
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was whether or not you worked as a child, whether or not you had a paper route, or you had chores at
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home, or you actually like me, I had a job. My dad owned grocery stores. And from the time I was 10,
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I went to work. And what working does is it boosts your sense of competence and competence is directly
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related to self-esteem. So if you're solving all of your children's problems, they don't feel
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competent and thus don't feel very good about themselves. Yes. No, I see this with parents all
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the time where they solve their child's problems, not necessarily speaking about homework, but just
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the kid comes up with, well, this kid did this to me. And rather than teaching the child how to think
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it through, they say, this is what you should do. And I think a lot of parents enjoy the dependency
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that results from that. No question. They get in their mind more connection. And, you know, I mean,
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it's so rewarding. Take the wisdom you gained over decades and pour it down your child's brain.
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The problem is it just doesn't work. What we're teaching them is to not be competent. And when a child
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says, I'm bored, rather than go, well, you could do this, or you could do that, or how about we do this
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together, just repeat it back. It's like, you're bored. I wonder what you're going to do about it.
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And then be quiet long enough for them to generate their own solutions. Parents talk way too much. And
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in raising mentally strong kids, I talk about the first thing is know what you want. What kind of
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parent do you want to be? What kind of child do you want to raise? I want to raise mentally strong
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kids. Well, that means I have to teach them to solve problems. I can't do it for them. And then the
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second thing it's bonding and bonding requires two things, time, actual physical time. Parents are so
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busy and so distracted by their own devices that they're not spending time with children and really
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important, a willingness to listen. So when your child says something on board, rather than solve it
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for them, go, just repeat back what you hear. It's what therapists do all the time, at least. And wait for
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them to fill in the blank, because they're filling it in using their brain to generate options. And what if they
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say, what can I do? What can I do? Mom, what can I do?
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Like, I wonder, what can you do? And then can you do and then be quiet so that their brain works to fill in.
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Now, after five minutes, if they're like, what can I do? What can I do? Do you want to hear maybe what
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other kids might do? And then generate options. But you know, as soon as you generate options, they're
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going to argue with them. But I think what you said is very interesting, like how to build, everybody
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wants to build mentally tough kids, resilient kids. Now, growing up in the 70s, the way that my mom did it
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was she just insulted me a lot. I'm kind of joking, but it's, there's a little truth to it. I don't
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know. She just, she didn't coddle us is my point. Never coddled us. And she never told us we were good
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at something that we weren't good at ever. So I always had a very keen sense of what was an actual
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skill versus a fake skill. You know what I mean? I never overjudged my capacity for something.
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Now, I'm a lot nicer than my mom was. So then I worry, am I, am I going to raise soft kids? Do I
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need to insult them more? How, what is the, what is the way forward?
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Well, I think the way forward is bonding and connection and modeling. You really want to
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raise brain healthy kids is you have to live the message. You have to model it. And the more you
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model, a healthy brain, a healthy mind, healthy relationships, if you are children like you.
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And this is very important. If they don't like you, they pick the opposite values. So growing up,
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I did not have a good relationship with my dad. He worked all the time. The only time I saw him is
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when I went to work with him and he tended to notice what was wrong about me more than what was
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right about me. 1972, I turn 18. It's the first time I can vote. He says, if I vote for McGovern,
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the country will go to hell. I vote for McGovern and the country went to hell, but it had nothing to do
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with McGovern. It was all Nixon. And, but it was, it was the lack of bonding and connection that drove
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me to do the opposite of him. If he would have spent time with me, listened to me, now I'm one of
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seven. So it was chaos in my family, but it would have been much different. Now, later on in life,
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he's my best friend and we vote in a similar way, but it's so important that connection and that
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bonding is not doing everything they want you to do. Bonding is time. It's listening and helping
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them learn to be competent. Can we talk about the advice giving? Cause we, we mentioned this a second
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ago, you know, about helping them solve their own problems and maybe helping them walk the path with
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the right questions they should be asking. But can you speak to the difference between if there is
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any, that process, when you're dealing with, let's say my kids are 11, 13 and 15. And then my friend
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who I talked to a lot about her adult children who are more like 31 and 29, you know, she desperately
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wants to weigh in on like who they're dating or their latest job choice. And I'm over here. Like I
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wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, not at that age, but at my ages, I think you do have to be more vocal
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Well, you know, I think always default to firm and kind and yes, at 11, 13, 15, they need guidance. I
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always say God gave you parents until your frontal lobes develop. So the front third of your brain,
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it's called the prefrontal cortex. It is actually not fully developed until you're 25. And that's why
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we need to do a much better job of protecting young developing brains, like not giving them access to
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social media until they're 14, 15, 16, just because it's so toxic there for them. So being involved
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and supervising them, and kids hate it when you supervise them. And they hate it more when you
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don't, because in their mind, it's like, you're you don't care. So I mean, until my kids were 1718,
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I want to know where you are, who you're with, what you're doing. And oh, by the way, I'm going to
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check. And now we have ways to check that were much better than when my kids were young. And so
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but when they're old, your job is to be sort of a good friend and a good coach. And never forget,
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I'm always a long term planner. Never forget, they're the ones that are going to be taking care of
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you when you're nine. And so I'm always sort of kind to my children. But if I do too much,
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I create dependence. And that's absolutely not what you want when they're 25.
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Well, and also, I worry that you create resentment. I worry, you know, in in expressing your real
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opinion about, let's say, you know, the daughter's boyfriend, if the daughter's 27.
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I don't know. I feel like at that age, they're going to do what they're going to do. And I would
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be very hesitant. I would feel like my role was more to be like, you know, you'll figure it out.
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How do you feel when you're around? Just ask questions as opposed to say how I feel, because
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I'd be worried that if I'm like, he's a he's a shit, like this is definitely not the one for you.
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You have a greater likelihood of you either throwing her into his arms just because,
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you know, it's OK for you to think your guy's bad. But if anybody else thinks it,
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then you're defensive of him or her just, I don't know, clamming up and not sharing future things
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with you. Yeah, no, I think it's that line. But if you really think he's a shit, you need to tell him
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because you need to tell her because new love is a drug. New love is just like you've been
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taking cocaine and you're not thinking rationally. And often it takes six months, a year,
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18 months for you to see, oh, this person's really not great for me. And it goes back to
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the relationship. If they know you want to spend time with them, that you're listening to them,
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that you're rooting for them like a good coach. I always think, you know, who's the best teacher
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you've ever had? Who's the best coach you've ever had? They notice what you do right and they teach
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you when you could do better. And too often, parents that are ineffective notice what you do wrong
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and never let you forget it. And so maybe a little bit like your mom, clearly like my dad.
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And that that's not effective because if he goes, oh, you shouldn't do this. My mind just to oppose
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him is like, well, I think I should do that. That's exactly what I'm going to do. Yeah. Somebody
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once told me that we've had many, many dog trainers because we have a very naughty boy in our dog
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family. And, uh, somebody said, it's the same way that you would raise a good kid. Um, expected
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behavior is not commented on great behavior. Good extra behavior is praised fully and, and vocally
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and negative behaviors are ignored unless they can't be, you know, unless like he's in the process
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of biting somebody and like intervention is required. But I kind of like that, right? It's like,
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you don't thank your kid for unloading the dishwasher because that's an expected chore.
