Episode Transcript
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Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio,conversations about issues that matter. Here's your
host, three time Gracie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein. I want to introduce
you to Josh Caldwell. He isthe director of a wonderful, beautiful,
powerful movie that is now in theaters. It's called Mending the Line and it
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stars the great Brian Cox, whowe love so much in Succession, but
for so many years before that,I loved his work. And also Sinkwell
Walls, who is currently starring inWhite Men Can't Jump, the remake of
that, and you might have knownhim from Friday Night Lights on TV.
Also the wonderful Patricia Heaton from EverybodyLoves Raymond and Perry Mattfield. Fans of
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In the Dark, Yeah, that'syour star and my husband is a big
fan of that show. So okay. This movie, Mending the Line,
is basically a love story of flyfishing of nature, and it's really about
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how fly fishing and nature can healour wounds. Specifically, in this movie,
it's healing the wounds of war.Brian Cox plays someone who had been
in the Vietnam War, totally scarredfrom the Vietnam War, while Sinqua Walls
has been more recently totally scarred fromthe war in Afghanistan. And then Perry
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Mattfield plays a young woman who isscarred by the loss, sudden, very
sudden loss of her fiance in amotorcycle accident. Okay, first of all,
beautiful, beautiful movie, and youhave to hang in there for credit
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because your eyes are going to tearup. You're just going to cry.
Josh, where did this come from? This came from the mind of Stephen
Camillo, who's our screenwriter, andhe his bother was in Vietnam and he
was exposed to agent orange while hewas there and back in the aughts.
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I guess he got cancer as aresult of this exposure and passed away.
And Stephen started writing this script.Well one he started he was a fisherman,
right, he was a fly fisherman, and he realized he was kind
of fly fishing through his grief andfound it to be very helpful and therapeutic,
and he started writing a story aboutit and started doing research and realized
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that there were these kinds of organizationsout there that did this right. They
took veterans and they took them flyfishing as a way of helping them deal
with their trauma, and he craftedthis really beautiful story between a younger you
know, um veteran of the IraqAfghanistan conflict and to Vietnam vet and you
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know, this kind of unlikely pairingin the way in which they they both
heal themselves and heal each other andm and then, like you said,
sort of had this this you know, it's typically a secondary story, but
really I think of it as sortof a third lead with Perry, where
it's another you know, it's it'sabout loss, right, it's about trauma,
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not through combat. And I thoughtthe way in which he sort of
melded all these characters together and toldthe story you know in Montana was just
a really beautiful story about loss andgrief and finding something worth living for Sinqua's
character just has a very hard timein therapy and a lot of people do
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you know, you're told to share, and if you're not used to therapy
and you're not used to sharing andopening up, and really all you're doing
is in your nightmares reliving what happened, and the last thing you want to
do is talk about that during theday. It's bad enough, you're dealing
with it at night. And thedoctor who is trying to heal him,
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and all he wants to do isget back to war. That said,
we're talking about two men, BrianCox's character, Sinqua's character, who had
something to die for. But whatthey need is something to live for,
and that's what they need to reclaim, learning to want to live again.
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But anyway, Patricia Heaton's character,she's the head doctor. She suggests that
try fly fishing with Brian Cox's character, who basically in the beginning wants no
parts of him. Well, hebasically wants no parts of any human ba
other than one friend he had thatthat taught him fly fishing. I mean,
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he basically has he has just createdall these walls. He's cut himself
off from his family. He it'sthat that is part of his nightmare.
And and it's interesting that with youknow, the soldiers who return, I
mean down to a man and awoman, everyone has difficulty reacclimating and not
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everybody can and not everybody can dealwith traditional talk therapy and the mets.
