Join us for an eye-opening discussion with acclaimed film and television director, Stephen Gyllenhaal. Our conversation primarily revolves around his latest work, Uncharitable, a groundbreaking documentary that strikes at the heart of traditional views on charity operations. We embark on a thought-provoking exploration of gender disparity in the non-profit sector, the constraints that hinder charities' effectiveness, and how these elements inspired the film's creation.
Our conversation with Stephen takes an incisive look at non-profit organizations, their struggles, and their indispensable role in society. We challenge the status quo, discussing the necessity for attracting top talent, offering competitive pay, and granting the respect that these individuals deserve. Moreover, we dive into the deeper psychological underpinnings of the charitable sector and even confront its potential dark side. We question the true nature of corruption, the importance of watchdog organizations, and the need for a revised perspective on charity.
As we wind down, Stephen shares his personal experience with the AIDS Rides and the invaluable life advice he's passed on to his son. We touch upon the much-anticipated premieres of Uncharitable in New York and Los Angeles, and the plans for its Canadian release. Don't miss this stimulating conversation filled with revolutionary insights into the charitable sector and its untapped potential. This is not just an interview; it's a call to action for a brighter, more charitable future. Tune in now!
If you liked this podcast
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/contributors/thomas-r-verny-md
Join us for an eye-opening discussion with acclaimed film and television director, Stephen Gyllenhaal. Our conversation primarily revolves around his latest work, Uncharitable, a groundbreaking documentary that strikes at the heart of traditional views on charity operations. We embark on a thought-provoking exploration of gender disparity in the non-profit sector, the constraints that hinder charities' effectiveness, and how these elements inspired the film's creation.
Our conversation with Stephen takes an incisive look at non-profit organizations, their struggles, and their indispensable role in society. We challenge the status quo, discussing the necessity for attracting top talent, offering competitive pay, and granting the respect that these individuals deserve. Moreover, we dive into the deeper psychological underpinnings of the charitable sector and even confront its potential dark side. We question the true nature of corruption, the importance of watchdog organizations, and the need for a revised perspective on charity.
As we wind down, Stephen shares his personal experience with the AIDS Rides and the invaluable life advice he's passed on to his son. We touch upon the much-anticipated premieres of Uncharitable in New York and Los Angeles, and the plans for its Canadian release. Don't miss this stimulating conversation filled with revolutionary insights into the charitable sector and its untapped potential. This is not just an interview; it's a call to action for a brighter, more charitable future. Tune in now!
If you liked this podcast
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/contributors/thomas-r-verny-md
Hello, this is Pushing Boundaries, a podcast about pioneering research, breakthrough discoveries and unconventional ideas. I'm your host, Dr. Thomas R Verny. My guest today is Stephen Gyllenha al, film and television director, writer and producer. Stephen is Swedish, of Swedish and English Descent. Through his father, he is a member of the Gyllenhaal family, and I have to say this because I've never before, or perhaps never after, will have on my program a descendant of the cavalry officer Nils Gunnisonha al, who was ennobled in 1652 by Queen Christina of Sweden, who confirmed upon him the crest and family name Gyllenhaal.
Speaker 1:Stephen's producing credits include Chattered Mind about a woman with dissociative identity disorder, and feature documentaries, exquisite, continent on Dream Interpretation and In Utero about prenatal psychology. Stephen interviewed me for this movie, and that's how we first met. Stephen is also a published poet. Among his other credits is being the father of actress Maggie Gyllenhaal and actor Jake Gyllenhaal. A few years ago, we made a career pivot, as they say nowadays, and founded the Identity Development Institute in Los Angeles, which provides a novel form of psychotherapy. We have talked about this the last time I had you on my podcast, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, yep.
Speaker 1:Right, but today, today, I want to talk with you, stephen, if I may call you Stephen. Yes, yes, yes, thank you, about your most recent, very exciting venture, the Documentary Uncharitable. Dr David Ho, time Magazine man of the Year 1996, and former president of Harvard University, has said of this film, and I quote what scales would our nonprofit organizations have to achieve to eradicate the great social problems that confront us, and how do our traditions and beliefs about charity stand in their way? Uncharitable, which is the name of this movie that you are, that you have just finished producing, has elevated the question we need to be asking. It provocatively challenges traditional views of how charities should operate and provide a thought-provoking alternative. End of quote. So, stephen, thank you for being here and welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you for inviting me. It's, as usual, delight. We've had a lot of fun over the years. Yes, through, you know, pushing the boundaries. Yes, being out of the box.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes. So tell me, tell me about this film. Whatever you know, whichever way you want to attack it, Tell me about the film.