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That's part of being a member of this family. Same way they don't expect, you know, they, I don't
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expect them to thank me for making my bed, you know, like that kind of thing, but like an, an extra
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kindness or an extra moment of politeness or of them like looking out for each other stuff. You want
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to see a lot, lot more of. Yeah. I vocally praise that profusely.
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Well, there's a part in the book, raising mentally strong kids that I just loved so much. And, um,
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I collect penguins, uh, in my office at work, I have dozens of them. And the reason I collect
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penguins is, so I have six kids and three of them are adopted and I adopted, uh, my oldest and he was
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hard for me, um, argumentative oppositional. And I really didn't like being a dad. Um, I'm like,
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this is just no fun at all. And I was a child psychiatry fellow. So I was doing my child psychiatry
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training and I'm talking to my supervisor about it. And she says, you have to spend more time with
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him, which was sort of the last thing I wanted to do. And I was living in Hawaii at the time.
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And that's where I did my child psychiatry fellowship. And I took my son to a place called
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sea life park, which is on Oahu and like sea world, they have sea animal shows. And we went to the
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killer whale show and that was great. And the dolphin show, but at the end of the day, he grabs
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my shirt and he goes, I want to see fat Freddie. And I'm like, who's fat Freddie. It's like the penguin
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dad. Don't you know anything? Um, and so we went to the fat Freddie show and it's this little chubby
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humble penguin who is amazing. He comes out onto the stage. He climbs like a 12 foot, um, ladder to a
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diving board, goes to the edge of the board bounces and then jumps in the water. And I'm like, whoa.
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And then he gets out of the pool, uh, bowls with his nose counts with his flipper jumps through a hoop
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of fire. And at the end of the show, the trainer asked him to go get something and Freddie went and
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got it and he brought it right back. And at that moment, time stood still for me. And I'm like,
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I asked this child to get something for me. And he wants to have a discussion for like 20 minutes.
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And then he doesn't want to do it. And I knew my son was smarter than the penguin. So I go up to the
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trainer afterwards. I'm like, how'd you get Freddie to do all these really cool things? And she looked
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at my son and then looked at me and said, unlike parents, whenever Freddie does anything like what
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I want him to do, I notice him. I give him a hug and I give him a fish. And even though my son
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didn't like raw fish, I realized I was like my dad, when he did things I liked, I paid no attention to
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him at all. And when he didn't do things I liked, I gave him a ton of attention. So I was inadvertently
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teaching him to do bad things to get my attention. So I'm dense. I collect penguins as a way to just
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remind myself every day. Notice what you like more than what you don't like. And we have a new
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study. So I have 11 clinics around the country. We do brain imaging. If you came to see me,
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we'd want to look at your brain before we gave you medicine or anything like that. And I have a brand
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new huge study coming out on negativity bias, negativity versus positivity. It's really the
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Fat Freddy story. And if you're more negative, you have less function in the front part of your brain,
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as opposed to if you're more positive. And so I'm a huge fan of accurate thinking with a positive
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spin. So not positive thinking, because that can get you into all sorts of trouble,
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but accurate thinking with a positive spin. I feel like that's my bread and butter for the most part.
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In fact, believe it or not, this year for Lent, I gave up negativity, which is, it sounds like a cop
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out, but it was designed around what you're talking about. Now, I kind of give myself the two hours off of
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this show because I got to do the news in the way I do the news. I can't be, can't mess with it. But
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in my, in the other 22 hours of the day, I'm trying to give up negativity and I'm not a negative person.
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I think I am an accurate person with a positive spin. And, um, but I have noticed now that I've
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made a point of it, how many times I'll say, you know, like, Oh, I can't stand that. Or that sucks.
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We wait, we played the game padel over vacation, which is not paddle and it's not pickle. It's
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padel. It's big in Europe. It's like a racket sport. And, uh, everyone in my family is great
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at racket sports, but I am not. And instead it's little things, but instead of being like,
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Oh my God, I suck. I was saying things like, I'm not, I'm not quite good yet. I'll be better
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the next time. It's just these little things. And then I read that you're big on starting the day
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by saying, this is going to be a great day. And I've been doing it. It's just these little,
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little pick me up stock. They actually have been making a nice difference in my life.
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Well, if you start the day with today is going to be a great day. And my favorite one is in the day
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with what went well today. It's a great exercise to do with the kids. But when I go to bed at night,
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I say a prayer and then I go, what went well today and go through my whole day looking for what was
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right rather than what was wrong. And the bad stuff shows up, but I'm like, Nope, this is not your time.
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And people who do that within three weeks notice a significant difference in their level of happiness.
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and imagine if you just do it with the kids at whenever you have a meal together, it's like, Hey,
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what are you looking forward today? Hey, what went well today? What you're doing is you're training
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positivity bias in their minds. And my wife, Tana, she and I do a podcast together and we just did a
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big podcast on negativity versus positivity bias. And her mom died just about a year ago. And
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both she and I noticed she's more negative and that's what grief does. Um, but as she worked on
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it, what she said is I find the micro miracles in my day, even the little things like I make her a cup
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of brain healthy, hot chocolate every night. And she's like, just the first taste is a micro miracle.
00:22:45.440
And it's a practice that you can do. And, you know, the most effective way to raise mentally strong
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kids is you be mentally strong yourself. And, uh, that's why I'm so grateful. You follow me
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on social media. Cause that's the whole goal is I was just at the white house and I hate the term
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mental illness. It shames people it's stigmatizing and it's wrong. These are brain health issues that
00:23:20.180
steal people's minds. The brain physical function of your brain creates your mind. And so as your brain
00:23:29.840
is healthier, your mind is just better. And so getting our food, right exercise. And I love, we're
00:23:38.180
talking about, um, coordination exercises because people who play racket sports live longer than
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everybody else. People who play football and soccer live less long than everybody else. I did the big NFL
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study. When the NFL was sort of wine, it had a problem with traumatic brain injury in football.
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Um, I scanned and treated 400 NFL players. And what we should be doing with kids is playing racket sports.
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And I think one of the best things my mom did with me, she's great at ping pong. And I played table
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tennis growing up and I'm, I love table tennis, tennis. Those are the things to do with kids rather
00:24:28.240
than put them in soccer or football where on average every year they get a concussion.
