Nigel Farage, HIV & A Warning From History

00:00:00: on today's episode.

00:00:01: You can come into

00:00:02: Britain from anywhere in the world and get diagnosed with HIV, and get the retroviral

00:00:07: drugs... There was a moment at Matt Nadell's

00:00:09: Oscar shortlisted documentary called Cashin' Out where- The whole sort of grotesque I'll call it arithmetic of the AIDS crisis lands in kind of single transaction.

00:00:19: It is Diane Mann selling his life insurance policy to an investor for fraction its face value.

00:00:27: He gets enough cash to live out whatever time he had left at that point, with some dignity.

00:00:32: The investor waits and when the man dies... ...the full payout lands.

00:00:37: Thousands of queer people did exactly this And a billion dollar industry grew around their deaths.

00:00:44: Matt Nadell's film has been produced for New Yorker.

00:00:47: It doesn't flinch from the moral tangle all it is not straight forward.

00:00:52: You'd like think they were just good guys or bad and then your dad's involved.

00:00:57: It's a film about what happens when the state abandons people so completely that free market steps in, it builds up business model out of them dying.

00:01:07: And if you think political indifference to HIV belongs into the nineteen eighties You haven't been listening to whats being going on in Britain recently.

00:01:15: In a reform rally in April Nigel Farage doubled down onto position he first outlined When he called for asylum seekers living with HIV to be banned from seeking treatment under the NHS, they'd just stopped treating them.

00:01:29: Here's a fact and I'm sure that other people will be mortified if i dare talk about it There are seven thousand diagnoses in this country every year For people who're HIV positive Which is not good place for any of them to be but I know.

00:01:44: But sixty percent of them

00:01:46: Are NOT

00:01:47: British Nationals.

00:01:48: You can come into Britain From anywhere on the world and get diagnosed with HIV, And get the retroviral drugs that cost up to twenty five thousand pounds per year per patient.

00:01:58: I know there are some horrible things

00:01:59: happening.".

00:02:00: His Scottish leader at Lord Offord backed it out with a handful of anecdotes from a single GP... ...and some cost figures that fell apart under the slightest bit of scrutiny.

00:02:09: He said this is national health service not an international health service.

00:02:14: The reality that he doesn't really understand or seem to care about is the UK is closer than any country in the whole world to eradicating HIV transmissions.

00:02:24: I think we can impart, thank God why it's treating for that?

00:02:27: I won't repeat that We've done without a vaccine and without a cure because we treat everybody who needs it Now...that isn't sentimentality That's epidemiology!

00:02:39: A person on effective HIV treatment just can't pass the virus, it's not possible.

00:02:49: And what makes the story of cashing out this Oscar-nominated documentary so urgently current?

00:02:56: is the signal under a reform government that lives are people with HIV would once again become a line item to be weighed against their political headwinds.

00:03:05: We've been here before.

00:03:06: The queer community has buried enough.

00:03:09: people know exactly where that road leads Which I wanted to speak to Matt at home in New York about this film, his Oscar nomination is father and the people who had to sell their own deaths.

00:03:33: Sex.

00:03:33: Fating apps have become a breeding ground for the worst of human behaviours.

00:03:39: What do you want to help me with?

00:03:41: We get together and we... Be simple, be simple!

00:03:45: Be simple

00:03:45: from beginning.

00:03:46: He will like go nosh himself

00:03:47: off.

00:03:49: This is

00:03:49: Outcast

00:03:50: World At map.

00:03:54: first of all congratulations on being shortlisted For an Oscar.

00:03:59: that's huge achievement Especially if I film this isn't it?

00:04:02: Thank

00:04:02: You.

00:04:02: Yes i am.

00:04:03: I tend to think so too.

00:04:05: For those who don't know, caching out is a documentary about an insurance system that allows investors to profit from the deaths of people with HIV and AIDS in the US in the nineteen eighties and nineties And About The Human Cost Of A Society Where Illness So Often Means Financial Ruin As Well.