Speaker 2:It started because a friend of mine, dan Pilata, had created and really really turned into a major operation the AIDS rides in the 90s when AIDS was destroying the country, really Right, and he raised over half a billion dollars of unrestricted funds for AIDS and then he was destroyed and I knew him during that whole period of time. He was destroyed because he worked outside the box, the closed box of how one functions in the nonprofit sector, which is essentially and I may ruminate a little bit today on it because I've been thinking about it a lot recently essentially the idea is you volunteer, you sacrifice your life for the good of others. It's a sort of you know, sackcloth and ashes approach you don't ask for much but you're a good person and I'm, and I think one of the things that seems to be true and has been true all the way along is that it's been seen sort of as a my granddaughter would not like me to use this phrase feminine, because she says grandpa, what do you mean by feminine? Well, what I mean by the old interpretation of it was someone who's humble, who doesn't talk too much, who is loving, gentle and good. And in fact, the nonprofit, the mission driven, the charitable sector has been primarily populated by women, while, of course, the for-profit sector has been primarily, until recently, populated by men, and so has government, and really the three sectors that really move anything forward or backwards, for that matter are these major forces.
Speaker 2:The for-profit sector is very powerful and robust, the government sector, which also is quite powerful, and the for-profit, the charitable sector, and down through the last three or 400 years, the charitable sector has played a part, but it's always been at a profound disadvantage. Because you can't spend any money on marketing, you can't be robust, you can't, you can't take risks, you can't take time to build an organization, because it's you take the time and you don't give the money to the poor or for climate change or for whatever. You're quickly seen as someone who's taking advantage of the situation and using the money for yourself, which is what happened to Dan, which was entirely not true. And when Dan and I who, as I said, knew each other for a long time began to talk after I did the movie in utero, actually, which you're in, and I began to play with the idea of the documentary, I didn't quite feel there was enough there, even though his story is very dramatic. But when he told me about a number of other people who'd gone through exactly the same thing very successful, raised a lot of money, were aggressive, took risks and accomplished major, major, major, you know changes in whatever sector they were working in. I began to say there's a problem here and there's a movie here.
Speaker 2:So that's when I really started to make it it was seven years ago really and through a pandemic and through my really coming to understand how critical this film could be, we finally got the film finished and it's coming out in September September 21st we're premiering in New York and then we'll be theatrically showing the film in New York and then we go to Washington DC for a VIP screening.
Speaker 2:Then the next week we're in Los Angeles doing another premiere and we'll slowly spread the film out across the country. And what's happened already, as we've been nearing the end of the film, is charitable organizations across the country have started to see the film and we want to not have too many of them see it, but we want enough people to see it and we have to have them very excited about how this can really change pretty much everything. And once the charitable sector has changed, it can impact the nonprofit sector to be more attentive to the fact that they should be participating in mission-driven charitable work as well, and the government can begin to be influenced to change, to work on legislation that can make the charitable sector 10 million people in the United States. It will be released also in Canada. We're working on that right now, so it'll be across Canada. How it's gonna change potentially change the world so that's why I made it. That's in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:What's the difference between charitable and not-for-profit?
Speaker 2:No difference, I mean, I think, not-for-profit or nonprofit, but not-for-profit is better. They are not focused on profit, I'd say. The difference would be, though, that some of the not-for-profit organizations have been more aggressive about using so-called capitalism to move things forward. Charity is this is a nuanced definition, but charity is more reticent to be, has been more reticent to be kind of aggressive, I'd say, and then mission-driven is somewhere in between, but it's really all the same thing, and it's really what we're trying to do is have all these organizations be able to be fully what they're capable of being.
Speaker 1:So would the Red Cross, for example, be a not-for-profit charitable organization.
Speaker 2:The Red Cross would be not-for-profit, nonprofit, charitable, mission-driven organization. It's all those things, all of those things, and at times the Red Cross has gotten into trouble. Every all these charities have gotten into trouble because when they start to really function aggressively and effectively, it goes against the grain of what we feel charity should be.
Speaker 1:And what is it that we feel charity should be?
