November 5, 2025 • 26 mins
Filmmaker Joel Gilbert joins Tom Needham on The Sounds of Film to talk about his new documentary, Roseanne Barr: Is America. In the film, the still hilarious and outspoken Roseanne recounts her unusual upbringing and rise to television stardom. A master storyteller, she shares her take on cancel culture, politics, and the challenges facing free expression in America.
Gilbert discusses Roseanne’s resilience, her lasting cultural influence, and how her story mirrors the broader divisions in American life. The conversation offers a revealing look at one of comedy’s most controversial and influential voices.
The Sounds of Film is the nation’s longest-running film and music-themed radio show, airing on WUSB Stony Brook. For over three decades, the program has featured in-depth interviews with filmmakers, musicians, and cultural figures including Billy Joel, Dionne Warwick, Ralph Macchio, and Howard Shore.
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(00:00):
Hi, this is Tom Needham, and youare listening to The Sounds of
Film. Today, we'll be speaking with
director Joel Gilbert about his documentary Roseanne Barr is
America. It's a raw, unfiltered portrait
of one of comedy's most groundbreaking and controversial
figures, tracing her rise, fall and resilience in the face of
(00:22):
cancel culture. Joel, thank you so much for
joining us on The Sounds of Film.
All right. Great to be here today.
Thank you. Yeah, I should also mention that
you're a writer. You do, you do a lot of things.
You've made a lot of films. Do you want to just give our
listeners just a little background of your your work?
Sure. Well, I'm, I'm kind of known as
the conservative Michael Moore. I've made a number of topical
(00:44):
films about conservative relatedsubjects.
I actually started out making films about 2001 about iconic
music figures like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Elvis
Presley. Then I started making political
documentaries, starting with a film about the Middle East
history in 2007. Made a number of films,
including one about Barack ObamaI'm pretty well known for called
(01:07):
Dreams from My Real Father. There's No Place Like Utopia
Trump, The Art of the Insults Made a film exposing the whole
climate hoax of Al Gore as as something he made-up for
politics film about Michelle Obama.
So I made a number of films. I also write for The Gateway
Pundit and I'm actually the person that exposed Letitia
(01:30):
James, her mortgage fraud, and got that going back in March.
I started writing about it up tothe point where she got referred
for a criminal, you know, arrestby the Department of Justice.
So I've been involved in a number of things.
I was an advisor and media consultant and videographer of
the Ted Cruz for President campaign for two years.
I worked with Ted Cruz, and I'vebeen involved in a number of,
(01:54):
you know, political issues, and mostly my admirers are on the
American conservative side. Well, it's funny that you
mentioned that you're the Michael Moore of the right.
We, we try to speak to people from all sides of the political
spectrum, but sometimes conservative films or
documentaries are not treated the same in public as films by
(02:15):
Michael Moore or others on the left.
Can you tell me a little bit about what it's like in the
marketplace and and where you'vebeen able to show your films and
how you've made so many? Well, I've had a distributor
luckily all these years and they've put my films on, you
know, Amazon and DVD originally on video, also all the live
(02:35):
streaming networks. So I've been lucky to have a
distributor from the get go. I've chosen subjects that seem
to have longevity. People are still interested in
the Middle East politics or Barack Obama, Trump, Paul
Mcgartney, The Beatles, Bob Dylan.
So I've always had subjects thathave had great longevity and I
think that's helped out a lot. And there is a bias that it's
(02:56):
hard for conservative films to breakthrough to theaters, to
theatrical, you know, venues. And but I have kind of made it
through by, you know, talk radiois dominated by conservative
talk shows. So I've done thousands of
interviews and been on a number of all the conservative media
platforms I've been able to promote my films.
(03:18):
So I think I've been successful and the Roseanne Barr is America
film is my latest and greatest, and it's available on every live
streaming network, Dish Network,DIRECTV, all the video on demand
networks, iTunes, you name it. So I think that's going to be
bigger than ever. And her life story is just so
fascinating, how she kind of started out in Utah and the
(03:39):
Orthodox Jewish family became a big comedy legend, how they
canceled her because of politicsand how she came back.
So I think it's really my greatest ever.
It really is a fascinating film and very entertaining.
The format of it is, is that it seems like you interviewed her
and her voice just runs through the entire movie and it's very
(04:02):
compelling. It's it's very fast moving.
Tell me about the structure of the film and why you decided to
do it that way. Well, like the Michael Moore
movies, a lot of my films I actually am in the movie 1 about
the Trayvon hoax about I expose the Trayvon Martin case as the
the key witness Rachel Jentel was a fake witness that claimed
(04:23):
she was Trayvon's girlfriend andshe was on the phone with him
and she heard things over the phone that contradicted the
eyewitness and it turned out that she was a fake witness.
Ben Crump and the Martin family met her and then she the real
girl named Diamond Eugene, she refused to lie to police.
So they substituted in this other girl who was 200 lbs
heavier and 202 years older thanTrayvon.
(04:45):
So in that movie and many of my movies, I appear in the movie
and I kind of take you on this journey of discovery to kind of
learn the facts and find out what really happened.
But when I met Roseanne, I realized that the best way to
tell her story was just to get out of the way because she's has
so much charisma on camera and she's so funny.
She's still hilarious. I realized the best way to tell
(05:07):
her stories, to let her tell herstory and and not be in the
film. So I just kind of sat her down
and walked her through the the history of growing up in, in
Utah and Salt Lake City of all places.
She had a, you know, a child that she gave up for adoption.
She moves to Hollywood, does theComedy Store.
Suddenly she's invited to be on the Johnny Carson show 2 weeks
(05:29):
later. And the whole thing just unfolds
and you get to hear Roseanne tell the story from a first
person point of view and it's just so entertaining.
