Latest / We Talk Back / Never Forget feat. Laura Dyan Kezman and William Howell

Transcript

Never Forget feat. Laura Dyan Kezman and William Howell · We Talk Back

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi.
• 0:00
  Speaker 2: I'm Laura Diane Cousin, director of Cycle.
• 0:03
  Speaker 3: And this is your boy William Howell, co director of
• 0:05
  Speaker 3: the film Cycle. And we are here live on the
• 0:08
  Speaker 3: We Talk Back podcast and we are talking Cycle.
• 0:12
  Speaker 4: Welcome to We Talk Back Podcast, the production of iHeartRadio
• 0:16
  Speaker 4: and the Black Effect Network Talk Talk.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: We're just two unapologetically black women with an opinion who talks.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: What's up, y'all, it's your girl a j Holiday. What's up, Tam.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Bam, y'all. It's Tam Bam. I love y'all. I missed y'all.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Thank y'all for coming back again another week. I'm so happy.
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: I'm proud.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: You said, I'm loud or I'm proud.
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: No, I say you have You're so happy, I am.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I love you. What was your weekend, girl?
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: Nothing?
• 0:53
  Speaker 5: It was like nothing. I ain't doing much this weekend
• 0:55
  Speaker 5: for real, y'all. I literally have been trying to save
• 0:58
  Speaker 5: because I've been looking at my uh my bank statements
• 1:02
  Speaker 5: and I'm just spending too much fucking money. And it's
• 1:06
  Speaker 5: usually just a Saturday and Sunday, so I've been trying
• 1:09
  Speaker 5: to stay my ass in the fucking house and not
• 1:12
  Speaker 5: shop sales on the weekend.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I got me going to.
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: How every week.
• 1:20
  Speaker 5: I did go to the gym this weekend. I did
• 1:22
  Speaker 5: look for some furniture this weekend. That's about it. Still
• 1:25
  Speaker 5: trying to spend money, but not like on small trinkets,
• 1:28
  Speaker 5: like small bullshit, because those things add up. You buy
• 1:31
  Speaker 5: a bunch of little shit and you don't spend a
• 1:34
  Speaker 5: thousand honars right real quick, mm hmm.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: So that's about it.
• 1:38
  Speaker 5: I don't do much this weekend, and it's work, you know,
• 1:42
  Speaker 5: what's some stuff?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: So my weekend, what did I do?
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: So?
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I posted a steak on my story and Charlemagne was
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: like where this steak from? And I told him where
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: it was from. He was like, you in Columbia. I
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: was like yeah. He invited me to the uh the
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: USC Basketball Conference championship with and his wife. Yes, so
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I went to the game with them. We had a
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: good time and I was hoping it was a sweet
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: but it was floor seats, so I had to hold
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: my stomach and the whole time I think I must
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: have breathed two times while I was there because it
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: was right on the floor. It's like no chairs in
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: front of me, and all got a hold in my
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: store and I had on like a little crop jacket.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I was like, my god, I can't breathe. But I
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: had a good time something. Yeah, I did know what
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to be on the whole trying with my gut. Just
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the girl, just a girl like this is the sweet.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: But anyway, it was fun. We had a good time.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: To shout out to Jesse and Charlotte for that showing
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: me that love. And then I flew to Costa Rica
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the next day to get dinal work done. And so
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I'm here now, I'm getting a crown need two feelings,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: and I'm getting a wisdom tooth pulled out. So they
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: started the work already, so they already I got a
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: posted my tooth and they like shaved it down a
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: little bit to put the crown on. And that's tomorrow.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Everything else is tomorrow. Then I'm flying right back. So
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: that was my week. I'm here in Costa Rica at
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: this dental resort and it's pretty dope, y'all. So if
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: you are someone who needs some work done and you
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: don't want to spend American prices, when I get back
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: next week, I'll tell y'all where it is, where to
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: go all the things. But right now, while I'm still
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: doing it. I want to make sure that I love
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: it before I recommend it to you all. So yeah,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: that's what I got going on.
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: And I want to know too, because I want to
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: go get me some good cheap dental work done, not
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: cheap as in quality, inexpensive okay in comparison and US prices,
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: because I still I think we need to go to
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: a turkey so we can get like a nice little
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: work up done and fixed. Yes, I've been I've been
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: looking into like peptides recently, not news and pics, right,
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: because there's a lot of like your body stops producing,
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: like the natural peptides are older, you get so a
• 4:11
  Speaker 5: lot of these clinics now these I guess, like I
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: don't know, cosmetic clinics you wanna call them that, like
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: you know places you go for like little blow bowtox
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: a little bit. But yeah, they I've been doing some research.
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: That's another thing I did this weekend, researching peptides because
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: I want to do something.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Well once you let's let's bring it all to the
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: table when we get our information together, let's bring the peptides.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And it's been a clinic for our girlies guys.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: Yes, all right, y'all. So there are no sense this week.
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: Okay, we have two amazing guests on We Talked Back
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: this week.
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: We have William Howell and Laura Diane Kasmin. Okay.
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: They are the producers of the film Cycle.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: And that's ce why cl Cycle.
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: It is an investigative documentary about the murder of an
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: eighteen year old on June teenth, Okay, in twenty nineteen
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: in Racing, Wisconsin.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: So they did this beautiful film. I won't.
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's it's real life, Okay, So we want
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: to relve into that this week, y'all stay tuned. All right, y'all,
• 5:33
  Speaker 5: thank you for joining us for a new episode of
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: We Talk Back. Today, we're talking about the film Cycle.
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: It's a powerful investigative documentary that explores a twenty nineteen
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: killing of eighteen year old Tyresse West and Racing Wisconsin.
• 5:49
  Speaker 5: So this case was largely unfolded without any national attention
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: or accountability from the officer involved, and oftentimes there's a
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: huge difference between the official narratives and the actual lived
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: experiences of the people involved. This conversation is about art,
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: it's about justice, it's about the media, and it's about
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: the Cycle. The cycle of that violence, the cycle of
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: the headlines, the cycle of outrage, and the cycle of forgetting.
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: So we're talking about responsibility of storytelling with the producers
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: of Cycle, y'all today joining us. When we talk back,
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: we have Laura, Diane Kisman, and William Howell, the producers
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: of Cycle.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: Thank y'all for joining me talked back.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, you guys.
• 6:44
  Speaker 6: For real, thank you for having us.
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: All Right, y'all, so let's get into it.
• 6:47
  Speaker 5: So the question becomes, what does it mean to turn
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: real life tragedy into film? Because is it awareness, is
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: it activism, is it accountability? Or is it another just
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: another way for more trauma to be consumed?