00:04:28: Given All That Matt Why Did You Decide To Make This Film?

00:04:36: Well, the reason I made the film has changed over the course of working on it.

00:04:44: Um...I started making a film for very particular reasons which was that discovered i had personal connection to subject matter and never heard this strange industry before.

00:05:01: but in twenty-twenty I was on a walk one day with my dad, because this is when we were sort of thinking about the possibility for COVID.

00:05:15: We hadn't seen one actually introduced yet and i said to my Dad offhand you know...I obviously really want them develop a vaccine but can help.

00:05:23: it feel weird that these executives at pharmaceutical companies are going make all bankrupted a lot of my friends and devastated so many people.

00:05:35: And, um... where people with AIDS, primarily gay men who had been given six months or a year two years to live could sell their life insurance policies to investors.

00:06:15: You know get say fifty sixty seventy percent of the own death benefit To use upfront while they're still alive and when they die The investor makes the rest as a profit.

00:06:27: And he told me that he was one of those investors meaning Childhood was in part bankrolled by gay men dying of AIDS Which is especially horrifying to me as a gay man and It sent me into a total spiral As I'm sure you can imagine.

00:06:49: Yeah, so that's why I started making the film But as I went through the process of making it which I'll show get into my sort-of purpose It changed a bit as I began meeting people whose lives had been shaped in some way by this industry, who'd survived this horrifying time.

00:07:08: And has the political realities of United States changed with the return of Trump to power and the horrifying abandonment that we're seeing by our government on health care needs for Americans right now?

00:07:22: They just felt like you know... This thing it started as document family secret end-of history became something different before my

00:07:32: eyes.

00:07:33: So it sounds like there was probably talking to your father, that the... That was a kind of moment where this stopped being like a piece of research and it became some thing personal in many ways you had to confront.

00:07:46: I mean This is-this Is The Most Personal Of Stories To You Isn't It?

00:07:49: And complex

00:07:51: Absolutely Yeah!

00:07:53: And so hard because y'know i'm..I think of myself as sort of standing on the shoulders the activists of that era.

00:08:02: I mean, there are so many wins political winds from that era That Are The Basis For My Life?

00:08:14: I take prep every morning to keep myself healthy-that wouldn't be possible without their activism.

00:08:21: but also There's a level Of Recognition A Level Of Social Justice That Was Won By The Activists In That Era Saying Like queer people will not be relegated to the margins.

00:08:35: We're having a real problem.

00:08:37: I need to really pay attention

00:08:38: too.".

00:08:39: So, yeah!

00:08:41: To think of myself as standing on their shoulders and then to learn that in some ways my life or my childhood had depended upon those very people dying was... Yeah it you know, kind of.

00:08:58: the only way to begin to process it was just start making a movie I guess.

00:09:03: So

00:09:03: on paper when i-when I was reading about The Premise Of Your Film... ...I thought I was immediately gonna be disgusted that this is an industry.

00:09:13: but after watching it all.. ..I was left with a much different take On This

00:09:21: Viatical

00:09:22: Settlements Industry.

00:09:25: Your first instance is to think this is outrageous, but in the context of just the system it exists.

00:09:31: It's much more I think nuanced than that sometimes isn't?

00:09:35: For people coming into this cold could you explain how this sort of viatical settlement system worked?

00:09:43: Yes So The First premise Is Somebody Had a life insurance policy In the US, that typically happens from your job.

00:09:57: We get our health insurance from our jobs and our jobs also provide us a set of other benefits.

00:10:03: one of them sometimes oftentimes is life insurance.

00:10:08: So you have a life insurance policy And then You Get Sick?

00:10:13: The doctor tells you to live for two years.

00:10:18: so there are lots people who You know enter real financial ruin after getting a diagnosis like that.

00:10:25: They were too sick to work so they lost their jobs.

