November 8, 2024 • 24 mins
NAACP Image Award-winning filmmaker Richard Hull discusses his new documentary, "Fighting Spirit: A Combat Chaplain's Journey," in theaters on November 8th in time for Veteran’s Day.
In 2021, when the remains of prisoner of war and Army combat chaplain Emil Kapaun (perhaps the Vatican's next saint) are identified after 70 years, much of our nation is captivated by their journey home. When a younger former chaplain unexpectedly embarks on his own journey to greet them, he becomes inspired by the untold stories of the 419 U.S. military chaplain heroes who've given their lives for this unique calling. As the paths of these two combat chaplains from different eras finally collide, we're reminded of how the profound weight of history and the immense power of love can converge to produce a life-changing moment of healing.
In 2021, when the remains of prisoner of war and Army combat chaplain Emil Kapaun (perhaps the Vatican's next saint) are identified after 70 years, much of our nation is captivated by their journey home. When a younger former chaplain unexpectedly embarks on his own journey to greet them, he becomes inspired by the untold stories of the 419 U.S. military chaplain heroes who've given their lives for this unique calling. As the paths of these two combat chaplains from different eras finally collide, we're reminded of how the profound weight of history and the immense power of love can converge to produce a life-changing moment of healing.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The jam Brece Show, All about Movies.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You're listening to The Jamfrey Show, All about Movies, and
today my guest is NAACP Image Award winner and director
producer Rich Hull, and we're going to be talking about this,
this beautiful documentary entitled Fighting Spirit, A Combat Chaplain's Journey.
Welcome to the show, Rick, thanks for having me. That's
a pleasure to have here. And this is such a
beautiful documentary. I cried many, many, many times throughout watching
(00:28):
this documentary. I always love it when somebody, you know,
when I cry, I watch something or laugh or whatever
it's supposed to be so it shows that it's moving
you the way it's supposed to move you. Just so
our guests know, why don't you give us anopsis of
what Fighting Spirit, a Combat Chaplain's Journey is all about?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Sure, so glad you were moved. I think that's that's
our job as a filmmaker is to make people feel something.
Sometimes early in my career I realized that if you
walk out of the theater and one guy says I
hate it, another guy's as I love it, and they
get in a fight, like I feel like I've done
my job and so I'm glad that you felt something.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's awesome, right, And I say this too. When you
walk out of a movie and go, oh, okay, that
was all right, you know whatever, and you don't talk
about it, there's no reaction to it, then I don't
think the movie has done what it's supposed to. I
think when you can spur conversation afterwards or you know,
I think that's always great. But as you say too,
you know, try your laugh or whatever it is. But
that's what I go to movies for, to be moved
(01:26):
in some way, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
My goal is to always make what I call a
refrigerator movie. So you come out of the theater, you're like,
that was pretty good, and then you get up in
the middle of night and you go to the refrigerator
and you can't get your mind off of it and
you're just kind of thinking about it and stewing on it. Like,
to me, that's that's very successful. And so hopefully this
one is a refrigerator movie.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I agree with you one hundred percent, and it is.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
It's a refrigerator movie.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Thank you so talking about the movie. So this is
a project I got involved in about four years ago.
I was originally just brought in as a producer. I
ultimately decided to direct it a little bit later. And
I knew nothing about military chaplains, and so this was
a journey for me to go and figure out what
is this world that I knew nothing about of military
combat chaplains, And I really kind of fell in love
(02:10):
with the subject matter and fell in love with so
many of the people who are so heroic right and
really felt entrusted to tell their stories, which they don't
like to do. The combat chaplains don't like to be
the story. They like to quietly serve. And so when
they do serve, a combat chaplain goes to war and
he wears he or she wears a uniform, but they
don't carry a weapon, which means this is a very
(02:32):
unique profession. It's really a calling that is motivated clearly
by something far bigger than just looking for a paycheck,
because you're going out and you're serving the soldiers who
are serving us as Americans. And when you're out there,
you may come from a particular faith background, and all
faiths are represented in the chaplain Corps. Literally every faith, Buddhist, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish,
(02:54):
you name it. But when you're out there on the
front lines and there's bullets whizzing by your head, a
lot of that goes out the window. And you're dealing
with people of all faiths and no faith, and these
are very existential life and death questions and you're helping
soldiers make sense of that. And one of the challenges
that the military has right now is that you are
more likely to die of suicide than you are being
(03:15):
shot at war, and that is a bad place for
our military to be. And the Chaplains are the group
that decided that they were going to go tackle that
and turn it around, and they're doing that, and so
this is a very noble calling. And Chaplains were created
by George Washington. So they've been a part of every
US war we've ever had. Four hundred and nineteen of
them have died throughout history for their service, but most
(03:37):
people don't even know they exist. And so that's really
what we wanted to do. We wanted to pull these
stories out of them that have never been told before
and shine a spotlight on it and then do it
in a way that would bring people together. So obviously
we're kind of living in a divisive time, and we
decided that we would premiere this movie in theaters, and
it's only in theaters. The only place you can see
(03:59):
it is in theater on November eighth, for the first
day of Veterans Day weekend. And of course we picked
that date for obvious reasons. It's a celebration of veterans,
but it's also three days after the US presidential election.
