Amplifying Women's Voices with Mary Mazzio

Episode 59: Amplifying Women's Voices with Mary Mazzio

Mary Mazzio, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, is also an Olympian, a lawyer, and an awesome female role model. At Ellevate, we believe that you can’t be what you can’t see, and Mary firmly supports that idea. In this episode, Mary shares how thinking about having a daughter made an impact on her views of herself and her impact in the world, her production company, "50 Eggs", how her experiences in college sports helped her feminism, resilience and grit, and her newest documentary I Am Jane Doe.

Episode Transcript

00:00 Rachel Griesing: Welcome to the Ellevate Podcast. Conversations with women, changing the face of business and now your hosts Kristy Wallace and Maricella Herrera.

00:13 Kristy Wallace: Hi and welcome to the Ellevate podcast. This is your host Kristy Wallace with my co-host Maricella Herrera and we are having lots of fun on a rainy day taping this for you in a tiny little coat closet of our office.

00:27 Marcella Herrera: In a tiny little coat closet which by the way I'm noticing that there are two light bulbs and one of them is out. So it's not just a coat closet, it is a dark coat closet.

[chuckle]

00:39 KW: Oh gosh.

00:41 MH: It's just getting better and better.

00:42 KW: And we're getting silly. I think it's oxygen depletion in here so we're gonna be a little silly today, but that's great.

00:48 MH: Yeah, 'cause we're always very very serious.

[chuckle]

00:50 KW: Yeah. So we today have Mary Mazzio who actually it's great that we have so much energy today because this woman, wow! Mary is a CEO and founder of 50 Eggs Films and she has some great stories that she shares with us on the podcast about being an athlete, going up against Title Nine. The documentary she's creating and why she's so passionate about it. So before we get to that, we've got a few exciting things. Just a reminder that this week, later tonight in New York City, we're doing our first podcast live taping with Gretchen Carlson so we hope to see you there and if you're not there, then you'd better be on the livestream 'cause we want you watching, tweeting about it, telling us what you think. We could not be where we are today. We would not have made it to a year without all of you. Your support, liking the podcast, sharing it with your friends, providing ratings and reviews. It means a great deal. You have no idea as we hope you join us tonight with a glass of wine in your hand hanging out with us either in person or on the livestream.

01:58 MH: Yes, please do. It's gonna be great. We have Gretchen Carlson as Kristy said. Some other guests and some other fun stuff lined up and it's also... It's just a great way to meet amazing women and other female role models and us because we're awesome and just have wine.

02:16 KW: Yup, yup. You bring up a great point there Maricella and one that we do not stress enough which is just the importance of networking and we should just say it everytime 'cause I can't tell you how many women say, "well I don't have time" or "I don't like it" or "it's not fun." Make it fun. I've been a member before I started working here as a member of the organization for years because I really believed in networking and I can't tell you how impactful, it's not only been in my career, but also in my life. I've met great friends. I've met people that I can turn to for advice and guidance. I've met mentors. We hope that you will attend Ellevate event wherever you are as unbelievable community of women really committed to elevating themselves and others and closing the gender gaps that continue to persist in business.

03:04 MH: Yeah. It definitely is a great community and networking is important and believe it or not Kristy and I are both introverts. You would not believe this if you hear us and a lot of people come up to me and say, "you are not an introvert," but we are. But it's part of really investing in yourself to put yourself out there, to meet people, to network and it doesn't need to be scary. It doesn't need to be fake. It is a great way to make connections, meet people you like and it goes from there.

03:36 KW: Yeah, absolutely. So exciting times our anniversary, I need to get you some flowers or a nice little gift. Maybe tequila, we're big on tequila these days.

03:48 MH: I know. We've been going down the tequila route lately.

03:51 KW: Right, I know. So maybe you'll get a little present on your desk or something. But female role models as well this month. If you don't follow us on social media, please do. We talk about a lot of great issues. We share content. We're actively involved in the conversation with our community and it's an important conversation around how do we succeed in the work place, succeed professionally, personally and really celebrate the successes of women which is really what this female role model campaign is about. So many inspiring women who have come before us, who are walking alongside of us, who are doing fantastic things that keep us going everyday and we wanna shed a spotlight on that. We wanna shed a spotlight on the women that inspire you. So share them with us, #femalerolemodel @ellevatentwk on Twitter and also if you want to talk about the Ellevate Pod, #ellevatepod.