00:24:36.100
Right, right. Oh, it's a table. Tennis is hilarious. It's great. My kids love it. They're very good with
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all rackets. They have the Doug Brunt, my husband's hand. I, I, I don't yet have it. I'll maybe this will be
00:24:49.120
in my ear, but I have dreams of secretly going to the ping pong place. There's a table tennis place,
00:24:53.720
not far from where I live and like saying I'm working out or something else. And then in the
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summer, when we really play a lot of it, busting out my ninja skills on my kids and bam, showing
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that like, they're like those Olympic with the, it's great to watch. Even my 11 year old has to go
00:25:07.560
easy on me now because he's so good at it. But that's interesting with the table tennis. Before we
00:25:12.340
leave that, this topic, what is a brain healthy, hot chocolate? What tell us all everyone wants to make it
00:25:18.560
now? It's so good. But before I do that, get a coach, go to the usatt.org, United States and
00:25:28.840
America table tennis association.org, get a coach. It's okay. The more you work it, the better you
00:25:36.900
will become. It's a cerebellar function, which is a very critical part of the brain. And if you didn't
00:25:44.100
develop that when you're young, you can totally develop it now. So brain healthy, hot chocolate,
00:25:50.060
raw cacao, organic, raw cacao, unsweetened almond milk, heat up the almond milk, put a heaping
00:25:59.920
teaspoon of raw cacao. There's a company I like, no financial connection to them called Sweet Leaf.
00:26:07.640
They make 11 different flavors of Stevia and their chocolate is unbelievable. And put in a couple
00:26:19.400
dropper fulls, put in a blender. It's so good. And literally, and it's calorie smart, right? It's
00:26:28.200
about 30 to 60 calories. It tastes great. It loves you. You love it. And it loves you back.
00:26:37.380
So it's just those two things, almond milk. And what was the third thing?
00:26:42.800
So raw cacao, unsweetened organic almond milk and chocolate Stevia from Sweet Leaf.
00:26:51.500
Oh, I see. Okay. All right. And, and how much of the chocolate Stevia goes in there? Just like a
00:26:56.480
packet or what? Uh, it's a liquid. It goes to whatever your taste is. Some people like it a
00:27:04.660
little bit better. Some people like it super sweet. So my grandfather was a candy maker. And so I like
00:27:11.860
sweet things. Oh, all right. That's good. I can do this. All right. Now, wait, let's go back to
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the brain scans and what you were saying about mental illness. So fascinating. So if, if somebody
00:27:24.600
comes into you and says, I I'm depressed or I have anxiety or whatever it is, is the first thing you
00:27:32.740
would do as a psychiatrist, a brain scan, you wouldn't just be like talk therapy or the big thing
00:27:37.780
now is take this drug. Well, how would you know, unless you looked? So I'm a double. Nobody looks
00:27:44.720
psychiatrist. And I belong to the only medical specialty that virtually never looks at the organ
00:27:52.640
it treats. And so for the last 34 years, we've been doing a study called brain spec imaging looks at
00:28:01.460
blood flow and activity looks at how your brain works. And Megan, literally it has changed everything
00:28:08.760
in my life, how I diagnose my patients, how I treat myself. If you date my daughter for more than four
00:28:17.340
months, I'm going to scan you because I really want to know. We have a poster. I don't know if you heard
00:28:25.080
the president and the department of justice, but he's about a conversation he had with the Mexican
00:28:30.560
president. And it's like, well, why doesn't Mexico have the drug problem we have, even though you're
00:28:37.260
selling us the drugs and they have a very vigorous drug education campaign. Well, as soon as I started
00:28:45.720
scanning people in 1991, I'd take a healthy scan. And then one of my marijuana users, cocaine users,
00:28:53.620
alcoholics, their brains look so bad. And we put it on a poster and called which brain do you want,
00:28:59.820
which now hangs in about 100,000 schools, prisons, churches around the world. It's like the real
00:29:09.100
reason not to use drugs is they damage your brain. Alcohol is not a health food and marijuana is not
00:29:19.140
innocuous. We have to stop lying to the American public and go, these are not good things. But
00:29:29.400
the first thing you have to do is get them to fall in love with their brain. And that's what the
00:29:34.960
imaging did for me. It's your brain is involved in how you think, how you feel, how you act, how you get
00:29:41.180
along with other people. And when your brain works right, you work right. And when it doesn't, you'll never
00:29:48.700
live up to your potential. So now you go drugs damage the brain. And why would you ever damage your
00:30:00.680
So what, well, what could you see in a brain scan that would change the way you would help
00:30:06.220
somebody coming in with any one of those things or other things people see a psychiatrist for?
00:30:12.260
Well, one of the big lessons I learned from imaging is mild traumatic brain injury is a major
00:30:19.340
cause of psychiatric illness that nobody knows about because psychiatrists never look.
00:30:24.860
So your suicidal ideation, your depression, your panic attacks, your ADD or learning disabilities
00:30:32.920
could have been from the car accident your family was in when you were four. Or I have one patient
00:30:39.080
depressed his whole life fell off the hood of a minivan when he was 18 months old, unconscious for a day.
00:30:49.000
They thought it was a minor injury. Years later, I could still see it. We can see evidence of
00:30:56.020
toxicity from substance abuse, but we also see evidence of toxicity from mold exposure or from
00:31:03.480
Lyme disease. And so I think in the future, there's going to be a whole sub category of psychiatrists
00:31:10.400
that just focus on infectious disease. Like I have hundreds of COVID scans and COVID causes an inflammatory
00:31:20.600
bomb that just goes off in your brain. Depression is like chest pain, right? Nobody gets a diagnosis of
00:31:28.600
chest pain because it doesn't tell you what causes it and it doesn't tell you what to do for it. Depression's the
00:31:34.920
same way. Is your brain low in activity? So I have to stimulate it. Is it high in activity and I have
00:31:41.820
to calm it? We can also see, I've published another study this year on childhood trauma, childhood trauma,
00:31:50.640
emotional trauma leaves a lasting signature in the brain. And treatments like EMDR, a specific
00:32:00.480
psychological treatment for trauma help reset it, help calm things. Is that the Prince Harry thing?
00:32:07.440
That's the Prince Harry thing. Like tapping, right? That's tapping could be part of it. I like
00:32:16.400
the eye movement part of it. Wow. This is going to come as such good news to so many people who just
00:32:23.640
think like, uh, I'm this way, but maybe it's, it is like a physical ailment that you could address.
00:32:31.620
Is there, and on that front, is there a way? Cause like if, if you say you hurt your brain when you
00:32:37.060
got that concussion, when you were 10, you know, that seems like something I'm kind of stuck with,
00:32:41.160
but you're saying no, absolutely not. And so in my NFL work, um, 80% of our players got better when we
00:32:50.440
put them on a rehabilitation program. And these are damaged brains, right? Some of our players,
00:32:58.440
um, like Dick Butkus, you know, he played for decades and had tens of thousands of hits to his head.