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: To me, I mean when we started this, and that's
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: the exact reason why I felt like it wasn't for
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: me to try to complete this film because us as
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: black people, we are just we are too embedded in
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: our own anger. And I knew that that's all that
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: I was going to be able to deliver to my
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: people was my anger. Like I couldn't see through a
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: six seven year process to making this kind of powerful documentary.
• 7:31
  Speaker 6: I had no idea what it took to even make
• 7:34
  Speaker 6: a film.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: And so at the time, I just I understood the
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: power in the visual because I was a local videographer
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: and my thing was to like, I wanted to inspire
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: all of these artists and I wanted to give them
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: visuals and videos that actually made them look like stars.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: And so yes, I understood just the power and the
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: visual and being able to tell the story. And when
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: you're talking about you have the new cycle running this
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: story twenty four to seven of him having a gun
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: and they're tearing down his character, it was very important
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: for us to tell it from our side, and so
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: I understood it from you know, that small level. But
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: to have somebody like Laura to come in and to
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: be blessed to be able to actually learn what it
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: took to make a film this powerful, to have to
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: you know, do all of the work that it takes
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: to be able to get this information and uncover it,
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  Speaker 3: like those are things that I would have never been
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: able to do as a black man here in Wisconsin
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: of all places.
• 8:29
  Speaker 6: And it was like just a necessity.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: I needed her and for her to you know, to
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: appear in my life, it was everything to this film.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: So saying that how did she appear like, how did
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: y'all meet?
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: Well, it was crazy because like I'm literally I'm just
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: online going crazy, you know, over what happened. And the
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: crazy part is that, like it was starting to me
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: it was viral, right because I live in this small
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: town and it's like you get three four thousand people
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: on one status, like Okay, the world know what's going
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: on here, and nobody in Milwaukee even knew, you know.
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: What I mean.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: So it was like it was just this instant where
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: I was running this website for like I said, for
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: all of the local rappers and my business partner, Jesse Booker,
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: who was also he's a white man, you know, and
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: but Booker is very very tied to the inner city
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: community and like you.
• 9:20
  Speaker 6: Know, everybody really knows him.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: So our relationship was able to flourish through hip hop,
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: and the word actually came through Jesse, like we have
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: a mutual friend in Jesse, and she reached out to
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: Jesse and let him know, like, hey, my friend is
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: a producer and she's she didn't know that this happened,
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: but like we literally rolled past the crime scene that
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: night that she was taking me home, and we was
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: wondering what that happened. And so after all this time,
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: she found me on the internet and she was seeing
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: what was going on, and so she connected us because
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: she just really felt like Laura was the one to
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: be able to, you know, kind of give me some
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: pointers to help me along the way.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Here, Laura, what connected you? I'm sorry, Laura, what connected
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: you to this project?
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: So, as Will mentioned are, the mutual friend that like
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: thought to introduce us is my good friend Amanda Thaxton,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: who eventually became a producer on the project as well.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And she had been familiar with Will. She's friends with
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Jesse Booker, who was Will's business partner, and and so
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: she facilitated the introduction. And it started as like like, girl,
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: you won't believe what actually happened the night that you
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: And because I was out with her in Racine the
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: night that Tyrese was killed. I I'm from racing. I
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: was born and raised in racing, and I rarely go
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: there to like hang out anymore. But her and I
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: just happened to be at a bar like maybe a
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: mile or so away.
• 10:56
  Speaker 7: We so.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: It was it was the night before. It's pretty sure like,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: oh we got the box. So I wouldn't consider that
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: a Juneteenth celebration. But the night before her and I
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: were we left the bar at like one thirty, which
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: was when we later found out that this all went down.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And all we knew at the time is that we
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: were re routed because the police perimeter was very large
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: and there was it was very silent, like it was
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: it was eerie, and I just remember her and I
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: just getting this kind of like chill of like, what
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: the fuck is.
• 11:38
  Speaker 7: Going on right now?
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: It just it was a lot of police presence and
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: everyone was was eerily silent, and and like Will said,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: I live in Milwaukee, thirty minutes north of Racine, and
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: the news didn't even reach me, uh what had happened
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: that night? And so months later, after Will and I connected,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: you know, it started with you know, you know, you
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: remember that night, this is what happened, and you need
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: to talk to Will because I feel like you could,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe point him in the right direction of
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: how to start a film documenting this crazy story that
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: no one's really talking about right now. And so he
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: and I met at a coffee shop in November of
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. This is months after Tyresee was killed and
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: what turned into a three hour conversation where we left
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: pretty determined to tell this story together, and within a
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: few weeks we filmed our first interviews.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: Have you ever worked? Can y'all not dare me when
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to Oh sorry?
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: Have you ever produced a film like this before, Laura?
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Not?
• 12:52
  Speaker 7: Like Cycle?
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: A Cycle is by far the largest undertaking and the
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: hardest thing I've ever done in my life just from
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: a filmmaking standpoint. You know, we investigated the case for
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: over two years. My background is in journalism. I've been
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: in the filmmaking journalism space for like seventeen years, and
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: I had done a film before that. Actually Will had
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: seen prior to talking with me and I which is
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: like interesting because like the film you know, didn't get
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: a ton of exposure, but it was about the segregation
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: in the experience of segregation in Milwaukee, which being that
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Milwaukee is continues to be one of the highest has
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: the highest rates of segregation in the whole country. And
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Will saw that film and unbeknownst to me at the time,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: was like, yes, you are the one that needs to
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: tell this story.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So even though she didn't make a film, now
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: was like per se, like Cycle, watching the it was
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: called All the Invisible Lines, and like she said, it's
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: purely about the segregation in Milwaukee, and Milwaukee is the
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: number one segregated city in America. And just from the
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: beginning of it, just the professionalism and the care and
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: what went into what you were witnessing. Like, I'm very spiritual,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: like God, even during that whole time of me fighting
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: for Tyresse, Like, I wasn't no type of activists or
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: nothing like that. I never did anything like that in
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: my life, but I knew I could feel when God
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: was speaking to me. And it was the same watching
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: this film, like and by it coming from somebody like Jesse.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: Of course I was already very open, but like even
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: when I prayed to God to like, please send me
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: somebody in my life that could teach me filmmaking.
• 14:44
  Speaker 6: Just being honest, I never pictured a white woman, you know.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: And so when I got this documentary and I'm just
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: watching and them just like in all that you dealing
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: with all of these emotions that are going through you,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: and in my mind, I was like, that's God, I
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: can feel it, and this is spiritual And it was
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: literally some of the best work I had ever seen
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: and from the moment that we connected. I always let
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: her know that, like you are literally like spiritual what
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: you do here with this camera and its editing just
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: your heart in the way that you yes, yes, Like
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: I could really feel like the emotion that she put into.
