three days in paradise

Even This Will Not Beat Me

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Update, remembrance & what fellow survivors taught me about enduring

If you’re like me, 2020 feels like a hammer smashing a marble.

I know we’re supposed to talk about rising up, being strong, overcoming, stiff upper lipping our way through it and all of those intentions are valuable.

But… Jesus Christ. I mean… Jesus Christ what an era.

This posting is meant as a reflection on the two-year anniversary of the Camp Fire, as an update on our project Three Days in Paradise and as a personal update for all of you who have become friends through these years. It’s also an update on the bright, if bittersweet, days, months and years to come.

Personal Updates

I’ll admit, most of the traumatic after effects of the Camp Fire did not come home to me fully until this year. In the aftermath of the fire it became my ambition, along with my producing partners Laura Smith and Jenna Lane, to tell the story of our town, our history, our people like only those who lived here and held it close.

That work through 2019 allowed me to forestall most of the trauma I saw in our fellow survivors. Working on Three Days in Paradise kept me busy. It’s my ambition to tell such a deep, era-spanning story of what the fire meant to us all that my work dovetailed with a lot of other meaningful projects.

I was lucky enough to make on a very meaningful project, the Emmy-Nominated A High and Awful Price: Lessons Learned from the Camp Fire. I was able to be a field producer on Ron Howard, Xan Parker and Lizz Morhaim’s Rebuilding Paradise, and go to the Sundance Film Festival. As a filmmaker, it’s quite an experience and one I never thought I would have when I settled in Paradise. (It’s premiering on the National Geographic Channel this Sunday at 9 PM).

When I got home in February, I was planning to make several trips around the country to gather the funding and support to make Three Days exactly the kind of high quality, modern, meaningful production our story deserves.

My travel was to begin in late March or early April. Plans personal, career and professional were cancelled. I was forced to stop and think.

I fell apart.

I won’t go deeply into it here because I’m sure my struggles rhyme with your own. Since the fire I came down with an illness that has left half my face partially paralyzed. My boys have had more taken from them than I think I’ll ever know. I’m proud of the men they’ve become, but I can still see the tremors of anger, nostalgia and sadness in quiet moments when they think of their childhood in Paradise. And my ex-wife was rushed into emergency surgery and had a close call.

And that. When the fire happened, we were married and now for a constellation of reasons we are not. While we parted as friends, this was once one of my greatest fears and another one of the things I wonder would be different if it weren’t for the fire.

But we will never feel another day when the influence of November 8, 2018 does not touch us. So we soldier on. In the past months and weeks I’ve risen from my knees and am getting back to work. About that…

Documentary Updates

While the arrival of Covid-19 has scrambled the lives of everyone, it has done a real number of the film and TV industry. My friends in the industry tell me it’s likely movie theaters will never return to be what they once were. That is not to say anything changes for producing Three Days in Paradise (not a thing in this world or the next will stop me from working on it until it’s finished and worthy), it’s just that the media landscape has changed. We are changing with it, to make sure our story still gets out.

In many ways, that has made the production more challenging… the tastes of streaming and distribution companies have changed. But almost uniquely the events of 2020, with fire in Australia and here in California, the burdens of a pandemic touching everyone on the planet, has made our story of loss and rebirth resonant to almost every other human on Earth in a new way.

One way is we will be producing a podcast with award-winning KCBS Radio reporter Jenna Lane. It will be a kind of sister project to compliment the documentary series. More details on that to come.

Another is that we are going to be going back out into the field for more interviews, more updates, more stories that have cropped up as we have rebuilt. Our ambition is to tell the story of our people from long before the fire to long after. To take all our pain and love and experience and make something meaningful that will be ours, and last long after we are gone.

Our story is not unique. Overcoming is our essential human nature. And no one can tell that story to a world that needs to hear it better than us.

How Camp Fire survivors can finally see Ron Howard’s REBUILDING PARADISE

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This post is how Camp Fire survivors can see REBUILDING PARADISE, the documentary directed by Ron Howard and produced by the duo who have become friends to so many of us, Xan Parker and Lizz Morhaim.

If you want to see it this weekend as part of an online film festival, follow this link and sign up by Friday at 6 PM: https://rsvp.theworldsbest.events/lzmgn

That said, I did want to add a few words about this film. If you’re like me, a resident of Butte County and onetime resident of Paradise, one of the awful worries that arose in the days after the fire is how outside TV producers and filmmakers would portray our story. Would they produce lurid, cheap, surface level treatments, where our homes, lives and friends are just props in a drama.

Or would they come and get to know us? Would they not only tell the story of the fire, but of US.