00:33:07.820
He called me his brain savior, uh, because on the right treatment, his brain just a couple of months
00:33:16.860
later was much better. And that's the big news in neuroscience is you're not stuck with the brain
00:33:26.380
you have. You can make it better and I can prove it. And every day your brain is part of your brain
00:33:35.140
called the hippocampus. Really interesting. It's shaped hippocampus is Greek for seahorse because
00:33:41.500
that's how it's shaped every day. It makes 700 new stem cells. So every day your brain is making
00:33:49.360
700 new baby seahorses that are involved in mood and memory. And your behavior is either growing them
00:33:59.700
or murdering them. Right. If you like have to have two to four glasses of wine at night,
00:34:07.080
um, you're murdering the babies. Um, you're smoking a lot of pot. You're murdering the babies. I posted
00:34:14.740
something two days ago that if you're under 50 and smoking marijuana, you have a six fold increase of
00:34:22.180
having a heart attack. It's like, Whoa, um, not good for the blood flow in your body. Um, if you go to bed
00:34:31.240
a half an hour early tonight, you're growing your seahorses. If you take a multiple vitamin and fish
00:34:38.120
oil and optimize your vitamin D level, you're growing your seahorses. If you eat food, you love
00:34:46.320
that loves you back like brand healthy, hot chocolate, you're growing your seahorses. And
00:34:53.120
Megan, it comes down to one question. And I played this game with my daughter, Chloe, when she was little,
00:34:59.680
is this good for your brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that with information
00:35:06.460
and love, love of yourself, love of your family, love of the reason God puts you on earth,
00:35:14.120
this is good for my brain or bad for it. You just start making better decisions.
00:35:19.580
Wow. What about, um, dementia, Alzheimer's when you do these scans, when somebody comes in,
00:35:28.080
is that, I know there is some sort of a test that can show you that now, but do you see that? And
00:35:33.640
to me, it's just such a scourge that we haven't figured out how to prevent or, or heal, stop, cure
00:35:41.440
those problems. So many, probably 6 million Americans, right. Have Alzheimer's. It's, it's
00:35:45.540
crazy number. Yeah. Estimated to go to 15 million Americans by 2050. And 19, um, no, 2005,
00:35:54.200
I wrote a book called preventing Alzheimer's and got no end of grief from my colleagues. They're like,
00:36:00.120
no, you can't do that. And I'm like, no, you can do it. Um, and last year, the Lancet published an
00:36:07.680
article that said 50% of Alzheimer's disease is preventable. How you prevent it is you prevent or
00:36:16.140
treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And, um, um, like B is blood flow. R is
00:36:28.880
retirement and aging. I is inflammation. G is genetics. H is head trauma. And you know, your
00:36:35.880
risks and spec scans can tell 20, 30 years ahead of time. If your brain is headed for trouble.
00:36:45.120
And some people go, Oh, I don't want to know. It's like, of course you want to know. If you knew
00:36:50.780
a train was going to hit you, wouldn't you at least want to try to get out of the way? And we screen
00:37:00.560
hearts and we screen, um, breasts, but we're not screening the most important organ.
00:37:07.220
That's so true. I'm going to buy all the books. I'm coming to a clinic. I want all the tests. I
00:37:14.160
want it all doc. This is great stuff. I love that you're doing this, that this is available
00:37:19.220
and that anybody who wants to tap into your wisdom can do it, including, including by buying his most
00:37:25.060
recent book. It's again called raising mentally strong kids, how to combine the power of neuroscience
00:37:30.440
with love and logic to grow confident, kind, responsible, resilient children, and young adults.
00:37:37.040
Dr. Amen. Thank you so much for being here. So much love to you.
00:37:45.080
Oh, see you soon. I, I really hope come back soon. All the best. Wow. God, don't you guys want to do
00:37:51.380
it all now? And now I'm thinking about, I did get a concussion when I was a kid. I got, I had two of
00:37:56.900
them, not like an athlete, but man, now I'm starting to wonder, like, remember when we talked to Maureen
00:38:01.620
Callahan about sometimes if I was, when I was stressed out, I would get more like OCD. Maybe
00:38:05.960
it wasn't OCD. Maybe it was my sledding accident in the fifth grade. This is fascinating stuff.
00:38:14.260
He's great. You can see why I liked him so much. And you should follow him on Twitter. Just
00:38:17.540
search for him. I mean, on, um, on Instagram, he's terrific. He's well worth the price of admission
00:38:22.140
over there. Those are the things that make Insta worthwhile, not the ridiculous 17 year olds trying
00:38:28.980
to pretend they've curated this perfect life that it leads young girls to feel, you know,
00:38:33.460
somehow less than, uh, as you know, my kids are not on social media as they get older. It's going
00:38:38.680
to get more challenging. It's already slightly more challenging just with those around them.
00:38:42.520
They're literally the only ones in their grades now who are not on it. I know it's eventually going to
00:38:48.800
happen, right? I was like, I don't think there's any human, uh, in America who hasn't been on social
00:38:54.860
media to some extent, but I'm postponing it as long as I can and, uh, invite you to join me in
00:39:00.520
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00:41:10.600
Four years after the fatal shooting of cinematographer Helena Hutchins on the set of
00:41:16.380
the movie Rust, the movie's finally set to be released. This week, we learned it will hit theaters
00:41:22.080
in May. Many questions remain about what happened that fateful day, October 21st, 2021, and a new
00:41:29.860
documentary explores the events in detail, the events that led up to the accident with the cast
00:41:36.900
and the crew who were there. The doc is called Last Take, Rust and the Story of Helena, and it's now
00:41:45.340
available on Hulu. Here's an emotional clip from the documentary of the director who was also
00:41:52.060
shot Joel Sousa finding out about Helena. That night, I've never before since had a moment like
00:41:59.920
that where I'm laying there and I'm, you know, wound in my shoulder and I'm sort of, I get, I remember
00:42:09.260
thinking that night, I'm like, I just, I didn't want to, I hoped I didn't wake up the next morning.
00:42:14.820
There wasn't a why about it. I just felt so devastated that I just thought maybe this is a
00:42:22.600
good place for it to all stop, you know? And I did wake up the next morning.
00:42:28.260
The director of the documentary, Rachel Mason, joins me now. Rachel, welcome. Thanks for being here.
00:42:34.280
Hi, Megan. It's really great to be here. Thank you for having me.
00:42:37.100
What an extraordinary film and what a project. My gosh, it must have been very hard to put this
00:42:43.900
together. What drove you to do it? Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. It was hard mostly
00:42:51.260
because Helena was a great friend and she was an awesome human being, great person, a mom. And the
00:42:59.060
way that I know her is because my son and her son went to the same daycare together. And there's not
00:43:04.900
too many moms that I work well with and know in the industry. And so her and I had that really
00:43:11.580
incredible rare thing that can happen every now and then when a person connects with you on every
00:43:17.940
single level, because our kids would hang out. And then she's just such a talented DP that we work
00:43:23.280
together. I would direct things and she would shoot. And as you know, there's also not that many
00:43:27.640
female DPs, directors of photography. So when she died, her widower, Matt, actually asked me to make
00:43:36.040
a film about her life and death. And that's how this all happened. Oh my gosh. I mean, when you heard
00:43:43.120
about this horrible day, because I mean, as a civilian not involved with anything and you know,
00:43:49.120
on the set, I remember it. I remember where I was when I heard this. I was like, what? You were so
00:43:54.660
bad. So can you just tell us how did that affect you as somebody who is her dear friend? I imagine
00:43:59.680
at first you're thinking, wait, it can't be my, it can't be my friend. Like what movie,
00:44:03.300
what cinematographer? Right. Oh yeah. No, it's actually, I mean, it's still, even now this surreal
00:44:11.400
unthinkable quality of it is there because it's not just the layers of shocking twisted, you know,
00:44:19.320
the last time anything like this ever happened was Brandon Lee, you know, in terms of a set with a
00:44:24.300
gun that a person was, um, you know, injured and killed with. Um, so that just made no sense.