• 15:19
  Speaker 6: Film, and that's why I wanted her leadership on this.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: So what was the most there? Remember? Back and forth,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: back and forth. Was there ever any hesitation on either
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: your behalfs with documenting something so extremely heavy?
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: I mean right away, no, Like you know, as far
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: as me, no, I never even hesitated.
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: I never thought about it.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: And it's so funny because like with Laura saying, I
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: don't think she ever hesitated. But it was a moment
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: where I was talking to her in the coffee shop
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, I'm literally expected to have like a
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: ten to fifteen minute conversation with her. But once I
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: seen that she she was open to it, I'm like,
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: in my head, I'm like, is she actually is locked
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: in with me as this conversationist. I'm thinking, So it's
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: a moment where I reached across the table, like I'm.
• 16:14
  Speaker 6: Reaching for her hand.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: I want to see her reaction to a black man
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: reaching and she literally just looked at me as I like,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: what is wrong with this nigga? I was just like,
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: she is the person, like she was locked all the
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: way to fuck in. And I was like, so, I
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: don't think from that point on, I didn't think that
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: she would hesitate.
• 16:32
  Speaker 6: It all either.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: So I would attribute a lot of I was just
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: gonna say, I attribute a lot of that to there
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: being this sort of like unspoken if you you know, God,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: the universe, I mean, like this real recognized calling yes.
• 16:50
  Speaker 7: Yeah, and it was and so there was no hesitation.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, shortly after we like started doing
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: this and did our first interviews, COVID happened a month later,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: and then shortly after that Breonna Taylor was killed, and
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: shortly after that in maud Arbury, and then after that
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: George Floyd, and while the world is captive to what
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: was happening, and while we were in the seed stage
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: of this film, and again another thing that you know,
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Will and I did without hesitation is we jumped into
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: my Honda Civic and drove to Minneapolis from Milwaukee and
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: were there in Minneapolis the day after George Floyd was
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: killed and filmed for at least three to four days
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: watching everything unfold around us and being there in the
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: epicenter of that moment before the world even knew or
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: saw the video was so profound that like any ounce
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: of hesitation that even would have existed was completely eliminated.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: And at that point we were just like we were
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: in and knew that we were going to do whatever
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: it took to tell this story.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: So I'm from Charleston, South Carolina.
• 18:02
  Speaker 5: You know, Walter Scott was murdered by the police here
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: in twenty fifteen, and there was a guy who filmed
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: the murder and he waited to see what the police
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: was going to report before he released the video to
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: the family. He literally just sat back with this evidence
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: and waited. And when the you know, the police department
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: essentially lied about how Walter Scott was murdered, he then,
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: you know, turned the footage over to the family. So
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: I want to know, like, at what moment, William, did
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: you know that this story needed to be told about
• 18:36
  Speaker 5: Tyresee West.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: I can truly say the moment that I knew is
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: the moment that I stood over Tyressee's casket, like I
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: you know, I grew up in the hood, and I
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: then did a lot of wild things myself.
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: So I know a lot of killers, you know.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: I know how they roll, I know how they move,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: And I've stood over the casket of a few of them,
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: and you don't really feel too much. And as I
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: stood over the casket of Tyrese, which this was the
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: first funeral that I had ever even accepted to film,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: like it was just God speaking to me, Like you
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: could literally feel the innocence on this boy. He's just
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: this small kid in this casket with these two execution
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: style wounds in his head. And it was literally just
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: breaking me on the inside to just think that I
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: could let somebody come into my neighborhood and get away
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: with this.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: For our listeners who are hearing this for the very
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: first time, can you walk us through what happened the
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: day Tyresee was killed?
• 19:35
  Speaker 6: Well?
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: Well, lord, did you want to kind of go through
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: the timeline? Sure? So?
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Well, actually, why don't you set it up that it
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: was Racine's judententh.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Well yeah, and as a matter of fact, because as
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: I think back, it's so crazy because like we spoke
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: about yesterday, Like even though it was months later when
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: I received the video, it's a while to see a
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: video that thirty minutes before Tyresee was even killed, there
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: was another kid that was being hunted and chased by
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: the police. Thank god that he had the wherewithal to
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: yell his name out and to yell that the police
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: are trying to kill me and somebody else went live
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: and that's the only reason why we know that, and
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: we were able to see that footage, and so yeah,
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: to me, it feels like something was.
• 20:20
  Speaker 6: Leading up to that.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: And so you have Tyresee on this bike, and let's
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: be clear that Tyresee is a kid that's from the
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: north side and Racine, when you're from the north side,
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: being on the south side is probably the scariest thing
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: for you.
• 20:33
  Speaker 6: Not the police.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: He's on the other side of the town where the
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: other kids don't like him. He's not accepted there, and
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: so he's already going to be very very you know,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: like high, strong and whatnot. And you have this kid
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: on this bike and it's this very very dark area
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: and very isolated from the rest of the city. And
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: even though it still feels like Racine, you're actually like
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: journeying through Kenosha mount pleasant all of it kind of
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: like you know, intersects in that area, and so as
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: Tyresee is coming back, the police officer sees. The police
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: officer hits his lights and he attempts to pull Tyresse over,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: which Tyresee runs away from him, and then the sequence
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: of everything that unfold happens.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So Tyrese was on his bike. He was heading
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: back home after attempting to visit his girlfriends who lived
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: in Kenosha, and we can only assume that at one
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: point he turned back. It's like an hour and a
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: half track from Racine to Kenosha on a bike, and
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: there's one path that he would go, which will mentioned
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: includes going through a part of town where he's just
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: trying to like remain invisible, like he just doesn't want
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: to be noticed, and he's by himself and he's on
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: the sidewalk and this officer just happens to spot him
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: from quite a distance away.
• 22:01
  Speaker 7: It is very dark.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: It's not a residential area, it's a industrial area that's
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: very dimly lit. And so, I mean, one thing that
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: will always be a mystery is how from that distance
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: away he was able to identify that this kid on
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: a bike didn't have a headlight on it. But that
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: is what he claims was his reason for clicking on
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: his lights and attempting to stop him, And after very
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: little attempt to get him to pull over, he starts
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: like more aggressively chasing Tyrese as he's trying to pedal faster.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Tyrese pulls to the right onto the first street that
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: he sees. The officer tries to cut him off with
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: his SUV and immediately gets out of the car and
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: starts chasing him. Tyree starts running, and everything that we
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: know after that point is from the officer's point of view,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: and so without the lack or with the lack of evidence,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: there were no witnesses. The officer did not have a
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: partner in his car. He had a canine, not a partner,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: so he was patrolling alone that night. He had a
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: dispatch radio that had to be manually pushed, which meant
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: that what is recorded on his end is only when
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: he's pushing the button, so not everything was recorded. There
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: was no surveillance footage, no witnesses, and so everything is
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: from his perspective, and so all we know is that
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: within ninety seconds of trying to pull this kid over,
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: based on the dispatch audio, that we have he was
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: shot twice in the head.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: And was this a motorbike or was this a child
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: on a pedal bike?