Well, now we know a lot. There were TV crews and filmmakers who made us their props. There were filmmakers who came to push their agendas. There were well meaning but amateur filmmakers who told earnest stories but were not talented enough to truly communicate what the Paradise Ridge was to us and what we lost.

And then there was the Imagine crew. Director Howard came to listen and talk. Producers Xan Parker and Lizz Morhaim came to get to know us. And they shot and gathered hundreds of hours of our story.

While working on THREE DAYS IN PARADISE, I’ve encountered a broad spectrum of filmmakers from newspapers, TV stations and world wide nes agencies, independent film producers and major Hollywood powers. None of them, not one came close to knowing us as Xan and Lizz did.

I was lucky enough to see REBUILDING PARADISE at the Sundance Film Festival in January. I was lucky enough contribute some small bit of producing for this film in what I think of as the end of my pre-COVID career.

What they did was worthy. This was made with a care and thought and sympathetic eye as though it was made by one of us. You will recognize the Paradise we knew and miss. You will recognize our struggle and strength.

I’m here to say they did it right, and if you have the hope to watch, you should see it. It’s something we can show our friends and family who were not here, did not live through it, to give them some idea what it was really like on that day and the year that followed.

And they wanted to show our Paradise Ridge community first. I talked to National Geographic and Imagine personnel at Sundance in January.

They were planning to show the film in Paradise April 27. There were even discussions of setting up a giant screen at Paradise High School’s Wraith Field and fill the field with survivors and first responders, bringing out community together to see it with the film’s crew. They also talked about showing it over two days at the Paradise Performing Arts Center.

This plan was literally days away from being announced in March. But Covid-19 overwhelmed this along with so much else. This was just another thing we lost, and another blow we had to absorb. I know it broke the heart of the producers and they wanted to share it with us, and do it first before the film rolled out to the rest of the world. But fate, as we know too well, had different plans.

National Geographic is also providing links to a spectrum of organizations still helping Butte County and Camp Fire survivors. You can find that HERE

Better than a Championship

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Invincible Bobcats helped resurrect a community

This morning, I suspect the players and coaches of the Paradise High School Bobcats are unhappy, but they should be proud.

What they gave the communities of the Paradise Ridge is something better than a Championship. I hope they know it. Through their disappointment, I hope they hear this.

In researching for Three Days in Paradise, I’ve come across dozens of old west mining towns in Butte County’s early days. Most of them are unknown.

I’ve found one thing separates settlements which become communities and those that fade into ghost towns. It’s schools.

All budding towns open bars, general stores, hotels and even a town hall. It’s the ones with schools that remain. Schools aren’t for the towns of today. They and their students are the town of tomorrow… the citizens, leaders, business people who will enrich and improve the town long after all the founders are gone.

Schools and the families they make possible, are the thing that separates a collection of buildings from a civilized town. Schools are how a town shows hope.

In the days, weeks and months after the fire, I interviewed dozens and met hundreds of survivors, recovery workers and public and private leaders. On camera and off they talked about, worried about, wondered about whether a community like Paradise could rise from the blow we had taken.

Yes, people vowed to rebuild, some businesses opened, but in whispers and wonders from across the spectrum I heard real worries from smart, informed people about the possibility Paradise would fade.

Then the schools re-opened in August, and it was a good sign.

But for many, it was the first game of the Bobcat’s Football Season on August 23 which made what remained of Paradise feel like what we remembered of Paradise. As survivors watched, coached and played in ame after game, our battered optimism reasserted itself.

Listening to the cheers of the crowds, watching the exploits of Harrison and Blood, Bettencourt and Hartly, Velasquez and everyone else made Paradise feel like a hopeful, happy place again. Through every regular season game, they won, finishing with a 10-0 record.

Their run helped us remember we could do this. We could clear the debris, claw through the heartache and remember those we had lost, and could have a town that felt like a place again. The Bobcats brought our eyes to the horizon again and let reminded us there is something more than ash in the future.

So they the players and coaches may not have gone to where they wanted to go this year.

But they gave us all something more dear. To do that you have to be something better than a champion.

You have to be Paradise Invincible.

 

Helping the Gold Nugget Museum and Three Days in Paradise

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Hey friends, neighbors and readers,

We come today with the happy announcement long in the making: Our Three Days in Paradise production team has entered into an agreement with the Gold Nugget Museum to donate all materials contributed by the public to our production to the Museum poste haste.

That means anything you give to us to use in our series, to tell the local and larger stories of the Paradise Ridge and the Camp Fire, will find a home in the Gold Nugget. We’re proud and touched to be allowed to help in this small way to rebuild an institution that means so much to our Ridge.

We’re looking to do two things: 1). Help rebuild the historical images of the Ridge from the 1840s to November 7, 2018 and 2). Create the most complete, fully sourced archive of Camp Fire related images, video, audio and more.