Yeah, I mean I think thatyou know, we needed to We wanted
to walk a fine line here becausewe weren't interested in demonizing the VA or
the notion of sort of group ortalk therapy um. You know, it's
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if you notice there's the scene withthe group therapy, like one of the
one of the vets Um general namedsal Arntinez, who is the double ampute,
like he talks about how therapy reallyhelped him. Right, So we're
not saying it doesn't work. Whatwe're saying is our for our main character,
it does not work. Beyond thatwe needed to get him fly fishing,
and if group therapy was working,he wouldn't go fly fishing. So
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they're sort of a dramatic purpose toit. But I think that you know,
we were wanting to make sure thatthe VA was not the bad guy
in the film, for sure.But our story is about fly fishing,
you know, it's not about theVA. And so the fact is,
you know, this is happening ingroups across the country, groups like Warriors,
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Acquie Waters Project, Healing Waters,Wounded Warriors, like they're all doing
fishing with veterans. But even beyondthat, you have groups like Casting for
Recovery, which are working with cancersurvivors and taking them fly fishing. Right,
So, fly fishing is a formof therapy is really widespread, much
more than I even knew when wefirst started working on the film. It's
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really interesting you say that, becauseI have a very close friend who survived
breast cancer and it might have beentwenty years ago that she started with therapy
with fly fishing and now, youknow, to deal with the trauma.
Yeah, and she had a veryhard fight with chemo. But anyway,
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now she volunteers, In fact,she just came back from Virginia last weekend
volunteering, you know, to workwith other breast cancer survivors and teach them
fly fishing. But she says shedoesn't really like fishing, she likes the
nature. Right. Well, thesecret with most fly fishermen is that it
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has nothing to do with fishing.It's not fishing, it's it's everything else
that comes with it. And Ithink that one of the reasons why fly
fishing. And this is anecdotal,you know, I don't have proof of
this, but I believe I feelthat the reason why fly fishing can be
such a powerful therapeutic, you know, device for or those that are experiencing
trauma, is that trauma often putsyou into a trauma loop. Right.
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You are bombarded by thoughts and memoriesand images of whatever you've experienced, right,
And it's often very, very difficultto interrupt that loop enough to try
and get a handle on it rightor try and address it. And the
thing about fly fishing is that inorder to fly fish properly and correctly and
actually give your shot of catching afish, you have to exist in the
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present moment. You cannot be outthere thinking about other things. Because when
you're you are standing in a river, you have that river pushing up against
your legs, you're trying to stayupright, You've got to try and cast
your fly because if you can't castcorrectly and get your your movement down,
you're never going to get the flyout there to the fish. And then
once that fly lands, and it'swhat we call drifting on the water,
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That drift might only last for sixinches and then you got to pick it
up and do it again. Soit requires a full immersion into the present
reality of what you're doing, andas a result, your brain is unable
to be to be sort of surprisedor think about anything other than what you're
presently doing. And I think that'sthe real power of it. You know,
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that's where fly fishing can really betransformative because it allows you to interrupt
that loop and then that allows anotherway in right and so true to form.
Like some guys they don't want totalk about it, you know,
they're not in a place to talkabout it. They're not ready to talk
about it. But like something aboutfishing, you know, again, like
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we parted with a group Warriors ofQuiet Waters. They bring these post nine
eleven combat veterans out to Montana andthey teach them how to fish, and
they take a fishing. These guyswant to talk, they can talk if
they don't, that's not why they'rethere, you know. And but it
does end up leading to a placeof being open and being vulnerable and willing
to share. And so there's justsomething about fishing that that does interrupt that
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loop that allows you to come inwith sort of other more traditional forms of
therapy to try and get a handleon PTS. I'm speaking with Josh Caldwell.
He is the director of Mending theLine. It's now in theaters and
it's all about fly fishing being usedas a healing source for those suffering from
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PTSD or from loss or the traumaof cancer. Was Brian Cox at the
time doing Succession? Because I don'tknow. This was actually so we shot
this in August of twenty twenty one, and so he was actually right.
He was in between Succession. Ibelieve he'd wrapped a couple months prior,
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and then he didn't really go backfor season four until the following year in
twenty twenty two, So we gothim kind of in that in between stage.