She's got so much charisma. It's so fascinating.
And she just walks you through the whole life story.
I think it's the greatest movie I've seen or probably ever made
because she's so great on camera.
Yeah, I bet you others would love to have told that story,
(05:52):
but they probably just stay awaybecause of her politics right
now. Interesting thing about the
politics though, and you do get into this.
In the movie, her younger years,she wasn't a conservative and
neither was her family. Can you tell us about her
family's early politics? Well, she talks about her family
came from Europe where they had,you know, strong socialist
(06:13):
countries. And they kind of came from
Europe with, you know, they're supporting Trotsky and
communists and socialists. I mean, even my grandmother came
from Ukraine. And when she was little, they
sang communist songs because that's that's what they grew up
with. So Roseanne talks about how her
family were were socialists and leftists and that's just kind of
(06:35):
how she grew up. She didn't really know any
better. And she does talk in the film
about her journey to conservatism and how, you know,
how she started out as a socialist, she even ran for
president in 2012 as a loudmouthsocialist in her own words.
And she, you know, suddenly overtime, she was expected to
(06:58):
support Hillary Clinton and she did not.
She like Donald Trump. He was an entertainer.
He was somebody who she had watched for years and had him on
her her talk show for years. And she became a Trump
supporter. So she walks you through how
she, you know, got rid of the the idea of that original
(07:18):
socialism and became a big MAGA American patriot to the point
where she was such a MAGA patriot that in 2018, the media
was trying to promote a theme that all Trump supporters were
racist. And because Roseanne on her TV
show was a Trump supporter and also won in real life, they
(07:39):
targeted her. And she talks about this in the
film. She put out this very funny
tweet. Or she said, you know, if the
Planet of the Apes movie and theMuslim Brotherhood had a baby,
it would be Valerie Jarrett. Now, that was a very funny tweet
because Roseanne, like most people, knew that Valerie
Jarrett was born in Iran, and she kind of looks Iranian.
(07:59):
And, you know, 20 minutes after she put out this tweet, they
called her from the network and said, did you know Valerie
Jarrett was about 10% black? And she said no.
And they said, oh, well, then it's racist now.
Even though Roseanne was a lifelong civil rights activist
and grew up with Holocaust survivors, he accused her of
being racist, even though it wasat best a misunderstanding
(08:20):
because she thought Valerie Terrell was from Iran, having
been born in Iran. So they decided to cancel her
over that tweet, which was actually pretty funny.
At best they should have just said, Oh well, Roseanne didn't
know she was not Iranian. But that's what the mood was of
the Democrat Party and the mediaat the time was to look for
(08:41):
people to cancel, and they made Roseanne the most high profile
victim of cancel culture at thattime.
You mentioned Michael Moore earlier.
I, I grew up watching Michael Moore's films like, you know,
about Flint, MI and everything, Roger and me.
And one of the things that has struck me and I've talked to
other film makers about this is that, you know, he he would
(09:02):
bring up a lot of the, the issues it seems that are popular
now with the MAGA movement. You know, things about people
being frustrated that jobs were being sent to other countries.
We were losing the manufacturingbase.
And you know, Michael Moore has also been very outspoken through
the years, at least up until recently, about war and, and
(09:27):
being anti war. And one of the things that
struck me is until like President Trump became
president, it seemed like the political parties just were very
different. A lot of those issues about
globalization and, and war and anti war were attributed to the
(09:48):
left and, and the right was, wasnot really associated with those
things. And now it seems to be the
opposite in some cases. And and I was wondering because
you you said Roseanne is Americaand it seems like her story kind
of tracks with that change. That's being, you know, it
takes, that's taking place rightnow in the country in some ways.
(10:09):
Well, I'll tell you that the Democrat Party kind of started
their big change to becoming this radical Socialist Party.
When Barack Obama emerged out ofChicago, he ran as a mainstream
candidate. Now I made a film, you know,
Dreams from My Real Father, showing that Barack Obama was a
radical. He was a member of the new Party
in Chicago, much like Zoran Mandami as part of his Democrat
(10:31):
Socialist Party. The new Party in Chicago was the
same type of radical Socialist Party.
Like Mandami, Obama joins the Democrat Party and runs it as a
Democrat to get power. Now, to do that, Obama ran as a
mainstream candidate in 2008. He said, I'm going to obey the
Constitution. Marriage is between man and God
(10:52):
and a woman. You know, I'm going to support
Israel. He tried to run mainstream.
And then when he got elected, hethrew the voters under the bus
and pursued this radical agenda that nobody voted for.
And the rest of the Democratic Party just joined in as if, you
know, no problem. They they just went along with
Obama's radical socialism to thepoint to this day that Zoran
(11:14):
Mandami can run as a radical socialist without even, you
know, pretending that he's not. So Roseanne, you know, 2012 is
when she ran for president and she saw how radical the
Democrats were becoming to the point that she did not support
Hillary Clinton and went over tobe a Trump supporter and became
this big, you know, MAGA Republican having kind of seen
(11:36):
the light. So Roseanne just walks through
through her whole revolution in the movie, and it's very
fascinating. She's so funny.
The I watched the movie we screened in Washington, DC, the
National Press Club, and everybody laughed the whole way
through. But you do learn a lot.
And she's, I think, one of our greatest patriots today.
(11:57):
Roseanne Barr really is America.The Roseanne Show, You know,
when you look back at that incredibly successful TV show,
what were some of the values andideas in that show that kind of
relate to the current political movement that's popular?
Well, what made that show so magical is because Roseanne was
(12:19):
so authentic. She was a real person telling
real stories about her real family growing up.