• 23:40
  Speaker 7: This was a child on a pedal bike, O.
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: Chrissy, So I did watch the film.
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: We made sure he watched the film so we could
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: have you know all the details surrounding the murder.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: I'm Tyreas and one part you mentioned the dog.
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: The officer said that this was in a situation where
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: the dog would have need to be involved. So I'm
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: trying to figure out at what point did the gun
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: need to be involved in And I think he attempted
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: supposedly to tase Tyrese and.
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: The taser wasn't.
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: Working or he didn't aim properly or whatever it was.
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: And there was supposedly also a weapon found on the scene.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, so there was a correct, So there was
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: a weapon recovered from the scene. It was allegedly Tyrese's
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: based of course, on what the officer said. But as
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: you see in the film, and we tried to break
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: down those series of events, you know, through a lot
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: of different layers so you can understand the context of
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: what's happening in that moment, and to also be clear
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: about the version of events that you're receiving and how
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: they is so much great area surrounding you know what
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: is being said, and you know, one key thing to
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: highlight is that that officer Eric Geezy was on the
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: crime scene for two whole minutes by himself before the
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: first responding officer arrived. So after he kills him, he
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: has two minutes on that scene by himself. And what
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: he's doing in those two minutes is that's only God knows.
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: So how did you guys, how do you balance like
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: the storytelling with the facts, right, because you can't just
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: come out and say that the police planted this weapon
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: on the.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: Scene, right.
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: But I kind of think that the film it does
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: something where, you know, it kind of gives you more
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: information than you would.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: Actually receive in a court room, you know.
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: So how did you guys have to consult legal experts
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: and stuff like that to make this film?
• 26:10
  Speaker 6: Yes?
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: I mean and actually, like when we first started, Laura
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: had connected us with the what is that the journalism
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: people over Wisconsin. Like we really made sure that we were,
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: you know, crossing every t and dot in every eye
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: because like you have to have the facts in this case.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: We didn't want to just I said, if I wanted
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: to just give an account of how I felt, then
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: you know, I could have just created this angry film
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: by having somebody like Laura who truly understood journalism, who
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: was teaching me that No, even though will you feel
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: this way and I understand that you feel strongly that
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Tyreche didn't have this gun, we still had to place
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: the gun in basically in Tyreche's possession to prove that
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: it wasn't there. We couldn't just say that it wasn't
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: when you know what I mean, the facts in the case, yes,
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: story right, and so like yes, having her to even
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: understand that level of investigation and to be able to
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: go in there and to stick by it, I mean,
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: that was everything for me.
• 27:14
  Speaker 6: And being able to even peel back that layer.
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: And in the beginning, so when Tyresee was killed, it
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: took the city of Racine and the village of Mount Pleasant,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: who intersect by the way. So it was a Mount
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Pleasant officer who killed Tyrese. And it was investigated by
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: the city of Racine, which is in the backyard of
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Mount Pleasant. And it took racing ninety six days for
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: the district attorney to issue a charging decision against the officer,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: which is an extraordinarily long time when you stack it
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: against any other case like this. So it took ninety
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: six days for them to ultimately decide to not charged
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: the officer with anything, which at this point everyone was expecting.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: Two months after that, Monique west Tyrese's mom filed a
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: federal civil suit in December of twenty nineteen, with the
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: help of prosecutors based in Chicago who have a firm
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: where they take on cases like this, and so because
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: of our relationship with Monique through this process, we worked
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: pretty closely at the time with the prosecutors who were
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: prosecuting the civil federal suit against the officer, and it
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: was through that that we got access to records that
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: we were being denied through Foyer requests that were not
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: being fulfilled. It was because of their power of subpoena
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: that we were able to get certain records much more
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: efficiently and at least fulfilled to some degree, because largely
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: we were getting silence from both Mount Pleasant and Racine
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: throughout the U investigation, and that is the only reason
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: that we were able to get the video deposition of
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: the officer testifying under oath, which is typically not recorded
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: and it's typically not available for public viewing. So one
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: really unique thing about Cycle is that it offers the
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: audience this behind closed doors look into what these officer
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: depositions are typically like.
• 29:25
  Speaker 7: And the only.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Reason that that footage exists is because we asked the
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: prosecutors to hire a court videographer to do that for
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: us and so, and because we knew going into it
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: that none of and we asked. Of course, every interview
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: request was denied by every officer on the scene, the
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: district attorney, the police chief, and we obviously knew we
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: were not going to get er Gheezy ourselves to talk.
• 29:52
  Speaker 7: About what happened.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: And so what was you know, even better than we
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: could have even imagined, was getting a three hour deposition
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: of him under oath telling his version of events.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Now, with including that in the documentary, did y'all feel
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: any pushback or tension from police department or anybody in
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: your community communities for putting that into the documentary?
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: To me, I really, I truly believe that it's been
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: the most vital part for us and just breaking open
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: that case. And like I think people truly see the
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: guilt on his face and you hear the guilt within
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: his voice. I love the way that the prosecutor was
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: able to lure him in to the conversation. And so
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: to me though, I think that is the perfect ending.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: It is perfect the way Lord wanted to kind.
• 30:41
  Speaker 6: Of like use it. It was just it was so
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: perfect to me.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: And I think it was her patience and her persistence.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: It's the only reason why this film wasn't already you know,
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: on the festival circuit or on some streaming platform like,
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: which is what I was honestly pushing for at the time, Like,
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: because you have these years going past, and I'm thinking, like,
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: nobody's gonna care anymore. But I just can't even imagine
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: if to have this film out there without that deposition video,
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: without that evidence of him incriminating his own self.