00:44:30.960
And then there's a celebrity factor and this giant global news story as well. And, and then the
00:44:36.640
reality of Helena, who's a person with so much life left. I mean, there just was no world in which
00:44:42.340
this could even be true, uh, to me. So yeah, it took a very long time to process the reality of it.
00:44:48.020
So I remember hearing that they were going to complete the movie, not, not your documentary,
00:44:53.680
but the movie rest thinking, no, no, not, there's no way you're like, and I thought for sure that her
00:45:01.460
widow or Matt would not want that, but I had it exactly backwards. As you explore in the documentary,
00:45:07.280
he, he did want it completed. And so did Helena's mom. Can you talk about why?
00:45:12.620
Well, I think this is one of those things as well that, um, you know, from the, from a distance and
00:45:19.860
from news coverage, if you were following the story and only getting certain bits of information,
00:45:24.860
you know, this is what I love about documentaries is that you really get the opportunity to speak
00:45:30.380
to people on every side and have nuance and change the story based on what is really going on. And so
00:45:38.480
when we met with Helena's mom, she had spoken to Helena just before she died. And Helena herself
00:45:45.460
told her how excited she was about this film and how much she wanted to finish the film. And her
00:45:50.760
mother said, you know, every film Helena has touched matters to me, especially this last one. Like we
00:45:56.560
want to finish it. This really is important. And if you knew Helena, that made perfect sense. I mean,
00:46:02.420
Helena is so obsessed with her work. I mean, I, I cannot think of a single time I ever spoke to her
00:46:09.280
that she wasn't talking about her last film and all the things she learned from it. And so knowing
00:46:14.280
that her mother wanted this completed, knowing her family wanted this completed. I even personally
00:46:19.340
had conversations with her son because he would be curious about all of the films she was working on.
00:46:24.760
So she was so intrinsically connected to her work. You know, when you understand that the family wants
00:46:31.180
something, any victim of any awful, horrific tragedy, as soon as you know what the family wants,
00:46:37.200
you know, if the family wants a tree in someone's honor, you just want to do that. And so her family
00:46:41.920
wanting this film done, it really was almost like a heroic effort of everybody to go back to this
00:46:48.360
absolutely unfathomable trauma. It's like walking back into a war zone.
00:46:52.260
And every single person who I met on the set, completing the film was there because they were
00:46:59.200
just trying to do what they could to honor Helena. And once I understood that, I was like, wow,
00:47:03.740
you people are being vilified and yet you're doing something heroic. So it really made me question my
00:47:09.920
own industry. You know, the, the, the people on the set of Rust were really treated very badly.
00:47:17.100
People were thinking of them as sort of like, wow, this is so shameless. You know,
00:47:21.540
you're just finishing this film. And it was so wrong. They, they actually had every reason to
00:47:26.540
be worried for finishing the film because they could be blacklisted for association with Rust.
00:47:31.280
And so they were willing to do it because they cared about Helena.
00:47:35.260
Do you, do you know how they decided to handle the scene in, in the, in the final cut of the movie?
00:47:43.200
What I'm aware of is that that was actually reconstructed altogether. The whole entire, um,
00:47:49.100
scene where, where, you know, Helena was killed. It was actually, there was a rehearsal and they
00:47:55.440
really made an effort to change the film and not go into that piece of it. And, um, you know,
00:48:02.660
I have seen the film and honestly, it's an extraordinary film. I, I will say I'm biased
00:48:08.340
towards the cinematography, which is so unfathomably beautiful and a testament to Helena's great talent.
00:48:15.200
Um, but I felt, you know, it was a really sad, painful film to watch, but it was really
00:48:21.220
actually magnificent as well because, um, the, the crafting of the film was absolutely amazing.
00:48:27.860
And, uh, the director, Joel Sousa is really talented and it, it was so, I can't even imagine
00:48:34.680
how hard, um, that film, it's hard to direct any film. It's really, really hard to direct a film.
00:48:40.020
Um, and especially with all that emotion and everything going on, it is where he too was
00:48:46.820
shot. I mean, he was shot with the same bullet, right? We believe it was the same bullet that
00:48:50.740
hit both Joel and Helena fired from Alec Baldwin's gun, which was supposed to be not, uh, was not
00:48:58.040
supposed to have live rounds in it, but did. And one of the big mysteries of this case in the
00:49:02.840
criminal proceedings that have gone down is how did that live round get in there? How did it get in
00:49:07.660
there in what was supposed to be a dummy round? As I understand it, this is one of those guns where
00:49:13.960
you can see the bullets. And so when you bring out this said gun, a prop gun on a set, you need
00:49:19.280
fake bullets that look like real bullets there. That's why they call them dummy rounds. They're not
00:49:24.720
exactly blanks. There's something else. And, um, the armorer somehow had a weapon supply in there that
00:49:33.880
had live rounds mixed in with dummy rounds. And that is how Alec wound up shooting Helena and Joel
00:49:41.320
with this one bullet. The real debate legally became, did he pull the trigger? He said no.
00:49:47.780
Then the FBI and many experts said that's not possible. He had to have pulled the trigger.
00:49:52.220
Even some of his defenders said he shouldn't pull the trigger, but nobody, if they pull the trigger is
00:49:58.060
thinking that there's a live round in there. And then people on the other side said, no,
00:50:01.980
this is why you never pulled the trigger. Um, so this is, these are just some of the debates that
00:50:07.040
were unfolding in the industry over this time. The, the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed is the
00:50:12.680
daughter of a very famous, respected armorer in Hollywood, but she did not have that level of
00:50:19.840
respect. And you delve into kind of how she got this job and some of the safety questions that came
00:50:25.760
up around her performance early on. Yeah. Um, well, I will say firstly, just going back,
00:50:31.780
no, no bullets should ever be on any movie set that is so, so unthinkable. Um, so the very first
00:50:39.160
thing that anyone in the industry, especially in the armoring profession, mostly, which is handled
00:50:45.720
by people with extensive training, often military backgrounds or law enforcement, uh, that was the
00:50:52.920
very first shockwave was just to like, just be so sickened, really. I mean, truly we, we interview
00:50:59.940
Andy were, who came in to finish the film and he is a really seasoned armor with military background.
00:51:06.340
And, and, and those were the words he used, like the, the, the armoring profession is actually really
00:51:12.520
quite amazing. The track record, very safe. I know that sounds like a strange thing to say because this
00:51:19.300
is guns, but most armorers are, I mean, I would almost say all armorers that I've ever heard of have
00:51:27.460
a really high level of skill. Um, so, you know, again, it's points to things that are problem in our
00:51:34.720
industry, in the film industry that need to be addressed and looked at how we hire people, this kind
00:51:41.220
of idea that you might just be qualified because this is your father. And, and in fact, that is actually
00:51:46.480
quite a typical scenario in the movie industry, including on the set of Rust, there was a, um, a very
00:51:53.900
lovely father and son team. And, you know, I, I kind of liked that dynamic because you could see
00:51:58.880
is a special effects upper, he's teaching his son, the tricks. So that's not unusual that often people
00:52:04.080
in this industry have, you know, a family connection, but in this case, you know, relying on
00:52:11.080
that entirely, you know, that's, that was one of those things that you have to question. There's so
00:52:16.240
many aspects of the, the narrative around all of the different issues that could have happened.