And all the characters on TV actually were people from her,
from her own family growing up. So the authenticity is, I think
would appeal to small town America.
And that's that's why it was so popular and so funny.
(12:39):
And that's what kind of has endured because people, you
know, are sick of politicians who are kind of phony and just
say the same things over and over and then they get into
office and do something else. So authenticity goes a long way.
And that's always been Roseanne Barr.
She's always been so authentic and so interesting and so
(13:00):
sincere. And that's why so many people
love her to this day. You, you mentioned her
presidential run. That was a pretty wild campaign
she did. What were some of the
characteristics of that campaignthat really stood out to you?
Well, first. She ran on the Green Party
ticket and didn't get the nomination.
So she ran on, I forget it was called the Freedom Something
(13:20):
Party. And she only got registered, you
know, qualified to be on the ballot in three states.
And she went around and did a few debates.
She talked about legalizing marijuana.
She talked about, you know, letting people who had committed
marijuana offenses out of prisonbecause of the high percentage
(13:42):
of black people in prison due tomarijuana.
That was a big platform she had.And, you know, she got around
50,000 votes in Florida. She got a few thousand votes in
other places. She didn't really affect the
election, but she actually made a movie about it at the time
called Roseanne for President, which you can still see.
It's a pretty interesting movie and you can actually watch it on
(14:02):
on live streaming as well. But in my film, she does talk
about that run for president andwhy she did it and takes you
through being a Trump supporter.She went to Trump rallies and
introduced Trump and ultimately suffered getting cancelled
because she was a Trump supporter because they wanted to
(14:23):
say that all Trump voters were racist.
So as I mentioned before, she made this very funny tweet based
on Valerie Jarrett being born inIran and no one knew that she
was 10% black or whatever. So that's what they tried to
create to victimize her and demonize her.
And Roseanne I, I came to agree.I think she also said it was
very anti-Semitic, canceling her, a lifelong civil rights
(14:46):
activist, because of what was a misunderstanding you.
Said she's a civil rights activist.
Can you give us some examples ofthe things that she did in her
life that allow her to have thattitle?
Yeah. I mean, well, back in Hollywood
in the 90s, she was the one thatwas insisting on having black
writers on her show and having black characters.
(15:06):
And she would promote different black entertainers.
She would go on different shows,with talk shows like Monique.
She was always interested in helping minorities because they
were always a big part of her audience.
When she had a stand up career before comedy, before TV, she
would always entertain an urban audiences and black churches.
(15:29):
So she was always very close to the to minority.
She is a minority. She's an Orthodox Jewish girl.
Her, you know, she grew up with Holocaust survivors, so she is a
minority and she always cared deeply about minority issues and
pushed especially black and minority issues in Hollywood and
(15:50):
had to fight against a very racist establishment in
Hollywood that wanted to preventthat for years.
So she really has the street cred as a civil rights activist.
Anybody can tell you that. And that's why it was so
ridiculous when there was a simply a misunderstanding over a
tweet that they said, Oh well, you're racist.
(16:11):
It's just ridiculous. It's really fascinating when you
look back, what happened to her with her cancellation is really
probably one of the the greatestexamples of that time period
when people were getting cancelled.
Can can you just go through someof the things besides her show
that was #1 at the time being taken off the air?
(16:35):
They they went after her in a lot of different ways.
What else did they do? Well?
Let. Me first tell you how cancel
culture started. It started because when Obama
became president, as I said, he threw the voters under the bus,
pursued this radical agenda thatnobody voted for, Obamacare.
He said we're going to have national healthcare, but we're
(16:55):
going to debate it and it's going to be open to the public
and the TV cameras are going to be there.
And then, of course, once he gotinto office, he just rammed it
through Congress with no debate.So everything Obama did was
opposite of what he campaigned on.
So a lot of media and Republicans came out and said,
you know, this. They were started to say, what I
was saying is that Obama is a radical and he's no moderate.
(17:20):
And so the media decided, well, if anybody opposes what Obama's
standing for, we'll just say that they're being racist.
That's kind of where it started,where the media and Democrats
would say, oh, well, if you don't agree with Obama, it's
because you're racist. It's not that you disagree with
his policies, you're racist. So they kind of built this thing
into the culture for about 8 years saying that if you oppose
(17:42):
anything Obama wants to do, it'sbecause of racism and not
because of a policy difference. So that's kind of where it was
born, that if you don't agree with them, you must be racist.
And anything. If you're racist, you don't
have, you don't get to have a voice anymore.
That's kind of how it developed over a couple of years.
And then in 2018, when Roseanne resurrected her show, as I
(18:04):
mentioned, she made this very funny political tweet that was
misunderstood and a misunderstanding, and within 20
minutes, they cancelled her entire show.
They made her sign over the rights to her previous
syndicated shows. She got cancelled out of all her
engagements in Las Vegas. She lost all of her commercial
(18:25):
opportunities. She was literally erased from
the planet for making a funny tweet.
She's a comedian. She says she does says funny
things. And the Democrats and the media
and all her former friends should have just said, oh, well,
of course Roseanne is a civil rights activist.
She did not know that Valerie Jarrell was 10% black because
(18:45):
she's born in Iran and she's she's white.
That should have been it. But they had evil plans.
The evil plan was to demonize Trump supporters as racists.
And they felt that they could sacrifice Roseanne to achieve
that. Well, not everyone probably
would agree that the, the tweet was that funny.
But the, the price that she had to pay, I think a lot of people
(19:08):
would agree today it, it was pretty extreme in terms of how
much the penalty was. And it seems that today, you
know, people on the other side are crying that they're being
attacked by the Trump administration.
