Silo

So first of all, Sam, why? Why did you guys come up with Perfect Sundaes?

Well, it's a follow-up to a project called Silo that Jim, who I'm standing next to, is the star of, and Silo is a feature film about a grain entrapment.

And while working on it, it became very clear that the stresses of identity and farm legacy can be the straw that breaks the camel's back on a farm.

And in the case of Silo, that's what leads to a grain entrapment accident.

Mm-hmm.

And that movie follows a rescue of a kid who gets trapped in a grain bin.

But we wanted to make sure it wasn't relentlessly upsetting.

We wanted to leave farmers with hope, but we did want to do something authentic.

I thought maybe I can get outside of my comfort zone, learn more about my fellow Americans who produce the food that I consume, and tell a story that's authentic.

And so we went and we made this movie called Silo.

Silo is a very successful, I think really authentic independent film.

Fictional, but we filmed it on an active eighth generation grain farm in Kentucky, and we filmed it with the community.

So everything you see in Silo, there was always a farmer or a firefighter nearby making sure we were doing things authentically.

And I'm very proud of that project.

while working on it we had many farmers say would you do something that deals with the subject of farmer mental health the stress that we're going through when working on silo it was very clear that the straw that often breaks the camel's back is farm legacy identity the things that a farmer can't necessarily control but feels emotionally this tide of land and so the writer of silo jason and myself along with my wife We outlined a TV series called Perfect Sundays, which is about a dairy farm grappling with this subject.

We are very lucky to be joined today by Sam Goldberg.

Sam is the genius behind Perfect Sundays and also the movie Silo.

And all right.

Sam, there's probably a number of folks who don't even realize what all the projects are that you have done with your passion for ag.

I heard about a grain entrapment incident.

Had never heard of anything like that.

Found it very compelling that volunteer fire companies very often know the person they are there to rescue, and I just learned more and more about rural America and agriculture, fell in love with the space, decided to make Silo, and then recently made the project Perfect Sundays.

Um, most of all, I just think farmers are about the nicest, most generous people I've ever met in my life, and I wanna make sure that they are depicted authentically in media.

My wife, Rupa, is an amazing artist.

We created Perfect Sundays and Silo together.

We also run an educational nonprofit.

And I guess I'm a kind of a guy who grew up really lucky.

And it was a short film, and it got into the Tribeca Film Festival, and it almost turned into a TV show with TNT.

And I was just trying to, you know, tell fun stories and be creative.

But it wasn't really until Silo came along and I learned more about agriculture that my desire to impact society and do something good for the world really aligned with what I wanted to do most creatively.

You know, with the Mildred Project, great creative project, but didn't have any social goals.

... not a whole lot that I don't own.

So I'm like just, you know, scrolling through of like, you know, what came out that I didn't know about, and then [laughs] out of nowhere, fucking Silo.

I was like, "Holy fuck, it's on Criterion Collection? I have to get it.

Like, [laughs] I just have to."