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[0:00] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's the round table with me, Robert Bannon. Well, welcome to the round table, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon. You're listening to us on Broadway World over here on the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeart and Spotify. And I'm really excited about our next guest. You know, I was a polysign major before I decided to get into this crazy business. And I think Showbiz and politics have a lot in common. And our guest actually combines the two making films, documentaries, and combining politics in the crazy worlds that we live in. It is January 6th. There is a story that has not been told yet. And Michael Premo is here telling us the story that has not been told yet with some unreleased footage and a very interesting perspective on three people who are a part of what happened on the sixth, and Michael is here to tell us all about it. Michael, welcome to the show.

[0:44] Michael Premo: Thank you so much for having me, Robert. It's a pleasure to be here.

[0:47] Robert Bannon: Michael, firstly, when did you want to be a filmmaker? And why documentaries?

[0:52] Michael Premo: Um, so I just love people. I love stories. I love what motivates them. My background is also in theater. I worked in theater for many years. Um, and I was a photojournalist, then a photographer, and there was just something about being able to create a space for people to share their own stories that really excited me. I really got my start in documentary through working for StoryCorps, and that really just ignited this love for just the ability to hear people's voices.

[1:22] Robert Bannon: And you have done, like when I look at your work before, you have done work that has been at all different events around Tribeca to around Europe and around the world. Your films have gone all over the place. And you have done and worked and done theater with a ton of like hip hop theater festivals, amazing organization, Peabody Award winning StoryCorps, like you said, the Village Voice, New York Times. Like you have stuff that has been all around the world. What's it like for someone who wants to be a filmmaker, aspiring filmmaker? Most people tell you you can't do it. You're never gonna make a living. No one's ever gonna so what's it like to be able to create projects and then have them seen around the world?

[1:59] Michael Premo: Well, I'm very blessed to have had work that has traveled around the world. Um, you know, it doesn't always feel that way, so it's really affirming to just sort of like check yourself and be like, oh wow, this is there are people in Germany and Spain and South America and Asia listening to the stories we're how we're helping put out into the world, you know. And I think for young people interested in documentary or filmmaking, like the advice is always something that seems overly simple, and it's just go shoot. Just get out there and record stories, whether it's your family, whether it's a person down your street, or you know, in your community, in your neighborhood, just go record. And it's just working that muscle is you figure out how storytelling works and how it functions and how you want to be a facilitator of stories.

[2:46] Robert Bannon: Well, one of my favorite things about documentary filmmakers when I talk to them is because I love documentaries and I love them more than a narrative because I like the idea of being able to hear real stories and finding out real information. So, for you, how do you build the story? When did this idea start? And it does from what I read, it follows three people. So, did you know them prior to the sixth? Did you know them after the sixth? How did you agree to get them to let you, strange or danger person, to show up in their life with a camera?

[3:15] Michael Premo: That's a great question. You know, I think again, I think one of the things I love about the work that I do, and I'm really privileged as an independent journalist as an independent filmmaker, is that there's nobody telling me, pointing me in a direction. I get to just follow my curiosity wherever it leads. And in, you know, 2016, 2017, 2018, I saw this sort of this conflict for lack of a better word, brewing in America, where you had just this partisan divide where people just were dehumanizing the other, and there was something brewing, there was something happening. And I wanted to go out and talk to people and understand what they were fighting for, why they were fighting, and what they hope to get.

And I was particularly interested in a subset of those people that were beginning to say that maybe violence was the only way to settle their disagreements. You know, that cardinal rule that we're taught from the youngest age that, you know, use your words, use your words. Um, I was encountering these people who felt like, you know, maybe democracy wasn't meeting their needs, and maybe this violence was the only way to get what they wanted. And that put me on this path. And we really started filming in 2018. And um, I started talking to people, and I met people at rallies and marches, and um, I went to bars and restaurants and places where these activists were hanging out, and I said, Hey, I want to know why you're out here.

Why aren't you just at your keyboard? What has got what has you brought you out into the street, so to speak? And that led me across the country with over a dozen people, um, and you know, hundreds of interviews. And we wasn't until when we got in the into the edit that we really had to do the hard work of figuring out how the story would function over a two-hour framework. And that led us to sort of choosing the three people in the film.

[5:03] Robert Bannon: Well, that's what I find so fascinating because you did all of this work, and then you have to kind of tell this story with all the fragments of there's no script, people. This is he's shooting it. So, Michael, this is a very divide. I don't my politics, I would not be able to do your job because for you to do your job, you're supposed to tell a story, and you to let the story tell the story, and you don't necessarily good journalism, at least in good filmmaking, documentary filmmaking, is you let these people tell their story, and then people make their decision. How do you keep I don't know you, I don't know your politics, I don't know what you think of the president, the United States, democracy, I don't know how you vote. How do you let the story be told and not let Michael's opinion sway the story?