Speaker 2:I think, we feel it should be sort of humble. It should do its job quietly. The people should be doing it mainly voluntarily because it feels good. But you can't solve anything with that. You can't, for instance, like Wounded Warriors, which is one of the organizations that came under fire. You can't have volunteers deal with wounded soldiers. You can't have volunteers deal with wounds, either physically or psychologically. It doesn't and in fact it can make a mess of everything and it has at times.
Speaker 2:Wounded Warriors spent a lot of money on what we call overhead. Right, it is doctors and psychiatrists and programs that really worked and that really made a difference for veterans. But they got into big trouble and to do that you need to have people overseeing it that are effective. You can't have volunteers overseeing doctors. You've got to have professionals doing the job and running hospitals. You can't have volunteers doing that. So it's about really changing the thinking and in a way, it comes back to what you and I talk about from a psychological perspective. It's really attacking the subject in a way from a psychological perspective, which is change the thinking. Change the thinking and everything else will follow. When you change the way you think, the things you think about change.
Speaker 1:So in your movie, how do you engage people sufficiently so that after they have seen the movie they will change their behavior?
Speaker 2:Well, I think I like the fact that you use the term movie rather than film, which sort of implies foreign films. So it's serious or documentary. It is a documentary but I see it more as a movie because I tried very hard as a director to have it be an emotional experience Right, movies are emotional experiences and then sends the audience through a real journey of first rage. I think at what has been done to some great people who have been decimated, destroyed by media or by sort of people who are holier than now, and then it sort of even speaks more to well, why do we think this way? What's going on? And begins to explore things like why are we also? Why is Hollywood, for instance, or books, a lot of things, but Hollywood in particular, and that means people flock to it. Why are they fascinated by the end of the world, the apocalypse that is all going to end terribly? There are almost all movies about the future Are movies of just ruination.
Speaker 1:Ruination destruction, yeah, capitalism, yeah, why, why are they?
Speaker 2:thinking that when we have the possibility of profoundly impacting this world, solving problems no, they're not simple. Problems aren't simple. The fires that are going on in Canada right now. That's a simple issue not easily resolved. There's no one thing that's going to solve it.
Speaker 2:It takes brilliant minds, it takes the best minds, and one of the things that the documentary speaks to and I want to speak to are two things. One is the sector needs the very, very best people in the world working in the sector and they need to be paid decently. Sorry, that's what it's going to take. They need to be paid with respect. They need to have the money to market. They need to have the money to hire people that are excellent, and a lot of the people already in the sector are the best people. There's some terrific people in it, but they have no ability to function effectively. It's like they have a car, or they have the. It looks like a car, but they have no engine, they have no wheels and they have no gasoline or oil. They don't have anything to really run that car. So you have a sector that needs to have the best people in the world doing it. It has some of the best people in the world, but they are hamstrung. So it's kind of a simple solution and it can solve, I think, issues that have seemed intractable, because every single challenge that we are facing has nonprofits trying to solve. So that's why I got involved with it and, as you know, I have my own nonprofit, my own organization, the Identity Development Institute, which to me is digging into solving the other I'm sorry or coming at the same issue of how do we both help this species survive, but also, and probably more importantly and probably directly connected with survival, how do we help this species, how do we make our fellow men and women thrive? How do we make them thrive? And while I think in charitable of critical importance, in umbrellas, everything, and we could really have a major shift, equally important is the psychological dynamics going on with each and every person in all of these sectors. But let's take the charitable sector as one.
Speaker 2:And it became clear to me after making the movie in utero, which you are in and really helped really make clear how important, how critically important development is, from conception through preverbal development, but particularly from conception through birth. You know, it's this thing that came to me yesterday and I'm not sure I can describe it right, but it's the smaller you are developmentally, the more global the impact is on you for the rest of your life, and you're the most fragile when you're tiny. Global is global in terms of how it's going to effloresce into the future. At the same time, when you are tiny, nourishment and love and connection and attention also impacts the growing organism in a global way, in a complete way.
Speaker 2:So I'm very, very focused on making clear to everybody you've got to go back and look at what happened to you and experience, if possible in deep memory, what happened to you really from conception through preverbal development. And the reason I'm so committed to the Institute is because we have come up with, as you said, a novel psychological method, but a method that, when addressed properly, is safe to go back to a time when many of us did not feel safe, and we're not safe. We were not safe back then because people don't still know what human beings really are and particularly don't respect or understand what you have. What you talk about in the film is incredible, miraculous being that we are, as we're developing, that can be so quickly knocked off kilter.
