ASM172 At the End of the Day

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[Music] well hello my friends it is me science mike i'm the host of this podcast if you're new to the program this is going to be an interesting episode to start out on um ask like mike is a a podcast where in theory i answer questions about science faith in life sometimes though i interview people last week i introduced my wife jennifer mccarg and uh this week i'm doing another interview with my friend kevin o'brien kevin's been a friend of mine for years and he's got a film coming out today called at the end of the day and i hope as the interview unfolds it will be clear to you why i'm doing an entire episode about a film made by a friend of mine but i just want to tell you that this film is really something special and uh and i wouldn't be taking the time out of your day for you to hear about it if i didn't think that this was a film that you would be interested in that you might find beautiful and that might change your life in some way so we'll get to my interview with kevin in just a second but before we do i want to let you know that this week something special is going to happen for patrons of ask science mike and the liturgist podcast we are going to release pre-sale tickets to our upcoming liturgist tour which will be me and michael gunger on the road for a tour called tabs and wafers now there's going to be more information coming in the future and of course those tickets will go on sale for the public as well but this week those tickets will be available for pre-sale only for patrons of ask science mike and the liturgist podcast so if you're a patron of this show really watch your email inbox or check the patreon app because you're going to get a chance to uh secure your spot at our upcoming tour before anybody else has that opportunity and with that uh here is my conversation with my dear friend kevin o'brien about his film at the end of the day well holy cow it's kevin frickin o'brien what's up that's how i like to be introduced all the time thanks for following the notes i mean yeah that's what i got your contract writer for an appearance was uh kevin frickin o'brien yeah dude how are you i am i am fantastic i'm thrilled are you kidding me this is like a pretty big thing um yeah i i guess i don't know like what to think like i'm crazy excited but then i'm also like uh you know what i'm talking about you i don't know you've had a thing i know this is a big day for you yes yeah that's um yep so why is today a big day for kevin o'brien uh my my uh first feature film is released on itunes amazon google play all those digital platforms so like anyone can watch it now and tell me what they think uh so that'll be that'll be that'll be fun no it's it's uh i mean it's a thing that i've been working on in five years this movie um almost exactly five years from the time i committed to like i'm gonna make a feature film uh every day i'm gonna take a small step towards doing that and yeah it's it's finally here and out in the world and i'm i'm crazy excited it feels like and i could be very wrong here i mean you know me but yeah you're wrong i feel like we've known each other in somewhat like that neighborhood of time like a five year kind of thing am i crazy you're not crazy uh i actually my first uh email to you was to ask you other than i'm sure i emailed you before saying uh yeah actually my first my first communication to you was like a tweet to you after the first five episodes of science mike and i was yelling at you why are there only five episodes besides mike i need more um but that was back you know when you were actually like answering questions and stuff in your podcast and so uh my son my son would listen to the podcast with me and he loved it he was really into science and stuff um so yeah that was our first thing and then our real communication i think started when i asked you if i could use one of the stories you told on the liturgists podcast in the film in the script um and uh you were like yes but just know that i'm going to use this story a lot uh too so it's not like it's exclusive or anything and then uh funny stories that's actually that's the first scene that we cut we are cutting the film but i i hold that as i hold that as like a a super imp like that's how we connected ultimately initially yeah and then i would make a couple of short films every so often that were really inspired by uh stuff you and michael would say on the liturgists uh some stuff about dualistic thinking and some short films on that and i think that's how you saw my work as a filmmaker and then we really connected when your book was coming out and we did a book trailer for you and um yeah we hung out that weekend and i think our kids became besties and we came we became great friends it was literally besties like my kids when we left florida the thing they were most torn up about i think was moving away from y'all which is funny because lakeland and tallahassee aren't very close they're not close it's like it's like a like a like a solid day trip just to get down there um yeah but now i mean we've you've drastically decreased the possibilities of that happening i mean the way i feel about it now the flight to lakeland from la it's comparable to driving from tallahassee to lakeland i mean it's about the same uh that's actually except when you you know consider cost and things like cost is always a consideration five whatever five people back and forth my point is whatever time is not the problem time is not the problem no um yeah those those trailers man by the way i i still use them for everything people like we need video of you i was like well i have this this one set a video with me that i like they're like oh he has a speaking event uh no it's book trailers it's me sitting in an empty room talking to nobody uh yeah i mean it was really hard to do those because you know i would just