00:52:22.840
Um, it's all coming back to me. I, I almost forgot that his name, Seth Kinney is the name of the guy
00:52:29.780
who supplied the ammo to the armor. And there was a bit of a, you know, finger pointing thing between
00:52:35.780
the two of them where Hannah Gutierrez Reed was like, he gave me a box of mixed live rounds and dummy
00:52:42.120
rounds. She still would have had responsibility for making sure whatever went into the guns she had on
00:52:49.320
set was only dummy rounds, but I remember, and he denied that he had done that. But I remember that was
00:52:54.500
one of the points of contention. She did wind up, well, she, she pled guilty, right? Did she, was she
00:52:59.960
found guilty or did she plead guilty? Why can't I remember? Um, she, well, a jury found her guilty and
00:53:05.520
sentenced her to 18 months and she is serving time in a correctional facility in New Mexico. Now, wow, you
00:53:11.860
have a great memory. Yes. Seth Kinney, the weapons supplier. I mean, you, you know, when you sit in a
00:53:16.020
courtroom, the cast of characters starts to unfold and I found it all very fascinating. And I didn't
00:53:21.760
ever think about where bullets come from or, or the fact that sometimes actors do, you know, target
00:53:27.800
practice and they might need to do it. So they understand the feel of a real gun, but that doesn't
00:53:32.080
happen on a set at all. It shouldn't. And it can't even, you can't even conceive of it happening
00:53:37.100
anywhere near a set, but could those bullets be mixed in? I mean, wow, these are things that you,
00:53:43.020
it's only when something horrible happens, you even contemplate those elements. And again,
00:53:49.600
when we were watching our film, we have body camera footage. And you also see that when the
00:53:53.320
cops came to the set, it was a crime scene immediately, but it was a set as well. So you
00:53:59.940
have the cop looking at Alec and saying, is that, is that real blood? And Alec is like, well, no,
00:54:04.840
of course not as fake blood, but you know, it's a, it's that world of fiction meeting reality
00:54:09.260
that is also like, well, it could be real blood, sir. You know, and this is Alec being like,
00:54:14.180
there's no way it could be real blood. And they're in, in both people's minds, you are living in two
00:54:19.180
alternate realities in the film world. You're making fiction. There's no bullets. There's no
00:54:24.420
blood. It's all fake. You get at this in your documentary. Again, it is called last take rust and
00:54:30.420
the story of Helena. It's on Hulu right now. You get at this in part with, um, the special effects
00:54:37.760
team and one guy in particular, who was talking about something called a squib, which I didn't
00:54:44.480
know anything about a squid, but a squib is like something you, you kind of like it's, it's fake
00:54:48.480
blood that you as a special effects guy, make sure gets on the person in the movie who needs to look
00:54:55.680
like they've been shot. And just here's, uh, here's a bit from that. Let's listen to stop 45.
00:55:00.740
But, and I would fire that little charge. It's called a squib that would send the blood flying.
00:55:06.660
And my first thought, I looked down at my hand at the button. And I thought to myself,
00:55:12.040
why the hell did we squib her? That was just my first thought. I saw this and I looked down and
00:55:19.760
there's no, no button. And that's what I said. Oh my God. She's been shot. The disbelief.
00:55:25.820
Yeah. Wow. Megan, this is cool because I got to say my little director brain went and it's like,
00:55:31.000
oh, I fought so hard to make sure we get that in this movie. And you know, you have thousands and
00:55:35.080
thousands of hours of, you know, ideas and footage. And I remember specifically saying,
00:55:39.440
you know, the edit team, you guys, this matters so much because when I heard Tom Gandy,
00:55:44.200
that's his name, describe a squid pack, which is the thing that explodes. You would strap it on a
00:55:48.860
person and it explodes and depends on, you know, every movie you've ever seen a person blood
00:55:53.560
popping off of, you know, it is a really kind of well-designed thing. It goes under a person's
00:55:58.600
shirt and then it pops and he has to pull that trigger. And I, when he was explaining it, I mean,
00:56:03.340
also I will say as Helena's friend, you're just like, no, please God, actually, this is so insane.
00:56:10.060
There cannot be a world in which he's watching her actual body explode for real. And he knows what
00:56:18.380
it's supposed to look like when it's fake. And he knows he didn't put that on her. So he knows
00:56:23.860
it's real. And so I was sitting there and I remember being like, oh my God, whoa, it was a real
00:56:30.740
moment again, to that point. Like, thank you for finding that clip because it was like fiction
00:56:35.300
meeting reality. And these moments when, you know, in the world of entertainment, which we all love
00:56:40.760
movies, it's this question of like, well, are we putting people into a scenario where there's ever
00:56:46.140
the possibility of something this real happening? And if so, it's just terrifying to imagine.
00:56:52.200
You just think about the horror of those in that room, Helena, chief of all, but those around her,
00:56:59.400
I mean, everybody, Alec Baldwin, all of them were horrified. I think everyone accepts that.
00:57:04.540
And the assistant director, David Halls, we talked a little bit about the armorer,
00:57:09.140
but he also takes responsibility and had to, because it was, he was the person who handed the
00:57:15.920
gun to Alec. And the rules are that he should have checked it too. There's supposed to be all
00:57:22.080
these redundancies built in, built in so that this can never happen. You did speak to him. You spoke to
00:57:27.540
everybody except Alec. Um, but here is a bit from the assistant director, David Halls in Sop 44.
00:57:33.580
And I brought me the gun. She opened up the hatch and I saw three bullets. And you only saw the
00:57:42.900
three? I only saw the three. Okay. Do you normally check all of them or what, what do you usually do?
00:57:52.300
Should. Okay. I was negligent in the inspection of that gun. It could have been a more thorough
00:58:02.020
inspection. I pled guilty, but guilty. A thorough inspection didn't happen. I could have been a
00:58:13.000
last line of defense. This poor guy. Yeah. I'm just watching that. And you know what I'm thinking,
00:58:19.420
Rachel is like, it's when people say it wasn't my fault. It wasn't, it was someone else's
00:58:25.120
responsibility that we all pile on that. We, that we are the ones saying, no, it was you.
00:58:32.040
When you hear a guy like that, you have the opposite instinct. You know, you, you want to
00:58:38.100
relieve him. That's a great point. I mean, that is absolutely fascinating to think about that because
00:58:44.060
it's, I, when I met Dave, the first time I was actually in the courtroom and, um, I had been
00:58:51.160
wearing Helena's hat, which actually is this hat right here. I wore this hat on every interview
00:58:56.240
and this was the hat she wore on the set of Rust. And, um, so he recognized it right away and he
00:59:02.260
came up to me and, and just started crying and just like the, the, the pain that I experienced
00:59:08.740
immediately, you know, seeing a grown man cry, like just that level of, of pain. Um, it's truly
00:59:14.760
astonishing. And I remember feeling like, you know, initially I was like pissed at all these people.
