Jared Callahan Interview

Jared Callahan directed the documentary Clean Slate. This documentary is about people in recovery producing a short film, and the challenges that they faced.

What messages do you want people to take away from the documentary, Clean Slate?

I hope that Clean Slate provides information for people that are not on the road of recovery. And I hope, in seeing Cassidy and Josh's story transpire, I hope that you gain access to the hectic-ness, that you gain perspective to what they are going through. And then hopefully by the end of it, as it did for me, it really softened my heart to creating space for people who are struggling with mental health and/or on the road to recovery, because I value their journey and it makes me softer to some of their actions that might be harsh to me. As it was a difficult film to make, working with Josh and Cassidy and the men in recovery. By the end of it softened me, and I hope the film Clean Slate does the same thing for people who see it.

What types of people do you most want to see Clean Slate?

Oh, we test screened the film a lot while we were in the edit. And we know that the film has worked really well for people who are in recovery themselves, because we showed it to some recovery groups and we got word after word about, "We felt seen." I've seen that they would say, "I've seen recovery or addiction portrayed in many films and often it's Hollywood-ized or made into a thing that it's not. But this film was a really accurate portrayal."

But then we found the film really works with people who are friends or family members of people in recovery as well, because it also sees that community. And as soon as you love someone who is in recovery, it is an all the time, every day thing forever. And it's heavy.

And I feel like this film is a laugh, cry, laugh, film. It deals with that, but also shows how much fun they can have in recovery. And how as Josh the character said one time, "Well, we laughed so much because if we don't laugh we'd be crying all the time." So it's very much a both end. And so both of those groups have really resonated with the film so far.

What were the main challenges of directing Clean Slate?

Oh, man. Well, I think as you see the film, no spoilers, but I end up becoming a part of the film as a subject, and I think that happened because I was there working with men in recovery and working on helping them tell their own stories, which two of our main characters decided to do. And as I was coaching them through making a feature film that they were going to make, they realized, and the recovery center realized, that making a short film might be the right decision.

And then it became a lot, as Josh says in the trailer, "There's a reason that people don't make films in recovery because it's impossible." And that is definitely captured in the film. So by the end of the film, I am a subject in my own documentary in a way, because I was trying to be true to the wild world of residential recovery.

And the process, as anybody knows who make things, you make things, it takes a lot of work to make a book or a piece of art or a song or a movie. And both of these guys take the huge endeavor of making a short film, which takes an army anyways, and doing it while in full-time residential recovery. So it was pretty wild to, at times, be working on multiple films at a time. And that's what you would get to see in Clean Slate.

Are you pleased with the reception that Clean Slate is getting so far?

Yeah, I'm very pleased with the way the film is being received today. We got word that Clean Slate has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. So it's wild to be at a stage in life where your film can be reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes.

So yeah, we test screened the film. One test screener saw the film and came up afterwards and said, "I have a brother that's been working through addiction and recovery for the last decade and it's come to a place where we've cut him out of our lives. And I've realized through watching this film that I should forgive him, and that I'm excited to show the film to my parents because I think we should reconcile as a family." And we worked on this film for five years and there is no better reception you could ever hear from anyone than that. And I'm just, "Oh, okay." I'm just crying. "So you liked it?" It's definitely a labor of love and has taken a lot of work, but it's definitely a film worth seeing. Yeah.

Do you think that there should be more funding for arts and/or film programs so that people who may have struggles have an outlet?

Oh, most definitely. Yeah. It is part of the uphill battle of even making this film has been, we made a great film and we'd send it to people trying to do a distribution and multiple times have received the feedback, "We love the film, but you are not famous and the subjects of the film aren't famous."

And not only was there a recognition of disability or the life situation they're in or the life-controlling issue of addiction, often those things are glossed over, because in the end they're looking at the film like it's a product. How can it make them money? Which makes sense, you're running a business, that's how they do it. But if the equation comes down to, am I already famous? Do I have enough followers. Are they already famous? Well then they'd rather the subjects be not Cassidy and Josh, the amazing people who were vulnerable in this community that opened themselves up to tell the story or us who worked on the film for years.