And it, it, it just seems like this is going to be the new
reality where different political parties go after their
(19:30):
enemies. And it it's really such a shame
that this has to go on and and that it can really destroy
people's lives. Well, my comment would be the
the Democrats and their media allies had a political agenda to
demonize Trump and Trump supporters as racist.
What you see with a couple of prosecutions, I was very
(19:53):
involved in, as I mentioned earlier, researching Letitia
James's mortgages. New York is a public record
state and anybody can go online and if you download about 10 or
15 of Letitia James mortgages since she was 24 years old,
everyone involves fraud. These are real crimes. 1983 she
pretended to marry her father toget a favorable loan terms to
(20:15):
buy a town home. She falsely told the banks that
her four story apartment building with five apartments
only has one unit in it to get lower interest rates she was not
entitled to. So these are actual real
mortgage fraud crimes that Letitia James has committed.
What you saw during the years that Roseanne was canceled, it
(20:38):
was making stuff up. That was not true though.
The worst thing they should havesaid about Roseanne is, well,
she took down that tweet after an hour once she was told that
Valerie Jarrett was 10% black, so just forget about it.
She's a civil rights activist. That's the worst thing.
That's the worst thing they should have done.
But they were looking to demonize Trump, and she was
(21:00):
their perfect victim. Why do you think she was such a
particular person that they feltneeded to be attacked and taken
down? Because it's very unusual that
if a if a network has a number one hit show, that's so hard to
do, to jeopardize that, to sacrifice that so quickly.
(21:22):
And talks about in the movie shetalks about how she thinks that
ABC, even though they were the number one show with 28 million
viewers. She talks about how she thinks
ABC didn't like the show becauseshe was a Trump supporter.
Wanda Sykes, one of the writers,black writer that that Roseanne
had brought into the show years before Wanda Sykes said, I think
(21:45):
this show is normalizing Trump supporters.
So there was a growing anger that Roseanne's character on the
show, who was a Trump supporter was helping Trump in some way.
So I think that's what made her a target.
There weren't really any Trump supporters on TV, on sitcoms,
you know, on network television.So she was it.
(22:07):
So I think that's what ultimately made her a target,
yeah. Going back to the mortgage
thing, just for a second, I, I, I heard your reports and I read
your reports regarding some of those facts about the mortgage.
Sounds very convincing, but why,when you read other mainstream
(22:27):
publications, do they make it sound like it's just all an
attack, a personal attack, and, well, all yeah, all they got?
To do is take to take 5 minutes to read my articles or download
the mortgage documents. It's a public record state and
you can see that every single mortgage she entered into was
fraudulent. Letitia James herself said that
(22:50):
any mistake on a mortgage application is a grave crime
that cannot go unpunished. That's which when she prosecuted
Trump, she said, you know, if you make any mistake on a
mortgage application, it's on the backs of American taxpayers
and so on and on. So she certainly set the
standard that you cannot do anything wrong when you apply
for a mortgage. But in Letitia James case, it's
(23:12):
not one odd mistake. It's literally a pattern of
behavior over 24 years, including buying two homes in
Virginia where she falsely claimed it would be her primary
residence in order to get lower mortgage rates.
Because the banks give you a lower interest rate and lower
closing costs if you're going tolive there because they think
you're going to take care of it better than if it's a rental
(23:33):
property. Her apartment building in
Brooklyn, it's 5 units, according to the certificate of
occupancy. She repeatedly over 20 years
refinances and tells the banks it's one unit or 4 units because
with five units or more, it's a commercial interest rate, which
is higher and very high closing costs.
So she's manipulating the system.
She actually sued people as attorney general for the very
(23:56):
same crime she was committing atthe same time.
So all these media outlets have to do is look at the facts, look
at the documents, and they'll see that Letitia James is guilty
of a a long pattern of mortgage fraud.
She hasn't. Been found guilty yet though, Do
you? Do you think that that is going
to be the outcome? I think she's going to be
charged in additional jurisdictions, including New
(24:18):
York State. I think there's superseding
indictments coming. I think she's going to be forced
to resign and try to cop a plea because the evidence against her
is so overwhelming. Unless she's somehow hoping that
maybe a biased jury might might let her off in Virginia or New
York State, I think she's she's toast.
Well, let's get back to the Roseanne movie.
(24:42):
We we have to wrap this up, but it's a very funny movie.
What is it that you most hope that people take away after
watching this documentary? Well, it's such a.
Entertaining movie because Rosanna is so charismatic and so
funny, but you just go through her whole life story, you learn
so much about how Hollywood works, how comedy works, about
politics, cancel culture, and how she persevered.
(25:05):
So I mean, people watch it, watch it again and again.
You can see it on iTunes or Amazon Prime.
You can see it on YouTube movies, it's on Roku Channel.
It's just about everywhere you would live stream a movie.
You can you can see the film andit's just really entertaining.
(25:26):
I don't think I've talked to anyone who only watched it once.
They said I had to watch it again and and I learned
something every time I watched it.
Why did why did you name the film Roseanne Barr is America?
Because Roseanne Barr is America.
Her whole life story. I mean, just starting out as an
immigrant family in a small town, as a minority, getting
into comedy and becoming the biggest comedy star in the in
(25:49):
the world for 10 years with the number one show.
She overcame The Cosby Show. She had talk shows after that,
gets into politics, runs for president, gets canceled and
comes back. I mean, I think it's just the
greatest American story ever told.
Well, Joel, I want to thank you for coming on the Sounds of
Film. Is there any other place online
or on social media you want to direct people to?