04:47 MH: And just to share some data, we did ask our community why are female role models important? We know they are, but wanted to hear the reasons behind that. 44% said they help us recognize our own potential, which I find very inspiring. 23% said they give me hope and inspiration. 16% said because you can't be what you can't see. To me that's one of the most important phrases.

05:16 KW: Yes it is.

05:17 MH: You really can't be what you can't see. 11% said we are conditioned to think women aren't powerful, but they are. And 2% said women have been overlooked in the history books. So we're trying to change that. We're trying to change all of those things. We do not want women to be overlooked. We are powerful. We want to be on the history books and we want to help you recognize your own potential by showcasing people who have done great things.

05:42 KW: Did I tell you how my son Benjamin who I talk about... But I should talk about my girls more too, but Benjamin's a little bit older so he has some more interesting stories, but for the holidays he bought me a book on bad ass women and every night, we'd go through and read one of the stories.

06:01 MH: I love that.

06:02 KW: And it was really cool. And I think that's so important to me. I was inspired just reading about all these women, some who have even, I'll have the honor of meeting in person, Venus Williams. Hint, hint.

06:13 MH: Venus.

06:13 KW: But I also was really excited to share that with him. I think it's not just about women celebrating female role models. I think it's about all, everybody celebrating the women who are doing amazing things and the women that inspire us. 'Cause it's not, you know, men inspire me, women inspire me and it should always cross gender lines. So, it was great time reading that book with Benjamin and now I'm thinking we should go back and do it again.

06:43 MH: That's so cool. You have to do that with Morgan and Zoey when they're older.

06:46 KW: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I totally will. They'll get it. But, yeah, Morgan's gonna be my female role model next year 'cause I know she's gonna...

06:56 MH: Morgan's a spitfire.

06:57 KW: She's gonna start pre-K and be like president of the school in about a day. But, yeah. It's gonna be fun.

[chuckle]

07:04 MH: Oh, she's so cute. Well, let's go to our female role model for today, Mary Mazzio.

[music]

07:23 KW: I wanted to start Mary, just to hear a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are now.

07:30 Mary Mazzio: So, when I was training for the Olympic games, we would often have, and I was a young lawyer at that time, we would often have long stretches at training camps, time in between sessions, long airline flights abroad, what have you, and I started writing screenplays and I started writing screenplays really about strong defiant articulate women. And I noticed around me when I go to the movies or look at advertisements I felt like the women that I knew were not represented anywhere. And what do I mean by that? The women I saw on the screen were skinny and blonde and leggy and gorgeous and not very opinionated and really two dimensional. And there were very few, if any, two dimensional women. And I think that that image of women exists today and has some really long term harmful consequences. But at that time, I was thinking I'm gonna have a baby girl, right, she's gonna have legs like her mommy, so she's gonna have big meaty thighs, and she's not gonna be blonde and she's likely gonna be opinionated and if I have anything to do with it state those opinions loudly. And really just be, have the courage to fail whether it's voicing your opinion or trying something new or whatever.

09:00 MM: Really exercise your limit and get out there, get ugly, get dirty, and that what you see around you in terms of who you are supposed to be as a woman, what's expected of you, you don't have to conform to any of that. And so, I was writing screenplays around strong women and they were like, all of a sudden, I'll never forget, I remember sending Paramount Pictures a screenplay with an Olympic t- shirt. And I said, "Here's a story of a kick ass woman. She's an athlete." And, you know, expecting nothing to come of it. And literally, I get this phone call. I literally thought it was a prank. I get a phone call saying, "You know, when are you next in LA? And we wanna have some development executives meet with you. And, by the way, can we have five more copies of your script?" [chuckle] And I thought, "Okay. It's on." And, you know, at that point, I was like, "Oh, I better look legit. I better have stationery. I better look like I know what I'm doing." Because I had not a clue what I was doing.

10:09 MM: So, I'm casting around for a name for my company. I'm like I gotta have a company name. And, you know, typical, in sort of what was my mode at that time which was all about women and strong women and having a voice and frankly being heard I thought wouldn't it be cool to have a company called Medusa's Revenge? And my husband said, "Okay, wait a minute." He was my fiance at that time. He said, "Okay. So, if you have a woman with snakes coming out of her head as a logo, is that what you're thinking?" And I'm like, "Yeah. Wouldn't that be like the best?" And he's like, "Well, let's step back. How would this logo and the name of your company resonate with foundations with corporate underwriters?" Largely, by the way, with purse strings that are controlled by men. And I thought, "Oh, yeah. Good point."