It was just how many Twitter followers do they have and can enough easy dollars come in by them distributing our film? So that's incredibly frustrating and I'm excited for groups that do work, that help people make films that are kind of already behind the eight ball or just working on a life story that isn't conventional to what they see or a way that they see can make them quick dollar.

So that's part of what I do. I live here at Point, you could see it. I live here on a 95 acre farm, and I run People People Media Foundation that runs artist grants and a space where people can come do artist residencies together. And so you're here on a farm and you're in the Bay or the San Francisco Bay area where it's really expensive to live, but we try and undercut the unethical housing prices here and make space where artists can come and work and stay for as cheap as possible and be encouraged to do work together and to do quality work. So I'm doing my part to try and combat that head on, while I'm also an independent artist trying to look for funds to make our next film.

In your opinion, what steps could society take to make life better for addicts and people with mental health issues?

Oh, we could do an hour about that, couldn't we? I think understanding is step one. I think that's kind of how our film, Clean Slate, and making a piece of art can engage this. Obviously, there needs to be policy change. And they're working on some of that about opioids and fentanyl and addiction and companies that target people to get them hooked. And making access to help and health that doesn't come straight through prison sentences, because that a lot of times can make things worse before it makes things better.

I think with step one would be empathy and seeing addiction as a disease. If you can understand that addiction is a disease and it's not something that, "Oh well, if they just made better decisions," and we've experienced it all. And then also filmed people sharing their stories of discrimination. And once you realize that it's a life controlling disease, it would change the way we as a country handle it from policy through personal relationships and how we treat people.

Do you plan on being involved in more documentaries? And what are some of your ideas, if you don't mind?

Yeah, that's a great question. During the Pandemic we finished this film Clean Slate, and then we also have been editing a film that has been in my life for the last 14 years. It's called Sometimes I Shake. And it's about really good friend of mine who was in his late 40s, early 50s over the course of filming, and he suffered from early onset Parkinson's disease, and he was a big band jazz conductor. So he would shake all the time and it was impeding on his ability to do his job. So he filmed a bunch of what would've been a film, and then I put the footage down, and we were busy and had other lives. And over the course of the next summer he received the unfortunate additional diagnosis of ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. And so we knew that his life had a timeline and that it was going to end sooner than later and we just cried together.

And his name is Dan. Dan invited me to film the rest of his life. So we actually just finished this film as well. It's called Sometimes I Shake, and Sometimes I Shake is on Vimeo right now. So we're kind of touring around two films, Clean Slate that's been in my life for five plus years and Sometimes I Shake, which took over 14 years. And they both are coming out at the same time.

So there's a lot of work going into that and seeing how it can find its audience and do test screenings and show with people who are in those Parkinson's and ALS communities. But Sometimes I Shake is another film that I'm really proud of and people can see that film now as well.

What part of film making do you enjoy the most?

Oh man, good question. I enjoy documentary filmmaking for being able to hear people share the most true version of themselves and to be able to reflect that back to other audiences. And as a filmmaker, I learn it's a lot of listening. It's a lot of relationship. It's a lot of time in being there with someone. But my job as a documentary filmmaker is to create a safe environment where different subjects, for whatever the topic is that we're talking about or that they want to share, that they can access a really vulnerable side of themselves and share it with the camera and thus the audience.

And now I've been working just long enough, I think 10 years as a full-time filmmaker at People People Media. And I've developed a body of work enough that I can look back at and see the through line is that that safe space makes a special film when you can then edit it down and condense it in a way that is true to the audience. It's true to what they expect to receive from a documentary, but it's true to the subject and they feel seen and honored.

And I don't agree with everything that everyone does or says that I film. That's not my job. The job is to show the most true, or a version of themselves they're most proud of to the audience. And I think that's a real gift. It's been a gift to my life. It's developed me as a person. It's helped me be empathetic and develop me as a listener. And I think that those films can be entertaining access. It's like seeing Clean Slate for you. The audience is a time machine. It's a portal into a place that we would never be invited, but you can go spend 82 minutes in this world.

Apart from documentaries, are there any film genres that you enjoy directing?

Yeah, we are developing into narrative films right now, a scripted content, and we've worked for with a lot of people for a long time. We have a big list. We have some scripts that have come out of that and we are excited about some of these stories.