00:10:28: or Maybe they did keep working, but the cost of medication Or other costs associated with the illness more we're too much to bear.

00:10:37: or maybe you know Their survival needs were met But they were told that they had a year two years to live and they wanted to go on That big vacation.

00:10:44: they want it get that dream house whatever It was.

00:10:46: there were financial Needs and desires.

00:10:51: So this industry emerges where you can sell your life insurance policy to an investor.

00:10:58: They'll give you a cut of it.

00:10:59: To use while you're alive quick upfront cash And they're making a bet that you're gonna die soon enough and when you died, they will collect the full policy.

00:11:11: so set You know say I have a year to live in one hundred thousand dollar life insurance Policy.

00:11:15: maybe an investor gives me sixty thousand dollars right now I can go on that vacation or pay my rent, or buy medication.

00:11:23: I die in a year.

00:11:25: the investor makes the other forty thousand dollars as profit less.

00:11:29: you know they had to pay to keep the policy enforced

00:11:32: and this was money That would have gone to their next of kin which often i'm imagining They're no longer in touch with.

00:11:39: for a lot people In

00:11:40: that era.

00:11:41: yeah Yeah A lot Of People You Know It's not queer people have always had less traditional family structures.

00:11:51: So this idea of a next-of-kind also is hard to even think about in this moment, I mean lots of people would've maybe left the money too their lovers but those lovers were sick too.

00:12:02: Lots.

00:12:02: sometimes you will be rejected by there families.

00:12:04: so why am i gonna leave it to mom or dad or brother or sister who doesn't want talk me?

00:12:11: This way for bring value with policy back myself.

00:12:17: How important, because we've just talked there about how it was the only way some people could pay medical bills cover rent or live without constant panic.

00:12:24: Some people what on the streets until they weren't so that were obvious upsides to this?

00:12:44: Yeah, yeah.

00:12:48: I mean i have to say I was initially sort of resistant To this nuance that you're alluding too?

00:13:15: Our social safety net is so frayed.

00:13:17: I mean, we'll start with health care right?

00:13:20: It's a catch-twenty two to have health insurance you need to have a job and To Have A Job You Need To Be Well Enough To Work Which Is To Say You Have To Be well enough To Afford To Get Sick it So Backward.

00:13:33: Yes There Are Other Ways Of Getting Health Insurance If You are Disabled Or.

00:13:37: But We Don't Have A Universal Or Public Healthcare System In The Way Other Countries Do.

00:13:43: And our social safety net is a really lackluster.

00:13:45: Like, you know... You can be terminally ill and there are basic needs that there's no institution set up to help you meet.

00:13:55: so in that context if somebody says look!

00:14:02: ...you have this asset of life insurance policy That isn't doing any good when your alive.. ..and its gonna go people who have disowned you

00:14:12: or

00:14:12: it could present some value to you right now, it's hard just sort of cross your arms morally and look at that.

00:14:21: And say like well they should have said no oh how exploitative when the alternative Like You Said was destitution.

00:14:29: so there were people who got real benefit out Of this industry Who we're able To meet those survival needs?

00:14:35: Who We are able to realize dreams That They had in their final months.

00:14:41: You know, that disgust I felt initially is valid but perhaps a bit misplaced.

00:14:49: The disgust i feel now...I guess..is less at the industry and more as system.

00:14:56: they created conditions for the industry you know?

00:14:58: More of country where every man has to take out in advance on your own death.

00:15:11: the US were set up in such a way that there wouldn't have been

00:15:23: The developed world, there is a healthcare system and some sort of security.

00:15:30: And except for the mother-of-democracy apparently where that there's nothing... There was a health care market?

00:15:35: I think this

00:15:37: as

00:15:37: well.

00:15:38: telling those story of people who are survivors of AIDS….

00:15:41: …I was in tears from when your film started all the way through A beautiful piece of work.

00:15:48: But it such an American Story isn't It?

00:15:52: Yes!