11:06 MM: And so he said, "Your favorite movie is Cool Hand Luke." and I was like, "Oh, yeah!" So, my husband said, "You know, 50 eggs." I'm like, "50 eggs?" He's like, "It's your favorite movie." And I was like, "Cool Hand Luke, of course!" And in Cool Hand Luke, I don't know if you know the film, it's an old Paul Newman film, but there's a scene where everyone bet that his character cannot eat 50 eggs. And he goes and he eats 50 eggs. My husband was like, "That's you. You're always eating the eggs. And people tell you it can't be done." And I was like, "I love that." And what's so funny about 50 eggs, and that is our company name and has been since we opened our doors in 2000, is that many people, some people get the alliteration right away and others are like, "Oh, 50 eggs." Is that how many eggs a woman have, or? [chuckle]

12:09 KW: Oh no.

12:10 MM: It's oh yeah, I get the whole spectrum. In any event, my feminist bent was tempered with the reality of how to run a business. [chuckle] Medusa's revenge is only a day of yesteryear, as it were.

12:29 KW: Can I ask you, do you think that the being part of a woman's sports team led, impacted your feminist bent? Is it a group of strong women who are supporting each other and it kind of leads to the juxtaposition when that's not the case, or I'm just wondering if...

12:53 MM: Great question. I really acquired my feminist bent at Mount Holyoke College. All women's institution and it was really there. Listen, I was a high school cheerleader. [chuckle] And not to date myself, but I had a curling iron. Those are coming back my friends.

13:16 KW: As did I. As did I.

[laughter]

13:20 MM: I had a curling iron, blue eye shadow, and a thought that, "Oh I'm gonna kick this," without a clue that there was such a thing as a glass ceiling. Without a clue that women were bound up in all sorts of restrictions and expectations and stereotypes that I was about to come into contact with first-hand. And I was really sailing through life. I was a high school cheerleader. It did not occur to me at the time that I was on the sidelines, cheering for the men. It didn't occur to me. For me, it was a means to an end. It was a "Oh, how do I get to know the football player I have a crush on?"

14:05 KW: Sure.

[chuckle]

14:06 MM: Completely superficial.

14:08 KW: Well and school culture and cultural norms that exist within our society that we just take as truth, right? That's the way it's always been, of course, you the girls are the cheerleaders and the guys are on the football team, and they're supposed to date each other, and that's how it is, right?

14:28 MM: And I fell right into it, but I will tell you a hilarious story where my first rubber hits the road as it relates to feminism happened, and that was, I was a cheerleader for Needham High School Rockets, Go Rockets, and we had to, one of the rules was you had to bake for the boys. And whenever it was my turn to bake brownies, I always conveniently forgot and I was like, "Well it's stupid to bake brownies. If it's cold out, somebody can bring some soup or Gatorade, like brownies?" So everytime it was my turn to bake the brownies I would "forget," and I literally did forget, and I think that was my first sort of act of defiance. And on the cheerleading team, if you wracked up 10 demerits, you were off the squad. I wracked up nine and a half.

[laughter]

15:20 KW: You got demerits for not baking the brownies for the men?

15:23 MM: Isn't that hilarious?

[chuckle]

15:25 MM: We got demerits. We were also competing in the Bay State Championships. And I didn't realize, but I was one of the strongest women who could hold another woman on my shoulders, so we had a standing shoulder mount. And on my shoulders was one of the larger women on the team. [chuckle] She was chunky, very vivacious, but she was a big woman. And only I could hold her and so, we were going into Bay State Championships as the favorite, by the way, to win the cheerleading Bay State Championships, I'll have you know. And I didn't get kicked off the squad because I was the only one that could hold her up in a stand.

[laughter]

16:07 MM: Shoulder mount. Et voila! And I never had to bake brownies for the boys.

16:12 KW: And then you learned that it's all about having the power, right?

16:17 MM: Well not only that, but it's all about the uniqueness that you bring. I go off to Mount Holyoke. I am not a...

16:27 KW: A team is only as strong as the skills and the qualities that each person brings, and it's all unique.