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think dam You were basically saying, like asking
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: if there was any retaliation from.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: The police, right, was there any retaliation or any pushback
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: from anybody in your community, especially you, Laura, being a
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: white woman, There are there anybody that felt like they
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: were not an ally to what you were creating based
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: on culture and race.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: I would say that everyone who was receiving the repeated
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: freedom of information requests from me and my team at
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: the time were not allies. No, no, Raccene in Mount
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Pleasant was incredibly resistant to giving us any information. The police,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: particularly the Mount Pleasant Police Department, found very interesting ways
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: of letting us know that they were clocking us at
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: various points in the investigation. You know, early on, you know,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: shortly after we released the first trailer for Cycle on
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: the one year anniversary of Tyresee's death in twenty twenty,
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: just a couple of weeks after George Floyd had been killed.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: You know, Raccene was on high alert at that time.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: You know, the people were back in the street, you know,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: yelling Tyresee's name because of the uprising that was going
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: on in that moment in the summer of twenty twenty.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: And one thing that you know, does get revealed in
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: the film, which is a particular point of tension on
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Will's end, is his you know, I'll let him tell
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: this part of the story, but his personal connection to
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: the police chief and the tension that that caused, and
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: so yes, at every point, and I don't even want
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: to say it was you know, like it was a
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: systemic tension. Yes, there was a racial tension, but it
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: was so much deeper than that, given the depth and
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: the history of corruption in Racing County.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, will I wanted to ask you, what does
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: things given look like at your house right now? Because
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: I know and shit probably kind of wow right now.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, when you're black, you know how it
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: is like, you know, you got your mama side of
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: the family, then you got your daddy and so by
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: my father not ever really being present in my life,
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: and I will say, like he was a great man.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: He wasn't a great father, but he was a very
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: loving man. And so my mother like never said one
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: bad word about my father to this day, I can't
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: even really talk bad about this man, right, But we
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: never really had a relationship. And so of course you
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: can imagine my uncle, the chief of police, as his brother.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: Our relationship was, you know, pretty much the same. But
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: when you're talking about my mother also, you're talking about
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: a career criminal. So I still remember when coming home
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: from a banquet as a kid and my house is
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: being raided, you know what I mean, and my mother
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: is going to jail, and this is this is the
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: beginning of like this is.
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: The story of my childhood.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: And my uncle has never made herself present to say, hey, look,
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: you know you shouldn't hate police because of this what
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: I never really had an understanding for like what was happening,
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: and he would never be present. So as I grew,
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: I think that there was an automatic kind of disdain
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: between us, and so for me, I don't really feel
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: like there was like this amounted pressure coming against me
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: because I was felt like I was mounting the pressure
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: against them.
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: I didn't care. It was me understanding that we have
• 34:48
  Speaker 6: the same last name.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: This is the only leverage that I have to use
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: to get their attention and to make everybody pay attention.
• 34:55
  Speaker 6: And so that's what I'm gonna do, Like if.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: My life hangs in the balance, like I have a
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: son here, like I would rather die fighting and make
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: this story even bigger because of that than to just
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: sit back and do nothing.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, Well, go ahead, it's your.
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: Turn that knows the delay between a connection too, So
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: we just never know. So what I was going to
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: ask Laura havn't been involved with this film, did it
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: change how you see law enforcement.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: As a white woman in America?
• 35:30
  Speaker 6: Good question?
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: Oh whatever, you identify, ask, because I don't identify as black,
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: So what you know, Laura?
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: Sorry? Assuming?
• 35:38
  Speaker 6: Right?
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: So, yeah, did it change how you being this closely
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: involved in this situation?
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: Like, did it change how you saw law enforcement?
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: Because from our perspective, a lot of people use it
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: as an extension of their affairs or their insecurities about
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: other groups of people.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: To be honest, it didn't change my view of law
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: enforcement because I had been paying attention for you know,
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: enough time leading up to that that this was very
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: in line with what I was expecting, you know, the
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: fact that it had happened before in racing a year
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: prior to Tyrese And it's part of what honestly made
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: me a little bit crazy when you know, during COVID
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: in this like uprising was happening, and it's like all
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: of these you know, so many of my like white
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: friends were kind of like having these kind of like
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: faux awakenings on social media that this is an issue.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: And part of what was driving me to do this
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: film was to prove that, like, this is not a
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: new issue. The fact that you know, we're not talking
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: about Trayvon martin An anymore or Walter Scott or you know,
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: like the countless names that have led to tyrone and
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: all the names that we have never heard before.
• 37:03
  Speaker 7: Is was really the fuel.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: For me to show, like my family members that like, no, this,
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: this is not just an issue right now, but it
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: has been this ever since our country was founded. You know, like,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: this is not a new thing, and I'm not going
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: to pretend like I, you know, was walking into it
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: with all of the historical contexts that I now have
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: because of the intentional research done on this film, But
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: at the time, it more reinforced the belief I had
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: at the time about law enforcement rather than changed my
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: opinion on it absolutely.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Now, I just wanted to clarify because AJ said that
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: she does not identify as black, and I don't want
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: y'all to think that she thinks she's white. She's actually
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: very translucent. It's see through, and like a that's.
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: Correct, right, I'm not see through, Okay, black is actually
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: as of color.
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: So that's why I'm not black. Okay. I am an
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: Indigenous American, That's what I am. And I know what
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: I am.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, I got it wrong too. The whole time I
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: thought she was translucent, so.
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: Not trans.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to talk about Tyresee a little bit.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: I know, you know, he was on the way to
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: see a girl, and that's just like heartwrenching because he's
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: just a little young guy liking a girl, you know.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: So I just wanted to give our listeners, like I
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: wanted to, you know, humanize this young black boy, like
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about who he was, Like,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: what's his personality? What do you know about him that
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: you could share with us?
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: You know what's kergy for me is that I never
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: had the opportunity to get to meet Tyresee or no Tyresee,
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: but his father and I were very close friends at
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: that age, and I could see everything in him, like
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: it literally like when he came up my timeline, it
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: was just his father like that.
• 39:00
  Speaker 6: That is how much they look alike.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: And so like, yeah, I never got to experience Tyrese,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: but right away from like when people found out who
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: it was they got killed, And when I seen the
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: response of the youth and the way the kids talked
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: about him, and even like some of the videos that
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: we started to get from Monique and like the stories
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: that she would share to me, like I it made
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: me tell Lauria It was the one thing that I
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: told Laura was that I need a moment in this
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: documentary where it feels like tyreeche comes off the screen
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: like I need him to live again, where it feels
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: like he is there to tell his own story. And
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: I truly feel like she gave us that moment in
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: this film where it feels as if like Tyresee is
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: still alive, but unfortunately I don't really know much about
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: him personally.