That means we’re looking for everything: Phone videos, home videos, historical pictures, Polaroids, modern phone pics, Beta Tapes, VHS tapes, slides, news station footage & 8 mm films… Everything.

We will scan or digitize you originals and get them back to you. We will then pass on museum quality digital copies to the Museum for their archives.

We came to this decision when we realized the needs to make our series… historical images and what we all saw and heard on November 8 and in the aftermath, matched neatly with what the Museum would be needing for the future.

There are a few ways to get us footage.

1). If you’ve got physical images or material… video or audio tapes, home movies, old pictures, anything, give us a call (530-680-7125) or email and we’ll set up an appointment (Info@ThreeDaysInParadise.tv).

2). Get on our computer and go to this link and send us material via DropBox. When asked, enter your name and email (this will tag each video you upload with your name so we know who contributed it). Only we will see the video you send. Here’s the link:
https://www.dropbox.com/request/XoKYqh7YQe5IHhPx1qPF

3). If you’re on an iPhone, select the photos and send us an iCloud link. You can send the link here: Info@ThreeDaysInParadise.tv

4). If you’ve got an Android, select the photos and send us Google Photos link here: Info@ThreeDaysInParadise.tv
Or…

Tell your Tales from the Paradise Ridge

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Like many of my fellow Camp Fire survivors, I have been torn up since the morning of November 8, 2018.

The filmmaker in me… that part that’s worked to tell stories since Star Wars and Snow White and Ken Burns’ Civil War kindled my love of cinematic storytelling… wants to tell the whole story of what happened to our Paradise Ridge communities.

The citizen in me… that part of me who raised a family with my wife on Scottwood Road, took our boys to Paradise Elementary, watched little league games at Egleton Field and fled the town with neighbors and friends… wants to make sure the world remembers what befell us. I want our stories told whether or not it’s me telling them.

It’s that part, the town resident, that wants to help my fellow citizens tell their story to every worthwhile reporter, author, documentarian, director, etc. who cares to listen with respect. That’s why as we’ve been working on Three Days in Paradise, we’ve been looking to partner with other storytellers to ready to tell the story of the Camp Fire as we knew it.

Which brings me to Lizzie Johnson, the San Francisco Chronicle. She’s a reporter known for her coverage of wildfires. We’re happy to announce we’re partnering with her on a new initiative to capture your stories.

In a book she’s working on, Johnson is working to tell the story of the fire and what it’s meant to us all in facts and prose. In our documentary series, we’re looking to do the same thing in images, music and sound.

So we’ve created an easy to use document you can fill out to start telling your Camp Fire story. What happened to you. What you went through. What you saw and what we should all remember. We’ll be using those to get in touch and make sure your story is known.

So please take a moment to add your story. We want to hear it, and take it to the rest of the world.

And the Gracie Goes to…

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As we cross the T’s and dot the I’s on some announcements coming up, we wanted to shine a special light on one of our team: Jenna Lane.

Lane reached out to us shortly after we announced this project to volunteer as part of our production team. With every project reaching to make something special, every ounce of hard work and talent needs to be assisted by lucky breaks and gifts of fate.

When Lane joined us, we knew fate was lending a hand.

See, she’s a reporter for KCBS 740 AM in the Bay Area. A great reporter, a hell of a researcher and the kind of team member you wish for on a project like this, she’s task oriented, optimistic and smart.

We’re saying that to say this: Congratulations Jenna Lane. In April she was recognized by the Alliance for Women in Media with a Gracie Award for her coverage of the Camp Fire. The Gracies recognize achievements in all forms of media across the country, so landing one is no mean feat.

We’re excited to get back to work with her and honored she’s here to help us tell the story of the Paradise Ridge and the Camp Fire the way it should be told. To get a taste of what she’s done to deserve it, take a listen here to some of the work she did in the wake of the Camp Fire.

 

A word about shady documentary crews in Butte County, Part 1

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Hi friends,

After coming home from a very emotional series of Gold Nugget events today, I wanted to share some hard-earned wisdom with my fellow Paradise (go Bobcats!) and other Butte County neighbors.

There may be documentary crews asking your to sign something that sounds reasonable, but will actually exclude you from our story in many ways. It may also be a barrier to rebuilding some of the institutions we all love.

I’ll explain.

I came to Butte County in 1993 for college and in some ways never left. I chose to live here, my wife and I chose to raise our kids here. I love Butte County.  But much of my professional work has been in Hollywood.