16:32 MM: It's all unique. I had something that they couldn't get rid of me and that's really important. That's a really important lesson in a man's world. You need to have something unique about you. I didn't know that then, but that was my first lesson with that concept. And I was not an athlete. I went off to Mount Holyoke and a coach comes up to me. Now I had done a lot of dance, but he said, "Hey," and this is all all women's college. He said, "Hey you have big legs" [chuckle] And I'm like...

17:03 KW: Oh, why thank you.

17:04 MM: What of it? And I didn't know he was a coach, and he said, "I think you should try out for rowing. Come down the next day." And I'm like, "I'd always wanted to be an athlete." I dreamt of the Olympics, and my sister... Four girls, my sister was an extraordinary athlete, and I was like the second has-been, but I always wanted to be an athlete. I had no eye hand coordination, so I was cut from every team in high school because I had no eye hand coordination, except cheerleading.

17:35 KW: Well as an aside, I have no eye hand coordination and I did not make the cheerleading team either.

17:40 MM: Oh boo hoo.

[laughter]

17:43 KW: Because I have such a lack of coordination. I ran track in a line. That's about the extent of that.

17:47 MM: Good for you! Well, I did throw the javelin and by the way, not very well. And I was on the JV Softball Team and again, I was quickly eliminated from my position because I would close my eyes every time the ball came. So cheerleading was it for me. And so I show up on the first day of practice and like literally 200 women were coming out for 30 spots. And so the coach says, "Alright, everybody's gonna run around a lake. It's not even a mile. I gotta see how fit you people are." okay, I am so like at the back of the pack and he comes up to me he said, "You know Mary, I'm not sure we need you tomorrow. We have all these women." And I don't know what I said but that was such a key moment for me and somehow I talked him into letting me come the next day. And my mother was always such a strong role model, like never take no for an answer because no is no for that one second. It might not be no five minutes late or it might not be no five years later. And the beautiful thing about rowing is you've got to get up at 6:00 in the morning. We had to run three miles in the dark to the boathouse and by the end of the first week those 200 women, there are like six of us left [chuckle] I mean literally, I became an athlete by default and he had to take me.

19:14 MM: And thus began sort of my like this great new experiment with pushing your limits. Really getting out there getting ugly, getting dirty, and what does that mean? Because for women, I think so many of us are expected to sort of conform to this look. We've got to glisten instead of sweat. And these notions of beauty that I cared a lot about, I thought that did... That was clear to me that women are rated on the basis of their appearance first and foremost and everything else comes second. And that was something that I wasn't quite aware of until I went to Mount Holyoke and had these great feminist classes where I was challenged every day in terms of what I was seeing. And that really translated.

20:13 MM: That sports experience, you're in locker rooms with women and I have this theory, one of the reasons how I came into what I do really what I do at the end of the day is I'm an interviewer, right. I get people to tell stories about themselves and this began a long long, long time ago when we'd go into the shower and I'd ask women, "Hey, what happened Saturday night? Well no. Tell us the real details. Come on. Come on." oh I was relentless. But because I have this theory that is apropos of nothing but in the shower, people literally zip open their hearts and they will tell you everything. And whether it's that culture, whether they're not wearing any clothes and so people... I just learned to start having really interesting deep conversations, always teasing by the way, with my teammates.

21:10 KW: With women in the shower.

21:12 MM: With women in the shower. [chuckle] So anyways I get through Mount Holyoke and I'm like become a big fish in a little pond. We are a terrible program at the time D3 but there was a woman who came to coach and her name was Kris Thorsness and she was a two-time Olympian. And our coach, we had a female coach that was my senior year her name was Holly Metcalf and she had been to the Olympics and there was something so accessible that Kris said to me. She's like, "hey I've got this Russian jacket, put it on. See how you feel. I think you have some talent and I think you need to really understand that you have some talent." But it wasn't until she like... This was such... It was such a generosity of spirit. That she would, a two-time Olympian, say to me this struggling athlete, "I think you have more than you think you have." That was transformative for me. And that happened at this all-female institution at Mount Holyoke College and in fact that's exactly what happened. I left Mount Holyoke. I started training for the Olympic team. Getting cut by the way left and right. And still coming back and again this was my mother echoing in my ear, "You can fail. You can cry for a day. And then you got to get back up out there. You got to get back at the plate." Because there is no alternative. You have to get back up. And that really has informed really so much of my work which is not about not failing, but getting back up and rolling with the punches.

22:58 KW: So to share a little bit about what you're doing now.

