Christopher - What If the Story You Tell Yourself Is a Lie?

Speaker: 00:00:00

there is one particular moment in the movie where,

Speaker: 00:00:02

and this is one of those moments that even as many times as I've seen it,

Speaker: 00:00:05

it still gives me chills. still gives me like,

Speaker: 00:00:07

there's still a visceral emotional reaction

Speaker: 00:00:11

it's a reflection of how these men are just at each other's throats.

Speaker: 00:00:15

And that moment in the movie is always that's why I'm doing this.

Speaker: 00:00:19

That's the state of the world today.

Speaker: 00:00:20

Can we not see this? Can we not see how that is who we've become?

Speaker: 00:00:26

And the question the movie asks is,

Speaker: 00:00:28

we willing to give up who we've become to be who we actually are?

Speaker: 00:00:31

Cause that's gonna take courage.

Speaker: 00:00:32

That's the Brave Man Podcast That's what

Speaker: 00:00:35

being a Catalyst in the world is going to require is the willingness

Speaker: 00:00:40

to give stories that we've constructed,

Speaker: 00:00:43

conditioning that we've been born into,

Speaker: 00:00:46

whether that looks like hatred or resentment,

Speaker: 00:00:48

Are we willing to that up to actually be the masterpiece underneath it?

Speaker: 00:00:53

Well, Christopher, thank you for being here today.

Speaker: 00:00:55

I've been looking forward to this conversation ever since I watched your movie

Speaker: 00:00:59

a few weeks ago.

Speaker: 00:01:00

Let's start with that. I was flicking through Amazon and just wondering what

Speaker: 00:01:04

to watch. And I just saw this thing called Catalyst. Okay.

Speaker: 00:01:07

Flicked it on and well, the rest is history.

Speaker: 00:01:11

I was up at three in the morning thinking about it,

Speaker: 00:01:15

wrapping through my mind, musing about it,

Speaker: 00:01:17

wondering about it. it was either that night or the following morning

Speaker: 00:01:19

I messaged you and said, I want you on my podcast.

Speaker: 00:01:22

And yeah, now here you are.

Speaker: 00:01:25

So thank you so much.

Speaker: 00:01:27

Well, thanks for having me. I'm honoured and grateful to be here.

Speaker: 00:01:32

Cool, so why did I get you on here?

Speaker: 00:01:33

What is so special about your movie?

Speaker: 00:01:35

What is unique about it? I think I can be happy with you!

Speaker: 00:01:38

I think I should be asking you that.

Speaker: 00:01:41

What landed for you? What had you up,

Speaker: 00:01:44

you know, at three in the morning cooking on it?

Speaker: 00:01:47

Okay, now that's a great one. I'm being interviewed on my podcast.

Speaker: 00:01:50

You didn't think that was gonna happen,

Speaker: 00:01:50

I didn't know this way it goes.

Speaker: 00:01:51

huh? Kinda like the movie, I bet.

Speaker: 00:01:55

Wow.

Speaker: 00:01:57

What did I like about your movie?

Speaker: 00:01:58

liked what really blew my mind was you had an incredible story

Speaker: 00:02:04

of people trying to make sense of what they didn't understand.

Speaker: 00:02:08

They were a bunch of angry men and they had to find something and

Speaker: 00:02:14

by not fighting, by not falling into that unhealthy toxic masculinity

Speaker: 00:02:20

of violence, bravado,

Speaker: 00:02:24

aggression,

Speaker: 00:02:27

magic happened. I think that's probably the easiest way of sort of sowing seeds

Speaker: 00:02:34

of what the hell is Hamish talking about?

Speaker: 00:02:35

What the hell did Christopher make?

Speaker: 00:02:37

Because that certainly

Speaker: 00:02:40

was something that I was fascinated by and

Speaker: 00:02:44

these hard men started to make sense of what was going on and changed their

Speaker: 00:02:49

way of thinking to get to a state where they actually talk to each other rather than

Speaker: 00:02:56

shout at, or hit each other. I mean,

Speaker: 00:02:58

that's a start, I think.

Speaker: 00:03:00

Yeah, I should say, we probably should mention that there's probably gonna

Speaker: 00:03:03

be spoilers throughout this. So if you haven't seen the movie,

Speaker: 00:03:06

I would check out the movie and then maybe listen to this.

Speaker: 00:03:09

yeah, I do think the, you know,

Speaker: 00:03:14

I appreciate hearing that. And I always love,

Speaker: 00:03:16

you know, reading people's emails from all over the world when they're seeing

Speaker: 00:03:20

the film. It means a lot as a filmmaker,

Speaker: 00:03:22

an indie filmmaker that like the message,

Speaker: 00:03:24

especially one from

Speaker: 00:03:26

like this movie, which is designed to sort of turn

Speaker: 00:03:29

the psychological thriller genre on its head and actually make something that stands

Speaker: 00:03:34

for something and means something.

Speaker: 00:03:38

Not from like a didactic or preachy way,

Speaker: 00:03:40

but as a means of like sort of holding a mirror up and reflecting how

Speaker: 00:03:46

we live our lives and what that's cost us and also what's available

Speaker: 00:03:51

on the other side of that, if and when we choose to listen.

Speaker: 00:03:57

are we willing to surrender the ego to listen to what the universe

Speaker: 00:04:03

or whatever you want? I mean, I know this sounds really like petty

Speaker: 00:04:06

and probably esoteric and mystical or whatever,

Speaker: 00:04:09

but are we willing to surrender the ego and listen to what our higher selves

Speaker: 00:04:14

is sort of calling forth in us?

Speaker: 00:04:16

And the idea of sort of doing that in the context of a like modern

Speaker: 00:04:21

day re-imagining of 12 Angry Men,

Speaker: 00:04:23

that was kind of my initial guiding.

Speaker: 00:04:26

you know, force.

Speaker: 00:04:29

It's funny, I acted in the play,

Speaker: 00:04:31

12 Angry Men in high school, 12 Angry Jurors,

Speaker: 00:04:33

there were women in it too. And I was the angry guy,

Speaker: 00:04:37

you know? So like,

Speaker: 00:04:39

I got to be a part of a story that did exactly that.

Speaker: 00:04:45

It held a mirror up to the way society was at the time,

Speaker: 00:04:49

which dealt significantly more with just,

Speaker: 00:04:51

you racism. was a jury trial. You know,

Speaker: 00:04:54

we're in the jury. For those of you who haven't,

Speaker: 00:04:56

seen the play or watched the movies.

Speaker: 00:04:57

Like the idea that it's literally a bunch of people

Speaker: 00:05:03

in a room arguing, but that there's one guy that's standing up against

Speaker: 00:05:10

the sort of conditioning that everybody's living in and standing

Speaker: 00:05:14

for something greater, open

Speaker: 00:05:17

to challenging the status quo in such a way that brings about profound

Speaker: 00:05:22

transformation in everyone around them.

Speaker: 00:05:26

And

Speaker: 00:05:26

it's hard to talk about a movie without giving away too much,

Speaker: 00:05:29

which we'll do our best not to.

Speaker: 00:05:32

And even if we do, you go and watch it because I mean,

Speaker: 00:05:34

I've watched it again and I'm going to probably watch it again because there is,

Speaker: 00:05:37

there is a lot in there around.