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: How was Tyree portrayed in early media coverage.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: In early media coverage, he was portrayed the way that
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: you would expect. You know, it's the police getting ahead
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: of the narrative, putting out a press release immediately saying
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: that this man had a weapon, even though he was
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: an eighteen year old kid on a bike, and that
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: was not proven at that point or at any point,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: and the media, of course, just is racing for who
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: can push the story out the fastest, and so they're
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: not as concerned about fact checking or you know, looking
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: at this press release issued by the offending police department
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: with a critical eye, and so they're literally regurgitating what
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: the police are telling them. And that was a really
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: important moment in the film. For us to highlight, particularly
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: in these smaller communities where this happens with such regularity
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: that doesn't get national attention. You know, this isn't La
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: or New York or Atlanta. You know, this is Racing Wisconsin.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: And the ability for the police and the local media
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: to control how everyone views this thing with, you know,
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: instantly is very powerful, and so part of the goal
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: of the film was to strip that back and to
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: help people understand like how these headlines are formed and
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: shaped in the first place. And so of course they're
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: they're you know, grasping at straws trying to you know,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: pull out you know, you know, past discretions that he
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: made while he was you know, at that point he's eighteen,
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: you know, when he's like fifteen sixteen.
• 41:35
  Speaker 7: You know, these like.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Petty, petty crimes are being reported on in the news,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: while this officer, who is decorated for his abuse of power,
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: is not even in the conversation in that way.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, what's happening, Wait to the.
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: I have a cat who climbs my plan.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: I saw, like, I don't know what's happening right there.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Sorry, go ahead, No, it's okay, it's okay.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: You were really trying to be discreet about it. Sorry, y'a, no,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: it's okay, no, but but yeah, so it's it's as
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: you would expect. And one thing that again we share
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: in the film is how this the official narrative of
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: what happened with Tyresee that night was shaped by the
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: district attorney and the one officer you know who killed
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: him is also the only officer on the scene who's
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: able to tell you from his point of view what happened.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: You know, what gets thrown into the mix of this
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: narrative is something that had happened earlier that day, where
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Tyrese and some friends were you know, got pulled over
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: for being in a stolen car. We see the friend
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: of tyree is in the film tell you the context
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: of what had happened that day and how Tyrese was
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: the one telling him like, bro, this is not a
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: good idea, and he's like, well, you're not gonna walk,
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: are you, And so Tyrese reluctantly gets in this car
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: that's later reported stolen, and later that detail which the
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: officer who killed him had no idea that that had
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: happened in a separate county earlier that day. But yet
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: that is being used to try to defame Tyrese's exactly,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: and in Tyresee's mentor in the film has a really
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: great line where you know, why is it that as
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: soon as a young black kid gets killed by the police,
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: you try to find a reason of why he's dead.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Like that's so fucked up, and that is exactly what
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: happened in this case.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Can I ask y'all, what does break in the Cycle
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: mean to you both personally?
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, after going through this entire process, like it's
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: it's so much bigger than what's on the surface, so
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: to speak, Like even manor Laura, like we had to
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: fight through so much to tell this story, like just
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: being a black man and a white woman wanting to
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: stand next to each other, Like that's a problem a
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: lot of places in America, And so like there's all
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: of these cycles that you see that need to be broken,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: But the first thing that you have to do is
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: break the cycles within yourself.
• 44:24
  Speaker 6: And so like there was.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: Times where you know, even I was fighting against my
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: own trauma, my own things that I may feel against
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: white people that was causing you know, static or whatnot
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: between men and Laura and causing you know, not this big,
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: huge problem, but it was clear that there's this misunderstanding
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: between us where that needed to be kind of learning,
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: and it was us growing over time, learning and loving
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: each other, really learning to love each other as people.
• 44:53
  Speaker 6: That allowed us to.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: Come to a place where we can even begin to
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: break those cycles with than ourselves. And so that's what
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: we begin to see more than anything. Like I spent
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: the first couple of years like angry, just so angry,
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: and I want justice and I won't and I was
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: trying to make this man out to be a monster.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: But in the midst of that, you all you really
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: doing is just making a monster of yourself. Like you know,
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: it's not up to us to create this big ultimate change.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: That's God's. That is God's job. It is my job
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: to play my little part that he gave me. And
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: so I think that's where I had to learn the
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: most inside myself and stop trying to like feel like
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: I had to kind of fix the world and fix
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: my part, fix what I'm doing.
• 45:41
  Speaker 6: And be able to connect.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: So like when I meet somebody like Laura, I'm not
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: angry and I'm saying, all this white woman, get away
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: from me.
• 45:47
  Speaker 6: You can't tell our story.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: My mind and my heart is open to a point
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: that I'm saying like maybe God is saying that this
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: is what it takes, that it's not your story, it's
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: our story.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, that's powerful.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what about you, Laura.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, one thing that I love to highlight, especially
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: for anyone that has seen the film, and it hopefully
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: this you know, allures people to see it whenever they
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: have the opportunity to. But you know, throughout the film,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: you hear Will's words kind of offer this poetic narration
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: throughout the film that at these key transition points, and
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Will's words are basically like writing prompts that I gave
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: him in increments like throughout the editing process, and they
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: were recorded in one take, you know, with him like
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: sitting down and just kind of like, you know, just
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: like whatever was on his heart is what came out,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: and that became the ultimate like narration of the film.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: And what's really key to know is that that didn't
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: happen linearly, is that that wasn't planned in terms of
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: how that would all come together. And Will's narration throughout
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: the film really represents the journey that both of both
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: he and I took that he just alluded to. I mean,
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: this has been an almost seven year process now for
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: both of us, and so much of that is mirrored
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: in what you see and experience in Cycle. And you know,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: it's a subtlety, and people may think that like it
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: was done intentionally, but you know, you hear a shift
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: in Will's tone as he's delivering these words in this narration,
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: And that's because they were recorded years apart, and the
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: final words that he leaves us with in the film
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: were literally recorded a month before we had our world
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: premiere at the Milwaukee Film Festival last May. And and
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: so it wasn't up until that moment that it felt
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: like we had the the true conclusion that was meant
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: for Cycle until that moment. And and it's because like
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: the revelations that he's having in real time are being
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: captured in those words that were not pre written, Like
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: that's that's all like a genuine reflection of his personal
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: journey and in a lot of ways my personal journey
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: through that. And and I neither of us could have
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: predicted that the ultimate takeaway in terms of how to
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: break the cycle is to start with the cycles within ourselves,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: and the cycles that we can influence in our own circles,
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: and that is was so profound to me. I just
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: remember when he sent me like the file of that
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: final bit of narration that closes the film, Like I like,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: I was just yeah, I almost like dropped to my knees.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: I was just like, like, after all of this time,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: like this is like the representation of this journey that
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: we've been on together. And I couldn't have pictured a
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: more beautiful ending because it's really it's not an ending,
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: it's an invitation. It's it's a way to extend. And
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: this is what we really want from cycles, for cycle
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: to be this invitation for people to to think differently
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: and to have a deeper understanding of you know, this
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: issue that only gets talked about in a pretty like
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: shallow way every time it hits the news cycle at
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: least the mainstream new cycle, and it's and it's clipped,
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: you know, like how deep we're actually able to go
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: and understand of like what, you know, what has preceded
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: this up to this.