23:02 MM: So if I can just start with a brief story about my first film. My first film called "A Hero for Daisy" was a story about sort of everything that I started my company for and cared about. So it was about these great women at Yale in the 1970s. I think I was 10 when this happened. Where Yale was completely unprepared for women in the 70's and these women would get on an unheated bus they were rowers. My sport. They would get on an unheated bus, drive 25, 35 minutes to the course. They would train in the wind, in the snow, in the rain. Get on a bus and then they would wait for an hour, for every man to shower. They'd come out of the shower red-cheeked with steam coming off and the women would be freezing. And they were getting sick. And they were getting mono, the flu, and these women by the way. Were not allowed to use the shower even after the men showered because the men then, you see, would be late for class.

24:06 MM: And the women said, two of these athletes were about to compete in the 1976 Olympic games. The women were winning all of their races, the men were not. And so the fundamental question arose among these women, we're paying the same tuition as the men. What's wrong with this picture? And so, they tried diplomatic channels at first, and they were told "The wheels of change here at Yale grind slowly." and so they ended up storming the Athletic Director's office, stripped, had Title Nine on breasts and backs in blue marker. Title Nine had recently been enacted as part of the Education Act under Nixon, believe it or not, which really mandated gender equality with federally funded institutions. And they dropped their trow, there was an article that was in the New York Times, and this article "Yale Women Strip" went around the world in the 70's. And alumni were writing in, sending checks, "Get those women a shower! Get clothes back on those people!"

25:14 MM: And that was the first salvo for what gender equity meant and what Title Nine meant. Nobody really knew and every athletic director stood up across the country and said, "Okay, I get it. This is what it means to have equal treatment for men and women." And so, for me, that was an extraordinary opportunity to articulate things that I cared about. A story that I had heard and I thought, "What a piece of history." I went to a women's college, I'm an elite athlete, how did I miss this story? How did I miss this gem? And so I made that film. As I mentioned before, I had these screenplays bouncing around Hollywood, never thought I'd be making documentaries. I thought I'd be on some film set with a cool pair of sunglasses and a leather jacket in a chair that said "Mazzio, Director." [laughter] That's where I was going, with the cheerleader crowd. Instead this film went from zero to 60. And I was hustling everybody; hustling reporters, hustling distributors, you name it, I was selling. And that film went on and it was an extraordinary, when you hit the Sunday New York Times and the photo editor calls and says, "Get ready, your life's gonna change," and you say, "Why?" and he says you haven't seen the size of this photo [laughter] going in the Sunday New York Times.

26:49 KW: Oh my goodness.

26:50 MM: Oh my God! And what that film ended up doing was so remarkable. I mean that film is now 17 years old. It is still shown, like kids will pop it in before races or meets. It's in class symposium throughout the country from school districts in Hawaii to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. And the feedback was unbelievable. I was hearing from fathers of daughters who said, "I saw this movie with your daughter. I haven't been able to communicate with my teen daughter in about a year, oh my God, we were able to reconnect and bond after watching your movie." Emails like that, to... I got an email from a young woman who said, "We're facing inequity within our own athletic department. What do we do?"

27:44 MM: So I said, "Well why don't you come see the movie?" So she organizes 45 kids and their parents to come see a screening of our film which was called, "A Hero For Daisy." And I met with them afterwards and I said, "You have a couple things you could do. You can do what these women in the film did, or maybe you start with all your parents, you meet the president of your college but let me know what happens." I get this letter back, saying, "Daisy doesn't have just one hero. Daisy now has 45. 45 of us went, we were so inspired by the Yale women from 1976 and we now have A, B, C, D, E. We now have gender equity." And there was a coach that we interviewed for "A Hero For Daisy," and she said this quote, and I'll never forget it. She said, "Today, girls and women have so much more and accept so much less."

28:39 KW: Yeah.

28:40 MM: And I think that issue around men and women gets very, very tricky, and it's really clouded today by, and I'm gonna segue a little bit into our newest project which is about sex trafficking of young girls and boys, but it's disproportionally girls online. And I think we have a culture now where anything goes online. A culture of commercial sex, of pornography but it's not, I'm not talking about the old consensual pornography but violent porn and what is that doing to shape our expectations in sexuality. I think that is a whole thorny issue that the next generation is really grappling with. My son went to a boys school and I'll never forget the head of the school said, "By the time your child is 16 years old, he will have seen 100,000 images of porn." And I remember thinking, "Not my kid." [laughter]

29:43 KW: Gosh, I'm...