Speaker 1:So it's just following up on what you were saying. It's hard to be charitable if you feel shortchanged, right? So I mean, if you're coming from a position of not enough, then how could you possibly give away anything, because you are already in a negative position?
Speaker 2:I think it's very true. I think it's once someone said to me how can I go into a poor neighborhood, work there with a nice car?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I said well, you know who the people in these neighborhoods look up to the NBA stars, the people who come in with Cadillacs, the people who've gone. I'm celebrating my life. I have a lot, I mean, I think it's not even material things, but I think it is important to be paid decently. I mean it's not paid decently, but it's important for these incredibly imaginative, creative people who are committed to helping other people be given the environment to achieve what they are dreaming to achieve. And when they do it this is what the film is about they get destroyed because you are not supposed to do that. Who is doing the destroying? Well, the media does it a lot.
Speaker 2:The media has attacked a lot of these. Now, all the media is a sort of lens that has been created by the populace. I mean the media is not going to talk about anything that doesn't bring in money. I mean the media is a for-profit entity. So I think sometimes they try to do right. They try to do the right that the mainstream generally feels is right. And what the mainstream feels is right is that charity should be humble. I should feel good when I give my money.
Speaker 1:And that should be enough, and that should be enough right.
Speaker 2:I want to feel good and I get that. And I don't feel good. Giving to the CEO's salary Right, you go to the homeless person, you're going. Well then, why are you giving it to a charity? Just go over and give the money to the homeless person, right. But the problem is the homeless person has psychological issues. For instance, I mean, 40% of the homeless in Skid Row and Los Angeles are war veterans who are not getting the protection and support they need, having done what they've been through. So you go. You can't.
Speaker 2:If you want to give your money to just anybody, just give it to the homeless and feel good about it. Do you feel good about it Really when you're handed to someone who's standing on the street with nothing? Is that the way to solve the problem? Does that really make you feel good? No, what makes you feel good is understanding what an organization is doing, even maybe participating in it.
Speaker 2:And I think one of the things the film is also about is the joy of being with other people and giving to other people, the psychological uplift that takes place. When you say I think two things happen the psychological uplift of being there for somebody else, and when you're there with them, you begin to realize they're no different than I am. Number one that makes you grateful that you are where you are, yes, and so it makes a connection with someone who is fascinating. I mean, some of the most interesting people, who have lived the most dramatic lives that would make movies, are the people who are homeless, for instance. You know, you begin to realize that everyone is interesting and human and you begin to have a hope. I think that's what begins to happen, and I certainly have emerged making this movie with a profound sense of hope.
Speaker 2:Not that it's going to be easy Now. There are going to be more fires, there's going to be more wars, there are all those kinds of things. But I'm going to put my weight behind trying to bring about real change and I think this is the two ways, core ways of doing it. One is really get this film out there, have people see it, have their minds changed, have their hearts changed, and also then to anyone who wants to come to the Institute and explore their early formation, both the good and the bad of it, because we can get back there now. Right, that's to me fun. I mean it's a fun life. I have moments of despair, certainly, like all of us. But I come out of them now and go right back up to wow, this is an amazing universe, you know, sort of like the brighter the sunlight, the darker the shadows. Yes, so the shadows are dark, but there's so much sunlight.
Speaker 1:Why is it called uncharitable instead of charitable?
Speaker 2:Well, we're playing with something that we're still working on it. It's based on a book called Uncharitable. Dan's book was called Uncharitable and I think for a while I wasn't sure that was right because I went. This is a movie whose message is ultimately profoundly hopeful and even joyful, right what can come. But the fact is that the sector is still suffering from so much uncharitable action around it that it's much better. And then the other thing is it's interesting is thinking about calling a movie charity.
Speaker 2:Just what does that feel like? What it feels like is kind of goody, two shoes ring, not a really interesting story, and one of the things it's like charity is kind of boring that people are doing it. They're kind of like oh, you feel better than me. Oh, you know, there's a level of yuck around it. Uncharitable has charity in it, yes, but it has that sort of Hollywood thing, I guess, where you're going into something that's going to be kind of a roller coaster and adventure. The thing is maybe putting parentheses around the on, but we haven't quite decided yet. You end in parentheses, sort of like a dynamic. So we're playing with some of those things. A little time left, but I think it's a. It's a good question, but that's the reason, because still, the world is primarily uncharitable. Mm, hmm, mm, hmm. Get rid of the UN and make it charitable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think I think you're right. I mean, I have dealt with titles for books for a long time and you definitely want to have a title that is not totally straightforward, Like you know they should be. Oh, what do they mean by that? Yeah, yeah, and if the person can kind of question it, then you already have them hooked.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how do you? How do you make a movie about an idea? How do you go about making a movie that people will want to watch for 90 minutes or whatever About an idea like charity and charitable organizations and not for profit? How do you go about that?