[5:44] Michael Premo: Oh, it's so hard to really be like constantly checking yourself and see when your sort of perspective is is is maybe influencing an outcome. Um and you know, of course, there's no such thing as total objectivity. I bring my own opinions and perspectives and understanding of the world to the story, and and and my perspective and my lived experience has told me, has taught me that we live in a violent society, you know, school shootings and you know, the very sort of ideas of race and class were created by violence. This country was created with a revolution, where we were forged in violence, and so sort of with that understanding, that really led me to sort of like turn my eye to people who like me grew up watching violent movies, grew up sort of using violent rhetoric very casually.

And so I just wanted to understand how that makes the leap from movies and entertainment and culture to people deciding that this is how they're gonna solve their political disputes. And it takes, you know, it takes a lot of energy to sort of just allow things to develop in front of the camera. And we did a lot of work in the edit to like make sure that people had space to sort of share what they wanted. Um, and you could see in the film in the structure of our editing, you see people say one thing, and then we let their actions sort of cooperate or contradict the things that they say, and that's sort of where my sort of perspective comes in because I'm like, okay, I see what you're saying. Now I'm going to see what you're doing and put those things together and let people decide where things match up or don't match up. And I feel like there's real power in that.

[7:28] Robert Bannon: Uh while we're talking, everyone, go to homegrown.film for the information about the film. The film comes out here on the sixth. So it is the sixth, so you can start, you can you can get on it, jump on it right now. If you are watching the news, if you're watching the news and this crazy world that we live in, and it's literally insanity by the time this air, which is the day before everyone, this is the fifth. By tomorrow, the way things are going, God knows what's happened in the next 24 hours. And we cannot forget what happened on that day, an unprecedented day of something that has never happened in American history. It hasn't happened in many places history. And a lot of people who don't understand the MAGA world and the way the Republican Party is right now, look at this as a very isolated incident.

They've been spun that it's a group of people, etc. How did you go as an actor? You study musical theater. Sometimes you have to play a character that you don't agree with, but you have to find the humanity in the character. You have to find a way in without judging the character. How did you spend time with these people who may not believe things you believe, who may say things and do things that you would never do, and then try to show their humanity on the screen? Did you find surprises about them as humans?

[8:41] Michael Premo: Yeah, totally, absolutely. I mean, that's a great analogy because it's like my work is really to like understand people's motivations. You know, it's reading the subtext, it's reading in between the lines of what people are saying to sort of try to understand and discern what their sort of where their heart lies really and what their values actually are in practice. And um, yeah, that that took a lot of work to really sort of like create a space where people would feel comfortable to be able to share sort of where they're at and what they're doing.

[9:12] Robert Bannon: Did you learn anything new? And are we gonna see something new in this documentary? I know there's unreleased or new footage. You know, it the story was so covered. There's so many iconic moments and characters and pictures. So, how do you, as a filmmaker, have the confidence that you're gonna bring something new, that we're gonna see something that we've never heard or learn something we've never learned before?

[9:32] Michael Premo: Yeah, the film is a hard watch for a lot of people who have very strong opinions about who they think these people are. But I think if people sort of like breathe it in and give it a moment, what they'll find is the things that we discovered. And one of the biggest things that we discovered is that, you know, often in these sort of partisan, heated partisan debates and online, you know, back and forth, it's about these big ideas about ideology or partisan or policies. And what we found was that ideology and sort of partisan policies aren't actually at the core of what's driving many of the people that we interacted with. What's driving them is this this desire, this need for community, for purpose, for meaning.

People want to feel valued, people want to sort of make meaning and find stability in a very unstable world. And I feel like those things, like, while maybe very hard for people who have a hardened perspective on the quote-unquote them, the other side or whatever that means, but like at the core of it, people have very similar desires and aspirations, and so and become vulnerable to sort of like perspectives that like lead them in all these different directions and and we show that in the film. I think also the other thing that we discovered was the the amount of people of color that are part of the conservative movement that I don't necessarily see in the media and even in sort of like conservative media itself I don't see that perspective of the participation of this sort of increasingly multicultural movement and it is there's a lot of black people and Latino people and and Asian East Asian people that are part of the movement and I think that's significant and something that needs to be reconciled with and talked about and and that's what our film shows and in a way that no other film really shows people in the sort of lead up to January 6th and then all the way through the pardons including the sort of multicultural aspect of it this story is so fast.