(26:10):
Yeah. If you can hit
roseanneisamerica.com, roseanneisamerica.com you can
see the movie trailer and that'll link you up to where you
can watch the film online or or buy the DVD.
Well, thanks again. And I do want to recommend the
film. It's it's really, really
interesting. And all those things that you
just listed, you'll, you'll learn so much about Hollywood
(26:35):
and the business and really what's going on politically too.
So great. Great movie.
Thanks so much. OK, well.
Thanks for having me today. Thanks again.
Hi, this is Tom Needham, and youare listening to The Sounds of
Film. Today, we'll be speaking with
director Joel Gilbert about his documentary Roseanne Barr is
America. It's a raw, unfiltered portrait
of one of comedy's most groundbreaking and controversial
figures, tracing her rise, fall and resilience in the face of
(00:22):
cancel culture. Joel, thank you so much for
joining us on The Sounds of Film.
All right. Great to be here today.
Thank you. Yeah, I should also mention that
you're a writer. You do, you do a lot of things.
You've made a lot of films. Do you want to just give our
listeners just a little background of your your work?
Sure. Well, I'm, I'm kind of known as
the conservative Michael Moore. I've made a number of topical
(00:44):
films about conservative relatedsubjects.
I actually started out making films about 2001 about iconic
music figures like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Elvis
Presley. Then I started making political
documentaries, starting with a film about the Middle East
history in 2007. Made a number of films,
including one about Barack ObamaI'm pretty well known for called
(01:07):
Dreams from My Real Father. There's No Place Like Utopia
Trump, The Art of the Insults Made a film exposing the whole
climate hoax of Al Gore as as something he made-up for
politics film about Michelle Obama.
So I made a number of films. I also write for The Gateway
Pundit and I'm actually the person that exposed Letitia
(01:30):
James, her mortgage fraud, and got that going back in March.
I started writing about it up tothe point where she got referred
for a criminal, you know, arrestby the Department of Justice.
So I've been involved in a number of things.
I was an advisor and media consultant and videographer of
the Ted Cruz for President campaign for two years.
I worked with Ted Cruz, and I'vebeen involved in a number of,
(01:54):
you know, political issues, and mostly my admirers are on the
American conservative side. Well, it's funny that you
mentioned that you're the Michael Moore of the right.
We, we try to speak to people from all sides of the political
spectrum, but sometimes conservative films or
documentaries are not treated the same in public as films by
(02:15):
Michael Moore or others on the left.
Can you tell me a little bit about what it's like in the
marketplace and and where you'vebeen able to show your films and
how you've made so many? Well, I've had a distributor
luckily all these years and they've put my films on, you
know, Amazon and DVD originally on video, also all the live
(02:35):
streaming networks. So I've been lucky to have a
distributor from the get go. I've chosen subjects that seem
to have longevity. People are still interested in
the Middle East politics or Barack Obama, Trump, Paul
Mcgartney, The Beatles, Bob Dylan.
So I've always had subjects thathave had great longevity and I
think that's helped out a lot. And there is a bias that it's
(02:56):
hard for conservative films to breakthrough to theaters, to
theatrical, you know, venues. And but I have kind of made it
through by, you know, talk radiois dominated by conservative
talk shows. So I've done thousands of
interviews and been on a number of all the conservative media
platforms I've been able to promote my films.
(03:18):
So I think I've been successful and the Roseanne Barr is America
film is my latest and greatest, and it's available on every live
streaming network, Dish Network,DIRECTV, all the video on demand
networks, iTunes, you name it. So I think that's going to be
bigger than ever. And her life story is just so
fascinating, how she kind of started out in Utah and the
(03:39):
Orthodox Jewish family became a big comedy legend, how they
canceled her because of politicsand how she came back.
So I think it's really my greatest ever.
It really is a fascinating film and very entertaining.
The format of it is, is that it seems like you interviewed her
and her voice just runs through the entire movie and it's very
(04:02):
compelling. It's it's very fast moving.
Tell me about the structure of the film and why you decided to
do it that way. Well, like the Michael Moore
movies, a lot of my films I actually am in the movie 1 about
the Trayvon hoax about I expose the Trayvon Martin case as the
the key witness Rachel Jentel was a fake witness that claimed
(04:23):
she was Trayvon's girlfriend andshe was on the phone with him
and she heard things over the phone that contradicted the
eyewitness and it turned out that she was a fake witness.
Ben Crump and the Martin family met her and then she the real
girl named Diamond Eugene, she refused to lie to police.
So they substituted in this other girl who was 200 lbs
heavier and 202 years older thanTrayvon.
(04:45):
So in that movie and many of my movies, I appear in the movie
and I kind of take you on this journey of discovery to kind of
learn the facts and find out what really happened.
But when I met Roseanne, I realized that the best way to
tell her story was just to get out of the way because she's has
so much charisma on camera and she's so funny.
She's still hilarious. I realized the best way to tell
(05:07):
her stories, to let her tell herstory and and not be in the
film. So I just kind of sat her down
and walked her through the the history of growing up in, in
Utah and Salt Lake City of all places.
She had a, you know, a child that she gave up for adoption.
She moves to Hollywood, does theComedy Store.
Suddenly she's invited to be on the Johnny Carson show 2 weeks
(05:29):
later. And the whole thing just unfolds
and you get to hear Roseanne tell the story from a first
person point of view and it's just so entertaining.
She's got so much charisma. It's so fascinating.
And she just walks you through the whole life story.
I think it's the greatest movie I've seen or probably ever made
because she's so great on camera.
Yeah, I bet you others would love to have told that story,
(05:52):
but they probably just stay awaybecause of her politics right
now. Interesting thing about the
politics though, and you do get into this.