Speaker: 00:05:39

Yeah. Just questioning your own story.

Speaker: 00:05:42

Is it, is it the right way of doing things?

Speaker: 00:05:44

Is there another way? Why should I just do what I've always done,

Speaker: 00:05:47

which doesn't work?

Speaker: 00:05:48

What if our story is the lie? What if,

Speaker: 00:05:51

I mean, you know, it's, even the way the movie is constructed is designed

Speaker: 00:05:56

to be a puzzle. It's designed to be challenging and to have the

Speaker: 00:06:01

user, viewer, a part of the experience of co-creating the meaning of it,

Speaker: 00:06:08

which is also a reason why, you know,

Speaker: 00:06:11

people that are willing to be open to something new,

Speaker: 00:06:15

watching it.

Speaker: 00:06:16

I think there's a, you can kind of see it from the macro scale.

Speaker: 00:06:23

And I think

Speaker: 00:06:24

those are the people that it's gonna resonate the most with.

Speaker: 00:06:27

Because yeah, mean, like,

Speaker: 00:06:30

you the universal is in the specific and in the movie,

Speaker: 00:06:33

we're dealing with specific issues,

Speaker: 00:06:35

but a lot of movies just focus on one issue.

Speaker: 00:06:38

I'm trying to show the commonality amongst a few of these different issues that when

Speaker: 00:06:43

you put them all into the room and you're like,

Speaker: 00:06:45

effectively the movie's about putting seven people that are really hard

Speaker: 00:06:49

and like you said, that represent various aspects of humanity and sort

Speaker: 00:06:55

of pain points or conflicts.

Speaker: 00:06:59

were all like, and also that's the other part of like how we actually shot

Speaker: 00:07:02

the movie, which we should probably get into later,

Speaker: 00:07:03

but it was always

Speaker: 00:07:04

going to be a bit of a social experiment.

Speaker: 00:07:06

Like when you put these seven people that all represent,

Speaker: 00:07:10

that have every reason to hate each other based on their dark pasts

Speaker: 00:07:14

and you throw them into

Speaker: 00:07:15

and you basically are like, all right,

Speaker: 00:07:16

which one of you is the worst of them all?

Speaker: 00:07:19

Or at least you think that that's why they're there.

Speaker: 00:07:20

Yeah, exactly. They're it. Yeah.

Speaker: 00:07:23

And then you're like, okay, yeah.

Speaker: 00:07:26

So when you got to kill the parasite,

Speaker: 00:07:28

what does that mean? And then.

Speaker: 00:07:30

Yeah, exactly. Who's

Speaker: 00:07:32

the parasite? Am I the parasite?

Speaker: 00:07:33

Is it in me? Yeah.

Speaker: 00:07:34

Is it a who? Yeah, it's like,

Speaker: 00:07:36

what, what, that's the, the fascinating part of it.

Speaker: 00:07:39

And so that was the initial sort of challenge is,

Speaker: 00:07:43

is like, when thrown into that,

Speaker: 00:07:45

that experiment, how do people show up?

Speaker: 00:07:48

How do they respond?

Speaker: 00:07:50

Let's let's wind back. You know,

Speaker: 00:07:52

why why did you make this movie?

Speaker: 00:07:54

What what what was your motives?

Speaker: 00:07:59

Not quite the right word. You know,

Speaker: 00:08:01

what was your the reason for it?

Speaker: 00:08:04

Because it's it is a labour of love.

Speaker: 00:08:05

It's a low budget movie that you've invested.

Speaker: 00:08:08

Well, you tell me how many years have you invested in making it?

Speaker: 00:08:12

Oh, good Lord. From concept to completion,

Speaker: 00:08:16

this movie took, well, I say concept to distribution,

Speaker: 00:08:20

it took effectively nine years to get this thing out to the world.

Speaker: 00:08:25

Our first day of principal photography was in 2017.

Speaker: 00:08:30

We'd chipped away at it over the course of several years,

Speaker: 00:08:35

finished the film, like principal photography of it.

Speaker: 00:08:40

like two weeks before COVID hit.

Speaker: 00:08:42

And then I spent the entirety of COVID.

Speaker: 00:08:44

The only thing that kept me sane during the COVID pandemic was sitting in my place,

Speaker: 00:08:49

editing a movie, multiple different ways,

Speaker: 00:08:52

trying different things and experimenting with how to tell the story because

Speaker: 00:08:56

the first day of production was all structured improvisation.

Speaker: 00:09:01

So like the only time those seven men are in the room,

Speaker: 00:09:04

this is where the social experiment comes into play,

Speaker: 00:09:05

was all structured improvisation.

Speaker: 00:09:10

there was a bit of a guide script and we had,

Speaker: 00:09:12

and we can talk more about this along the way,

Speaker: 00:09:13

but like was a very experimental way to make a movie because of the content

Speaker: 00:09:18

of what we were going for. I wanted to have

Speaker: 00:09:23

as much realism and have actors that kind of could speak from experience

Speaker: 00:09:29

in a way from their own personal lives.

Speaker: 00:09:31

Some people were non-actors that were thrown into these roles just because

Speaker: 00:09:36

I knew they came from a background that,

Speaker: 00:09:38

was accessible in those moments.

Speaker: 00:09:43

Because when you're throwing people

Speaker: 00:09:44

into, they're not identical to the story,

Speaker: 00:09:46

but it's something that they have a real touch point that they can go to

Speaker: 00:09:51

that makes a lot of sense. I'm just looking at the protagonist.

Speaker: 00:09:54

I'm looking at Alec.

Speaker: 00:09:56

what's his story? Because I suspect if we tell his story,

Speaker: 00:10:00

people get a better understanding of your story,

Speaker: 00:10:05

my story, about how this man developed all of his...

Speaker: 00:10:10

his rage and everything and how

Speaker: 00:10:14

he didn't act out and destroy himself without giving away too much of the movie.

Speaker: 00:10:21

We could touch on that a little bit,

Speaker: 00:10:22

because that's also related to my why or making the movie,

Speaker: 00:10:26

what kind of inspired the movie in the first place,

Speaker: 00:10:28

which I think is the question that I never really totally answered.

Speaker: 00:10:31

I did a little bit.

Speaker: 00:10:34

The idea that, effectively, my friend,

Speaker: 00:10:37

one of my friends from growing up,

Speaker: 00:10:39

came to me and basically told me that he had been abused by a priest

Speaker: 00:10:42

throughout his childhood, and how much that had messed him up throughout his life.

Speaker: 00:10:49

And he told me, he like, if I ever saw him again,

Speaker: 00:10:51

I'd kill him. Like it had messed him up that bad.

Speaker: 00:10:54

And I also, after having done a bunch of emotional intelligence trainings

Speaker: 00:10:59

and sort of been able to go back and support those and mentor people and learn,

Speaker: 00:11:03

you know, about sort of core wounds and like kind of how that impacts people along

Speaker: 00:11:10

the way, I started questioning myself,

Speaker: 00:11:13

well, what if this movie was a sort of

Speaker: 00:11:16

the lead character had dealt with that sort of abuse growing

Speaker: 00:11:20

up and wanted revenge,

Speaker: 00:11:23

but then something sort of interrupted that and caused him to reflect.