[11:29] Robert Bannon: You know, I you're all gonna remember the day. I'm gonna remember the day. I remember turning on the television. I remember not believing what I was seeing as the notification on my phone. I remember seeing iconic images. I remember how late the certification of the vote went that night. I remember Lindsey Graham speaking and saying this was the line in the sand. And then we fast forward to today and we're in a world where they're pardoned and we sometimes with the news cycle easily forget things that have happened. Um, there is a country of rules and laws and there is a country that has a decorum or supposed to be. So, Michael, when you see the story and you see how it unfolds, do you feel promised at the end of the movie? Do you feel like we're all gonna be on fire? Do you feel like we should all get together and sing kumbaya or build a bomb shelter? Like, what should happen? What happens to the end of both? Maybe we should do both.

[12:20] Michael Premo: And you know, I think that like understanding people's motivation is the step. I think the hope is in the fact that knowing that like maybe people you sort of fundamentally disagree with are sort of getting to that point where you disagree with them from a point they're starting at a point where they understand and see the world in similar ways. You know, like people, the price of eggs, the price of bacon, this sort of like this criticism of this corporate elite and this economic system that's rigged in favor of billionaires at the expense of working people. It's a hard reality that so many people across the political spectrum can really agree with. But where we begin to disagree with is who's responsible for it and how we solve it.

But if you can really drill down to that meaning, I feel, uh, the core critique, that core reason, I feel like that gives us sort of some level of common ground to be able to dig in in a way that sort of like recognizes each other's humanity. Because, you know, I do, I'm not totally hopeful about this moment. We’ve reached a point in American history where the two major political parties no longer see each other as legitimate partners in governance. We have one, you know, one of the things that the pardons telegraphed was that political violence is okay. It was a permission slip to use violence to achieve what a movement wants to achieve. And that is scary. I think if we were reporting on a foreign country, we would call it sectarian violence.

Yeah. If it was the Middle East, if it was, you know, South America. But because it's America, we don't use that language, but that sectarianism is erupting into violence in a way that like we've never experienced in this country. And the fallout from since then, we could connect a lot of events that have happened to this whole entire decade-long worth of desensitizing the way we speak, the way we talk to one another. You know, while I was talking to you, I'm very quick to judge like many people on either side, we're quick to judge the other side. There's a it's a very passionate, there's lives on the line, there's money on the line, there's families on the line. So we feel very impassioned by it.

Many people who are very active politically. But what I do know is that at the end of the day, no matter if you are from the far right or the far left, we're all trying to have the similar things. We're just going about it in different ways. I don't want to pay more for eggs, I don't want to pay more of my taxes. I want to make sure my schools are safe. I want to make sure my family is okay. We all have things that we want. Sometimes we just grow up in a different area, a different place, and we don't have the same way of getting there.

[14:54] Robert Bannon: You're a filmmaker, and I'm just a little shlubby podcast host that teaches sometimes. So do you feel like the exposure, the art, the documenting of this is going to bring people together? We're gonna see things from a different perspective. Maybe we'll learn, even if we don't agree with you where you come from, is that one of the goals?

[15:14] Michael Premo: Absolutely. Absolutely. Like, I'm sitting down with people that maybe some people might find disagreeable, so you don't have to, and trying to bring that story to people. So maybe we can find some common ground. Maybe we can sort of like understand humanity a little bit deeper so that we can understand our world better and make different choices. Um, I feel like often the reason why the arts and humanities are so often the first thing to get cut and the first thing that's attacked is that fundamentally arts and humanities make us a better and richer society by helping us understand ourselves in a way that few other things really help us do.

[15:51] Robert Bannon: Homegrown.film, everyone. So when you showed it overseas, you went to Venice Film Festival, you did all the you did 50 plus film festivals. What's the response like outside of the United States when people see this movie?

[16:02] Michael Premo: The response outside this country has been overwhelming, critical acclaim. We've done screenings where the entire theater stays afterwards to engage in conversation because people are so hungry and curious to understand what's going on here in America. Um, we did a lot of screenings in Germany where there was a lot of sort of particular interest in the film. Um, their sort of national broadcaster gave the film an award. Um, and one of the things that they were saying is that like, you know, we need to understand the slide away from democracy. We need to understand not necessarily just the leaders and the people who sort of like spew this propaganda and rhetoric, but like the everyday people, the person, your neighbor, the person down the street, the bodega worker, the deli worker, the restaurant worker, when they start participating, that's when we need to like take note.

And you know, in places like Germany and Spain, they understand this very intimately. Um, and there the response has been overwhelming. That's what is so fascinating about when people make the comparison to those times in history versus where we're living right now is those times in history didn't happen just because one leader decided to do this. It was a way of changing the whole entire thought process of a giant part of the population.

[17:30] Robert Bannon: When it's out, which is it's out now. How can we go to the website? How can we stream it? How can we support the film?