00:15:54: You're right This industry did not take off in Europe, and most other countries.

00:16:00: It was a very American phenomenon.

00:16:03: You know the industry existed in other places But as sort of financial tool.

00:16:11: you know.

00:16:11: Oh somebody who already has a lot of money Who maybe wants to move it around through some new?

00:16:18: Financial sneakiness.

00:16:20: but The thing we're describing meeting survival needs that is an American phenomenon.

00:16:27: It's so... And when I talked at the beginning of our conversation about The Purpose Of The Peace Evolving, That sort of what i began to notice like this Is a reflection of the kind of fundamental paradox of America which Like you said it's the mother of democracy in the richest country In the world and yet A country where everybody has To be So scrappy even with their own survival.

00:16:56: And you know, this is a an American solution to an American problem.

00:17:03: You know it's trying to use the market To hack dignity out of a market that's not designed to give it to you.

00:17:11: and I you Know i hope in some ways That people Walk away from The film Understanding the human and moral cost of unchecked capitalism, that this is how people are forced to spend their time and brainpower even at the very end just to have there needs met.

00:17:31: That's not

00:17:32: justice.".

00:17:32: No

00:17:33: no I feel like in the center of this film as well.

00:17:36: has it been a great piece of work?

00:17:38: It also kind your own reckoning isn't it?

00:17:41: The discovery you're father had invested into these policies for the right reasons by investments in these policies.

00:17:55: Did you find yourself, with it being your

00:17:59: father one of the critical

00:18:00: people and I'm left kind of liking your dad?

00:18:04: And I can understand why he would make them decisions in the context that society wasn't doing for wrong reasons as I felt as a viewer.

00:18:12: but did you found yourself wanting to defend him then having to sit?

00:18:17: what instinct may be revealed?

00:18:19: It

00:18:19: was such a good question.

00:18:26: I first wanted to roast him.

00:18:29: I'll bet, yeah!

00:18:30: Like my... My first instinct when just started the project is like how dare you?

00:18:36: Why what are you

00:18:37: doing?!

00:18:39: What are you talking

00:18:40: about!?

00:18:41: You know.

00:18:42: and then as i got deeper into it And had people like Scott & Sean two of the stars in the movie talked to me about the value that this had brought into their lives and How badly they needed it?

00:18:55: And how badly so many people.

00:18:56: They loved needed it.

00:18:58: then I started feeling like oh Shit, maybe my dad actually did do something good here and Maybe I need to cut him some slack.

00:19:07: It was a hard line-to-toe Especially because I love them because he's my Dad.

00:19:12: you know i didn't want to let him off easy.

00:19:16: You Know This Was A I think a really important line of inquiry.

00:19:21: But what helped is that my dad was game for that inquiry, he was not resistant to the line of questioning That i wanted to pursue and He also wasn't...he didn't have any kind Of um..He didn't want to control The conclusion that I reached about this?

00:19:41: He sort of Was willing To put it all out there And say look you're gonna land on This wherever You land On It but I know what this did for people.

00:19:48: I was there, I was on the phone with people...I was hearing What This Did and you know.

00:19:54: yes your my son but if you're a good documentary filmmaker You're gonna probably get to this too.

00:19:58: so yeah The process also just gave me So much respect For the genuine bravery that People have when they volunteer To be in a documentary.

00:20:11: And here i Was like.

00:20:13: This is my dad, like I have a vested interest in being balanced and fair toward him.

00:20:19: And you know... ...I can only imagine how hard it would be to put your story into the hands of somebody who don't trust as much as your son.

00:20:29: Of course!

00:20:30: Yeah yeah In many ways your Dad's an asset in this film.

00:20:33: he gives you An insight- I don't think that you'd've got that insight at not being your Dad.

00:20:37: How many of them investors will just come on and chat with?

00:20:43: No.. I include some archive in the film of a couple who invested and these policies, many of them.

00:20:52: And then none of the people whose life insurance policies they bought died... I saw that.