Speaker: 00:11:28

So the

Speaker: 00:11:30

fact that we opened the movie on Alec,

Speaker: 00:11:33

our lead character's journey to take revenge against the priest that abused him,

Speaker: 00:11:38

because he's found him, he wants him dead,

Speaker: 00:11:40

but he can't do it. There's

Speaker: 00:11:44

something in that.

Speaker: 00:11:46

that hesitation, then he's abducted by these people.

Speaker: 00:11:49

And it's interesting,

Speaker: 00:11:54

masked figures, and it's like,

Speaker: 00:11:56

they throw him into a room where he is then faced with another priest that abuse

Speaker: 00:12:01

children. And so that is the sort of hook that's like,

Speaker: 00:12:04

wait, this is different than where we've been before,

Speaker: 00:12:08

perhaps. And then we see as they're sort of,

Speaker: 00:12:12

even though they're kind of being stoked to like,

Speaker: 00:12:17

prompted with these things to sort of to kill the parasite effectively,

Speaker: 00:12:21

right? We don't know who that is or what that is or what it really means,

Speaker: 00:12:24

but left to their own devices.

Speaker: 00:12:26

Our conditioning would have us think one of us in here has to die.

Speaker: 00:12:31

so

Speaker: 00:12:33

Alec is the guy that then becomes the challenging.

Speaker: 00:12:39

He starts to challenge the status quo of the conditioning as he starts

Speaker: 00:12:44

to really listen.

Speaker: 00:12:45

and really search and really seek something different.

Speaker: 00:12:50

Because you realise that something else is going on here.

Speaker: 00:12:53

And so being along that journey,

Speaker: 00:12:57

like I wanted that to be something that we could all sort of,

Speaker: 00:13:00

you know, we've all been abused in some way,

Speaker: 00:13:03

not necessarily a sexual abuse from a priest growing up where it's like

Speaker: 00:13:06

an authority figure and it's like someone that you probably knew and trusted.

Speaker: 00:13:10

But if you start to widen out,

Speaker: 00:13:11

like how have all of us been?

Speaker: 00:13:14

taken advantage of or really abused emotionally,

Speaker: 00:13:17

mentally, spiritually, physically,

Speaker: 00:13:20

any of that. It doesn't look a certain way for us to sort of access that.

Speaker: 00:13:25

Because when you're put in this pressure cooker of a chamber that

Speaker: 00:13:30

the movie sort of invites the audience into in that way,

Speaker: 00:13:35

I wanted us to be able to have the most accessible point to that because some

Speaker: 00:13:38

of the other people that he's faced with wouldn't necessarily be

Speaker: 00:13:41

as accessible from an entry point.

Speaker: 00:13:44

for the story, if

Speaker: 00:13:45

that makes sense. And so

Speaker: 00:13:47

if we're on his journey and we're allowed to sort of identify with him

Speaker: 00:13:52

and then see how he's challenging the status quo and see how he's shifting

Speaker: 00:13:56

and what his choices are throughout,

Speaker: 00:13:57

and by the end of movie where his path goes,

Speaker: 00:14:00

maybe we can look at our lives and start to question,

Speaker: 00:14:03

you know, where am I coming from,

Speaker: 00:14:07

you know, those, the sort of before transformation?

Speaker: 00:14:14

mentality, the judgement, the resentment,

Speaker: 00:14:17

the hatred, the aggression, lack of willingness to be open

Speaker: 00:14:22

to different possibilities, to new possibilities.

Speaker: 00:14:24

And I'm not saying that what the guy did to him was okay.

Speaker: 00:14:28

That's never been the intention at all.

Speaker: 00:14:30

But it's like at a certain point.

Speaker: 00:14:34

every moment of our lives is either choosing heaven or choosing hell based

Speaker: 00:14:38

on what we choose. That's our choice.

Speaker: 00:14:42

It's not what,

Speaker: 00:14:42

and

Speaker: 00:14:43

you someone could, you could live your entire life being a victim

Speaker: 00:14:47

to someone else's choices, or you literally choose responsibility

Speaker: 00:14:51

and have the ability to respond to what is.

Speaker: 00:14:56

Because when we're in resistance to what is,

Speaker: 00:14:59

there's no, you know, we just keep getting more of the same.

Speaker: 00:15:03

And so,

Speaker: 00:15:04

If someone wants something new,

Speaker: 00:15:06

are we willing to do whatever it takes to challenge the status quo,

Speaker: 00:15:10

to challenge our mental conditioning

Speaker: 00:15:14

and face,

Speaker: 00:15:18

confront and break through what it is that's actually holding us back.

Speaker: 00:15:21

And if it's that resentment it's that resentment.

Speaker: 00:15:23

it's that ego or the hatred or the toxicity

Speaker: 00:15:29

that we hold onto and expect it,

Speaker: 00:15:31

like, it's...

Speaker: 00:15:34

It's asking the question of what would life be like on the other side of that.

Speaker: 00:15:37

that, that's what I love the way,

Speaker: 00:15:39

the way they, you, you moulded the movie to do that.

Speaker: 00:15:43

These, these, the whole story was that and Alec,

Speaker: 00:15:46

he had to change because I mean,

Speaker: 00:15:50

I'm not going to give anything away,

Speaker: 00:15:51

but before he got kidnapped, he was in quite a situation where,

Speaker: 00:15:56

you know, that wasn't, was not going to be a very nice outcome.

Speaker: 00:16:00

No.

Speaker: 00:16:01

and yet he had to.

Speaker: 00:16:03

face his story, he had to face everything and then realise does he want

Speaker: 00:16:07

to go down that route of revenge or change?

Speaker: 00:16:11

And I mean, I love the way you wrapped it up and what he said at the end,

Speaker: 00:16:17

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:16:17

how he did that was just beautiful.

Speaker: 00:16:19

But I mean, I think it's a really apocryphal story.

Speaker: 00:16:23

It's a really powerful story of choice,

Speaker: 00:16:27

of making a choice to serve yourself rather than be the victim,

Speaker: 00:16:31

rather than be

Speaker: 00:16:32

resentful rather than just destroy yourself.

Speaker: 00:16:35

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:16:36

Well, and also I would say that the other thing that just came up,

Speaker: 00:16:39

I feel compelled to share, compelled to share is the idea of like,

Speaker: 00:16:44

our choices also impact other people.

Speaker: 00:16:48

there is one particular moment in the movie where,

Speaker: 00:16:51

and this is one of those moments that even as many times as I've seen it,

Speaker: 00:16:56

it still gives me chills. still gives me like,

Speaker: 00:16:58

there's still a visceral emotional reaction and it's when

Speaker: 00:17:02

like, I think it's about like 30 minutes in the movie or something like that,

Speaker: 00:17:05

but that we see just how it's a reflection

Speaker: 00:17:11

of how these men are just at each other's throats.

Speaker: 00:17:15

And that moment in the movie is always like,

Speaker: 00:17:19

just the, that's why I'm doing this.

Speaker: 00:17:23

That's the state of the world today.

Speaker: 00:17:25

Can we not see this? Can we not see how that is who we've become?