And so we thought, well, if you're ever going to
try to find a common ground issue that like everybody
can agree on, no matter what your geography is or
your persuasion or whatever, it's going to be the incredible
(04:21):
role that combat chaplains play to support our soldiers. And
so we thought, wouldn't it be great to have everybody
be able to sort of convene as their community in
theaters with people that they may not even agree with
on many things, but find common ground in this in
this movie, And so far we've seen a lot of
that happening. So I've been on the road traveling around
(04:41):
the country for the last few weeks screening the movie
and advanced screenings for audiences, and you know, when the
lights come up, many people are having the same reaction
you did. And there's tears and emotion, and that's really
powerful for me. And so I think a lot of
the military people are getting a lot of emotion out
of it. I think faith based people are getting a
lot of motion. General populations are getting a lot of
emotion out of it. I mean, I'm a guy that
(05:03):
I'm not a veteran. My dad was a veteran. I've
got a lot of veterans throughout my family, but I'm
not a veteran, and I'm still moved by the subject.
Now I'm a little biased in this, I would say, probably,
but I think there's a lot of people like me
that just like opening the door to this world that
they didn't even know existed. Whereas for people perhaps like
who have some connection to the military, whether it be
a military family or someone that have served in the military,
(05:26):
I think it starts with this opens up in them,
and then by the end it's sort of become like
tears of joy because this movie kind of gives a
voice to maybe their experience in a way that they
couldn't necessarily do on their own, and that helps them
convey to their friends, their family, to everybody else, to
the world what it really is. Like to serve in
the military, and every single veteran I've ever met in
(05:47):
my entire life has a story about a chaplain. And
it may just be a moment, or it may be
that they impacted their life, it may be that they
saved their life, but they all have a story.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
And chaplains in the military are just revered.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
They're put on a pedestal and they really have their
own place in the military in all branches, and so
for us to be able to tell those stories has
been just an incredible journey for me. I mean, we
talk about the word journey a lot in the movie,
and it's in the title of the film, A fighting Spirit,
a combat chaplain's journey, but it's intentionally vague, like I
didn't want to know. I didn't want to know, and
(06:19):
I didn't want to tell anybody whose journey it was,
because it's really about a lot of journeys, right. We
tell a bunch of stories in the movie, but the
audiences go through their own journey too.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So I took that.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Journey and it's been really incredible for me, and I'm
so glad that you were moved by it as well.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Thank you for making this because as you say, I
don't think many people are really aware. And let's say,
are they know about it? Chaplain military would know about
what it? Would you even think about chapons with you
serving in the military, how and what they are and
the men that they serve and what they mean for everybody.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And there's so many.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
There's chaplains from every single religion out there now, Katholic,
read Muslim, you're Jewish, everybody's a Protestant obviously, but everybody's
represented in this film but also in the military itself,
and it's so important. You interviewed quite a few chaplains
that are serving now, I believe, And how did you
(07:15):
attract those chaplains to come and share their stories. They're
sort of the talking heads throughout the film, but they're
fascinating to hear their story.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
We got really lucky to have the opportunity to interview
chaplains both current and former, from all branches of the
military at the highest levels, from the chief of Chaplains
on them and we did that because of the partnership
that we were able to sort of forge with the military,
and they have really been a good partner. The Army.
Chaplain Corps has really taken us under their wing and
(07:46):
been very gracious to let us in the door in
a way that they've never done before. This is really
the first partnership they've ever done with Hollywood. And as
you pointed out, like most people don't know the chaplain stories.
I would argue that the Army Chaplain Corps need new publicists.
They would argue that they don't want any publicists. They
don't necessarily want to be part of the story. So
in some respects we had to drag it out of them.
(08:07):
But I was brought into this movie because I had
made I think this is my twenty eighth movie as
a producer, but my first as a director.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
And I was brought in because of.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
A documentary that halle Berry and I had made ten
years ago with the US Army about black soldiers that
fought in all the US wars we ever had. So
Hallie and I won the Naacpmge Award that year, We
want a bunch of other awards, and so I think
that had built a lot of trust with the military. Well,
there's a production company in Los Angeles called Paulist Productions.
They're a nonprofit They've been around for sixty years. They
(08:40):
were started by a Catholic priest and I sit on
the board and they wanted to make a documentary about
military chaplains, and so because of my past experience with
the army, they said, hey, maybe you can help us
get the attention of the military. And we really liked
to ultimately interview you know, active duty military chaplins, and
(09:00):
so we need their support, and so I was able
to kind of make that connection. I think because of
some of the trusts that I had built in the past,
the Army felt comfortable having me involved, and so I
was just going to be a producer. But in doing that,
we and ultimately I decided to direct the movie. But
in doing that, we kind of got their blessing, if
you will, and it allowed us to use them to
(09:24):
help us navigate kind of the internal halls of the
Pentacon and the military to find just the right people who.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
We could interview to tell these stories.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
And so we did that in Washington, DC in a
sound stage just not too far away from the Pentagon
and everybody. I love it because everybody showed up and
they had their full military uniform. They all look great,
but they're also so darn articulate and so then that
association with the military allowed us to shoot up military
bases tap into their extensive archives. And so what I
(09:56):
love about that is that a lot of those interviews
are people telling historical stories, right, so they really had
to help us tell those stories, some of which were
happening even before these people were alive. Other times in
those interviews, we just stumbled upon interesting stories that they
happened to be talking about. And so, like, as an example,
(10:18):
there's a person in the movie named Tom Solgian who
is the former chief of Chaplains and so.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Chief Soljohn was telling some of these historical stories in
his interview. Well kind of between those and between takes, he.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Started telling us a story about something that happened to
him in Iraq, and luckily the camera just was rolling,
and that ended up making it into the final movie
because it was such an authentic, genuine, real moment for
him that he was just telling us to just kill
some time. And so those really magical moments always happen
(10:55):
in documentaries that you just never expect. But you know, yes,
we did those interviews, but then we also had all
this historical and archive footage that we were able to
gather and some of that came from the military, some
of that came from other sources. We spent a lot
of time just digging through a lot of footage just
to find the exact right archival footage to tell these stories.