Speaker 2:Well, to me, I mean, I've made primarily narrative films in my life Mm hmm, and in a way, in utero, the film that you were in was about an idea, mm hmm, to a great extent. But the idea has to be about people. I mean, what's the step? What's an idea separated from people? So the answer really is tell the story of people. Oh, tell the story of heroes, yes, who are destroyed. Yes, the hero's journey, the hero's journey, it's really the hero's journey, and the hero's journey really is.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, out of the ashes comes the idea. So, in a way, there's a sense of charity, there's a sense of all this. There's people are idealistic, they go into this, they go through the hero's journey of into the fire, and what comes out is a new idea of charity which is much tougher. My grandmother, my grandmother, my granddaughter would would sort of be upset with me too, but something that's that's more male, maybe, or rather, I think, rather than that, because most of the strongest people I know are women anyway. So it's time to give up. But what I want sexy to be Well, I want what I want charity to be is that other word sexy? I want it to become a sexy Cool.
Speaker 1:See, you want it to be cool, right Cool?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the people who you know, as I was making, as I was working with all these people in the film and there's some really important people in the film, I mean Edward Norton was has been a big deal in the charitable sector. Darren Walker, who's president of the Ford Foundation. Scott Harrison, who is a wonderfully charismatic Dory McWhorter in Chicago, who is spectacular you cannot get Dory in Chicago to ever be negative. She said, well, you know, her childhood was tough. And she said, well, you know, some people might have thought whatever they thought about my childhood, but that it was not all, not all positive. She can't, you can't get her to be negative, she's just positive and she's tough as nails.
Speaker 2:So what I what I love about the film as it sort of unfolded was the emergence of seven or eight people who are heroic and flawed here and there in ways, but generally really heroic and and you see them go through this journey and that becomes really, I think, an interesting experience and also, I think, the idea. As best I can, I think we've succeeded moving the audience at a certain time towards despair. I mean the whole, the world's gonna end, it's all terrible, everything's terrible, and then slowly going down into the shadows. Really, you know that's you gotta be a movie maker, you gotta entertain. You know, right, go down into the shadows, which are real, and then slowly come back up again In your.
Speaker 1:In your summary, in your summary of the movie, which is on your website, you say that this feature documentary exposes the dark side of philanthropy. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:It's the part that, well, it's interesting because people say, oh, you're making a movie about documentary. Oh, they're all so corrupt, they're all using the money for whatever. You know, I so many times I've heard that I'm going. You really believe that, don't you? I mean, and the news does that you know, oh, my, this guy's no, darren Walker, who's the head of the Ford Foundation, who followed all these these things, says 99.9% of charities do what they set out to do, 99.9%. And there's this 1% which we love to look at and I wonder sometimes if it's and I think I've sort of explored this enough to go.
Speaker 2:Well, people mostly aren't prepared to sacrifice their lives and a livelihood and, you know, put their children in a much less good school or they live in a less good environment. They don't want to do it, to do good. It's too much to ask. So anyone who's actually doing it, it's got to be kind of weird. So I think that people don't sort of like the people in this sector. In a way. It's like there's a kind of edginess like I'm not doing it, and it makes them sort of almost feel guilty. I think, you know, I don't have, oh, I would do it, but I don't have enough time and there's this sort of edginess to it and I think that, as a consequence, they're willing to embrace that the dark side of charity is corruption and the charity which is not the case.
Speaker 2:The dark side of charity is everything around charity that holds it down. It's everyone, everyone, the news, the there are these watchdog organizations. It's like there are more watchdog organizations on charities than there are boosters of charities. You know they're there and they can't really do it. I mean, the problem is this is a whole nother conversation, in a way, but the watchdog organizations that people go to, you know, like charity navigator and these kinds of things, have very, very limited staff. So they can't really dig in and see whether an organization, a nonprofit, not-for-profit, mission-driven charitable organization, is really doing its job effectively, as opposed to the for-profit sector where there is millions and millions of dollars spent on analyzing a company's you know financials, where it's headed, so on and so forth, before anyone invests in them. I mean, Wall Street is all about that. So it can't really be done in the charitable organization.