Speaker: 00:17:30

And the question the movie asks is,

Speaker: 00:17:33

we willing to give up who we've become to be who we actually are?

Speaker: 00:17:37

Cause that's gonna take courage.

Speaker: 00:17:38

That's the Brave Man Podcast That's what

Speaker: 00:17:41

being a Catalyst in the world is going to require is the willingness to give

Speaker: 00:17:46

up the stories that we've constructed,

Speaker: 00:17:49

the conditioning that we've been born into,

Speaker: 00:17:53

whether that looks like hatred or resentment,

Speaker: 00:17:56

can look like denial, whatever it looks like.

Speaker: 00:18:01

Are we willing to that up to actually be the masterpiece underneath it?

Speaker: 00:18:06

And even like, cause when we start to ask the question of like,

Speaker: 00:18:11

What would have someone that has done that horrible abuse

Speaker: 00:18:16

to a child or any of the other stories in the movie,

Speaker: 00:18:22

what kind of world would someone have to live in that would have them show

Speaker: 00:18:26

up like that and choose that?

Speaker: 00:18:28

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:18:29

Because if we can change that by how I'm showing up as an individual,

Speaker: 00:18:34

if I can change something even small out of

Speaker: 00:18:39

and do different and choose differently moving forward,

Speaker: 00:18:42

what would that mean on a grander scale?

Speaker: 00:18:45

Does that make sense?

Speaker: 00:18:46

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:18:47

absolutely. Yeah, it really,

Speaker: 00:18:51

really does. And I think

Speaker: 00:18:52

Having all that anger,

Speaker: 00:18:57

all those conversations in that space,

Speaker: 00:18:59

they weren't allowed to kill each other from memory and they only had so

Speaker: 00:19:02

Yeah, that's the other thing.

Speaker: 00:19:05

much time. So they had a container to...

Speaker: 00:19:08

operating to think, to muse, to work it all out.

Speaker: 00:19:11

so they, you know, there was that a moral,

Speaker: 00:19:14

not a moral responsibility. There was a timeframe.

Speaker: 00:19:17

There was, they had to make a decision.

Speaker: 00:19:20

They couldn't just sit on their fingers and just,

Speaker: 00:19:22

and just wait. There was, there was an accountability,

Speaker: 00:19:26

um, which actually is really important.

Speaker: 00:19:30

You know, you, you gave, you said you have to resolve this or you're dead.

Speaker: 00:19:35

I mean, that's, that's life, isn't it?

Speaker: 00:19:37

If you don't,

Speaker: 00:19:38

sort yourself out, you're going to be dead even if you're alive,

Speaker: 00:19:40

you're going to be bitter, you're going to be resentful and you just remove that

Speaker: 00:19:45

by saying, you know, this is the outcome.

Speaker: 00:19:46

it's a highly evocative story.

Speaker: 00:19:49

did you, what really I'm curious about is how did you,

Speaker: 00:19:52

one, film all of that scene and two,

Speaker: 00:19:55

how did you get those guys to step through a process of

Speaker: 00:20:01

change without them sounding fluffy or woo woo or making

Speaker: 00:20:06

it unrealistic because it was realistic.

Speaker: 00:20:09

It was incredibly hard. But they didn't just suddenly go,

Speaker: 00:20:13

love and light and big hugs and kisses.

Speaker: 00:20:16

You know, it wasn't, it wasn't that fortunately.

Speaker: 00:20:19

No, not that, it's not gonna be that.

Speaker: 00:20:20

Yeah, I mean, like these are very highly,

Speaker: 00:20:26

high octane testosterone driven dudes,

Speaker: 00:20:31

you know.

Speaker: 00:20:33

I mean...

Speaker: 00:20:34

But in terms of what you were asking about,

Speaker: 00:20:36

the emotional catharsis,

Speaker: 00:20:39

it was important

Speaker: 00:20:44

to identify people that had that sort of,

Speaker: 00:20:48

like I said, that sort of, it's in the writing,

Speaker: 00:20:50

it's in the casting specifically,

Speaker: 00:20:54

I think had a lot to do with it,

Speaker: 00:20:55

is identifying people that I knew were either there and going there,

Speaker: 00:21:02

or also like,

Speaker: 00:21:04

Like if you take one character that's really stuck in their ways and then

Speaker: 00:21:07

you put another guy like for instance The story deals a little

Speaker: 00:21:11

bit with terrorism and a little bit of a chill,

Speaker: 00:21:12

know and like you put another guy in there that has also Literally

Speaker: 00:21:16

in real life witnessed the 9/11 towers fall and it's like he can speak to this from

Speaker: 00:21:21

a context that is completely different

Speaker: 00:21:24

You know a guy that Never had that happen.

Speaker: 00:21:27

So, you know, I mean in a lot of ways that the the way that the story was designed

Speaker: 00:21:33

the way that these characters were designed to be in conflict,

Speaker: 00:21:38

but also know that they had what it took to sort of stand for something bigger when

Speaker: 00:21:44

thrown into this construct that required them

Speaker: 00:21:49

to actually talk and listen to each other.

Speaker: 00:21:53

That's

Speaker: 00:21:55

what is so different about this movie.

Speaker: 00:21:57

It's like, in movies like Saw and everything,

Speaker: 00:21:59

they're all thrown into these sort of pressure cookers and they all.

Speaker: 00:22:02

have to kill each other, but they don't want to.

Speaker: 00:22:04

In this movie, it was all they really want to kill each other.

Speaker: 00:22:06

And the system is actually saying,

Speaker: 00:22:07

you can maybe in 60 minutes if you choose it.

Speaker: 00:22:12

And it's like, it's like, whoa,

Speaker: 00:22:14

this is completely different, right?

Speaker: 00:22:15

So like, but because they're forced to kind of pause

Speaker: 00:22:21

and really listen and some people in that room,

Speaker: 00:22:24

like I said, Alec, our lead character is challenging them like,

Speaker: 00:22:26

wait, no, I think something else is going on here.

Speaker: 00:22:29

And he starts to...

Speaker: 00:22:30

ask those questions, he's one by one starts to convince some of the others that maybe what

Speaker: 00:22:35

they think isn't the reality. And so that's again,

Speaker: 00:22:40

on a macro scale, if we're able to kind of take that step back in our lives

Speaker: 00:22:44

and ask ourselves, where am I in my life?

Speaker: 00:22:46

Am I thinking that I'm, or needing to be right about

Speaker: 00:22:49

my interpretation about something?

Speaker: 00:22:51

And that's stopping me from seeing the truth or the other aspect of it,

Speaker: 00:22:56

or someone else or someone else's eyes that

Speaker: 00:23:00

that that is actually costing myself,

Speaker: 00:23:03

my family, my community and the world more being right about

Speaker: 00:23:08

me.

Speaker: 00:23:09

X, Y and Z as opposed to being open.

Speaker: 00:23:11

the guys in the movie, do that.

Speaker: 00:23:13

the child in the car, and the remorse,

Speaker: 00:23:15

the regret that what happened,

Speaker: 00:23:18

that wasn't part of the plan.

Speaker: 00:23:21

that character carried that with him,

Speaker: 00:23:22

and I suspect all the way through.