00:20:57: ...and went on TV news raging so angry filed a lawsuit.

00:21:04: you know?

00:21:05: That footage ages very poorly.

00:21:12: it really looks like Well, well to do straight couple angry that people didn't die on time for their retirement account.

00:21:20: To fill out you know like they're just yikes.

00:21:23: You know and I was in way?

00:21:25: I was glad That They Had the audacity to say it then because did not

00:21:32: make all makes sense to you.

00:21:33: than at that point though when you saw that Did.

00:21:35: there is that moment where the moral logic of the system becomes clearest.

00:21:39: i feel Like It isn't some ways peace.

00:21:41: People are Not dying.

00:21:45: I think that's right.

00:21:48: You know, you can put this in shiny humanitarian wrapping paper but how do you respond when your investment does not pay off?

00:22:01: Are you going to take the risk we took and at least people are living or did something good here?

00:22:10: I don't want to paint with too broad a brush.

00:22:18: There were different kinds of investors.

00:22:20: some investors, i think sort of saw this innovation in treatment for HIV Saw the life expectancy is extending and said sort of look every investment carries risk?

00:22:33: I'm glad we're able to help these people.

00:22:35: I'm not going to bother them anymore.

00:22:37: I'm gonna sort of Forfeit this investment.

00:22:42: But there are other people who didn't And I think in some cases You know, like this couple that went on TV.

00:22:48: They had invested their whole retirement in these policies.

00:22:51: I mean That's just a bad investment decision.

00:22:55: Don't put everything into one type of investment Like you know...I think they're mad at themselves!

00:23:02: They made really bad investments and then they are trying to blame some gay guys for living.

00:23:06: Sorry thats your fault.

00:23:08: Did that kind change?

00:23:10: how do feel about the word investment?

00:23:14: It takes that word and does something else with it, doesn't?

00:23:20: Good question.

00:23:22: I mean... Yes!

00:23:31: Well..it just made me feel like its really hard for things to be sort of about money.

00:23:47: They're either about money or they are not about money.

00:23:50: And again this industry had a humanitarian veneer.

00:23:56: I think there are some people who entered it not really thinking about the money.

00:24:01: They were like, look if i made a profit lovely but i'm doing this to help some people.

00:24:06: and there are people who said that they're going for money Like its nineteen ninety two And gay peopl dying of AIDS is pretty sure bet?

00:24:16: But those people was about money.

00:24:20: You can't be like oh im doing this fifty percent about money and fifty percent for humanitarian reasons.

00:24:27: I think money is a sort of poisoning force, in a way.

00:24:31: And if you start doing something kind-of for money that very quickly becomes the working logic.

00:24:39: Watching this now in an era of public fury at insurance companies and growing anger about healthcare inequality in the US... The film feels uncomfortably current at times.

00:24:53: So do you think Cashinout helps explain why healthcare in America produces so much fear, rage and moral confusion?

00:25:04: I hope it helps to explain that.

00:25:11: Our government and our health care system have done a very good job of making things seem like this order is inevitable or natural.

00:25:21: Oh, well of course it's complicated.

00:25:23: It is so expensive to provide for people health care and I just... My hope that cashing out lays very plainly what was happening which the American healthcare system treats human lives as either profit generators or profit saboteurs.

00:25:45: And That arrangement First of all, does not lead to the best health outcomes for people.

00:25:53: But second of all it means that some people are haves in this system and some have knots Scott & Sean or two I mentioned who were able benefit from the viadical settlement industry because they had life insurance policies to sell Because capitalism has sort-of deemed their lives sufficiently valuable, but my film also includes somebody named DeeDee Shambly who's a black trans woman in Atlanta.

00:26:18: Who had been working as a sex worker and because of that she didn't have a life insurance policy to sell.

00:26:24: so this whole moral question was inaccessible to her.