00:59:19.940
I'm like, what the hell are you guys like? But then I said, I was like, Oh wait, this was an
00:59:25.720
unfathomable nightmarish accident. And this guy has to actually live with the image in his head
00:59:32.100
of what we're seeing in the film is, you know, there was a moment in which he could have stopped
00:59:37.520
it. But I mean, the, it's like the armor, if we presume, as she says that she did shake the bullets
00:59:43.360
because that should have been a different shaking sound from a dummy round versus a live round is what
00:59:47.520
they said. If she really did do it, who knows if she really did do it, but if she really did do it
00:59:52.440
and she wasn't able to determine the dummy from the live, could David really have done it? I mean,
00:59:57.660
not a, not an ammo expert, you know, it's, we have redundancies, but I, you know, we're probably
01:00:02.840
thinking on most of these sets, they're mostly unnecessary. We're really kind of just making
01:00:07.920
sure it's not, there's not like an obvious problem. And this, this wouldn't have been, um,
01:00:12.620
the, the stuff with the crew really jumped out at me. I know she was crew, obviously she was part of
01:00:18.020
the crew, but as somebody who's been not an actress, but on camera for many years, you get
01:00:23.820
very close to your crew and the crew guys are like truth detectors. Like they just, if you're a bitch,
01:00:30.820
if you're a nightmare to work with, they know, they just know. And these guys clearly loved her
01:00:37.480
and loved working with her. And there's a, we pulled this clip of, um, a guy named Jonas Huerta
01:00:42.720
from the camera crew who also seems to be taking responsibility. You know, it's like he, they all,
01:00:49.120
all these good guys are like, it was on me. It was on me. It was on me. We pulled a little bit of that
01:00:54.880
43. And the moment Helena arrived at like all of our hearts dropped, she looked like blindsided.
01:01:05.120
She did not understand what was going on. She's like, what's going on? We're like, we're,
01:01:08.720
we're leaving. Like this, we're done. Like she's like, I don't understand. Like,
01:01:14.160
it feels like I'm losing my best friends and, uh, our monitor wasn't working and she had to
01:01:21.120
see the frame from the steadicam. And I was like, well, if I was there,
01:01:26.200
I could have put her monitor out of harm's way. I could have, you know, I always made sure that she
01:01:33.040
was out of the danger. Like anytime the gun was pointed, I would make sure that monitor was safe.
01:01:42.400
Oh, he walked off along with many others that day because the set was riddled with safety concerns.
01:01:50.960
Well, you know, one of the things that I pointed out is that everybody basically feels some level
01:01:56.720
of survivor's guilt. And, and, and, and in discussing a second ago, the idea of the different
01:02:02.800
stop gaps that exist so that, you know, you don't have a gun without being checked one or two times,
01:02:08.080
you also never should be standing in front of the gun. And so his trauma comes from the fact that
01:02:14.640
one of the protocols that exists is actually that you have a monitor and Helena should have never been
01:02:20.160
where she was, but because they had walked off, he didn't have a chance to set that monitor up. And
01:02:25.360
so he goes back in his mind and just lives with this awful feeling, which of course he shouldn't be
01:02:30.720
feeling like actual real guilt. That's would have, you know, someone else might've gotten shot in a
01:02:36.000
horrible other way if there was real bullets, but, you know, looking at these different reasons for
01:02:42.160
everyone, um, you know, feeling these feelings, you can see there's sort of a cascade of things that led to
01:02:49.600
this happening. And I will say, you know, interviewing the guys that walked off, they had
01:02:54.480
quite a few different things they were making noise about on the set. And it's great. Like you see
01:03:00.000
the reality of just, I mean, I'm saying crew. Yes. I'm glad that, you know, what it feels like to
01:03:04.240
work with crew in it. And in a way it's like the behind the scenes, the backbone of every single thing
01:03:10.080
we're doing, even now there's producers, there's people we rely on deeply and yet no one ever sees
01:03:14.640
them. So I was happy to be able to reveal that world because people only ever see the actors and
01:03:20.240
see the main people on the screen. You mostly don't even know who your favorite DP is and what they
01:03:25.040
look like, you know, but that's a really talented. That was her world. That's those were her, you know,
01:03:31.840
frontline workers. And I'm sure they were affected probably more than, than even the cast by her death
01:03:39.520
on the subject of Alec. He was charged. And then ultimately the charges were dismissed with
01:03:45.760
prejudice, which means that we're done. He's not going to get charged again. Um,
01:03:51.840
he has a reality show with his wife and she spoke to the effect, this whole thing. I mean,
01:03:58.240
the shooting, obviously he was holding the gun to the almost criminal prosecution to just the public
01:04:05.840
aftermath and all of it. And, uh, here's what she said on their TLC show recently.
01:04:13.760
Everyone who is close to Alec has seen his mental health decline. He was diagnosed with PTSD.
01:04:22.800
And he says, you know, if in his darkest moments, if an accident had to have happened this day,
01:04:29.280
why am I still here? Why couldn't it have been me?
01:04:35.600
What do you make of that Rachel? And why do you think he did not speak with you for this documentary?
01:04:42.640
Well, um, gosh, you know, I just, that's the first I, I, I've, I haven't been paying attention
01:04:48.880
truthfully to, um, his reality show, but I was aware of it. And so hearing that, um,
01:04:54.720
you know, I will say there's just this agony of PTSD that exists and it's very real and there's
01:05:02.240
every single person does have that. And, and I did actually speak to Alec, um, myself. Um,
01:05:09.840
I happened to know Alec from my first documentary, which is called circus of books. And I got to know
01:05:16.400
him at a film festival, the Hamptons festival. And so after this happened, I, I spoke to him and I,
01:05:21.440
I heard that trauma in his voice, that first call. And it actually was horrifying, you know,
01:05:29.520
just to hear the trauma that just like Dave Hall's, you, you start to understand like, wow,
01:05:35.200
people have seen something that they will never get this image out of their head. It's burned in.
01:05:39.040
It is, it's a, it's a terror. It's a, that probably gives them all nightmares. Um, you know,
01:05:44.640
I had to deal with the loss of just my friend, which is not anything small. It's huge. It's vast.
01:05:49.680
I'll never get over it. But they had to deal with like seeing something that only exists in horror
01:05:55.200
movies, like, or, you know, just like cops and people. And I mean, he has to deal with the horror
01:06:01.200
of actually having caused it, you know, using that gun. Yeah. Just as a matter of fact, I mean,
01:06:07.280
he definitely caused it. Um, do you, so the film, it doesn't have a villain. Do you think,
01:06:14.560
you know, having made it now, like who is to blame? Like what, on what do you blame the death
01:06:21.440
of your friend? God, you know, blame is a really complicated word. And I'm not sure I've fully
01:06:28.800
grasped it because there's so many people at different moments that I felt really mad at.