Speaker: 00:23:24

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:23:25

But that was really powerful. Something happened in my life that

Speaker: 00:23:29

I really didn't want to

Speaker: 00:23:31

happened and it did. know, completely out of his control.

Speaker: 00:23:34

Like Alec's story, like your friend's story,

Speaker: 00:23:38

that kind of thing. How do I deal with it?

Speaker: 00:23:41

embracing it as if, like, what if that's exactly what was meant to happen

Speaker: 00:23:44

for me to transform something in my life,

Speaker: 00:23:48

in humanity, in whatever? Like,

Speaker: 00:23:49

that's the notion of, acceptance,

Speaker: 00:23:52

right? Of surrender, of filling in whatever you want to call it.

Speaker: 00:23:55

that's meeting the moment with acceptance and surrender and embracing

Speaker: 00:23:58

it as opposed to being in resistance to it and stopping and whatever,

Speaker: 00:24:01

you know, which

Speaker: 00:24:02

ultimately...

Speaker: 00:24:03

breeds resentment and then creates this sort of self perpetuating cycle of,

Speaker: 00:24:08

you if I could swear on podcast,

Speaker: 00:24:11

I'll say the word but yeah,

Speaker: 00:24:12

You're absolutely allowed to. is,

Speaker: 00:24:14

it's like a bullshit. It's like literally you

Speaker: 00:24:15

is, is. Yep.

Speaker: 00:24:17

look at the world is like what?

Speaker: 00:24:18

Hello. I mean, let's be real, like,

Speaker: 00:24:21

not to simplify it overly or whatever.

Speaker: 00:24:25

But like the idea like if we just stopped and like actually looked at some

Speaker: 00:24:29

of the people that we hate.

Speaker: 00:24:31

and then start to see through that to who they are underneath all

Speaker: 00:24:38

the things that they've become,

Speaker: 00:24:39

are we able to see something different?

Speaker: 00:24:43

Are we able to choose differently?

Speaker: 00:24:45

Are we able to, you know, and again,

Speaker: 00:24:46

that is not a stance. That's not a popular,

Speaker: 00:24:51

you know, that's not the conditioning we live in.

Speaker: 00:24:53

And so that's, that's, that takes courage to...

Speaker: 00:24:58

choose differently in a world that is literally a giant middle finger

Speaker: 00:25:04

to people that choose compassion at a moment where they're conditioned

Speaker: 00:25:09

to think violence. They're conditioned to say,

Speaker: 00:25:13

they deserve to die, they deserve whatever.

Speaker: 00:25:14

It's like this movie was designed to really push buttons and,

Speaker: 00:25:19

you know.

Speaker: 00:25:22

make you feel that rage and resentment in a way and then

Speaker: 00:25:28

ask you what do you do in this moment.

Speaker: 00:25:32

And I think you did that very,

Speaker: 00:25:35

very well.

Speaker: 00:25:38

Thank you.

Speaker: 00:25:38

Yeah. mean, why, big question.

Speaker: 00:25:42

Why was it so important for you to have that story?

Speaker: 00:25:46

Why do you, you know, it's not a cops and robbers movie.

Speaker: 00:25:50

It's not, it's not just brain candy.

Speaker: 00:25:52

Why, why did you want to create a movie that challenges all of that?

Speaker: 00:25:58

What was so important in your life that this

Speaker: 00:26:00

This was what you wanted to create.

Speaker: 00:26:03

I think, you know, having my friend that had been through that and also like,

Speaker: 00:26:08

you know, the notions of

Speaker: 00:26:13

pain and trauma and heartache and what it takes to sort of heal.

Speaker: 00:26:19

I think there's a moment of catharsis that we have to feel the pain,

Speaker: 00:26:23

feel and get leverage over it to choose different,

Speaker: 00:26:29

to see something different. And so when you asked like to keep answering

Speaker: 00:26:33

the question before, like how I got the actors to go there,

Speaker: 00:26:38

like there is a sense of

Speaker: 00:26:40

the feeling, the weight of what our choices have created

Speaker: 00:26:47

in our lives. Like that lead actor,

Speaker: 00:26:50

like just feeling the weight, the gravity of I've lived my life since five years

Speaker: 00:26:56

old, hating X, Y, and Z type of person or choosing like that rage

Speaker: 00:27:03

can calcify into cancer. can calcify into,

Speaker: 00:27:07

you know, choosing to go try to murder somebody like

Speaker: 00:27:10

can look any different way. I wasn't ever abused as a child growing up.

Speaker: 00:27:14

And I was like, that's not the personal story to me.

Speaker: 00:27:17

I think that it's asking the questions on the bigger scale of what pain have

Speaker: 00:27:23

I had growing up that, you know,

Speaker: 00:27:26

I felt resentment towards and what that cost me in my life.

Speaker: 00:27:29

And when I finally chose to see it with new eyes and look at it from

Speaker: 00:27:32

a different context and,

Speaker: 00:27:35

ask the questions and be willing to live and like,

Speaker: 00:27:38

and have that sort of internal catharsis for myself to face

Speaker: 00:27:43

the pain and effectively rewrite the story.

Speaker: 00:27:48

Not from like a brainwash,

Speaker: 00:27:51

not from like a, know, I think that's the way to say it.

Speaker: 00:27:57

I,

Speaker: 00:27:58

wrote my own story up like, so I can rewrite my story.

Speaker: 00:28:01

That's literally that simple. It's like,

Speaker: 00:28:03

if that's why I asked at the beginning of this conversation,

Speaker: 00:28:07

what if the story I've been telling myself is a lie all along?

Speaker: 00:28:10

And if, you know,

Speaker: 00:28:13

even one of your listeners of the podcast is like asks that question

Speaker: 00:28:17

and goes and says, okay, I'm going to try something completely different today.

Speaker: 00:28:21

And the person that I have every sort of reason to hate,

Speaker: 00:28:24

like, what if I just ask myself,

Speaker: 00:28:27

what kind of world would they have to live in that would have them show up this way?

Speaker: 00:28:31

Can I find sort of compassion in that and do differently to create a world that

Speaker: 00:28:37

is counter to that, that chooses respect,

Speaker: 00:28:43

healing, and watch how my life changes as a result of it?

Speaker: 00:28:48

Does that make sense?

Speaker: 00:28:52

Unbelievably makes sense, yes.

Speaker: 00:28:55

Yeah, it does. And I've been looking at my stories and this was last night

Speaker: 00:29:02

and this morning, just looking at certain beliefs that I held and that story,

Speaker: 00:29:07

it's not untrue.

Speaker: 00:29:10

It's pathologically untrue. It came from telling it,

Speaker: 00:29:16

I'm 54, telling it 500, 600 times.

Speaker: 00:29:20

adding a little bit of poor me,

Speaker: 00:29:22

adding a little bit of identify with me,

Speaker: 00:29:24

adding a little bit of bullshit,

Speaker: 00:29:26

of trauma, of nonsense, of la la la la la,

Speaker: 00:29:28

right back to something that I can't even what happened.

Speaker: 00:29:31

But that's the story and that story is not true.

Speaker: 00:29:34

And then having to go, that can no longer define me,

Speaker: 00:29:39

that can no longer be my identity.

Speaker: 00:29:41

And it is really painful having to rewrite a story because suddenly there's

Speaker: 00:29:46

a chunk of who I am missing.