00:26:28: And This idea that she wasn't sort of eligible for this kind of dignity Because her life was not assigned the right type of capitalist value is really disturbing to me and I think should be disturbing to everyone.

00:26:48: So yes, I hope Cashing Out helps explain the fury, helps explain anger and just lay bare the logic of our healthcare system in our social safety net in America which has a logic for profit but not care.

00:27:04: The film was made with New Yorker an incredible partnership.

00:27:09: Do you feel that platform gave audiences a bit of blue tick to help elevate the documentary as opposed just doing everything on your own?

00:27:24: Definitely.

00:27:26: I think there is a legitimizing force there, y'know... ...I want film to feel in some ways like a long-form New Yorker story Like it's not making It's not trying to make you think or feel one thing, but it's taking on a sort of winding intellectual moral journey and giving you the tools to make your own broader assessments.

00:27:51: And I think when you start a film and it starts with The New Yorker logo there is a way that you sit up in your seat like okay this will bring me kind-of a journey...it'll ask me to think deeply!

00:28:10: Um, and I also think the film it's kind of a big ask.

00:28:18: I'm asking people to think about some heavy, heavy stuff And i think in some ways what The New Yorkers logo an affiliation do is signal To People look this isn't going to be An easy forty minutes but It's worth your time.

00:28:32: um This Is A queer arts culture sometimes bit political as a podcast and your work set, I think family in that lineage.

00:28:42: In twenty-twenty three you made cans can't stand following black trans women challenging Louisiana's crimes against nature by solicitation law.

00:28:51: um what would you say connected cashing out to that?

00:28:55: And also just a touch on something you were saying uh be i don't know if we got it at the start of the interview.

00:29:01: um The word you're doing now kind of ad hoc one needs I don't know how to describe it, immigration crackdown doesn't even do justice.

00:29:13: The secret police going door-to-door and carting people off with masks over their faces... What is the thing that connects all of this work?

00:29:25: Good question!

00:29:31: I'm interested in stories about how people survive when very powerful institutions are conspiring against them.

00:29:42: How do people band together and develop these sort of creative strategies to get around these powerful forces of destruction?

00:29:57: You know, what's happening on the ground right now in the US with this Yeah immigration crackdown or whatever you want to call it.

00:30:06: It's horrifying And we're seeing an incredibly incredibly inspiring degree of organizing, coordination and response.

00:30:22: In my storytelling I look for accountability to tell stories about justice or injustice but also I look at the story of hope in humanity not from things going well.

00:30:44: There's so much they can take from us, but they cannot take our humanity and They cannot take the inconceivable power that exists when we come together around something.

00:31:00: And I've seen in this moment in the US The first instance of that in quite a while where When you see somebody executed in the street for exercising their right to protest, the disappearance and abuse of neighbors that crosses a line for a lot of people.

00:31:24: And there is space for everyone in the response to that.

00:31:27: like you don't have to be an activist quote unquote You don't need To Be A Front Lines Person!

00:31:32: You Don't Need To Be An Organizer Like...You Can Be A Mutual Aid Person?

00:31:36: You can Be Baking Cookies Or Making Food For The People Who Are On The Protest Lines.

00:31:43: You can be a designer of the protest signs.

00:31:46: There are all these ways, whatever your skill set is or what ever you're disposition is there's way to plug yourself into movement and response in this moment?

00:31:55: And we see that happen like theres sex shop in Minneapolis.

00:31:58: thats become a hub for mutual aid.

00:32:01: people coming their basic necessities because they afraid go store.

00:32:07: We're seeing people come together in unlikely ways, form unlikely coalitions and actually lean on each other as community.

00:32:15: So you know that film Can't Stand That You Mentioned?

00:32:18: Yes it's about this horrible Louisiana law but also how a group of very disempowered black trans women have come together formed collective power to oppose the horrible laws used for putting them down.

00:32:34: Yeah, I mean to the extent that you can put any sort of like unifying logic on my work.