Did he talk at all about thephenomenon of Succession? I mean all
these people that are really really unlikable, Yeah, I mean he you know,
again, like I knew of Brianfor a lot of his other work,
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you know, I was very familiarwith him. But at the same
time, like what I watched kindof I hadn't seen Succession, So I
started watching it before um we startedshooting because I like to just see what
they're doing. And I just rememberthinking, like, I hope Logan Roy
doesn't show up, because like that'sa really intimidating guy, you know,
And of course he does show up, you know, Brian comes and he's
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the complete opposite. I Mean,Brian's a total sweetheart. He was really
really generous, you know, withhis time on set. Definitely a pro,
you know, definitely a guy who'swho's done this a lot, and
and again was generous with both myselfas a director, young director, you
know, working with somebody like him, and then also with other actors like
Sinqua and with Perry and West andthose guys in Patricia and so um,
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you know, he I think he'sa guy who he didn't really talk much
about it. I think he um, you know, he's a character actor.
He's been a character actor his wholecareer, and now all of a
sudden he's he's like a leading man. I think he's like was sort had
taken aback by it, you knowabout just the the enormous success and the
way it's really catapult to them intoa completely different stratosphere than he had been
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prior to that show. And PatriciaHeaton, this was a turn for her
too, because she's really known forcomedy, yeah, and you know,
but she's also somebody who is reallyreally supportive of the troops and everything with
that, and so I think shesaw the value of this story. And
look, she knows who she is, like, she's Patricia Heaton, right,
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and so you know she sort ofcame in and lent herself to this
film, but it's because she reallybelieved in it. I think that's what
we found repeatedly, you know,with all the actors, is that they
really believed in this story and thepower of this story. And that allows
you to get amazing talent. Imean again, Golden Globe winners, Honorary
Academy Award winners, Emmy winners,you know, like, I mean,
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that's crazy to have it that,you know, kind of the kind of
cast we had, right, andthat was sort of the old guard,
and then we got this awesome newup and coming you know talent with like
Sinqua and Perry and Chris Gillust likeyou know, in sin Qua, like
he when he made the movie,he had just rapped Nanny, which later
on to winn went on to winSundance, but you know he was not
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and then now he's got white ManKent Jump, like you said, he's
he's locked up the Blackening coming out. Perry was you know, in the
Dark was like the number one showon streamers, like right as we were
rapping the film, and so youknow, but that's also kind of the
spirit of the movie, right,Like you've got this older guy passing on
his fly fishing knowledge to the youngergeneration. That's happening in real life.
And then you've got these great olderactors, you know, sort of working
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with these younger actors and this kindof stuff. And so it was all
very kisment. At the end ofthe day, just one quick thing,
we only have a minute and ahalf left. How is the Writer's Guild
strike impacting you. I'm not amember of the guild. I'm I'm just
a member of the DGA, whichis the Director's Guild. So we're currently
in negotiations were our contract is upon June thirtieth. We'll see what ends
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up happening. But as far aslike the writers Guild strike, I mean
it's impacting everything, you know.I think that it's making a challenge.
You're not getting anything going right now. Certainly you know, it's impacted Steven's
ability to promote this project, whichI think is unfortunate as seeing as he's
actually not in the guild. Butyou know, it's a challenging time and
even over the last year, it'sbeen a challenging time. In Hollywood,
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you know, in terms of stuffgetting made and a lot of people out
of work. So you know,I mean, I hope the writers get
what they're they're you know, tryingto get out of this, and you
know, definitely support them in thiswhole thing. And we'll see if the
DGA ends up joining them on thepicket line and SAG Aftra yeah, and
SAG as well. Exactly, thiscould really snowball into something much bigger than
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it is right now and perhaps lasteven longer than you know, Yeah,
I mean at the end of theday. You know, at the end
of the day, DGA is notWGA and SAG is not WGA. We
have our own kind of you know, pursuits in terms of our contracts,
but there is definitely a conversation happeningaround, you know, the solid area
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of these three guilds. I thinkif you do see them striking, this
will end up being over pretty quick, I think, and a big discussion
about AI and streaming. But anyway, we have to end it here with
that. Thank you so much.Josh calledwell a tremendous, tremendous movie and
it is in theaters now. Mendingthe line. Thank you so much Josh
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awesome, thank you, appreciate youtaking the time You've been listening to Sunsteen
sessions on iHeartRadio, A production ofNew York's classic rock Q one oh four point three