Speaker: 00:29:48

Well, and that's the thing.

Speaker: 00:29:48

But it is so

Speaker: 00:29:49

nice to go, that's a lie. And it's okay to realise it's a lie.

Speaker: 00:29:53

It doesn't matter as long as I don't hang on to it.

Speaker: 00:29:57

But that's the thing, sometimes we're so addicted to our stories and we are living,

Speaker: 00:30:02

like that's the thing, we're living to be right about the story we wrote.

Speaker: 00:30:07

So what

Speaker: 00:30:08

if we challenge the story and then actually start to gather evidence

Speaker: 00:30:11

for something new, then what's possible?

Speaker: 00:30:14

And again, like the only way to do that is to sort of ask the question.

Speaker: 00:30:17

I'm thinking of my father's funeral.

Speaker: 00:30:21

I have a story and my brother did the most beautiful eulogy and

Speaker: 00:30:27

he told bits of my bits of stories I didn't know about my dad.

Speaker: 00:30:31

My dad's best mate did who's in his eighties like my father and the stories.

Speaker: 00:30:37

Yeah, my story was this. I was getting the view of my father from different angles.

Speaker: 00:30:42

Exactly what you said. Look at it from a different perspective.

Speaker: 00:30:45

And fortunately I have made peace with my dad.

Speaker: 00:30:49

You know, we became friends again.

Speaker: 00:30:50

However, my story was still bullshit.

Speaker: 00:30:56

It was still my story and I still need to look at that.

Speaker: 00:30:58

And that's tragic. It is tragic to realise that it could have been different

Speaker: 00:31:04

for 50 years if I had seen things differently.

Speaker: 00:31:07

Far more tragic if I had never spoken to him or regrets for not being

Speaker: 00:31:12

on his deathbed and being friends,

Speaker: 00:31:13

that kind of thing. Yeah, you've nailed it.

Speaker: 00:31:19

Look at it differently. Be curious.

Speaker: 00:31:21

It is so important.

Speaker: 00:31:23

Yeah, and

Speaker: 00:31:25

all it takes is asking the question.

Speaker: 00:31:26

It's like, everybody's on their own sort of choose your own adventure in life,

Speaker: 00:31:30

right? So to say there's like one simple answer,

Speaker: 00:31:36

explanation of everything, that's not what I'm suggesting at all.

Speaker: 00:31:41

But like, as long as we don't look at how we're living

Speaker: 00:31:47

in that sort of...

Speaker: 00:31:49

delusion or self pity or whatnot.

Speaker: 00:31:52

We're doomed to repeat more of the same.

Speaker: 00:31:57

it's like life has a tendency to continue giving us these lessons on

Speaker: 00:32:01

a larger and larger scale until we freaking listen and like actually

Speaker: 00:32:07

choose differently. So, you know,

Speaker: 00:32:12

I'm fascinated. Like I believe that,

Speaker: 00:32:14

you know, I'm put on this planet to tell stories that

Speaker: 00:32:18

are asking questions, you know,

Speaker: 00:32:21

and inviting people to look at how we live our lives.

Speaker: 00:32:24

it's a calling that I felt is starting with this movie and continuing

Speaker: 00:32:30

on in some other projects that I have going on.

Speaker: 00:32:32

And I'm just grateful for the ability to be able to tell those stories.

Speaker: 00:32:38

I think you told a remarkable story.

Speaker: 00:32:40

And as I said, just that, what am I going to watch tonight?

Speaker: 00:32:43

I like the name of that. Has started this whole conversation and it's magical.

Speaker: 00:32:49

Really, really magical. I'm, I enjoyed the movie tremendously and I gotta

Speaker: 00:32:55

say it has rocked my world in ways I hadn't anticipated.

Speaker: 00:32:59

You

Speaker: 00:32:59

just said something that piqued my interest.

Speaker: 00:33:01

You saw the title and that piqued your interest,

Speaker: 00:33:04

right? So,

Speaker: 00:33:06

because my distributor almost wanted me to change the title.

Speaker: 00:33:09

And part of the reason why it took several years

Speaker: 00:33:10

You

Speaker: 00:33:12

for the movie to come out is because we fought them to get to keep the title what

Speaker: 00:33:16

it was as Catalyst.

Speaker: 00:33:19

So tell me about your thought process when you saw the title.

Speaker: 00:33:22

that to me is like,

Speaker: 00:33:26

It's interesting, if it had been called what they wanted it to be called,

Speaker: 00:33:30

I actually really question whether you would have watched the movie.

Speaker: 00:33:33

So, yeah.

Speaker: 00:33:34

Fair enough.

Speaker: 00:33:36

Catalyst for change. A Catalyst is something that you,

Speaker: 00:33:40

I mean in chemistry, it sits there and stuff happens.

Speaker: 00:33:44

I can't remember the chemicals,

Speaker: 00:33:45

but you know, it goes in there and these two things,

Speaker: 00:33:48

there's a change. It is a harbinger of change.

Speaker: 00:33:51

And just that, you know,

Speaker: 00:33:55

from chemistry, from curiosity,

Speaker: 00:33:57

from something's got to change,

Speaker: 00:33:58

I can't do it myself.

Speaker: 00:34:01

an external stimulation, that kind of thing.

Speaker: 00:34:05

It's all of those metaphors. Something

Speaker: 00:34:10

to invoke a change. What were they going to call it?

Speaker: 00:34:14

What did you fight against calling it?

Speaker: 00:34:17

They wanted to call it Kill the Parasite.

Speaker: 00:34:20

And I was like, no. Also that changes

Speaker: 00:34:26

the meaning of the movie effectively.

Speaker: 00:34:28

you

Speaker: 00:34:28

I

Speaker: 00:34:29

think it would attract, it would be disingenuous to the audience to,

Speaker: 00:34:35

to that, which is it's perfect that you said this,

Speaker: 00:34:37

because you're the exact kind of person that I want to see this movie in

Speaker: 00:34:40

a way to talk about it and to spread.

Speaker: 00:34:40

You

Speaker: 00:34:42

So it's

Speaker: 00:34:43

like that problem. I don't know that like,

Speaker: 00:34:45

you know, you would have been scrolling and like,

Speaker: 00:34:49

yeah, let's watch Kill the Parasite Like,

Speaker: 00:34:51

I don't know. Would you

Speaker: 00:34:53

tell me? I'm not like I'm very curious about that.

Speaker: 00:34:56

But it is definitely

Speaker: 00:34:57

things that for me, it felt like it was completely changing the context of

Speaker: 00:35:04

the story by leaning into that.

Speaker: 00:35:07

it would have changed it. And words are so powerful.

Speaker: 00:35:09

I mean, don't appreciate how powerful words are.

Speaker: 00:35:14

I mean, had a conversation with a friend this morning about between to and from.

Speaker: 00:35:17

Yeah, it wouldn't have.

Speaker: 00:35:22

It was the wrong story. It was the wrong title.

Speaker: 00:35:24

Completely. It wasn't about that.

Speaker: 00:35:25

It was about change rather than destroying something.