29:44 MM: I'm wrong, right?

29:45 KW: If you could see my face right now, there's outrage, but...

29:49 MM: Right, 100,000 images of porn. And you think, oh okay. And I'm thinking, "Oh, it's the Happy Hooker. No big deal." No, no, no, no, no. This is, the kind of porn that's out there, is just, it's excruciating. And so I...

30:01 KW: Is this like Victoria Secret's catalogue, is that considered or is this straight up...

30:06 MM: Oh my friend if only. Victoria Secret and Playboy are harmless. That's child's play. That's not even pornography, I mean, seriously really. Let me like let me segue back to, "I Am Jane Doe." The theme of empowerment of women has run through so many of our projects but really fundamentally, it's... All of our work is all about overcoming obstacles and we really dedicate everything that we do to projects that are socially impactful and not necessarily confined to women by the way. Our last project was about four undocumented boys that built an underwater robot out of sticks and clay and ended up defeating MIT. And that project was so extraordinary, we were able to work on it and launch it at a time where immigration was the debate of the day and heightened sensitivity and yet here we had a film that up ended convention and stereotype on its head.

31:15 MM: You had four 16 year old kids that were undocumented, english was a second language and they kicked the shit out of an MIT team. How phenomenal is that! Look at the talent we have in this country, look at what these boys did to overcome the extraordinary obstacles in front of them. And that film by the way from an impact standpoint was... Really raised the bar for us. That film raised a $100 million in public and private commitments with the White House and all that money was dedicated to STEM education for underserved children. So we have a high bar to meet. This project, "I Am Jane Doe," came about because I read in the Boston Globe a story about Jane Doe number one, Jane Doe number two and Jane Doe number three that it filed suit against the Old Village Voice. The Village Voice and Backpage.com for injuries they sustained by virtue of being bought and sold online for commercial sex at the age of 14 and 15 years old.

32:31 MM: And two thoughts went through my head; number one, this is happening 10 minutes from my house. This isn't a crime that's supposed to be happening in the United States. Sex trafficking! What're they talking about? And number two the fact that Backpage was winning these lawsuits. How is it possible that it is legal in this country to host the advertisements of children for sale for sex online. That made no sense, not... I was like mind blown. And so I thought here is an opportunity to talk about a profound issue that's affecting disproportionately girls but both boys and girls and nobody's talking about it. It's under-reported and it is a crime of urgency particularly with the numbers of children that this happens to. And I am not talking about a kid here or there, as I have come to learn this happens to hundreds of thousands of children on an annual basis. And it's extraordinary and it's happening to the most vulnerable among us. So we dove into this project and I had the privilege of meeting Jane Does, Jane Doe's one through five in Seattle and the other Jane Doe's around the country who had filed suit against the Backpage.

33:56 MM: And one of those children... This is very, very difficult for parents to talk about, for the families who endured it, to talk about, for the children themselves and I'll never forget one of the victims said to me. She said, "I really don't wanna talk about this." I said, "I know you don't." And she said, "What are you gonna do with this film?" and I said, "Well, I hope that it has an impact and people understand that this crime exists because if they understand I think there's more likelihood people will do something about it." She looked me up and down and she said, "Do you have a daughter?" I said "Yeah, I have a daughter." She said, "Do you love your daughter?" I'm like, "I adore her." She said, "I tell you what, I'm gonna do this project and I'm doing it for your daughter." "Would your daughter do it for me?" and it was at that moment, I mean it was on, I had her trust, she was on my shoulders.

34:57 MM: All of these Jane Does, those are the voices we amplify in "I Am Jane Doe" and the film tracks their journey, trying to seek justice on this issue and suing Backpage and in the middle of the project a congressional investigation erupted and so fast forward we just opened the film theatrically to really extraordinary, not just critical press but popular press, the likes of Esquire magazine, a men's magazine loved this film and for me I think it's a true feminist, is all about having a voice but having a voice that doesn't just preach to the choir. You need to be able to communicate with young people, old people, men, women, people of all genders of all sexualities on the spectrum of all race, of all creed, of all ethnicities. And I think that, that is what this film is doing. It is amplifying the voice of these children so that people understand the nature of the crime in order to do something.

[music]

36:11 KW: Well, thank you Mary. Thanks for all that you're doing.

36:13 MM: Alright, thank you so much. Appreciate it.