[17:36] Michael Premo: So you can watch the film on your device or your smart TV by going to homegrown.film and it'll be available until President's Day, so about mid-February. Um, and the best way to support the film is watch it and share it with some friends. Um, for those, um, we have this fund too. This we call it the pay it forward fund, uh, where you know, if you wanna uh pay it, uh, allow buy a ticket for somebody else on that same website, you can pay a little bit of extra money and then that allows someone else to see watch the film for free.

[18:05] Robert Bannon: Kudos. That is so cool. I think that is an amazing, really amazing thing. It's an exclusive release on Gather and um and it's going to be available, like he said, until President's Day. And shout out to your producer and Rachel, who you work with because you guys have done a lot of work together in putting this together. So I wanted to give her kudos for working with you because it sure it takes a village, Michael, to get something like this.

[18:28] Michael Premo: Absolutely takes a village. We have a huge team of collaborators and uh my producing partner, Rachel Falcone, who also did sound, uh, because of the pandemic, we were kind of forced into be a really small crew. It was me filming and Rachel producing and recording sound, and uh we were just crisscrossing the country in a crazy moment in time, and I couldn't have done it without her.

[18:46] Robert Bannon: Well, I'm from Jersey, so I know one of the people you focus on. I gotta, I gotta, I want to know what my Jersey brethren, some of them were thinking at this time. And one last question, not a controversial question, I promise, Michael, but I want to know your take because you're a filmmaker in a historical sense. So the news media's coverage of this and what has been shown about it. How how much blame do you put on the news media for not you're coming out here? You're showing actual footage, you're telling real stories. Do you feel like the news media is lacking and the documentarians are the ones that are out here showing some of the real truth because it's been censored, or there's a fear about free press in the United States these days?

[19:25] Michael Premo: Yeah, you know, the press is just under such scrutiny, such attack these days. Um, I feel like what it's not necessarily the press's fault, although individuals in the media could do a better job to more clearly call out what's happening, more clearly sort of be explicit around these sort of threats to democracy, uh, where you talk in a more nuanced way about political violence. I feel like this sort of this American exceptionalism, this idea that it can't happen here, so deeply permeates our psyches that you know it informs how sort of the things like this are covered. And there is this somewhat of a kind of I would say tacit dismissal that, like, oh well, you know, it's bad, but it's not really bad.

It's not a systemic problem. It's just some of these people over here. And if we just get rid of them or we just give them a little bit more education, the problem will be solved. And I think that comes from this idea that it can't happen here, but it's happening here. Democracy is crumbling in America, and we need to put in some work to make sure that the promise of a multiracial democracy, which you know was the sort of idea that we've come to grow and accustomed to, uh, is preserved.

[20:36] Robert Bannon: Look, Michael, I was doing a good job. I was proud of myself. I was really trying to keep my politics in. But what Michael just said, everybody, what Michael just said, everybody, you're in a time right now where there are not many checks and balances and people are not really standing up. So we can't vote. There may not be an election today. What we can do, in my opinion, and I'd love to know what Michael thinks, is we can speak about it, we can learn about it, we can have education about it, we can learn how the system works and how it's supposed to work, and try to hold each other accountable to what this country is founded on and what democracy is supposed to be. What do you what is your hope when there's not a Senate, there's not a Congress, there's not a Supreme Court, there's not a president, and there doesn't seem to be full support of the media or people backing following what's supposed to happen in this country?

[21:08] Michael Premo: We could stream the documentary, do that so you learn about it. And B, I think B is like look to local journalists, the local journalists, the folks who are in your community, in your region, in your town, uh, you know, folks like yourself who are like in conversation with people is the people we should be listening to, is the people should be in conversation with. And I'm also like really encouraged by local government, the ability to, you know, when you're in a town of 8,000 people, 100,000 people, um, you know, what can move people and elected officials is less than on a national level. When you're feeling sort of like despondent around the inaction of Congress, maybe it's time to sort of look a little bit closer to home and see what you can do to make your community just a little bit brighter.

[22:06] Robert Bannon: And I feel like doing things like that can really help restore people's faith in the possibilities of democracy. First lesson in poly sci class was all politics is local, so go to your city, go to your town, be active, and you can you may not be able to make progress nationally, but you can at home. Congratulations, Michael. Everybody please make sure to go to the website, go to homegrown.film, and it was such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for being here.

[22:13] Michael Premo: Thank you so much for having me, Robert. I loved your questions. It's a joy to talk to you. Your spirit is infectious. So yeah, good luck to you. I'll be watching tomorrow. I'm gonna tell you what I think. I'm excited.

[22:56] Robert Bannon: Please do.