01:06:33.040
And then I would open a door and be like, oh, okay, wait, I'm, I'm mad at you, but you're living
01:06:38.560
in a personal hell that I'll never, you know, like Dave Halls, when I met him and I was like,
01:06:43.440
wow, there's actually no prison sentence that could be worse than your own head going through
01:06:48.560
this for the rest of your life. Same with Hannah, like, my God, um, she has to live with this horrific
01:06:54.960
set of like feelings and the guilt of that. So, um, when I think about what I'm the most upset at,
01:07:02.080
I think on some level, that's where this idea of examining almost like the workplace environment
01:07:10.960
that allowed what I started to understand and feel could be almost any workplace. Like it, you know,
01:07:18.480
you, you think about an accident now, anytime there's an accident on a set, I'm immediately
01:07:22.320
keyed in. Like there was a guy who fell to his death on a, uh, Radford studios, which is a really
01:07:28.240
like very high level place here in LA, Marvel. And this guy died on this. I'm like, oh my God,
01:07:33.760
like how would a person die on that set? It's the opposite of rust. Like that, that's a Marvel
01:07:38.880
film. But then I want to go through that chain reaction. There's this, there's that. And that
01:07:43.120
person might've been on a smoke break or taking, and this person wasn't here for that happened.
01:07:47.120
And why was, were people aware that there might've been a faulty rig set up? Oh yeah. People knew about
01:07:52.880
this thing. You read about it, you understand like, okay, so just like on an airplane where it won't
01:07:58.080
lift off the ground until you have all the cross checks. I really feel like the same thing has to
01:08:03.360
happen for a movie set. Like you cannot say, go until these cross checks exist or can't be a way
01:08:08.640
in which there could be a gun at all. That could be just in a position where it hasn't been checked,
01:08:14.240
where an actor happens to have it in his rehearsal and people aren't, you know, that was part of the
01:08:18.880
other problem. There were so many different levels to this scenario. This was an unplanned scene.
01:08:25.840
It was a rehearsal. And that happens all the time in films. You know, I'm sure you might have an
01:08:30.320
idea and I'll say like, Hey, let's just get this cool shot. The guy's running that way. And especially
01:08:34.000
if you're in journalism, like, and you might want to do something. Well, there's this sort of spur of
01:08:39.120
the moment act that can happen. And when you're dealing with, you know, it's not just guns, but like
01:08:44.320
explosives, stunts. I spoke to the guy who actually worked on the Harry Potter film. He was Daniel Radcliffe's
01:08:52.000
stunt double and he's permanently paralyzed. There's actually a good documentary about him
01:08:55.680
called the boy who lived. And I wanted to understand what, oh my God, like you got hurled
01:09:01.760
against a wall going like 80 miles an hour. Like you could have died this, you're permanently paralyzed,
01:09:06.880
this horrific nightmare accident. So we're in this pressure cooker environment. People are going fast
01:09:12.720
and they don't know each other very well. And I think those are some of the things that when I think
01:09:16.960
of what I got the most angry with, it's like, where are the additional checks? How can we make this
01:09:22.480
better? In fact, that's a money problem. I mean, that's what we read in the news is that it was
01:09:27.520
underfunded. Basically they were, they were trying to do it too skinny. You know, that's one of those
01:09:33.200
things. What I have to question as well. Was it just a money problem? Because again, I'm looking at other
01:09:38.320
film sets where, you know, they had plenty of money and someone died or got killed or had a,
01:09:44.080
sorry, had an accident. And it's more about the decision-making and the communication gaps,
01:09:50.560
as far as I can tell, because sure you can save money here, but, and so she, yeah, the decision
01:09:57.120
to again, get a low ball armor as Tom Gandy says in our film, that's one of those decisions, but it's,
01:10:04.080
it's one of many decisions that when you look at this scenario, it wasn't just that. And I think
01:10:10.960
that's part of the issue. Do you, maybe this is a weird question, but whenever there's tragic loss,
01:10:19.840
especially if someone at a young age and a mother, a wife, I, I think it's natural to ask why,
01:10:27.440
what, you know, what good could possibly come of this? Why would God allow this? Is there some
01:10:32.000
greater meaning that's, that's been gleaned from it? Will it, will the death save lives? Like,
01:10:36.800
is there any, is there any answer on, on that? That's the, the big question, Megan,
01:10:44.240
you know, and I, I've went through that every single minute of every day for the last three
01:10:49.120
and a half years, because not that I would want anyone to die, but like, I, I think about this as
01:10:54.320
like, my God, of all people, Helena had everything going for her and rust would have been the film that
01:10:59.680
was going to launch her whole career. She was up for enormous jobs. And also, you know, I speaking
01:11:06.720
to another woman in an industry that is heavily dominated by men, especially just like the power
01:11:11.200
house ones. You're like, I want you to, you're going to succeed. Like I knew it. There was no doubt
01:11:15.600
Helena was going to get an Oscar. She was going to be up there with the top. She was. And so to me,
01:11:22.240
her particular death was like so cruel, so unfair to all the people that knew and know her and think
01:11:32.240
about her as just a rising star. Yeah. I wonder that. And I think, and that's part of why I think
01:11:39.600
the things that continue to allow her to be spoken of, like this great opportunity right here. Thank you
01:11:46.400
to speak about her, to speak about what happened. Those are all things that, yes. And I think of like,
01:11:51.760
okay, can we make meaning from this? Is that possible to do? It's, you know, that, that is
01:11:59.120
something I know. I would wish I could trade this all for her in two days, like two seconds. Nope. I
01:12:04.520
would much rather have her. Your film is trying and your film is doing it even more so than the
01:12:09.460
completion of rust because people, there will be a segment of the population that goes to see that
01:12:14.640
movie that doesn't know anything about the backstory, you know, the young people who don't follow the news
01:12:18.380
that much. And, but if you watch this documentary, you will know, you will know her, you will learn
01:12:23.980
some lessons about safety and redundancies and so on, how things can go terribly wrong. And I'm sure
01:12:28.540
there'll be a lot of industry people who are way more interested in your product than in the final
01:12:34.340
movie, but they'll probably see both. And maybe they will learn something because you chose to take
01:12:39.460
this on as painful as it was for you as a friend. So hats off to you. I mean, literally hats off to you.
01:12:48.380
She was lucky to have you as a friend and I, I admire all the work you put into this. Well done.
01:12:56.320
Well, thank you. And I will say, Megan, you're somebody that I, as a documentary filmmaker,
01:13:00.180
I'm, I've been fascinated with you and your story and you've done a lot as well for women and media.
01:13:05.120
And I, at some point want to keep following what you're up to because I appreciate the opportunity to
01:13:09.580
be here. And, um, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff that you cover. So thank you for this
01:13:15.400
opportunity. Oh, that's very kind. Good, good luck with it. And please everybody check it out. Again,
01:13:19.520
it's called last take, which is also a great title, profound last take rust and the story of
01:13:25.840
Elena. And it's on Hulu right now. See you next time.
01:13:29.180
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.