ask you questions and let you talk so um which i can do for a while you can do for a while i think the editing was the the toughest part i was like which of these 20 20 videos do you want to use mike and i think the answer was we just used all of them just use all of them yes releasing videos yeah uh so it's been amazing to watch what you can do with the creative project when not hampered by my involvement [Laughter] oh gosh man at the end of the day is a beautiful film i um i was i was surprised kind of how no okay that's fair that's a fair response my pause there that was a bad pause what i mean okay it's okay i was surprised like how weepy i got uh towards the end of the film my favorite thing is making people cry i love making people cry well and that's not i don't say that like cynically like i i uh i think for for me my like that i say that a lot about my filmmaking and i say that because i know that when i like i i make most of the change in my life when i am in an emotional state of um you know exposure and vulnerability and i feel like that's what i want to do with my films is help people to to rethink about things and examine things and change things in their life so i i think when you make people cry you're you're at least moving them in some way to to rethink thing or you know see something from a different perspective so i'm glad i made you cry but well thanks for clarifying it'll be helpful for everyone to understand why i cried uh would you mind telling science mike listeners just like like what is this film about what you know let's start there okay uh well you surprised did you say the name i don't even know if you said the name i asked at the end of the day all right so yeah by the way at the end of the day i just like this podcast episode that's helpful i didn't find out until later like much later in the process that at the end of the day is ranked as like the number one most annoying phrase in the english language so that's uh that's a word a notch that's an award we can win um no so it's a it's a dramatic comedy and it uh like lives in the tension between the evangelical church and the lgbtq community um specifically kind of discussing and exploring the uh the lgbt youth who are facing religious rejection and the outcomes of that um the actual story is about a guy named dave a conservative christian professor who finds himself planted in a gay support group to undermine their opening of an lgbt youth shelter in their small town uh and so it sounds uh it sounds i feel like it sounds more problematic than it actually is i was really like pleased with how you handled that um awesome because there's so many media narratives with the like undercover i'm not really gay thing that are super problematic yeah but in this film um and i i don't want to spoil anything but uh he never actually tries to intentionally make someone think he's gay he basically gets like caught up in a conversation that went wrong and then just kind of stuck there yeah yeah he uh he allows that to go through it doesn't clarify yeah things um yeah and so um that that's what it's about it's uh hopefully i mean again i hope it hopefully it moves people uh but also moves them in laughter as well i mean it's class i classify it as a dramatic comedy which is i feel like the comedy is always the scarier and harder part yeah i guess i've always thought like maybe because i like laughing more that comedy would be easier you are easy laugh uh which i really really appreciate i have a lot of friends who are comedians and i'm starting to think it's just because like laugh is a drug for them and i'm just a good dealer but i was it is truly if you want to feel good about yourself as a comedian be friends with mike exactly because i think everything is hilarious including this film and i guess that's i guess that's my point the comedy i expected do you see what i mean like when i watched the trailer kind of how it was cut the the the personality and the style that comes across i'm like okay fascinating to make a comma comedy about this this particular topic uh and then i watched the film i was like oh oh okay well trailers are hard man trailers uh really actually suck putting together you know taking this taking this whole story that's an hour and 40 minutes and trying to you know the whole tension of i mean i hate watching trailers in general if i'm at a movie theater and there's a movie i know i'm gonna see i me and my son came in we put our ears and fingers in our ears and we like make noises and close our eyes so we can't hear or see anything i'd hate giving anything away but then when you're trying to sell something you have to make a trailer and you have to try to convey you know something about it to engage people but then also leave obviously not not give everything away and then with it with a thing like this with a story that uh that anyone who sees it will probably have some sort of issue with it um you know trying to do it in a way that that will entice people to see instead of just say like oh i know what that is i'm not even gonna watch it uh that's a tough thing so let's let's stop there for a second and think um you know as you're cutting together a trailer and representing a story that's kind of at the intersection of conservative evangelicalism maybe even some fundamentalism and lgbtq youth uh one of the the first and i imagine most difficult choices that you faced as a filmmaker was creating a story in that setting where the protagonist is a straight man who i'm assuming based on the film's context begins the film uh as like an evangelical um yeah yeah how what was that process like and how did you how did you end up with that decision uh well i i definitely landed on um that that tension first you know i definitely landed on the idea of of exploring this conversation church lgbt thing and that's definitely out of my own faith shift over the years and and learning myself i