Speaker 2:So it just sort of you deal with this phrase overhead. If the overhead is X, you know, then it's okay, which means nothing. You know what, if the overhead is nothing and you have a soup kitchen and it's serving rotten food because you haven't had a decent management in place, right right as high overhead, but it's, they've raised a huge amount of money, they're feeding great food, they supply all the needs of someone who's homeless, but in terms of the charity navigator, the only way they can really look at it because they don't have a big enough staff is what's the overhead? So it's, and they can function, because people have a sort of a I don't trust. Where do I go? How do I do this? What do I do? I don't trust a lot of these people so Well.
Speaker 1:Trust has become a huge problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And it's funny that the one sector where you can trust the most it's the charitable sector. So, charity, you like Check it out, not because you're suspicious, but because you wanna know if this is the charity you wanna be involved with.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Meet people, hang out a little bit. You do that and you feel good. I mean, I've been in the sector, working in the sector now for seven years on and off and I have my own, but more in making the movie. I've been around a lot of these people. You feel really good. You do feel hopeful. You can see they're burnt out and if you're not getting paid well enough and you're not being respected you burn out after a while. But especially when you're dealing with major, what appear to be intractable problems Is that what you're doing, Sorry.
Speaker 1:So in order to make a movie, you need funding. Yes, so did any of these non-for-profit organizations contribute to the making of this movie?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, a foundation foundations could not, because of their rules, put donate any money into this film because the film is 100% overhead. There's nothing about this film is going to anyone or it's just changing everyone's mind. So we had very, very difficult time raising money. I knew I was never gonna get investment money because it started this documentary. So it was like pulling teeth, yeah, and it was my really first experience at trying to get donations and it was a humbling experience. It was a humiliating experience a lot. It was a tough experience. We did do it. I had some great people helping me. In the end it was a movie. So and you know I have a reputation so we were slowly able to put together. But now we struggle. So anyone who wants to put money into this movie for marketing we've finished the movie you can just you can reach out to Thomas and he can get you to me. I'm easily reachable if you got cash.
Speaker 1:That's the movies, of course. Stocks and bonds, or anything, anything at all, anything, whatever, sure you wanna sell your third house or fourth house, go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2:You wanna feel good? You wanna feel good, come to all those things. Come on down, come on down.
Speaker 1:Did you make any mistakes along the way, and how did you recover from them?
Speaker 2:I think the process of pretty much anything, thomas, at this point, is all you do is make mistakes, tons of mistakes. Then, by luck or just by the math of having made every single possible mistake you could make, you find the right choice. Then you go down that road and now you have an intersection with a whole bunch of possibilities and you make mistakes going down all of them. But if you're hardworking, if you're humble, and even if you've been humiliated and you get yourself back up again, you keep going you'll find the one road that was the right road to go down. I think in a way that's the secret is knowing when you're wrong, yes, then knowing when you're right, or it's even less happy than that. It's knowing when you're wrong and knowing when it's right, because it might not even be you that came up with what's right. But the ability to know what's right and be able to disconnect from your own need to be terrific to know that you're wrong.
Speaker 2:I was wrong, a lot wrong all the way along life. It's slowly we began to find our way. The way is the heart. A movie really works when it's from the heart. You have to be almost a child in a way to do that properly. I think that comes back to what I was saying earlier about the most critical time is from conception through preverbal development. That's where you really evolve. The more you can get back to that place in yourself that has been shut down because of the pain that almost all of us felt because no one knew how to raise kids Right. Or you can get back to that place the more energy and power and sophistication you have, ironically, and curiosity and a willingness to be I'm wrong. Okay, throw it out, start all over.
Speaker 1:Well, you have to have guts to do that, yeah that's true. That's guts and perseverance.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So do you have another project in mind for the future? What's your next project?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I was saying, you know how. I think I use myself as an example of what this work that the Institute does. I'm an example of what it would have accomplished. I don't really even hold myself responsible for what's going on now with me, because I think the deeper we go into all of this, we don't even know where we begin and where the universe is. And what is this? How did I evolve from where I came from? And I think also, as you go deeper and deeper into your own childhood and back to this period of time where I've gone back, you realize you are so much driven by epigenetics, genetics not even DNA to some degree, but epigenetics and particular, which goes back generations with other people. So what makes you make decisions? Well, are you really making these decisions fully yourself? I think what was the question? Again, I was just slipped out of my finger tip.