(11:20):
We did some reenactments, but we also kind of did
those in a really unique way with sort of the
sort of crayola like drawings that we were able to
do to really bring those to life.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And I had an.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Editor who was my partner in the edit room, and
her name was Holly Stocking, and she was a very
deliberate choice, and she spent a lot of time going
through all of this archival footage to really find the
exact right stuff. And I picked her for two reasons.
One is that she's probably one of the most sought
after film trailer editors in all of Hollywood, and she'd
(11:57):
never done a long form peace like this. And you know,
some of the stories, these little journeys that we tell,
they're almost if you think about it, they're very long stories.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Told in a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
And I thought, well, who better to be able to
take a very long, complicated story and tell it in
a short amount of time than a.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Film trailer editor.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
And then I also thought, well, a lot of these
stories are very male centric, a lot of testosterone and
action and excitement, and I thought, wouldn't it be interesting
to be able to kind of view some of those
through a female lens as well. And so I think
those two things are what ultimately led me to want
her to come on board, her to want to come
(12:37):
on board. She and I got along great most of
the time. You know, in the edit room there's always
this healthy creative tension, and each one of us only
stormed out a few times, and that's way down from
you know, the amount of times you usually storm out
of the edit room.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But I think that really both of.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Us coming at it from a very different perspective helped
a lot. And I also think that, you know, there
was a sort of a third perspective, which is Justin Roberts,
who co directed the movie. Justin as a veteran, you know,
he has a very veteran specific lens. He's a former
Army chaplain, he's left the military now. He really, I
(13:23):
think helped us tell these stories with authenticity. And I
wanted to be sure that we could that we could
say that that we could say that we were being
authentic to the veteran stories that we were entrusted with
telling because we had the support of a veteran as
part of that. And so yeah, we dug through just
(13:44):
hours and hours and hours of footage to find just
the exact right moments and.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Hopefully it resonates.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It really does, and we're going to get I want
to get back to Justin Roberts because I want to
talk about a meal at home and again I'm not
sure I'm saying it correctly, but Army combat chaplain Emil
Cuppman in his story, which is really the central part
of this journey that's started, and there's a cute story
(14:15):
behind that and how things shifted, So I want to
know more about that too.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Well, you're not alone in not knowing quite how to
pronounce Emil Caupon's name. Uh, there is a lot of disagreement,
which we even had a lot of disagreement in the
edit room because we found different pieces of historical footage,
whether it be President Obama talking about this or others
talking about it, and nobody pronounces it the same way.
(14:43):
And we're like, we got to get to some consensus
about how we're going to pronounce it? How are we
going to pronounce it even when you know we're narrating
the movie. And so my brother in law is from Wichitalk, Kansas,
where Emil Coupon is from, and I called him, he
called his mother, his mother called a bunch of friends,
and ultimately we found no consensus. In Wichita they pronounced
it capin, some people pronounce it capone, some people announce it,
(15:08):
pronounce it capon. And finally we just gave up and
we just said, everybody's going to know who we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And just this morning I got an.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Email from Ray Capon, who is the nephew of Father
emil Upon, who had just seen the movie for the
first time, and he was so glowing. He was so
moved by the movie and Moshi that he felt in
watching this story, and how grateful he was that we
had told his uncle's story.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But his uncle story, I think is really unique for us.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
So Father atmilk Upon is a Catholic priest who was
an army combat chaplain. He died in a prisoner of
war camp back in Korea, and they had given him
the opportunity to leave, and he wouldn't leave his men
and so when he died, he was buried and they
found and identified his remains seventy years later, And it
(16:00):
just so happens that that was when we were in
the edit room for the movie and we were cutting
the movie and we were struggling, i think, to find
the movie's voice, as often happens, and we heard about
this story of this former combat chaplain from the army.
It remains had been identified, and they announced that they
were going to repatriate him, bring him back to the US,
(16:23):
go back to his hometown of Wichitak, Kansas, bury him,
have a proper funeral. And we didn't quite know how
that would fit into our work because it wasn't one
of the stories we intended to tell, but we just
knew that it would, and so we took Justin Roberts
and we sent him to the funeral and with a
(16:44):
cameracker and we said, just go shoot this and we'll
figure out how to use it.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And he did.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
And we didn't know if anybody was going to show up,
even we thought maybe Justin would be the only guy there.