grew up uh much like you did not baptist uh we were a pentecostal we were assemblies of god so uh we had more fun than you guys did i'm not even gonna debate that you absolutely had more fun than we did um but uh i mean i feel like the same under you know the same uh spiritual trauma is there um so so my and my wife theresa is our journey like exploring that based on uh which started a lot with our relationship with our kids and as we thought about what uh what does this look like what would it look like in our family if one of our kids came out as anything other than heteronormative like what does that look like for us that's what really kept us going uh and and re-examining our faith on uh lgbtq theology and which i mean exploded into all of all of god or whatever that is um but so so i knew that that tension was something that could be talked about and hadn't been done quite in this style or this voice or this perspective or this way you know there's there's a lot of really good uh and really powerful documentaries about it there's a lot especially uh lately a lot of very very emotional and intense um and powerful dramas narrative dramas about that um but there wasn't anything quite like this i felt like from from someone who's grown up and a straight guy who's grown up in an evangelical church and had a faith shift so yeah so that's where that's where i kind of landed my first couple tries that like a story about this were much more melodramatic and very serious and i'm so glad those didn't really work out um and you know somewhere along the way i realized that comedy and is a it's great a great disarmer and that would be a great way in to let people relax a little bit and then uh kind of you know hit people with some truth i think and and some heartbreak um and so that's where we like i was just you know what's the what's the worst kind of guy that would be end up in a gay support group part of that part of that came from my wife and i joining a local p flag group uh here in lakeland in port county in central florida and just seeing the amazing community that was there that for us many ways replaced our church um as far as community and seeing the the love and relationships there that's really what kind of inspired it in other words like dave the main character kind of experiencing this love that he's like heard about in church and in uh you know bible school and and his counseling and all that heard about all of that his whole life uh but he actually experiences it in a place that he did not expect to that he was told actually wasn't possible that's kind of the crux of it um that's kind of something i took from the film um is that there is definitely energy put into support and solidarity for the lgbt community but a big thrust of the film is this transformation narrative that kind of helps a viewer especially a straight viewer uh wrangle and wrestle with their understanding and their views um on human sexuality and and sin and theology and that's something we tried to do in the liturgist podcast with episode 20 like the that show's primary um construction and arc was for straight viewers to or straight listeners in that case to kind of re-examine what they think and why and as i watched the film i couldn't i couldn't help but like i had this like wish this almost dream i could just see kind of affirming christians and their parents or their their friends having dinner and then watching this film and then having some conversations which is not to say that i'm not i'm not saying this comes across or is um like propaganda or marketing it is primarily a film but i think that really great art um like art at its best challenges something about our assumptions and something about the way we see the world and you faced a really difficult needle to kind of thread here to make a film that like isn't blatantly offensive to to queer people but that also is accessible to unaffirming evangelicals i mean that is that is quite the uh quite the mandate in a piece of media and i just thought you did a masterful job uh working that tension and and inviting a skeptical viewer uh into a viewing and into an experience um i was i was really blown away man thanks uh that really that really means a lot that's i mean that's definitely what i was going for i i feel like we have yet to see how how skeptical of a person we can get to uh be moved but you know i don't know uh so far all the screenings have been at festivals or here locally in lakeland where i mean in lakeland we're pretty conservative uh town in a conservative county um but at our screening here we had 700 people show up that that one night only screening which was amazing um so there's been incredible support of it uh but yeah so far everyone that's gone to it has kind of known what it is and are going to it publicly and it's in a public screening so i it'll be interesting to see what happens when it is on you know now that it's on itunes now it's in the world and people can see it from their own homes what kind of people will see it and what kind of pushback we'll get from it uh on either way i mean i i don't know if we've said this specifically but i am a straight white cisgender dude uh and so um yeah i i know that this is i was definitely taking taking a risk and for a long time i was like i'm not the person to do this because what you know we've seen enough stories from straight white cisgender dudes and uh you know this this is not the time for for me to make this movie but then there there was this drive there were several times where i tried to put it away and tried something else but it just kept pulling me back uh and i think i think the reason that it works is that uh while the lead character the protagonist is a is a straight white dude um christian guy like that like he's not the hero of the movie in a way and uh it really does center i worked really hard to center the stories of the lgbtq community uh and