Speaker 1:The question was whether there were any problems that well, any mistakes that you have made, and how did you recover from them.
Speaker 2:Well, I think then you were asking do you have any other projects? Another project, right? So what I would say is A, the Institute number one, and we're about to start scaling and going much bigger because we really have realized it really works and we're kind of it's a nonprofit but we're going to probably spin off something to be a for-profit. Stay tuned. I'm starting to do more podcasts, like your podcast, and I'm finding that I'm very much a part of the trauma community and very much linking up with all of that. That's number one. Number two I'm working on a TV show, a TV series about it, that involves a family in crisis and aliens.
Speaker 1:And aliens.
Speaker 2:Aliens? Okay, we are citizens of the universe. We're not citizens of Canada or the United States. We're citizens of the universe. And who says I mean, I'm sure there's something else going. It's a massive universe, oh sure, yeah, I also work on a musical now. I'm finishing a memoir. I'm probably coming out with another book of poetry. I have an eight-year-old, I have grandkids.
Speaker 1:I have Luke, eight years old, luke.
Speaker 2:He's eight years old now, yeah, and I got to go take him to basketball lessons and basketball games, yeah, yeah. So all of those things are. I seem to be able to juggle them all, I think because you know internal family systems is an interesting has shed light a lot on what we've uncovered, to that trauma spits, the organism, the being, the psyche, and if you can get access to all the splits that are who you are, going back to the very beginning, you can juggle a lot of things. So I'm juggling a lot of things and I'm having a good time doing it like a little kid, almost like a big big toy store Buy whatever I want to, or it's all free. They just give me FAO Schwartz on Fifth Avenue and say you can have everything you want, like, ok, I'll take that, that, that, that, that, that. So I'm doing all of these things, yeah, and it's fun.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, we're going out with this movie.
Speaker 2:You know It'll be in theaters.
Speaker 2:It's between 50 and 125 cities and if you are involved in a charitable organization, reach out to us on UncharitableMoviecom, but you know hashtag UncharitableMovie, check us out and join what I think is going to be a really, really major mission that involves A after this, probably a TV series with movie stars and celebrities talking about their large charities and you know, and celebrities being in the sports world or wherever, music, whatever and then probably going back to what Dan did a long time ago, which is a gathering of people being together.
Speaker 2:I'm sort of describing it as a burning man that is on the move, that has wonderful joyful element to it, which is raising hundreds of millions of dollars, not just for one charity but for many, but, almost more importantly, raising the consciousness and lifting the hearts of the people that would take part in it. That's what Dan really learned when he did the AIDS rides, which really started all this off, which is it's the biggest thing is not not so much raising money, although it's critical, because money is energy. Finally, the biggest thing is people, connecting with people. That also brings on mental health and it's joy and it's fun. So so all of these things are sort of where I think we're headed and that's why I'm hopeful. Not that it's easy, it ain't easy but it's not impossible either, and that's the good news.
Speaker 1:So you have, you have an eight year old son, luke, right, yeah, what? What advice would you give him about life at this moment, as you have, as you have reached this stage, what are you about? 60, 73? Really Well, you look like 60 at the most, thank you, thank you, congratulations. You have done well, so okay. So here you are at 72 and almost 74, almost 74, almost 74.
Speaker 1:You have lived 74 very exciting years, very creative. What would you say to him? What kind of advice would you give him about life? I mean in, in, in, in the case that perhaps you found out God forbid that you have only you know like a week to live. So before you die, you want to give him the best advice you can. What would it be?
Speaker 2:Well, you know you, you can't help at 74. To have that thought in your mind anyway, right? So with all, with Luke and my granddaughters and my kids, it's a good question. I think I'm working on a memoir and I'm really realizing it's a lot for my loved ones. Rough memoir in many ways. There's a lot of complicated things in it, but I'm not sure this is exactly right. But there's a line that's coming to mind right now and I think it applies to Luke as it applies to my other kids. It doesn't apply to everybody, I don't think. Yes, both Maggie and Jake and Luke found me privileged.