But if you know anything about the Catholic Church and
the military, they know how to put on a pretty
good show, and so this turned out to be basically
a complete shutdown of the city of Wichita.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
People came from far and wide.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
It was a packed house, and people were there to
celebrate combat chaplains, right, not just this one, but all
of them. And that was such a moving experience for Justin.
He you know, he took his own journey. He lives
in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He went across the country, he
got there, he was blown away by this kind of
(17:29):
outpouring of support, and like many military members, when he
came home, he was struggling to make sense of what
life was going to be like for him after the military.
And when he went on this journey and kind of
had this reaction at this funeral, it was.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Life changing for him.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
It really became a turning point, I think for him
and gave him some clarity on what he wanted the
next portion of his life to look like. And so
there's that journey again, right, everybody seems to go through
a journey, And so we decided to integrate Father Capon's story,
along with Justin's part of that into the movie, and
(18:13):
Justin kind of then became our tour guide through some
of these historical stories in a really fresh and unique way,
and I think that's where the movie found its heartbeat.
Quite frankly, I think that's what makes it makes it work.
There's a we had a little bit of an inspiration
for it, I guess you know.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
There's a there's this movie from a few.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Years ago called My Octopus Teacher, which you may remember.
It was a documentary at one Best Picture. I love
the awards season. I'm an Oscar voter, and so I
get to like dig in with all these really amazing
documentaries and watch them for awards consideration. And this is
one that I remember watching with my wife and we
(18:51):
both were just so moved by it. Unexpectedly, we didn't
really know anything about. It was just the next movie
on the list that we were going to watch that night,
and and it's the story of the life cycle of
an octopos, so basically from birth to death. And they
shot it and they cut it and it kind of
seemed like a nature film and it wasn't terribly interesting,
(19:11):
and so then they threw that out and they recut
it again. It was still a nature film. So they
sent that to a friend of a friend that was
a director in Hollywood, and he said, well, tell me
about the guy that shot this. And it turns out
that guy who was going through his own stuff in
his life. And so they went and they interviewed that
guy after the fact, and they wove those two storylines
together and that's what made it work. And so we thought, wow,
(19:33):
I wonder if we could kind of do something similar.
And I think that's where the movie really really found
its voice. So, you know, kind of father Capon's parting
gift to us, I guess, was to help us find
the voice for this movie. And you know, he maybe
our next saint. He's in contention with the Pope at
the Vatican. We screamed this movie at the Pope's house
(19:57):
at the Vatican, and who knew that the Pope had
a screening room at his house And that was a
whole crazy experience where like, you know, the Vatican has
their own you know, Vatican City has like their own
theaters and stuff, but like the Pope's screening room in
his little compound, that was really special for us and
the people that get invited to go screen there are
(20:18):
the household names of our industry, Martin Scorsese and people
like that, and you know, and this room was built
in nine hundred a d. It's an old chapel, right,
So it's the sound is bad and the picture quality
is weird, and if it were a screening room in
Los Angeles, nobody'd go to it. But it was such
an amazing experience to walk through the Swiss Guard and
(20:39):
go into this compound. And it was a really powerful experience.
It made my Catholic mother very proud. But it's it
was a really powerful experience, and it.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Was a great way to kick off.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Just you kind of throwze up. It was a great
experience to kick off movie. Is that what you were saying, Well.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
To kick yeah, to kick off a series of screenings
that we've been doing around the country.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I can't imagine what that would be like to go
to the Vatican to screen of film with the folk. Wow,
pretty amazing. You know. When you were talking, I just thought,
you know, the thought came that this was a god.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
It was God.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Speaking through through all of this, because, as you say,
they found you're filming this movie about military chaplains and
you haven't found your center of the film. And then
emil Upon's body, his remains have been found after seventy
years while you were filming it. To me, that's a
(21:36):
god thing, you know, for those who believe in all
of that. I do, and that's what brought it together
and created the center for this film. And had that
not happened, you might not have had a screening at
the Vatican.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
That's right. I mean, that's a that's a good way
to think about it.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
You know. It's when you make a documentary, well, nobody
makes documentaries for the money. You make it because it's
a labor of love. And when you start a documentary,
you make a plan and the only thing you know
for sure is that the plan is going to be wrong,
and so you kind of got to go with it.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
And documentaries they.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Always run out of money at some point, they always
take longer than expected. They take these left turns and
then right turns, and you just got to kind of
go with it. And so I think that's what we
did there is we just tried to be open to
something that we didn't expect, that was new, that we
didn't anticipate being.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Part of the story.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
And sometimes when you do that, that's when the magic happens.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Oh Rich, thank you so much. This movie is really
beautiful and I please everybody seek out Fighting Spirit a
compat a combat Chaplain's journey. Over the Veterans Day holiday weekend.