uh make those the powerful things in the in the movie and i i think that's what what kind of works those are like the strongest moments i think uh and there's no question how often the protagonist gets out of the way and some of the most powerful moments in the film for me um and i didn't know this going into it it's until i watch the credits but there was these stories that seemed like so real i'm like either these are the single greatest actors in the history of film or there's some truth behind these accounts and then i i watched the credits with tissues and uh i saw you know this this mention of the zebra coalition could you tell us a little bit about who they are and how they came to be a part of the film yeah well i i discovered them i think through uh through pflag um when i was talking to them about the story first i mean that that's a whole situation of a self joy i joined my local pflag group and i told them from the beginning uh i'm i'm doing this movie and i'd like to come just like listen to your stories and so i got appropriately grilled on who i was and what i believed and why why i was doing that but they but but they told me about zebra coalition which is an a uh lgbtq youth resource center in orlando it started out as a homeless shelter for lgbtq youth um and now it's it's much bigger than that um but from the from the time that i found out about them and i visited them and talked with their executive director and what they were doing i knew that that had to be that was kind of for a lead character that was kind of the moment for him where where he realizes the end result of of what he's been saying and teaching and counseling um so yeah so they uh graciously allowed us to come film there there's a scene or two that happens at the zebra coalition orlando it's the only day that we weren't filming in lakeland but then four of their youth that uh that are served by zebra coalition uh were gracious enough to just sit there and tell us their stories so um that that segment of the movie is pretty much is a documentary you know that's that's not written lines in the script i had a few i had a section written out to just kind of fill in the space and so we as a crew and cast could kind of feel what was going on there but we honestly had no idea what they were going to say we had no idea what their actual stories were and we set everything up and i sit down behind the camera it's just me and me and each person by themselves everyone else was like around the corner to to you know give them as much privacy as possible um and they started talking and i'm i mean just bawling the entire time uh listening listening to them specifically one of them uh starts she started by saying i don't i don't think my story is like i don't think i have anything good to say i don't think it's gonna be you know you're gonna be able to use anything that i'm saying and i'm like well just you know just start with with who you are and kind of tell me a little bit about your life and she starts with saying i'm intersex and i grew up uh as a christian hearing uh that god made man and woman listen to sermons about god making man and woman when i'm not strictly either i mean holy crap like that was the first thing of the first interview that we did and it was just non-stop um stories about um how the center that where they were was definitely became a home um but i was the most interesting thing to me was how every single one of their families was a they were they had you know they experienced religious rejection it wasn't that they just rejected or that they you know ran off on their own but it was strictly about how the religious influence of their families community rejected them and that's why they needed zebra coalition um yeah i i'm forever grateful for those moments and almost everyone that sees it says that that that is like a the crucial point for them and that's what i wanted to do for the lead character too it doesn't surprise me that such a beautiful moment from the film came out of your very genuine and sincere interaction with the lgbtq community like you were careful from the outset uh to be kind of mindful of who you were and what it meant as a straight person to try to approach this topic i wonder if you'd be willing to tell us a little bit about the conversations you've had with people in the lgbtq community both like during the production or even post-production i know you've been to some film festivals i'm curious about what the reception has been like about at the end of the day well the the biggest fear for me uh in doing this was that those characters would feel authentic you know i mean i uh i was i was terrified of that so while i was writing it took me about six months to outline the story and um a couple of weeks to write after i had it fully outlined the first draft at least so um yeah in that in that time i had more i had more coffees i had more lunches i had more um you know read more books i'm not a reader or studier but i read every single thing i could get my hands on um and i uh my my wife calls it the coffee and listening to her like that that's what i did i would take uh my lgbtq friends to coffee and just ask them about their story and listen i would ask them things like how uh like how do you know when someone sincerely wants to listen to your story you know like how do you know when what people are worth giving the time to and what people you know are just uh are not going to to listen to you um several of them were friends from the school that i went to that got that did get kicked out because of their sexuality um and this uh this beautiful couple they've been together for 20 plus years they met at at that college at southeastern university and they got kicked out it was in 98 it was the year that i went there they got kicked out at the end of that first year uh lost all their money and credits and all that stuff and they've been together in this