Speaker 2:I think I have believed. First of all, you know, it's not what you say exactly is what you do. So we'll come back to what I might say. But I think it's more what you do. And I'm thinking about my grandmother, one grandmother that most of my grandparents were loony tunes but she wasn't. And she wrote some articles from McCall's magazine which I really want to find, about the importance of chaos and raising children. It's really a critical piece which at the time was not something I think you would embrace. That too, you know.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's who you want to be. Explore, be curious, Be whatever you want to be. I don't know what you should be. You have to find that out yourself. I'll be there for you as much as I can. But the thing that was coming to mind with him a little bit. I wouldn't say this to him now, quite yet, but somebody said recently there are only two ways to change the world. And yeah, we got to work on changing the world. We can't drive ourselves crazy about it. You know, I'm not interested in doing that. I'm going to play my part and I have a lot of energy, so I'm going to do what I can, but only if it's fun, really. But there are only two ways of changing the world Violence and storytelling. Who said this? I don't know. Somebody told me this thing and I just went. That's really the truth, you know, and when you see how people are swayed on the right, the left, the center, whatever it is it's the stories that are told.
Speaker 1:Well, this would be. I just want to say this would be incredibly popular right here in Stratford. Yes, of course, Of course. Storytelling is. Everything Like this is what happens every day here in the summer.
Speaker 2:And it is. It's really. It's really what it is. You know, stories have been told since campfires, caves. Stories have been told all the way along because they're about human beings, human beings behave and how maybe they can behave differently, although I think it takes generations to really bring about change.
Speaker 2:So he loves telling stories, just like Maggie and Jake, and do, yeah, but you're in that tradition, he's in that tradition. So I'd say, yeah, he likes to type away on his. Now he's already typing already, and so I'd say, tell the stories that matter to you. You know, learn the craft if you want. Yes, yes, and, and I think, and have a good time at it and don't be a misery and despair and all those kinds of things. You can't bury them, you got to bring them to the surface. But if you bring them to the surface, I believe underneath it, you really find that at the core of what we are, we're kind of being held together molecularly, quantumly, I think, by joy and love and some level, some version of that level of energy. As you look around at the universe and you go holy shit, look at this place, pretty amazing. Yes, yeah, telescope or my father.
Speaker 1:Yes, so you mentioned at the beginning, before we recorded, that there will be premieres of your film also in Canada.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. So one thing I was going to mention. You have one other project I'm working on now is called the universe sings. I'm just starting. It's a documentary about everything, has vibration to it, everything resonates, everything is sending out data and we can pick that data. Yes, we can do that too. So I'm starting, just starting. I swear I was never going to make another documentary, but here I am back again because it's just too wonderful a form.
Speaker 2:So the movie so, so, so A you can get a new to online. That's one movie. You can see all my other movies. Losing Isaiah of Twin Peaks, which I did tons and tons of movies over the years, really had a really great time. You can go to Netflix and see all my movies. Just look up Jillian Hall. Oh, wait, a minute. Look up Jillian Hall. Hmm, you're going to get Maggie and Jake. They've made more movies than me, which I'm very proud of. So look up Jillian Hall and you can just watch movies for a month.
Speaker 2:You want to see Uncharted at a theater? It starts in New York on September 21st. There'll be, hopefully, a good amount of information about it before then in the news as we start to roll it out, and then it'll be. It'll roll out across the country. So check out a theater new year near you, because I think that's the other piece of this. And going back to theaters, going back to seeing things with other people it's like going into nature. People say, oh, you should go into nature. That's a really good thing. Go into a theater, you're surrounded by nature. You're surrounded by nature that laughs, that cries with you, it eats popcorn with you that you can get mad at, that you can love, you can kiss in the theater. You can do, you can do anything you want in a theater.
Speaker 1:So you better stop before we get into a too deep discussion In terms of the premiere. Please let me know when it's premiering in Canada. I would love to attend and I would like to tell my friends about it, absolutely.
Speaker 2:We're working on it. We're working on getting it all started out. I think a major company is coming in to really release it quite extensively across Canada.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, okay. And like here in this theater town of Stratford we always say when we wish someone good luck, we say break a leg.
Speaker 2:We do that here, we do that in LA too, can you?
Speaker 1:So let me say break a leg break, Stephen. Thank you, it's so great to talk to you and I wish you tremendous success I mean, I know it's going to be a great, great success and also give my regards to Kathleen yes and Luke, who I have never met, but I seem to almost know him from talking to you.
Speaker 2:I think there's some truth in that he's. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Right right they roll away in their own directions.
Speaker 1:So let's stay in touch, Stephen, and break a leg and thank you, thank you, take care, bye, bye.