You'll have an extra day to find the film and
just be it. It's really, really a beautiful film and
(22:58):
it will create a lot of discussion afterwards with the
people that you go to see. Go see with your
loved ones, bring your tissues for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, thank you so much, I mean for saying that.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
And i'd say people can go to the website that
we've got with just fightingspiritfilm dot com and as we
start to add theaters in their area, which is sort
of a process that will kind of be happening between
now and November eighth, then they'll start to be able
to there'll be a little, you know, sort of theater
finder on there and they can they can find the
theater near them.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Wait, and we'll put that on our social media post
to fightingspirit dot com so people can find it for sure,
and we put the trailer on there too. Thank you
so much, Rich, It was a blessing to have you
on the show. I really appreciate your time and I
wish you much success the Fighting Spirit.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
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(24:10):
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Speaker 3 (24:12):
The jam Right Show All About Movies.
The jam Brece Show, All about Movies.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You're listening to The Jamfrey Show, All about Movies, and
today my guest is NAACP Image Award winner and director
producer Rich Hull, and we're going to be talking about this,
this beautiful documentary entitled Fighting Spirit, A Combat Chaplain's Journey.
Welcome to the show, Rick, thanks for having me. That's
a pleasure to have here. And this is such a
beautiful documentary. I cried many, many, many times throughout watching
(00:28):
this documentary. I always love it when somebody, you know,
when I cry, I watch something or laugh or whatever
it's supposed to be so it shows that it's moving
you the way it's supposed to move you. Just so
our guests know, why don't you give us anopsis of
what Fighting Spirit, a Combat Chaplain's Journey is all about?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Sure, so glad you were moved. I think that's that's
our job as a filmmaker is to make people feel something.
Sometimes early in my career I realized that if you
walk out of the theater and one guy says I
hate it, another guy's as I love it, and they
get in a fight, like I feel like I've done
my job and so I'm glad that you felt something.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's awesome, right, And I say this too. When you
walk out of a movie and go, oh, okay, that
was all right, you know whatever, and you don't talk
about it, there's no reaction to it, then I don't
think the movie has done what it's supposed to. I
think when you can spur conversation afterwards or you know,
I think that's always great. But as you say too,
you know, try your laugh or whatever it is. But
that's what I go to movies for, to be moved
(01:26):
in some way, you know.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
My goal is to always make what I call a
refrigerator movie. So you come out of the theater, you're like,
that was pretty good, and then you get up in
the middle of night and you go to the refrigerator
and you can't get your mind off of it and
you're just kind of thinking about it and stewing on it. Like,
to me, that's that's very successful. And so hopefully this
one is a refrigerator movie.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I agree with you one hundred percent, and it is.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
It's a refrigerator movie.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Thank you so talking about the movie. So this is
a project I got involved in about four years ago.
I was originally just brought in as a producer. I
ultimately decided to direct it a little bit later. And
I knew nothing about military chaplains, and so this was
a journey for me to go and figure out what
is this world that I knew nothing about of military
combat chaplains, And I really kind of fell in love
(02:10):
with the subject matter and fell in love with so
many of the people who are so heroic right and
really felt entrusted to tell their stories, which they don't
like to do. The combat chaplains don't like to be
the story. They like to quietly serve. And so when
they do serve, a combat chaplain goes to war and
he wears he or she wears a uniform, but they
don't carry a weapon, which means this is a very
(02:32):
unique profession. It's really a calling that is motivated clearly
by something far bigger than just looking for a paycheck,
because you're going out and you're serving the soldiers who
are serving us as Americans. And when you're out there,
you may come from a particular faith background, and all
faiths are represented in the chaplain Corps. Literally every faith, Buddhist, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish,
(02:54):
you name it. But when you're out there on the
front lines and there's bullets whizzing by your head, a
lot of that goes out the window. And you're dealing
with people of all faiths and no faith, and these
are very existential life and death questions and you're helping
soldiers make sense of that. And one of the challenges
that the military has right now is that you are
more likely to die of suicide than you are being
(03:15):
shot at war, and that is a bad place for
our military to be. And the Chaplains are the group
that decided that they were going to go tackle that
and turn it around, and they're doing that, and so
this is a very noble calling. And Chaplains were created
by George Washington. So they've been a part of every
US war we've ever had. Four hundred and nineteen of
them have died throughout history for their service, but most
(03:37):
people don't even know they exist. And so that's really
what we wanted to do. We wanted to pull these
stories out of them that have never been told before
and shine a spotlight on it and then do it
in a way that would bring people together. So obviously
we're kind of living in a divisive time, and we
decided that we would premiere this movie in theaters, and
it's only in theaters. The only place you can see
(03:59):
it is in theater on November eighth, for the first
day of Veterans Day weekend. And of course we picked
that date for obvious reasons. It's a celebration of veterans,
but it's also three days after the US presidential election.
And so we thought, well, if you're ever going to
try to find a common ground issue that like everybody
can agree on, no matter what your geography is or
your persuasion or whatever, it's going to be the incredible
(04:21):
role that combat chaplains play to support our soldiers. And
so we thought, wouldn't it be great to have everybody
be able to sort of convene as their community in
theaters with people that they may not even agree with
on many things, but find common ground in this in
this movie, And so far we've seen a lot of
that happening. So I've been on the road traveling around
(04:41):
the country for the last few weeks screening the movie
and advanced screenings for audiences, and you know, when the
lights come up, many people are having the same reaction
you did. And there's tears and emotion, and that's really
powerful for me. And so I think a lot of
the military people are getting a lot of emotion out
of it. I think faith based people are getting a
lot of motion. General populations are getting a lot of
emotion out of it. I mean, I'm a guy that
(05:03):
I'm not a veteran. My dad was a veteran. I've
got a lot of veterans throughout my family, but I'm
not a veteran, and I'm still moved by the subject.