• 49:49
  Speaker 7: Moment in time in our history?
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: And so so I just I always love highlighting that
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: because it is so reflective of not just like what
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: we hope for cycle in terms of how to break
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: the cycle, but is reflective of our own personal journeys.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, do you think it?
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: Absolutely?
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: Do you think independent films are or more trusted now
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: than news outlets?
• 50:17
  Speaker 6: Oh?
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: I definitely believe that because of social media, you know,
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: social media influencers, us being able to connect even like
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: with Steve, O're telling me about this podcast here, like dude,
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: like these two like.
• 50:29
  Speaker 6: They are the ones they on fire.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: I believe that, you know what I mean, I believe
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: that that trust and that you know, in people being
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: able to pick who they see in them and when
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: you deliver information and we can take it as true
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: and like okay, like these are the people that we
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: want to filter our information from.
• 50:51
  Speaker 6: I think that that's a beautiful thing that people.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: You know, there's so many different outlets and everybody has
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: the opportunity to choose who and what they believe, you know,
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: or what the truly.
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: Absolutely?
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: Uh So do you guys think storytelling now is like
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: the new form of activism essentially?
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: Because it's Yeah, it works.
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: A different feeling in you when you watch a film
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: like this versus watching a news outlet.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, I I think that I for a long
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: time have viewed the sort of like the soul attraction.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: I've always had to this work, to to documentary work
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: in journalism as fulfilling that it's I mean, because it's
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: a mixture of art and activism, but it's really you know,
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: how you choose to apply it. And and for me,
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, with everything happening in the world right now,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: and it just feels like it's just like a constant,
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: you know, barrage of things that are vying for our
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: attention at every moment, and you know, in so much
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: of it, especially with social media, is distraction. I married
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: one hundred percent. And so with a film like ours
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: that took you know, seven years for us to be
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: here talking with you right now, and the time and
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: the thoughtfulness and the intention that it went into every
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: single cut, every frame that you see in Cycle is intentional.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: Every word, the pacing of it, the music, shout out
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: a murtal girlfriend, you know, everything was so intentional with
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: this film. And and you know a way that I have,
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: even in like this present time, kind of reconciled not
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: being like quote unquote active in like responding and reacting
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: to every horrible thing that comes up on my timeline.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: I have to ground myself in reminding myself that, at
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: least for me, like Cycle is my resistance, like is
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: my form of resistance right now, And and I think
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: that we need more of that, like more people dedicated
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: to carrying you know, one flag fully, you know, and
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: seeing it all the way through, rather than you know,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: these like flashes in the pan where no one even
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: knows what's going on or can't remember what happened last week.
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: So so yeah, I mean Cycle is a you know,
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: we were in it for the long haul with this one.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: I have one last question. I have one last question,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: all right, for viewers who feel moved or even unsettled
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: after watching this, what do y'all say they should do next?
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: Well, for us, it's all about just opening up that
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: door with people feel comfortable taking that next step, which
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: for us, it is trying to build a coalition, a
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: coalition of people who feel like, if you love this
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: filmly like we need to spread this word. It was
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: like what at our last Q and A, I explained
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: to them that to me, it's just like installing a
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: new program. And so if all of us was here
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: and we wanted to do this right, here. If one
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: of us didn't have a program then that person wouldn't
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: even be able to connect and wouldn't be able to
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: be here.
• 54:28
  Speaker 6: And that is how I truly feel about Cycle.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: And that in those moments when you have a kid
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: like Tyrese and you have this cop and he hits
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: this light and these are the only two people here
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: in this dark area, like there is no understanding there.
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: Tyrese when he sees the lights, he's going to think
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: every horrible thing in his mind about this cop. The
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: cop is gonna think every horrible thing about Tyrese. And
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: so there's no programming there. There's nothing where they're able
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: to connect in that moment. And to me, like that
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: is what psych represents. That's what Cycle becomes. If we're
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: able to present Cycle and put it into the lives
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: of a young eighteen ninety year old white kid who
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: doesn't know yet that he might become a police officer,
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: but even Cycle starts to inspire him to even go
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: down that line, then I feel like it is up
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: to us to change the programming, and the more that
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: we focused there, I believe that those things can happen.
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Manof definitely a very heavy topic but I'm glad that
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: y'all came and shared with us. When I began watching
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: the film, you know, I felt pulled to the floor
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: with the heaviness, honestly, But as the film went on,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: I left with a hopeful feeling. Is that what you
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: intended for the viewer? Yeah?
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, in the beginning, we you know, and
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: I've said this before, but like the film is such
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: a reflection of our own discovery of not only what
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: this film needed to be, you know, like the higher
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: purpose that we feel like this film needed to exist for,
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: but also our real time discovery of how the system works.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: We went into it, you know, wanting for Monique West
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: what she wanted at first, which was her day in
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: court and to see this officer properly convicted and held
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: accountable for what he had done to her son. But
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: as the process went on, as the years went by,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: and this federal case dragged out in court the way
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: that it did, you know, one of the most sobering
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: realizations that I had is that that hope was never
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: an option. It's not even baked into how the system
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: is constructed in the first place. And the more people
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: realize that the more we can have a more productive
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: conversation politically legislatively about what needs to change, you know,
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: uh in this country in order to prevent the frequency
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: and the ease with which this shit happens all the
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: fucking time. Most of the time you don't hear about it,
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: just like with Tyresee's case. And the more we can
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: put a spotlight on how the system is constructed, the
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: more you people can't look at it the same way. Again,
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: the more people can't stop short at banging their head
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: against a wall. Every time that an officer isn't charged, Well,
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: you have to understand that the likelihood of him being
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: charged in the first place was little to none. Derek
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: Chauvin was an exception. He was used as a you
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: know that that was.