Speaker: 00:35:30

Well, and to that point, it's like,

Speaker: 00:35:32

think personally, the idea of having the title be Catalyst,

Speaker: 00:35:38

and you see the poster and you kind of get a flavour for like,

Speaker: 00:35:40

okay, there's, there's definitely,

Speaker: 00:35:42

you know, there's some kidnapped people or abducted people and they're,

Speaker: 00:35:45

you know, they're, they're trapped and like,

Speaker: 00:35:47

you kind of get flavours of like what you might think it is,

Speaker: 00:35:50

but then the Catalyst, the title asks the question,

Speaker: 00:35:52

like the whole movie is asking a question.

Speaker: 00:35:54

like part of me, as filmmaker,

Speaker: 00:35:56

I want you to ask why

Speaker: 00:35:59

Catalyst, what does this mean?

Speaker: 00:36:01

And then

Speaker: 00:36:02

along the way, be a part of that.

Speaker: 00:36:05

It's like, again, it's like kind of commenting on the whole story of the movie.

Speaker: 00:36:10

And so I'm glad that our distributors ultimately worked with us

Speaker: 00:36:15

to continue to call it Catalyst.

Speaker: 00:36:18

And so I'm grateful. And ultimately,

Speaker: 00:36:21

I'm glad to see that it's out in the world the way it was intended to be seen.

Speaker: 00:36:26

Because that's also the reason why we

Speaker: 00:36:29

chose to keep it an independent film as opposed to going to any sort of like,

Speaker: 00:36:32

know, Blumhouse or some other company to get more money,

Speaker: 00:36:38

but then ultimately

Speaker: 00:36:39

how to change the story to be exactly what the conditioning of,

Speaker: 00:36:42

or challenging in the movie is,

Speaker: 00:36:44

you know what mean? That's the thing that like,

Speaker: 00:36:47

had we gone that route, it would have changed it.

Speaker: 00:36:50

So look, as indie filmmakers, it really means the world for people to like yourself,

Speaker: 00:36:55

that watch it and spread the word about it and,

Speaker: 00:36:58

you know.

Speaker: 00:36:59

are willing and open to have that conversation.

Speaker: 00:37:01

I mean, I was on a flight one time and I was wearing my jacket from

Speaker: 00:37:06

the film or whatever and then someone behind me was like,

Speaker: 00:37:08

I saw that movie, I saw that movie last night,

Speaker: 00:37:11

did you do that movie? And I was like,

Speaker: 00:37:12

yeah, yes. And she's like, great,

Speaker: 00:37:16

you gotta tell me about the ending.

Speaker: 00:37:18

And I was like, wait, actually before she said anything about the movie,

Speaker: 00:37:23

she's like, can you tell me about the ending?

Speaker: 00:37:25

And I was like.

Speaker: 00:37:26

What are you talking about? And then I realised that I was wearing the jacket.

Speaker: 00:37:28

And she's like, I went

Speaker: 00:37:30

with my son and then I watched it again.

Speaker: 00:37:33

It's like, want to see if I'm right about the ending.

Speaker: 00:37:36

it was just like, this is on a flight,

Speaker: 00:37:39

right? I'm half asleep. And then she said,

Speaker: 00:37:42

was like, this is great.

Speaker: 00:37:44

The fact that people are watching it then they're having a conversation about

Speaker: 00:37:48

it there's some people that watched it and they were like,

Speaker: 00:37:52

man, this is required viewing for my family.

Speaker: 00:37:55

I'm going to be having it.

Speaker: 00:37:56

We're gonna have a conversation,

Speaker: 00:37:58

you know, dinner table later about this.

Speaker: 00:38:00

And I'm like, that's very rewarding as a filmmaker

Speaker: 00:38:05

to know that it is challenging people enough to have that question

Speaker: 00:38:12

and talk about it and share it with people and to have the courage

Speaker: 00:38:17

to stand for something different in a world that,

Speaker: 00:38:20

you know, would...

Speaker: 00:38:24

what is conditioning us to believe otherwise.

Speaker: 00:38:27

it is challenging. It is provocative and it's not fluffy.

Speaker: 00:38:30

you, yeah, it's, it hit home.

Speaker: 00:38:34

Great ending, great everything.

Speaker: 00:38:36

So what are you working on next?

Speaker: 00:38:38

What's Christopher got plans on?

Speaker: 00:38:40

Is this all under NDAs and LOBs and TLA's and stuff?

Speaker: 00:38:43

There's a lot going on.

Speaker: 00:38:46

I have actually directed two short films last year as proof

Speaker: 00:38:51

of concepts for features. have one that's premiering at the Beverly Hills Film

Speaker: 00:38:56

Festival in April. That is an action thriller,

Speaker: 00:39:00

sci-fi, you know, that deals with a bit of AI and like kind of a sort of,

Speaker: 00:39:07

you know, again, sort of tech sci-fi grounded sci-fi thriller.

Speaker: 00:39:13

that's called The Asset.

Speaker: 00:39:15

So, but then there's another much larger movie that I've been writing.

Speaker: 00:39:22

And I will say that it is,

Speaker: 00:39:25

we're not in production yet. I'm looking at how we can move forward.

Speaker: 00:39:30

I just finished the script, but it is effectively the true story,

Speaker: 00:39:34

the untold true story of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting that happened

Speaker: 00:39:39

in Florida 10 years ago this year.

Speaker: 00:39:41

And.

Speaker: 00:39:43

you know, 49 people lost their lives that night.

Speaker: 00:39:45

It was a horrific night. And again,

Speaker: 00:39:49

asking the question and when I felt compelled after I wrapped Catalyst,

Speaker: 00:39:53

that was immediately the thing that I was like,

Speaker: 00:39:54

I was starting to ask myself, what is next for me?

Speaker: 00:39:58

And

Speaker: 00:39:59

I started looking into that incident because I was like,

Speaker: 00:40:01

I feel like I need to do a movie that's about like a hostage situation.

Speaker: 00:40:04

I don't know why, but like I, I feel like something's calling me to that.

Speaker: 00:40:08

And then like, I again, kept asking the question,

Speaker: 00:40:11

like what is,

Speaker: 00:40:13

what hostage situation, maybe it's a true story.

Speaker: 00:40:16

And then immediately Pulse came to mind and like,

Speaker: 00:40:18

okay, I gotta look into this. And I started doing some,

Speaker: 00:40:21

just again, asking questions and putting out feelers.

Speaker: 00:40:25

And I learned that I was literally one degree of separation away from multiple

Speaker: 00:40:29

people that were all in that incident,

Speaker: 00:40:31

like hiding for their lives for three hours while the cops were outside doing

Speaker: 00:40:35

nothing, effectively. Many

Speaker: 00:40:38

of them were very inactive at a point when,

Speaker: 00:40:41

you know,

Speaker: 00:40:43

there are people that have now become my friends were bleeding out

Speaker: 00:40:48

in the bathroom waiting and being

Speaker: 00:40:50

held hostage by a guy. And then also where the system sort

Speaker: 00:40:56

of failed them and the people that were actually first responders that were doing

Speaker: 00:41:02

the right thing in the face of,

Speaker: 00:41:04

and again, standing for like a brave man podcast,

Speaker: 00:41:06

courage to do different when...