Now I'm a little biased in this, I would say, probably,
but I think there's a lot of people like me
that just like opening the door to this world that
they didn't even know existed. Whereas for people perhaps like
who have some connection to the military, whether it be
a military family or someone that have served in the military,
(05:26):
I think it starts with this opens up in them,
and then by the end it's sort of become like
tears of joy because this movie kind of gives a
voice to maybe their experience in a way that they
couldn't necessarily do on their own, and that helps them
convey to their friends, their family, to everybody else, to
the world what it really is. Like to serve in
the military, and every single veteran I've ever met in
(05:47):
my entire life has a story about a chaplain. And
it may just be a moment, or it may be
that they impacted their life, it may be that they
saved their life, but they all have a story.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
And chaplains in the military are just revered.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
They're put on a pedestal and they really have their
own place in the military in all branches, and so
for us to be able to tell those stories has
been just an incredible journey for me. I mean, we
talk about the word journey a lot in the movie,
and it's in the title of the film, A fighting Spirit,
a combat chaplain's journey, but it's intentionally vague, like I
didn't want to know. I didn't want to know, and
(06:19):
I didn't want to tell anybody whose journey it was,
because it's really about a lot of journeys, right. We
tell a bunch of stories in the movie, but the
audiences go through their own journey too.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
So I took that.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Journey and it's been really incredible for me, and I'm
so glad that you were moved by it as well.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Thank you for making this because as you say, I
don't think many people are really aware. And let's say,
are they know about it? Chaplain military would know about
what it? Would you even think about chapons with you
serving in the military, how and what they are and
the men that they serve and what they mean for everybody.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And there's so many.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
There's chaplains from every single religion out there now, Katholic,
read Muslim, you're Jewish, everybody's a Protestant obviously, but everybody's
represented in this film but also in the military itself,
and it's so important. You interviewed quite a few chaplains
that are serving now, I believe, And how did you
(07:15):
attract those chaplains to come and share their stories. They're
sort of the talking heads throughout the film, but they're
fascinating to hear their story.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
We got really lucky to have the opportunity to interview
chaplains both current and former, from all branches of the
military at the highest levels, from the chief of Chaplains
on them and we did that because of the partnership
that we were able to sort of forge with the military,
and they have really been a good partner. The Army.
Chaplain Corps has really taken us under their wing and
(07:46):
been very gracious to let us in the door in
a way that they've never done before. This is really
the first partnership they've ever done with Hollywood. And as
you pointed out, like most people don't know the chaplain stories.
I would argue that the Army Chaplain Corps need new publicists.
They would argue that they don't want any publicists. They
don't necessarily want to be part of the story. So
in some respects we had to drag it out of them.
(08:07):
But I was brought into this movie because I had
made I think this is my twenty eighth movie as
a producer, but my first as a director.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
And I was brought in because of.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
A documentary that halle Berry and I had made ten
years ago with the US Army about black soldiers that
fought in all the US wars we ever had. So
Hallie and I won the Naacpmge Award that year, We
want a bunch of other awards, and so I think
that had built a lot of trust with the military. Well,
there's a production company in Los Angeles called Paulist Productions.
They're a nonprofit They've been around for sixty years. They
(08:40):
were started by a Catholic priest and I sit on
the board and they wanted to make a documentary about
military chaplains, and so because of my past experience with
the army, they said, hey, maybe you can help us
get the attention of the military. And we really liked
to ultimately interview you know, active duty military chaplins, and
(09:00):
so we need their support, and so I was able
to kind of make that connection. I think because of
some of the trusts that I had built in the past,
the Army felt comfortable having me involved, and so I
was just going to be a producer. But in doing that,
we and ultimately I decided to direct the movie. But
in doing that, we kind of got their blessing, if
you will, and it allowed us to use them to
(09:24):
help us navigate kind of the internal halls of the
Pentacon and the military to find just the right people who.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
We could interview to tell these stories.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
And so we did that in Washington, DC in a
sound stage just not too far away from the Pentagon
and everybody. I love it because everybody showed up and
they had their full military uniform. They all look great,
but they're also so darn articulate and so then that
association with the military allowed us to shoot up military
bases tap into their extensive archives. And so what I
(09:56):
love about that is that a lot of those interviews
are people telling historical stories, right, so they really had
to help us tell those stories, some of which were
happening even before these people were alive. Other times in
those interviews, we just stumbled upon interesting stories that they
happened to be talking about. And so, like, as an example,
(10:18):
there's a person in the movie named Tom Solgian who
is the former chief of Chaplains and so.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Chief Soljohn was telling some of these historical stories in
his interview. Well kind of between those and between takes, he.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Started telling us a story about something that happened to
him in Iraq, and luckily the camera just was rolling,
and that ended up making it into the final movie
because it was such an authentic, genuine, real moment for
him that he was just telling us to just kill
some time. And so those really magical moments always happen
(10:55):
in documentaries that you just never expect. But you know, yes,
we did those interviews, but then we also had all
this historical and archive footage that we were able to
gather and some of that came from the military, some
of that came from other sources. We spent a lot
of time just digging through a lot of footage just
to find the exact right archival footage to tell these stories.