• 57:57
  Speaker 6: Exception.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, one hundred percent. The average case does not end
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: with that outcome. And and I think that it is
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: a disservice for families to you know, already be navigating
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: this like horrendous tragedy where you're not given any level
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: of support whatsoever and you have to like like dig
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: like ridiculously deep for the endurance and the help that
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: you need to even take it as far as moniquested
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: only to realize that settling was your only option to
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: begin with, and no one told her that, right, And
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: so I think that lawsuit afterwards, So the lawsuit that
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: was filed two months after Tyrese or the officer er
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: Gheezi was not charged by the Racine DA, that lawsuit
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: dragged on for like three and a half years, and
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: and and what ended up happening is that you know,
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: it's either after all of this time, you risk walking
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: away with nothing, or you take a very menial settlement
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: that they're offering you, and at that point you're exhausted,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, Monique, she says at the end of the film,
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: like like Laura, I'm tired, like I like, all I
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: want is peace, you know, for my kids, you know,
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: for us to live in a in a home that
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: they've always wanted and to just you know, reclaim some
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: sense of joy and happiness. And Will says it so
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: beautifully at the end of the film. We were never
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: meant to be this angry. God never intended us to
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: be this angry. You know, she never asked for this
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: to begin with. So you know, it really is our
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: hope that the film can also be like an instructional
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: tool in a blueprint for people to follow as the
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: bike wheel is taking you, you know, along this chronological
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: journey of systemically how the cycle works, you know, for
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: to only you know land where we started and for
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: it to perpetuate, you know, we hope that it can
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: be a blueprint for people to understand, you know, how
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: the system was constructed in the first place.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this is absolutely a great documentary. But I don't
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: know if I you know, like Tammy said she was,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: she was full of full of hopefulness. That's definitely not
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: how I'm always mad, right, So I try to pick
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: and choose what I lend my energy to.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: I'm mad about this type of stuff.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: I don't really internalize it as much anymore because I
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: understand that there is nothing that will change the hearts
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: of individual people. If they never experienced what Tyrese's mom experienced,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: their hearts will never There's no legislation that can change
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: the hearts of the people. It literally has to be
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: ass whoopings to change.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: I just feel like, why something like this, like you
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: could the pain was palpable, like you could feel it.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: How could you watch this and not like almost experience
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: it yourself in a way, not truthfully, but in a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: way like it was so heart gripping that it just
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: made me hope we see ourselves and other people would
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: see it and feel it in a real way, not
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: just like reading a news article like, oh this happened
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: to another black man, damn, but really feel this shit.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Because that's what I felt when I watched it myself.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: And maybe I'm a huge infant, and and that's not
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: everybody's situations, so maybe I felt it in a different
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: way that I want to fight.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: That's how I feel.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 6: That's that's exactly.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: That is exactly the emotion that it's conveyed to you know,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: to me as well, and in it in the same way,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: I'm an empathy. But at the at the same time,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: this was what drew me to Laura. Her unders standing
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: for what she is doing. You are experiencing ninety five
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: minutes of what we experienced in six years.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 6: She is squeezing it into this.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: But her just her professionalism and her care and understanding
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: this story and treating our pain as a process instead
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: of just kind of throwing it at you.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 6: It was just.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: Beautifully done because she's emotionally at the same time watching
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: how traumatized I am in real life and realizing that
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: he doesn't even know that he's traumatized. He's literally just
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: living his life. So your anger, right, your anger is yours.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: It's valid, and that's what drove me to stand for Tyrese.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: If I didn't have this anger that I felt, then
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: I never stand up. I kind of just like you
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: know everybody else. And so your anger is a part
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: of what God has provided you in order to you know,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: take you to that next step.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: Your anger.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: There's blessings in your as much as anyo happiness, and
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: you just have to kind of let things unfold in
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: life sometimes.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how can people view this documentary? Where can they
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: see it? Where can they like? How can people be
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: a part of the almost mental process that it took.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: How can they how can they get this?
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: Well, for now, we're going to be focusing on the
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: festival circuit. We really want to be able to take
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: this film into a lot of these film festivals, and
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: we're having an opportunity like we, like I said, this
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: is Laura's first feature film. This is my first time
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: journeying into like the filmmaking space, and so like even
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: like going to Pan African, like you have.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 6: All of these true black stars. You have black star power.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: And this film is went from you know, us at
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: home here in Milwaukee Premiere into going into these different
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: places where you have true black star power in these
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: different people who are really prominent within the film industry,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: and they are and like you know, really helping Cycle
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: to grow and to breathing us as filmmakers.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 6: We are gaining the confidence to do these things.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: Like me, last year, I wouldn't have been able to
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: sit here and do an interview or get on the news,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: and like this entire process for the last ten months
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: has prepared me to kind of step into the spotlight
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: and kind of learn what it means to represent Cycle
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: and to be a filmmaker on this level and to
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: represent also some a company like laying Our Media and
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: Laura something that she has put her heart and her
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: life into and to you know, not take those things lightly.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Is there anywhere like IG or anywhere people can follow
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: the process or how can we keep up with the story?
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so at Cycle Movie is our ig handle have
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: We also have a Facebook page. I always direct people
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: to Will's Facebook page, specifically since he's got such a
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: following there, but on ig at Cycle Movie is where
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: you can follow our festival journey and all the updates
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: coming out. And yeah, like we'll said, we're going to
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: continue on the festival circuit. You know, LA at the
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: Pan African Film Festival was our fifth festival. We premiered
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: at the Milwaukee Film Festival, took it to Brooklyn, took
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: it to Miami, took it to DC, and we were
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: just in LA a week ago. And coming up we
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: have some regional festivals and then and then we're going
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: to be Cycle will be in Seattle in April. So
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: so yeah, I mean, right now, it's we're trying to
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: maximize the amount of people who can see it, who
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: can talk about it, who can create a demand for
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: it in their own cities, because we want to bring
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: Cycle everywhere that we can, wherever there's an audience for it,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: And with that, we're hoping to you know, leverage that
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: demand for our ability to get it on a platform
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: that makes it accessible and widely seen by as many
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: people as possible.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 7: That's the goal.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: Hey man, Well I'll be praying for that to happen
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: for you guys for real. Thank y'all for coming on
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: the show. Thank y'all for what y'all doing, y'all or
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: doing the Lord's work, whether you know it or not,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: you really are so I salute to you both seriously.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 5: Absolutely, we really really appreciate y'all. Stay prayed up and
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: have weapons.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 6: Thank y'all.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: Thank y'all so much for everything though. We really appreciate it.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 5: All right, y'all, So if you enjoyed this episode, y'all,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: tune in every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app or wherever
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 5: you get your podcast at. This is your co host
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 5: aj Holiday two point zero on Instagrams.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: My name is William Howell and I am the co
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: director of the award winning film Cycle And. You can
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: contact us at Cycle Movie.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 6: On Instagra.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: And I am Laura Diane Cousmin. I am the director
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: and editor of Cycle And, like Will said, you can
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: follow us at Cycle Movie.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: This official Tam bam. I love y'all so so very much.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: Every week. I appreciate y'all for tuning in. Remember speak
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: now and never hold your peace period.
• 1:07:22
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• 1:07:27
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• 1:07:31
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