amazing the most amazing beautiful people uh ever so they like their these all the you know all of these things came from real true stories and i don't i don't know i felt like i tried to just be as authentic as i could with them um even even more uh you know some stories that involved life and death um went to uh it was a um uh locally a father who lost his son uh to a hate crime and um that i'd met through our p flag groups and asked him if i could use his son as the inspiration for a part of the movie he was the very first person i gave the script to afterwards uh and was terrified you know just terrified of what he would say but he he loved it and gave us his his approval even even to the fact of letting us he gave for production he gave us a a a big picture framed picture of his son that we put in the very last shot of the movie as an honor to him um which i found out later his wife did not know that until she's watching the movie at the premiere uh in lakeland yeah and so thankfully that's a big big thing thankfully she she was so moved and she loved it and she felt you know she felt like it was she she understood the honoring that we were trying to do so um yeah it was it was it was that nonstop listening um making changes to the scripts and the screenplay as i was going along you know and then trying to find a line where because the lead character is not aware of the work you know of language to use and what vocabulary and he has he has other friends so um you know and there's there are other characters who are not aware of what's right to say and what's not wrong to say you know trying to find a balance of of those things so that it feels real from that perspective but that it's also not um too too much for for someone to you know be moved by in a positive way so yeah that was i there i don't there's certainly no i don't think there's no any specific like this is the way you do it other than listening and going with going with your heart and you know make listening to people's response to it um so that was all before that was during the writing um and then uh you know after at the at film festivals um our our biggest responses were to were at the two lgbt festivals that we went to um one that was in atlanta the out on film festival in atlanta where we were the first runner-up for the audience choice award and then in tampa the tampa bay international game lesbian film festival we won the audience choice award uh which to me is like the most that's the most important award i could that this movie could have won to say that we we connected with that audience let them hear feel heard and understood and respected um and something that they want to tell other people about i mean that's that's everything you know gosh how does that feel kevin oh man no one's asked me that yet i'm all about feelings well i am too but i want other people to do that um oh i think there's a big part of me that's still scared that like i i mean every time i every time i send the movie to somebody or send a screener out or whatever there's a huge part of me that's terrified that that this one person is the one that's going to shut it all down you know like shut this uh that that everyone else has just been really nice to me uh and has not been telling me this one gaping hole um but that that feeling of when you're at a film festival and there's a q a afterwards and um queer students from the school you attended tell you thank you for telling my story um that i don't know what the word is for that feeling um but i mean that that is it for me you know like that's yes of course i i would love to make the moon i would love to make the money back that the movie cost for sure um but that reaction breaks me and like makes me feel whole at the same time i i don't know house other to explain it or when yeah another another lakeland screening um a friend brought their um retired military and uh baptist friends this older couple to the screening not knowing how they would respond but she just wanted them to see it and they uh left like enjoying it and not really saying anything about it but they they enjoyed the movie um and then six days later their daughter came out to them and uh they still didn't it's not like the movie helps them understand everything and be like you know internally 100 good um but what the movie did was allowed them to respond with hugs and love and we love you no matter what um and still you know still inside of course screaming and not knowing what to do with that um [Music] but that first response which is what what kids need to hear from their parents is we love you and this is changes nothing about you how we feel about you i mean that's that is it you know that's it that's why that's why i did it um where can people learn more about the film online uh the website is end of the day film dot com um and all social media stuff is is also the same end of the day film it's on itunes amazon google play and in a week or two we will have blu-rays and dvds available on amazon to purchase but right now it's all digital but yeah everything's at end of the day film.com kevin thank you for making this film and even as um [Music] as a straight man a cisgendered man uh i've seen the amount of your life that you've poured into this project and i know the kind of soil in your heart that it grew out of and i hope a lot more people see this film because sometimes to me it feels in many ways as a country and especially as a faith christianity we're moving backwards on on seeing the profound beauty and dignity and humanity of lgbtq people and uh i was just so touched i was so touched to see a film not only help people think through their understanding of sexuality but also to see people as they are it's a beautiful film kevin i hope you're incredibly proud of it and i hope people are still watching and talking about it 20 years from now oh man that would be amazing thanks uh yeah thank you