(11:20):
We did some reenactments, but we also kind of did
those in a really unique way with sort of the
sort of crayola like drawings that we were able to
do to really bring those to life.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
And I had an.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Editor who was my partner in the edit room, and
her name was Holly Stocking, and she was a very
deliberate choice, and she spent a lot of time going
through all of this archival footage to really find the
exact right stuff. And I picked her for two reasons.
One is that she's probably one of the most sought
after film trailer editors in all of Hollywood, and she'd
(11:57):
never done a long form peace like this. And you know,
some of the stories, these little journeys that we tell,
they're almost if you think about it, they're very long stories.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Told in a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
And I thought, well, who better to be able to
take a very long, complicated story and tell it in
a short amount of time than a.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Film trailer editor.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
And then I also thought, well, a lot of these
stories are very male centric, a lot of testosterone and
action and excitement, and I thought, wouldn't it be interesting
to be able to kind of view some of those
through a female lens as well. And so I think
those two things are what ultimately led me to want
her to come on board, her to want to come
(12:37):
on board. She and I got along great most of
the time. You know, in the edit room there's always
this healthy creative tension, and each one of us only
stormed out a few times, and that's way down from
you know, the amount of times you usually storm out
of the edit room.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But I think that really both of.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Us coming at it from a very different perspective helped
a lot. And I also think that, you know, there
was a sort of a third perspective, which is Justin Roberts,
who co directed the movie. Justin as a veteran, you know,
he has a very veteran specific lens. He's a former
Army chaplain, he's left the military now. He really, I
(13:23):
think helped us tell these stories with authenticity. And I
wanted to be sure that we could that we could
say that that we could say that we were being
authentic to the veteran stories that we were entrusted with
telling because we had the support of a veteran as
part of that. And so yeah, we dug through just
(13:44):
hours and hours and hours of footage to find just
the exact right moments and.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Hopefully it resonates.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It really does, and we're going to get I want
to get back to Justin Roberts because I want to
talk about a meal at home and again I'm not
sure I'm saying it correctly, but Army combat chaplain Emil
Cuppman in his story, which is really the central part
of this journey that's started, and there's a cute story
(14:15):
behind that and how things shifted, So I want to
know more about that too.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Well, you're not alone in not knowing quite how to
pronounce Emil Caupon's name. Uh, there is a lot of disagreement,
which we even had a lot of disagreement in the
edit room because we found different pieces of historical footage,
whether it be President Obama talking about this or others
talking about it, and nobody pronounces it the same way.
(14:43):
And we're like, we got to get to some consensus
about how we're going to pronounce it? How are we
going to pronounce it even when you know we're narrating
the movie. And so my brother in law is from Wichitalk, Kansas,
where Emil Coupon is from, and I called him, he
called his mother, his mother called a bunch of friends,
and ultimately we found no consensus. In Wichita they pronounced
it capin, some people pronounce it capone, some people announce it,
(15:08):
pronounce it capon. And finally we just gave up and
we just said, everybody's going to know who we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And just this morning I got an.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Email from Ray Capon, who is the nephew of Father
emil Upon, who had just seen the movie for the
first time, and he was so glowing. He was so
moved by the movie and Moshi that he felt in
watching this story, and how grateful he was that we
had told his uncle's story.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But his uncle story, I think is really unique for us.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
So Father atmilk Upon is a Catholic priest who was
an army combat chaplain. He died in a prisoner of
war camp back in Korea, and they had given him
the opportunity to leave, and he wouldn't leave his men
and so when he died, he was buried and they
found and identified his remains seventy years later, And it
(16:00):
just so happens that that was when we were in
the edit room for the movie and we were cutting
the movie and we were struggling, i think, to find
the movie's voice, as often happens, and we heard about
this story of this former combat chaplain from the army.
It remains had been identified, and they announced that they
were going to repatriate him, bring him back to the US,
(16:23):
go back to his hometown of Wichitak, Kansas, bury him,
have a proper funeral. And we didn't quite know how
that would fit into our work because it wasn't one
of the stories we intended to tell, but we just
knew that it would, and so we took Justin Roberts
and we sent him to the funeral and with a
(16:44):
cameracker and we said, just go shoot this and we'll
figure out how to use it.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And he did.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
And we didn't know if anybody was going to show up,
even we thought maybe Justin would be the only guy there.
But if you know anything about the Catholic Church and
the military, they know how to put on a pretty
good show, and so this turned out to be basically
a complete shutdown of the city of Wichita.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
People came from far and wide.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
It was a packed house, and people were there to
celebrate combat chaplains, right, not just this one, but all
of them. And that was such a moving experience for Justin.
He you know, he took his own journey. He lives
in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He went across the country, he
got there, he was blown away by this kind of
(17:29):
outpouring of support, and like many military members, when he
came home, he was struggling to make sense of what
life was going to be like for him after the military.