Because of this I know the openness, earnestness and honesty (well, mostly, LOL) we all love in our Butte County neighbors. I also know the openness, earnestness and honesty (more than you’d assume actually) of people who work in Hollywood.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s I made my living as an entertainment journalist (journalism degree from Chico State 1996. Go Wildcats!). I interviewed many of the people who inspired me into filmmaking. I got to talk to directors, writers, actors. I talked to Will Farrell about his first movie (Superstar). I talked to M Night Shyamalan the week before he released The Sixth Sense. And I interviewed to Ron Howard as he prepared to release Ed TV (yes, he’s as nice as his reputation). But by this point, you don’t need me to tell you that.

In the mid-2000s until now I’ve been running my own production company out of Butte County, dividing my time between making my own documentaries and educational programs while also contracting out for various companies across the nation for various reality TV and documentary crews.

So I’m not coming at this from assumptions or things I’ve read. I know my way around Butte County and I know my way around the film and TV industry. What I learned was this: Almost all TV and filmmakers in Hollywood is trying to do a good job to make something people will enjoy. For the crews working on those films and shows, it’s a lot like any other job: People are just trying to get through their day.

And like every other job, there’s some people who just make things hard for everyone. We’ve all had that bad boss, that dullard co-worker, or that schemer who makes office politics awful.

That’s why I’m here now.

Watch Out For This:

When a documentarian talks to you, they’ll probably ask you sign what’s called a release.  Among other things, it allows them to edit you into their documentary without the fear of you suing them. Many networks, streaming services, etc. require releases for every interviewee in a documentary or they won’t air it. 

As I make Three Days in Paradise, I ask everyone to sign a release because eventually I want it on the biggest network or streaming service I can get. I want the world to know our story, to know Butte County, to know our history, and to know what this fire did to us.

But there’s another, shadier kind of release that screws things up for everyone. This kind of release is called exclusive release.

What an exclusive release says is you can ONLY talk to the documentarian for which you sign it. You can ONLY appear in their documentary. But what’s worse is it binds you even if they never use your interview. Documentarians shoot a lot of interviews they never use. So if you sign an exclusive release, that documentarian talking so nicely to you now can literally leave your story of the Camp Fire on the cutting room floor. No one will ever see your story. But here’s what’s worse:

If you sign an exclusive release,  you cannot give interviews to anyone else. 

You cannot talk to other local documentaries. Not just me, but the many others who need your stories.

You cannot talk to other non-Butte County documentaries, who we need to help keep our story alive.

You cannot talk to the many interviewers looking to record our stories for the Gold Nugget Museum, the Butte County Historical Society, or other local history institutions.

You cannot talk to the crews from Chico State looking to record our oral histories.

You cannot talk to the local news.

You cannot even talk to the video crews from our local high schools.

If you sign releases with exclusive clauses, you take your voice out of our local community. You are silenced.

Maybe that’s something you want to do. Maybe it makes sense for you. I’m not telling you what to sign or not to sign.

I’m saying I would never sign one myself.  I would never ask anyone to sign one. There’s no good reason for a documentarian to ask you to sign one. If you appear in Three Days in Paradise, it’s no skin off my nose if you also appear in any other documentary.

I’ve never seen a filmmaker I respect ask someone to sign an exclusive release for a documentary.

So if anyone asks you to sign an exclusive release, think long and hard about it. It doesn’t guarantee your story will be told. It DOES guarantee you will be silenced for local projects and may be silenced forever.

MARCH UPDATE: Production powers and some interesting meetings…

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Since we began pre-production in December 2018, just days after the last embers of the Camp Fire were extinguished, we have been working tirelessly to gather the stories, moments and images to best tell the comprehensive story of what happened to all of us in Butte County.

We have already conducted dozens of interviews, shot at many county, town and public events and are looking to conduct dozens and dozens more interviews in the months ahead. If you’ve contacted us and we have not yet scheduled your interview, fear not.

The feedback and interest in Three Days in Paradise has been nearly overwhelming. But we will be here for the long haul, and currently are managing with a small and professional crew, so please know we will get back with all of you. It just may take a bit.

On that note, we want to let you in on some early indications for some very big things coming. While we cannot yet share details, the Three Days team has had some very hopeful meetings with parties well placed to get this series funded and then shown to the world in the way we all hoped.

Our ambitions are high, but our calling to tell this story is higher. We hope to be able to tell you more soon.

We are also working on a very interesting project which would gather imagery shot by all of us during the Camp Fire to help planning agencies see that this kind of disaster never happens again. We hope to have something to announce soon on that too.

Our final announcement is we’re revamping the way you can share your videos, pictures and historical imagery with us. That should be in the menu bar of this website in the next day or so. To tell the story of Butte County before, during and after the Camp Fire, we’ll need you.

Until then, thank you for your attention.