In the movie, her younger years,she wasn't a conservative and
neither was her family. Can you tell us about her
family's early politics? Well, she talks about her family
came from Europe where they had,you know, strong socialist
(06:13):
countries. And they kind of came from
Europe with, you know, they're supporting Trotsky and
communists and socialists. I mean, even my grandmother came
from Ukraine. And when she was little, they
sang communist songs because that's that's what they grew up
with. So Roseanne talks about how her
family were were socialists and leftists and that's just kind of
(06:35):
how she grew up. She didn't really know any
better. And she does talk in the film
about her journey to conservatism and how, you know,
how she started out as a socialist, she even ran for
president in 2012 as a loudmouthsocialist in her own words.
And she, you know, suddenly overtime, she was expected to
(06:58):
support Hillary Clinton and she did not.
She like Donald Trump. He was an entertainer.
He was somebody who she had watched for years and had him on
her her talk show for years. And she became a Trump
supporter. So she walks you through how
she, you know, got rid of the the idea of that original
(07:18):
socialism and became a big MAGA American patriot to the point
where she was such a MAGA patriot that in 2018, the media
was trying to promote a theme that all Trump supporters were
racist. And because Roseanne on her TV
show was a Trump supporter and also won in real life, they
(07:39):
targeted her. And she talks about this in the
film. She put out this very funny
tweet. Or she said, you know, if the
Planet of the Apes movie and theMuslim Brotherhood had a baby,
it would be Valerie Jarrett. Now, that was a very funny tweet
because Roseanne, like most people, knew that Valerie
Jarrett was born in Iran, and she kind of looks Iranian.
(07:59):
And, you know, 20 minutes after she put out this tweet, they
called her from the network and said, did you know Valerie
Jarrett was about 10% black? And she said no.
And they said, oh, well, then it's racist now.
Even though Roseanne was a lifelong civil rights activist
and grew up with Holocaust survivors, he accused her of
being racist, even though it wasat best a misunderstanding
(08:20):
because she thought Valerie Terrell was from Iran, having
been born in Iran. So they decided to cancel her
over that tweet, which was actually pretty funny.
At best they should have just said, Oh well, Roseanne didn't
know she was not Iranian. But that's what the mood was of
the Democrat Party and the mediaat the time was to look for
(08:41):
people to cancel, and they made Roseanne the most high profile
victim of cancel culture at thattime.
You mentioned Michael Moore earlier.
I, I grew up watching Michael Moore's films like, you know,
about Flint, MI and everything, Roger and me.
And one of the things that has struck me and I've talked to
other film makers about this is that, you know, he he would
(09:02):
bring up a lot of the, the issues it seems that are popular
now with the MAGA movement. You know, things about people
being frustrated that jobs were being sent to other countries.
We were losing the manufacturingbase.
And you know, Michael Moore has also been very outspoken through
the years, at least up until recently, about war and, and
(09:27):
being anti war. And one of the things that
struck me is until like President Trump became
president, it seemed like the political parties just were very
different. A lot of those issues about
globalization and, and war and anti war were attributed to the
(09:48):
left and, and the right was, wasnot really associated with those
things. And now it seems to be the
opposite in some cases. And and I was wondering because
you you said Roseanne is Americaand it seems like her story kind
of tracks with that change. That's being, you know, it
takes, that's taking place rightnow in the country in some ways.
(10:09):
Well, I'll tell you that the Democrat Party kind of started
their big change to becoming this radical Socialist Party.
When Barack Obama emerged out ofChicago, he ran as a mainstream
candidate. Now I made a film, you know,
Dreams from My Real Father, showing that Barack Obama was a
radical. He was a member of the new Party
in Chicago, much like Zoran Mandami as part of his Democrat
(10:31):
Socialist Party. The new Party in Chicago was the
same type of radical Socialist Party.
Like Mandami, Obama joins the Democrat Party and runs it as a
Democrat to get power. Now, to do that, Obama ran as a
mainstream candidate in 2008. He said, I'm going to obey the
Constitution. Marriage is between man and God
(10:52):
and a woman. You know, I'm going to support
Israel. He tried to run mainstream.
And then when he got elected, hethrew the voters under the bus
and pursued this radical agenda that nobody voted for.
And the rest of the Democratic Party just joined in as if, you
know, no problem. They they just went along with
Obama's radical socialism to thepoint to this day that Zoran
(11:14):
Mandami can run as a radical socialist without even, you
know, pretending that he's not. So Roseanne, you know, 2012 is
when she ran for president and she saw how radical the
Democrats were becoming to the point that she did not support
Hillary Clinton and went over tobe a Trump supporter and became
this big, you know, MAGA Republican having kind of seen
(11:36):
the light. So Roseanne just walks through
through her whole revolution in the movie, and it's very
fascinating. She's so funny.
The I watched the movie we screened in Washington, DC, the
National Press Club, and everybody laughed the whole way
through. But you do learn a lot.
And she's, I think, one of our greatest patriots today.
(11:57):
Roseanne Barr really is America.The Roseanne Show, You know,
when you look back at that incredibly successful TV show,
what were some of the values andideas in that show that kind of
relate to the current political movement that's popular?
Well, what made that show so magical is because Roseanne was
(12:19):
so authentic. She was a real person telling
real stories about her real family growing up.
And all the characters on TV actually were people from her,
from her own family growing up. So the authenticity is, I think
would appeal to small town America.
And that's that's why it was so popular and so funny.
(12:39):
And that's what kind of has endured because people, you
know, are sick of politicians who are kind of phony and just
say the same things over and over and then they get into
office and do something else. So authenticity goes a long way.
And that's always been Roseanne Barr.