Speaker: 00:41:10

when their protocol is saying one thing and they're being told to go away from

Speaker: 00:41:14

the scene, the two paramedics that defied orders to save lives that night,

Speaker: 00:41:18

I've got the life story rights to tell their story.

Speaker: 00:41:21

They are examples of what

Speaker: 00:41:26

it takes to challenge the system that would have them

Speaker: 00:41:32

choose fear and move away from the scene as opposed to go and do the right thing

Speaker: 00:41:36

and turn towards the incident and.

Speaker: 00:41:39

you know, actually save lives.

Speaker: 00:41:41

The body count would have been 30 times higher had they not done what they did.

Speaker: 00:41:44

And so it's like, those are things that had I not asked the question,

Speaker: 00:41:47

I never would have learned any of stuff.

Speaker: 00:41:48

And so the idea is like, even,

Speaker: 00:41:50

you know, it's like, how do I tell a story that then,

Speaker: 00:41:53

you know, can point to the truth and have us talk about,

Speaker: 00:42:00

where the story stands for itself.

Speaker: 00:42:02

And it's literally designed to just tell the truth.

Speaker: 00:42:05

I think that's the key.

Speaker: 00:42:08

Why is it so important for you to ask these questions?

Speaker: 00:42:10

Just very briefly, what's your purpose around challenging questions?

Speaker: 00:42:16

I think questions create choices and character is revealed through choices.

Speaker: 00:42:22

if we are willing to ask the questions,

Speaker: 00:42:25

we're given a new sense

Speaker: 00:42:30

of power and not from like an egoic sense of power,

Speaker: 00:42:34

but like when you ask a question,

Speaker: 00:42:36

what does that give you?

Speaker: 00:42:39

It gives you choices.

Speaker: 00:42:45

I think that, again, kind of to sum up what I've been saying is that when

Speaker: 00:42:51

we ask a question, we're able

Speaker: 00:42:54

to get curious about what,

Speaker: 00:42:59

like I said, what the status quo is costing us,

Speaker: 00:43:02

what our way of life today is costing us.

Speaker: 00:43:05

That could look like our government,

Speaker: 00:43:09

that could look like my personal choices on what I do every morning I wake

Speaker: 00:43:12

up or how I go about my day.

Speaker: 00:43:15

or all of that.

Speaker: 00:43:19

And in that moment, in that choice point,

Speaker: 00:43:23

like, is a choice that could either lead to freedom

Speaker: 00:43:27

or fear and depression and anxiety

Speaker: 00:43:32

and all the things that we say we want to avoid,

Speaker: 00:43:37

but we choose.

Speaker: 00:43:38

I hope I'm communicating there.

Speaker: 00:43:40

But I think that that at the core of it all,

Speaker: 00:43:42

questions create choices. And through choice,

Speaker: 00:43:45

there's there's access to different sort of power that can guide us,

Speaker: 00:43:51

you know. And it takes like,

Speaker: 00:43:56

you know, to loop it back to your podcast.

Speaker: 00:43:58

the the Brave Man Podcast, like what does it mean to be brave in this world?

Speaker: 00:44:02

What does it mean to be a man in this world?

Speaker: 00:44:05

I have the weight of the world on my shoulders to fix it all.

Speaker: 00:44:08

But what can I do in my daily life to show up and choose to create

Speaker: 00:44:13

a world that breaks the conditioning of the past?

Speaker: 00:44:16

Whether that is creating a podcast or it's making a movie or it's whatever

Speaker: 00:44:20

any of your listeners does to stand for something instead of resisting something.

Speaker: 00:44:29

There's such a necessity for that in the world

Speaker: 00:44:32

I just think like, what would the world be like if Gandhi didn't have

Speaker: 00:44:35

the courage to do different? If Martin Luther King Jr.

Speaker: 00:44:39

didn't have the power or the willingness to ask the question that

Speaker: 00:44:45

his dream asks of what has us not stand for this world?

Speaker: 00:44:51

know, like, what are we being right about that would have us not choose that?

Speaker: 00:44:57

It's standing up.

Speaker: 00:45:00

for something instead of resisting what is.

Speaker: 00:45:03

Because when we resist it, we're actually feeding into it.

Speaker: 00:45:07

We're giving it power, but asking questions.

Speaker: 00:45:10

may open up that new possibility.

Speaker: 00:45:12

Does that make sense? I hope it does.

Speaker: 00:45:16

That is the perfect ending for this podcast.

Speaker: 00:45:19

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You ask a question,

Speaker: 00:45:22

you've got options. You don't ask a question,

Speaker: 00:45:24

you don't have options. You don't have choices.

Speaker: 00:45:29

Christopher, thank you. Brilliant.

Speaker: 00:45:31

Love this conversation. I had no idea where it's going to go.

Speaker: 00:45:33

it went everywhere where it could have done and it was fab

Speaker: 00:45:39

Where can people find you? Obviously they can find...

Speaker: 00:45:41

What's the movie called again?

Speaker: 00:45:44

The movie is called Catalyst. Still called Catalyst.

Speaker: 00:45:47

Thankfully it's called Catalyst.

Speaker: 00:45:49

If you search Catalyst and make sure,

Speaker: 00:45:52

know, my name is Chris Folkens Christopher Folkens you know,

Speaker: 00:45:56

like I think there's some other movies that are named Catalyst,

Speaker: 00:45:58

but you'll see it as long as you see my name on there.

Speaker: 00:46:01

And it was released in 2025. so the film is available,

Speaker: 00:46:07

I know, on Apple TV's

Speaker: 00:46:09

I think it might be on Prime now.

Speaker: 00:46:10

I'm not exactly sure. I know it's on Tubi now.

Speaker: 00:46:12

It is available in the US, UK,

Speaker: 00:46:15

Canada. And I think we have a Latin America deal that just closed

Speaker: 00:46:18

and we're waiting for our airline deal to go.

Speaker: 00:46:22

it's going to be all over. But I know that Tubi has it.

Speaker: 00:46:24

But I know it's in the US, UK,

Speaker: 00:46:25

and Canada at least as of now.

Speaker: 00:46:27

And then in terms of getting a hold of me,

Speaker: 00:46:31

I mean, I'm at Chris Folkens on Instagram.

Speaker: 00:46:36

And yeah, that's a good place to reach out.

Speaker: 00:46:38

If you watch the movie and you wanna share,

Speaker: 00:46:41

I love seeing people's reactions to it,

Speaker: 00:46:44

obviously. You reached out as well.

Speaker: 00:46:46

And I know it is starting to pick up steam on the sort of video on demand side

Speaker: 00:46:50

of things, which is cool to see.

Speaker: 00:46:52

watch the movie guys, watch the movie.

Speaker: 00:46:55

So there we are everybody, another episode of the Brave Man Project.

Speaker: 00:46:58

That was Christopher, You can find him,

Speaker: 00:47:00

he's told you a bit about it. He's got a couple of shorts on YouTube as well.

Speaker: 00:47:05

If you like what you listen to,

Speaker: 00:47:06

please like this, please share it.

Speaker: 00:47:07

This is an important conversation and keep asking questions because with questions,

Speaker: 00:47:12

as Christopher said, you've got curiosity,

Speaker: 00:47:15

you've got options, you've got choices.

Speaker: 00:47:17

Thank you ever so much.