00:32:42: I think it's that i'm interested in how people come together and find creative genius ways to survive when the systems that are set up to hurt them or working at full force.

00:32:59: filmmaking is an art form isn't.

00:33:01: And do you think that there is a space in art and culture, uh...in this moment?

00:33:08: In America.

00:33:11: I think there has to be!

00:33:17: You know..I think about AIDS history.

00:33:20: obviously some people say the AIDS movement was the last successful social movement at least in U.S.

00:33:31: Why?

00:33:31: because it got resolved.

00:33:33: things are better than they were.

00:33:34: Everyone's not dying

00:33:35: anymore.

00:33:35: Yeah, I think so.

00:33:37: and there was an incredible degree of coordination And organizing over a disparate group?

00:33:43: I mean yes HIV it was sounding that was affecting queer people But it was also effecting drug users and it was affecting hemophiliacs.

00:33:49: and you know There is a way that these end within the Queer community as we know like The there's a lot of they can be discord.

00:33:56: i mean They're are the leather-jacketed act up white gay men.

00:34:00: but there was Also huge epidemic HIV among black and brown people, especially in the American South.

00:34:07: And so how can those groups come together around a shared goal?

00:34:10: Anyway part of that movement was A collective called Grand Fury which was a group of artists making The striking visual material.

00:34:20: That was the ammunition for act ups political you know public opinion fight.

00:34:27: I think Art is what can bring us back to the kind fundamental humanity that is offended by what's happening right now.

00:34:40: And I think, that's part of what fascist governments want to do—is sort-of alienate us from that humanity at our core and drown it out.

00:34:55: so we forget to be outraged?

00:34:58: We forget how to feel the deep offense of what's going on, and I think art has a way of just snapping us back into that.

00:35:10: All kinds of art are not just saying protest signs or not just say AIDS history movies.

00:35:15: but if you can make somebody feel again all the other feelings floodback...I mean i'm a movie watcher- I love movies!

00:35:25: And often find myself going to the movies and crying..I cry at like almost every movie

00:35:33: Same

00:35:34: And yes, I'm crying about the movie.

00:35:37: But it's like... The movie has opened up this space for me to cry over whatever I needed to

00:35:40: cry about.

00:35:42: Yes and that is a space art can open for people.

00:35:45: Like get people crying again Get people laughing again Get them in the same room Again.

00:35:52: It brings us back To part of ourselves That feels And they could get numb too easily.

00:36:01: Totally agree Matt, finally what's next?

00:36:05: Can we expect to see some of your more recent work anytime soon?

00:36:08: or is that kind

00:36:20: an author who was credited and lauded for a while as the, quote father of The Gay Rights Movement until just a few years before Stonewall when he unexpectedly embraced conversion therapy.

00:36:47: And betrayed the movement that he had helped to create.

00:36:51: And the film sort of tries to figure out what happened to him through their perspective with his only son is now in.

00:36:57: So that's sort of a, and it's really... I mean i don't want to spoil it but It's really a story about Sort-of how movements evolve And what we do with The kind of imperfect drafts That We work through as we get To Kind the version Of things that feels most right.

00:37:27: brilliance to imagine a better world, but did not have the courage to live in it himself.

00:37:34: He was born in nineteen thirteen and there were all these ideas he had internalized about what it means to be gay that you know.

00:37:42: It's hard to shake that stuff off.

00:37:43: So this day

00:37:44: people

00:37:44: are still doing that

00:37:45: aren't they?

00:37:47: Yeah That I think...it is another challenging watch that i hope says something important where the gay community sits right now and where we can work.

00:37:59: And yeah, I mean...I also have some interesting other work coming or at least i think it's interesting about others sort of unlikely forms of survival in resistance you know?

00:38:11: I'm interested not across-the-board as a gay man obviously gravitate toward queer stories but there are so many fascinating ways that disempowered people grab their agency And I have a couple stories about that bubbling

00:38:29: right

00:38:41: now.