She's always been so authentic and so interesting and so
(13:00):
sincere. And that's why so many people
love her to this day. You, you mentioned her
presidential run. That was a pretty wild campaign
she did. What were some of the
characteristics of that campaignthat really stood out to you?
Well, first. She ran on the Green Party
ticket and didn't get the nomination.
So she ran on, I forget it was called the Freedom Something
(13:20):
Party. And she only got registered, you
know, qualified to be on the ballot in three states.
And she went around and did a few debates.
She talked about legalizing marijuana.
She talked about, you know, letting people who had committed
marijuana offenses out of prisonbecause of the high percentage
(13:42):
of black people in prison due tomarijuana.
That was a big platform she had.And, you know, she got around
50,000 votes in Florida. She got a few thousand votes in
other places. She didn't really affect the
election, but she actually made a movie about it at the time
called Roseanne for President, which you can still see.
It's a pretty interesting movie and you can actually watch it on
(14:02):
on live streaming as well. But in my film, she does talk
about that run for president andwhy she did it and takes you
through being a Trump supporter.She went to Trump rallies and
introduced Trump and ultimately suffered getting cancelled
because she was a Trump supporter because they wanted to
(14:23):
say that all Trump voters were racist.
So as I mentioned before, she made this very funny tweet based
on Valerie Jarrett being born inIran and no one knew that she
was 10% black or whatever. So that's what they tried to
create to victimize her and demonize her.
And Roseanne I, I came to agree.I think she also said it was
very anti-Semitic, canceling her, a lifelong civil rights
(14:46):
activist, because of what was a misunderstanding you.
Said she's a civil rights activist.
Can you give us some examples ofthe things that she did in her
life that allow her to have thattitle?
Yeah. I mean, well, back in Hollywood
in the 90s, she was the one thatwas insisting on having black
writers on her show and having black characters.
(15:06):
And she would promote different black entertainers.
She would go on different shows,with talk shows like Monique.
She was always interested in helping minorities because they
were always a big part of her audience.
When she had a stand up career before comedy, before TV, she
would always entertain an urban audiences and black churches.
(15:29):
So she was always very close to the to minority.
She is a minority. She's an Orthodox Jewish girl.
Her, you know, she grew up with Holocaust survivors, so she is a
minority and she always cared deeply about minority issues and
pushed especially black and minority issues in Hollywood and
(15:50):
had to fight against a very racist establishment in
Hollywood that wanted to preventthat for years.
So she really has the street cred as a civil rights activist.
Anybody can tell you that. And that's why it was so
ridiculous when there was a simply a misunderstanding over a
tweet that they said, Oh well, you're racist.
(16:11):
It's just ridiculous. It's really fascinating when you
look back, what happened to her with her cancellation is really
probably one of the the greatestexamples of that time period
when people were getting cancelled.
Can can you just go through someof the things besides her show
that was #1 at the time being taken off the air?
(16:35):
They they went after her in a lot of different ways.
What else did they do? Well?
Let. Me first tell you how cancel
culture started. It started because when Obama
became president, as I said, he threw the voters under the bus,
pursued this radical agenda thatnobody voted for, Obamacare.
He said we're going to have national healthcare, but we're
(16:55):
going to debate it and it's going to be open to the public
and the TV cameras are going to be there.
And then, of course, once he gotinto office, he just rammed it
through Congress with no debate.So everything Obama did was
opposite of what he campaigned on.
So a lot of media and Republicans came out and said,
you know, this. They were started to say, what I
was saying is that Obama is a radical and he's no moderate.
(17:20):
And so the media decided, well, if anybody opposes what Obama's
standing for, we'll just say that they're being racist.
That's kind of where it started,where the media and Democrats
would say, oh, well, if you don't agree with Obama, it's
because you're racist. It's not that you disagree with
his policies, you're racist. So they kind of built this thing
into the culture for about 8 years saying that if you oppose
(17:42):
anything Obama wants to do, it'sbecause of racism and not
because of a policy difference. So that's kind of where it was
born, that if you don't agree with them, you must be racist.
And anything. If you're racist, you don't
have, you don't get to have a voice anymore.
That's kind of how it developed over a couple of years.
And then in 2018, when Roseanne resurrected her show, as I
(18:04):
mentioned, she made this very funny political tweet that was
misunderstood and a misunderstanding, and within 20
minutes, they cancelled her entire show.
They made her sign over the rights to her previous
syndicated shows. She got cancelled out of all her
engagements in Las Vegas. She lost all of her commercial
(18:25):
opportunities. She was literally erased from
the planet for making a funny tweet.
She's a comedian. She says she does says funny
things. And the Democrats and the media
and all her former friends should have just said, oh, well,
of course Roseanne is a civil rights activist.
She did not know that Valerie Jarrell was 10% black because
(18:45):
she's born in Iran and she's she's white.
That should have been it. But they had evil plans.
The evil plan was to demonize Trump supporters as racists.
And they felt that they could sacrifice Roseanne to achieve
that. Well, not everyone probably
would agree that the, the tweet was that funny.
But the, the price that she had to pay, I think a lot of people
(19:08):
would agree today it, it was pretty extreme in terms of how
much the penalty was. And it seems that today, you
know, people on the other side are crying that they're being
attacked by the Trump administration.
And it, it, it just seems like this is going to be the new
reality where different political parties go after their
(19:30):
enemies. And it it's really such a shame
that this has to go on and and that it can really destroy
people's lives. Well, my comment would be the
the Democrats and their media allies had a political agenda to
demonize Trump and Trump supporters as racist.
