Right

... tried to take his life, you know, more than once, and I thought, "There has to be something better than just throwing a bunch of medications.

There has to be something out there that's actually helping people get past their post-traumatic stress and get their lives back." And so I put the feature film on hold, and that's why I ended up doing my first documentary, which is called Wounded Heroes.

So I didn't plan to do it.

It was, I did it out of necessity, not knowing if I'd be able to find anything that would help them, those battling post-traumatic stress.

And then I spent years, well, it was three years producing that film, but a number of, uh, at least a year just doing research, and I found the most amazing alternative treatments that have changed people's lives.

Some have made a significant difference in their lives.

How do you know when it's time to reinvent yourself versus staying the course and getting better at what you're doing already?

Mm-hmm.

But, uh, the last three films I've done happen to have been documentaries, and the whole documentary thing happened on accident.

I had a film I wanted to do called Wounded Heroes, and we're actually hoping to produce it this next year finally.

Uh, and it's, it's a military story about post-traumatic stress and, and veterans, father, son, who both have post-traumatic stress, father being from Vietnam War and son from Afghanistan.

Uh, and I wanted to learn more about post-traumatic stress.

I didn't know much about it.

And so I was interviewing veterans and went down to San Diego and met this guy named Carl who was in his 20s on, he was on 18 different prescription medications for his post-traumatic stress.

So what was the next film you made after that?

Mm.

And then three first responders showed up, w- well, I should say two.

Chuck Siewart had been a paramedic in the past, but he struggled with drug addiction and alcohol addiction.

He had just gotten out of rehab not too long before, and he woke up that morning, uh, because he was...

He said he was depressed after a few days, saw on TV what was taking place.

He, he listened to a voicemail from his sister who said, "Oh, you must be down at Ground Zero helping." And he said he wasn't thinking about actually going down to help.

He didn't want her...

Yeah, and I don't expect you to have an answer for this, 'cause I don't know if anybody has an answer, but just after making this film, what is it about humanity that a tragedy happens, we're all together, we're on the same page, and just slowly we start growing and growing and growing apart, and then it takes something else that's tragic to bring us back together? What, what, what do you think it is about us as a human race that allows that to happen throughout history and we don't learn from the other instances?

Mm.

And then three first responders showed up, w- well, I should say two.

Chuck Sweeny had been a paramedic in the past, but he struggled with drug addiction and alcohol addiction.

He had just gotten out of rehab not too long before, and he woke up that morning, uh, because he was...

he said he was depressed after a few days.

Saw on TV what was taking place.

He, he listened to a voicemail from his sister, who said, "Oh, you must be down at Ground Zero helping." And he said he wasn't thinking about actually going down to help.

Yeah, and I don't expect you to have an answer for this 'cause I don't know if anybody has an answer, but just after making this film, what is it about humanity that a tragedy happens, we're all together, we're on the same page, and just slowly we start growing and growing and growing apart, and then it takes something else that's tragic to bring us back together? What, what, what do you think it is about us as a human race that allows that to happen throughout history, and we don't learn from the other instances?

know,

and I, now go ahead.

Well, I just interviewed Sean McFarland.

He's a three-star general.

And he's been in the military, I think he said over 30 some odd years, 36 years or something.

But he was already in the military when 9-11 took place.

So we talked about how did things change in the military when 9-11 took place.

It was really cool to hear his story and to hear his perspective.

Why don't you talk about the general tone of the film and what people are going to see when they watch? Yeah.

Absolutely.

So Chris Meek approached me.

He had seen some of my other documentaries, and he knew he wanted to do something for the 25th commemoration, but he didn't know what.

And so he talked to me about producing the film for him, and I told him we don't want to produce something about 9-11 that's like all of the other 9-11 movies.

The story's already been told.

And so after thinking about it, I kind of went back to him and said, let's focus on the positive things that came from 9-11 despite the tragedy.

What was he under concrete? He had, he had kind of heavy beams on

Michael, what do you want people to take away from this film?

Well, you know, Caitlin just said it, finding the light in the darkness.

And, you know, we all know the tragedy and we should remember the tragedy.

But this film, the heroism and resiliency of 9-11 literally focuses on the positive things that came from 9-11 despite the tragedy.

It's all about heroism, resiliency.

And believe it or not, most people expect the film to be depressing, but they all tell me after watching it, your film is incredibly inspirational.

And it is.

And the question I want to ask you, based on what you looked at and sorted through with their stories, were there acts of heroics or survival?

You know, I think it was both.

It took a lot of bravery to actually decide we're going to attack and fight back against the terrorists.

But the overwhelming response, I believe, was because they were trying to save themselves and stop the plane from being used as a target to take out who knows how many hundreds or thousands on the ground.

And, you know, so, yeah, I think the overwhelming goal was So what would happen was they weren't planning on that plane leaving as late as it did.

The terrorists weren't.

And so by the time they left, which was much later than the other planes, the people on the plane, the passengers on the plane, had a chance to call their loved ones to say, we've been taken over by terrorists.

And these were men and women who were saying, no, I am not done.

So walk me through the process as you're starting to kind of figure out, right, who am I going to start interviewing? Who are we looking for? You know, what was that kind of journey like of diving into these stories behind the tragedy now?

Yeah, you know, for a film like this, it's a lot about research at the very beginning.

And just, again, I didn't know a lot about 9-11 other than what I saw that morning and then learned that evening.

And I really didn't, you know, study it or become incredibly educated on it.

in the days that followed.

So I was in a lot of ways starting from scratch.

And there were so many stories I did not know, just doing research, whether it's going to YouTube, using Google, and just learning about individual stories of heroism, individual stories of resiliency.

So talk to me a little bit more about your conversations with Chuck.

Yeah

...

so that it's one cohesive piece.

Um, and so, you know, just in the editing process, I just decided that, uh, Alex Zablocki, it's, it's his story, uh, talking about how the homeless folks going through a drug rehab program really helped the people up from Wall Street.

And, uh, I just thought, you know, it just ended up fitting there at the beginning first.

Um, and what was great about that story and why it was important to me was, you know, it's just a role reversal.

You know, Wall Street guys, you know, pretty successful, make a lot of money.

Mm-hmm.