And when he went on this journey and kind of
had this reaction at this funeral, it was.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Life changing for him.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
It really became a turning point, I think for him
and gave him some clarity on what he wanted the
next portion of his life to look like. And so
there's that journey again, right, everybody seems to go through
a journey, And so we decided to integrate Father Capon's story,
along with Justin's part of that into the movie, and
(18:13):
Justin kind of then became our tour guide through some
of these historical stories in a really fresh and unique way,
and I think that's where the movie found its heartbeat.
Quite frankly, I think that's what makes it makes it work.
There's a we had a little bit of an inspiration
for it, I guess you know.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
There's a there's this movie from a few.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Years ago called My Octopus Teacher, which you may remember.
It was a documentary at one Best Picture. I love
the awards season. I'm an Oscar voter, and so I
get to like dig in with all these really amazing
documentaries and watch them for awards consideration. And this is
one that I remember watching with my wife and we
(18:51):
both were just so moved by it. Unexpectedly, we didn't
really know anything about. It was just the next movie
on the list that we were going to watch that night,
and and it's the story of the life cycle of
an octopos, so basically from birth to death. And they
shot it and they cut it and it kind of
seemed like a nature film and it wasn't terribly interesting,
(19:11):
and so then they threw that out and they recut
it again. It was still a nature film. So they
sent that to a friend of a friend that was
a director in Hollywood, and he said, well, tell me
about the guy that shot this. And it turns out
that guy who was going through his own stuff in
his life. And so they went and they interviewed that
guy after the fact, and they wove those two storylines
together and that's what made it work. And so we thought, wow,
(19:33):
I wonder if we could kind of do something similar.
And I think that's where the movie really really found
its voice. So, you know, kind of father Capon's parting
gift to us, I guess, was to help us find
the voice for this movie. And you know, he maybe
our next saint. He's in contention with the Pope at
the Vatican. We screamed this movie at the Pope's house
(19:57):
at the Vatican, and who knew that the Pope had
a screening room at his house And that was a
whole crazy experience where like, you know, the Vatican has
their own you know, Vatican City has like their own
theaters and stuff, but like the Pope's screening room in
his little compound, that was really special for us and
the people that get invited to go screen there are
(20:18):
the household names of our industry, Martin Scorsese and people
like that, and you know, and this room was built
in nine hundred a d. It's an old chapel, right,
So it's the sound is bad and the picture quality
is weird, and if it were a screening room in
Los Angeles, nobody'd go to it. But it was such
an amazing experience to walk through the Swiss Guard and
(20:39):
go into this compound. And it was a really powerful experience.
It made my Catholic mother very proud. But it's it
was a really powerful experience, and it.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Was a great way to kick off.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Just you kind of throwze up. It was a great
experience to kick off movie. Is that what you were saying, Well.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
To kick yeah, to kick off a series of screenings
that we've been doing around the country.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I can't imagine what that would be like to go
to the Vatican to screen of film with the folk. Wow,
pretty amazing. You know. When you were talking, I just thought,
you know, the thought came that this was a god.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
It was God.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Speaking through through all of this, because, as you say,
they found you're filming this movie about military chaplains and
you haven't found your center of the film. And then
emil Upon's body, his remains have been found after seventy
years while you were filming it. To me, that's a
(21:36):
god thing, you know, for those who believe in all
of that. I do, and that's what brought it together
and created the center for this film. And had that
not happened, you might not have had a screening at
the Vatican.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
That's right. I mean, that's a that's a good way
to think about it.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
You know. It's when you make a documentary, well, nobody
makes documentaries for the money. You make it because it's
a labor of love. And when you start a documentary,
you make a plan and the only thing you know
for sure is that the plan is going to be wrong,
and so you kind of got to go with it.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
And documentaries they.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Always run out of money at some point, they always
take longer than expected. They take these left turns and
then right turns, and you just got to kind of
go with it. And so I think that's what we
did there is we just tried to be open to
something that we didn't expect, that was new, that we
didn't anticipate being.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Part of the story.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
And sometimes when you do that, that's when the magic happens.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Oh Rich, thank you so much. This movie is really
beautiful and I please everybody seek out Fighting Spirit a
compat a combat Chaplain's journey. Over the Veterans Day holiday weekend.
You'll have an extra day to find the film and
just be it. It's really, really a beautiful film and
(22:58):
it will create a lot of discussion afterwards with the
people that you go to see. Go see with your
loved ones, bring your tissues for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, thank you so much, I mean for saying that.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
And i'd say people can go to the website that
we've got with just fightingspiritfilm dot com and as we
start to add theaters in their area, which is sort
of a process that will kind of be happening between
now and November eighth, then they'll start to be able
to there'll be a little, you know, sort of theater
finder on there and they can they can find the
theater near them.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Wait, and we'll put that on our social media post
to fightingspirit dot com so people can find it for sure,
and we put the trailer on there too. Thank you
so much, Rich, It was a blessing to have you
on the show. I really appreciate your time and I
wish you much success the Fighting Spirit.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I have a quick message for everyone. If you would
like to support the jam Fry Show All About Movies,
you can now give a tax FREEK donation. Go to
creative visions dot org. That creative visions dot org find
the Jamfright Show in the podcast faction and that's where
you can make a text donation. Thank you all in
(24:10):
advance for your support
Speaker 3 (24:12):
The jam Right Show All About Movies.
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