What you see with a couple of prosecutions, I was very
(19:53):
involved in, as I mentioned earlier, researching Letitia
James's mortgages. New York is a public record
state and anybody can go online and if you download about 10 or
15 of Letitia James mortgages since she was 24 years old,
everyone involves fraud. These are real crimes. 1983 she
pretended to marry her father toget a favorable loan terms to
(20:15):
buy a town home. She falsely told the banks that
her four story apartment building with five apartments
only has one unit in it to get lower interest rates she was not
entitled to. So these are actual real
mortgage fraud crimes that Letitia James has committed.
What you saw during the years that Roseanne was canceled, it
(20:38):
was making stuff up. That was not true though.
The worst thing they should havesaid about Roseanne is, well,
she took down that tweet after an hour once she was told that
Valerie Jarrett was 10% black, so just forget about it.
She's a civil rights activist. That's the worst thing.
That's the worst thing they should have done.
But they were looking to demonize Trump, and she was
(21:00):
their perfect victim. Why do you think she was such a
particular person that they feltneeded to be attacked and taken
down? Because it's very unusual that
if a if a network has a number one hit show, that's so hard to
do, to jeopardize that, to sacrifice that so quickly.
(21:22):
And talks about in the movie shetalks about how she thinks that
ABC, even though they were the number one show with 28 million
viewers. She talks about how she thinks
ABC didn't like the show becauseshe was a Trump supporter.
Wanda Sykes, one of the writers,black writer that that Roseanne
had brought into the show years before Wanda Sykes said, I think
(21:45):
this show is normalizing Trump supporters.
So there was a growing anger that Roseanne's character on the
show, who was a Trump supporter was helping Trump in some way.
So I think that's what made her a target.
There weren't really any Trump supporters on TV, on sitcoms,
you know, on network television.So she was it.
(22:07):
So I think that's what ultimately made her a target,
yeah. Going back to the mortgage
thing, just for a second, I, I, I heard your reports and I read
your reports regarding some of those facts about the mortgage.
Sounds very convincing, but why,when you read other mainstream
(22:27):
publications, do they make it sound like it's just all an
attack, a personal attack, and, well, all yeah, all they got?
To do is take to take 5 minutes to read my articles or download
the mortgage documents. It's a public record state and
you can see that every single mortgage she entered into was
fraudulent. Letitia James herself said that
(22:50):
any mistake on a mortgage application is a grave crime
that cannot go unpunished. That's which when she prosecuted
Trump, she said, you know, if you make any mistake on a
mortgage application, it's on the backs of American taxpayers
and so on and on. So she certainly set the
standard that you cannot do anything wrong when you apply
for a mortgage. But in Letitia James case, it's
(23:12):
not one odd mistake. It's literally a pattern of
behavior over 24 years, including buying two homes in
Virginia where she falsely claimed it would be her primary
residence in order to get lower mortgage rates.
Because the banks give you a lower interest rate and lower
closing costs if you're going tolive there because they think
you're going to take care of it better than if it's a rental
(23:33):
property. Her apartment building in
Brooklyn, it's 5 units, according to the certificate of
occupancy. She repeatedly over 20 years
refinances and tells the banks it's one unit or 4 units because
with five units or more, it's a commercial interest rate, which
is higher and very high closing costs.
So she's manipulating the system.
She actually sued people as attorney general for the very
(23:56):
same crime she was committing atthe same time.
So all these media outlets have to do is look at the facts, look
at the documents, and they'll see that Letitia James is guilty
of a a long pattern of mortgage fraud.
She hasn't. Been found guilty yet though, Do
you? Do you think that that is going
to be the outcome? I think she's going to be
charged in additional jurisdictions, including New
(24:18):
York State. I think there's superseding
indictments coming. I think she's going to be forced
to resign and try to cop a plea because the evidence against her
is so overwhelming. Unless she's somehow hoping that
maybe a biased jury might might let her off in Virginia or New
York State, I think she's she's toast.
Well, let's get back to the Roseanne movie.
(24:42):
We we have to wrap this up, but it's a very funny movie.
What is it that you most hope that people take away after
watching this documentary? Well, it's such a.
Entertaining movie because Rosanna is so charismatic and so
funny, but you just go through her whole life story, you learn
so much about how Hollywood works, how comedy works, about
politics, cancel culture, and how she persevered.
(25:05):
So I mean, people watch it, watch it again and again.
You can see it on iTunes or Amazon Prime.
You can see it on YouTube movies, it's on Roku Channel.
It's just about everywhere you would live stream a movie.
You can you can see the film andit's just really entertaining.
(25:26):
I don't think I've talked to anyone who only watched it once.
They said I had to watch it again and and I learned
something every time I watched it.
Why did why did you name the film Roseanne Barr is America?
Because Roseanne Barr is America.
Her whole life story. I mean, just starting out as an
immigrant family in a small town, as a minority, getting
into comedy and becoming the biggest comedy star in the in
(25:49):
the world for 10 years with the number one show.
She overcame The Cosby Show. She had talk shows after that,
gets into politics, runs for president, gets canceled and
comes back. I mean, I think it's just the
greatest American story ever told.
Well, Joel, I want to thank you for coming on the Sounds of
Film. Is there any other place online
or on social media you want to direct people to?
(26:10):
Yeah. If you can hit
roseanneisamerica.com, roseanneisamerica.com you can
see the movie trailer and that'll link you up to where you
can watch the film online or or buy the DVD.
Well, thanks again. And I do want to recommend the
film. It's it's really, really
interesting. And all those things that you
just listed, you'll, you'll learn so much about Hollywood
(26:35):
and the business and really what's going on politically too.
So great. Great movie.
Thanks so much. OK, well.
Thanks for having me today. Thanks again.
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