Two that I'm most excited about. We optioned short novella written by a friend of ours named Steven Kennedy, and the book is called Birds of Massachusetts. You could buy it online right now, Birds of Massachusetts. And it's a great two-hander story about a woman who has dementia and her young caretaker and the relationship they have with each other and how their time spent together shapes them both. It's great. It'd be beautiful. Be shot over three seasons in the coast of Massachusetts kind of film, Birds of Massachusetts.

And then another one would be, we optioned a short story that then I co-wrote into a feature script with a friend, called Rashley. If you googled it, you could probably read the short story, Rashley. We wrote a feature script and recorded it into a podcast, a 70 minute thing that we read out loud. And that's online, called Rashley, on SoundCloud. And it's great. It's fun. It's entertaining. It's unlike anything we'd ever make. And that kind of has gone well to the point where now we're shopping that story idea as a podcast. And I don't even want to tell you what it's about, because I feel like even in the logline it kind of spoils a twist. So it is a coming of age with a twist story. But you can listen to the whole thing. We'll read it to you and we performed it and added 20 songs into it. So Rashley, like the name Ashley, but she's a girl who has rashes. Rashley on SoundCloud and Birds of Massachusetts. Those are both great stories that I hope get made into feature films soon.

What other projects that you've produced are you most proud of?

Oh, man. Sometimes I Shake is really good. That's another laugh, cry, laugh. Clean Slate is great. Probably a short documentary I made that came out on the New York Times, called Saltwater Baptism. Saltwater Baptism, it's a short film that you can just Google and find that's still on the New York Times. It follows Santiago Gonzalez, who was a young man, who was working on his sexual identity, his spirituality, and his heritage identity. Like what? He's a Latinx and he was attending a small conservative Christian university. So that's a lot to handle all at once.

So I went and filmed him for the last week of his college education and it's a real fly on the wall experiential, and by the end of what turned into a 17 minute short film, I filmed it to be a feature film. But with the help of a wonderful co-director and producer, Russell Schaffer and Artless Media, we condensed it with the New York Times down to 17 minutes and it involves split screen and really wide and really close up and some narration that's kind of in his head. And it is a great film. So Saltwater Baptism, that was a free film that you can watch, and I'm really happy with the way that film turned out.

What's the most challenging aspects of being a director?

Oh man, if you're doing the whole thing, if you're at a level where you can just get hired to make other people's stuff, which you've worked to a level that you're at, that's great. Then that's hard because you're pitching to get work. But for me, I think it's trying to find funding. It's trying to get your film made. Everybody has great ideas. I mean, we have countless ideas and scripts and things we'd like to make if you could just get a check written.

And I think how much you can get people to put into your films determines how they're going to get made, who's going to be in them, who you can afford to hire, that's crew and actors. And if you have money to hire someone famous, then hire someone famous and that your film is now worth more, will be seen by more people, has a better chance of playing in larger places.

So it's doing the good work and never sitting around, like Mark Duplass has famously said, the Duplass brother said, "There's no calvary coming, right? There's no golden ticket. You don't just jump to the end." There's no skip, go, collect $200. There's no, there's none of that. It's just you've got to do the work and you got to be proud of what you're doing and you've got to have your morals and not just sell out to go work for someone who's going to pay your lot, but you don't believe in it.

But it's finding funding to continue to make work. Because at some point if you keep putting in your own money, then we would just become really expensive hobbyists. We're not professional filmmakers. So that's a hard thing that so much of your life is trying to get people to help make your films. A little bit of filmmaking and then a whole lot of talking about and getting people to see your films. As I said recently, "So much of making art is not about making art." And I think that if you're going to be a professional art maker that kind of goes with the gig.

Where can people follow you and your work?

Yeah, our website is peoplepeoplemedia.com. peoplepeoplemedia.com has all of our films listed. You can find the links to Clean Slate, Sometimes I Shake, and then Janie Makes a Play, a feature documentary I made, and then all the rest of the short films are on there. I think they're all free. So peoplepeoplemedia.com. On Instagram, I'm Jared_Cal on Instagram. And then our People People Media and People People Artist Residency are both on Instagram. So those People People Media is a great way to use the website as a hub to find everything that we've made and to get connected. I think you can even follow a newsletter that we send out probably once every six months to give an update on what we're working on and how you can see things.