Tribeca 2023 | To My Father Interview with John Papola & Sean Schiavolin
Recently, I interviewed John Papola and Sean Schiavolin who were involved in the production of a documentary short called To My Father.
It explores the career of actor Troy Kotsur and the impact of his father on his life. Sean Schiavolin directed this bioshort which is scheduled to make its world premiere at Tribeca 2023 and will be shown at AMC 19th Street.
Watch the interview using the YouTube video player above, or scroll below to listen to the audio-only version. If you don’t want to listen to or watch the interview, keep scrolling for the transcript of the interview.
You can purchase tickets for the screenings at https://tribecafilm.com/films/to-my-father-2023 if you're interested in watching it.
Austin: Hello everyone and welcome back to my Tribeca coverage. Today, I'm talking with the producers of, to my father Sean, and John Papola and Sean I'm sorry, sh-Shiaviolin. Come on.
Sean Schiavolin: Shia. You got it.
John Papola: Okay. Schiavolin I am horrible with names. I like, I will meet some not even just the pronunciation of it, but like I will meet somebody 20 times. And I still won't get their name right.
Sean: Oh yeah, I got that. But that mine's a, it's a tricky name. My, my name is a tricky one.
Austin: But yeah. Thank you both for joining me today.
John: And yeah. So, for those who don't know what, to my father is if you remember the film CODA from, gosh, has it been two years since that movie came out?
Sean: Was it end? Yeah. Early last year or two years?
John: Yeah. Yeah. It won the Oscar in 2022, so Yeah. That it came out in 2021. That's right. Wow.
That feels like yesterday, but also so long ago. We're in post covid time where every minute hap-happens at a random duration. Yeah.
Sean: And people in public, it's I'm having people come up to me like, Hey, you didn't, you say you worked with that guy? That was in the film Coda. I saw it yesterday and it was like, blew my mind.
It was incredible. Yeah. It's still happening. Yeah.
Austin: Yeah. I saw it at I actually saw it, I wanna say three times I think once at Sundance and then twice on Apple TV plus. But this To My Father is a docushort that's talking about. Troy Kotsur's life, his father, and just I would describe this as a bioshort, if that's even a category that exists.
John: We're inventing it. It's a new thing. Yeah. A bioshort,
Austin: because if you can have biopic, why not biosshort? Yeah. And for tho, for those who are heading to New York, it's playing June 8th. And June 9th at AMC 19th Street. Oh, also June 17th at 19th AMC 19th Street. I think they've added a fourth screening because it's, I think we've sold out.
Yeah. There might be still tickets available though, so if you're watching don't let the sold out sign detract you from trying to get in. Yeah, those three are rush tickets, it looks like from the Tribeca website. And then June 14th is at the Angelica. And then if you can't make it to New York, it's also playing on Tribeca at home June 19th through July 2nd.
If you can't make it cool, but if you can take a lot of photos no. But yeah. Again, thank you so much for joining me. It's, I, it's I can't I can't believe something like this was made. I get like the need to, oh, hey he won an Oscar out of and I watched Oscars as it was happening.
And it was just this weird moment of awards momentum. But even still, I can't believe this journey that Troy went on. He won the Spirit Award and the Oscar, which is unheard of. But, could you imagine a world where Adam Sandler got the Oscar and the Spirit Award for uncut gems that would be heaven on earth?
But but jokes aside, I wanna talk about some of the more artistic choices. There's There's this kind of faded memory kind of thing that's going on behind Troy as he's talking, where, it'll show clips of, I believe Tom and Jerry. It also intersperses clips of other things from his life to connect these the performed bits of it and the interviews.
Really quick what, I guess what inspired that that decision? Yeah.
Sean: So, this is our first film that we've made for a deaf audience, right? And and so we were learning a lot of, we're having to rethink all of our different methods of of storytelling for film. And one of them is a realization that, we've got a narrator here who speaks with his hands and we have to have his hands up the whole time.
Typ -typically I'll cover up the narrator, but like the whole time or interviews and stuff, try to get more of a emotional attachment into the visuals aesthetic, aesthetic narrative to it. But, we couldn't do that for this, and it just we just had this opportunity to -I've done some things like this before.
And so, we just decided to come up with these tonal elements to look like as if it was to project behind him. And yeah, and it, hopefully it worked well. I'm glad you brought it up.
John: Yeah, I, this was a vision that Sean had as a director from the start. As we, we conducted this interview last summer with Troy on the stage, and it was really framed for this.
And and then it was such an interesting thing because we were also balancing doing this, pretty heavy duty compositing throughout the film while trying to preserve. And essentially cinematic and organic look. So we didn't want it to feel like a bunch of motion graphics. We wanted it to stay in the world of the reel, in the world of the possible through a camera lens.
And so that was the other balancing act. That, we worked on together quite a bit with our compositor and art director Brian, who did a tremendous job of, I think making those projections feel like a projection instead of a graphic effect. That was what we were definitely going for.
Austin: Yeah. And then you've got some impeccable sound design and which is actually a trend I'm noticing. This year I talked yesterday with the director, Olivia West, I believe Olivia, west Lloyd from somewhere quiet which I highly recommend. Just if you like, sound I think it's one to watch because there's like a moment where the husband's scratching his beard and it, you can just hear every motion of it.
But in- in the context of this film I thought it was a great decision for the soundtrack to be minimal talking about, making for a deaf audience. Because it makes you focus on what's happening on the docushort rather than, and what's being said, rather than, oh, hey, I'm just watching a docushort.
If that makes, does that make sense? Or do I need more coffee?
Sean: We all need more coffee. Yes. Always. Great.
John: I'll start that, that our, the sound design, I'm personally really proud of the sound design, insofar as I can take no credit for it. But Jesse Bennett, who did con, who produced the sound design, who as sound. Sound engineer, design and mix. This is in some ways her most she's an associate producer here at Emergent Order Foundation, and this was a big step up in complexity for her, and she just hit it so far out of the park.
You know, this is, I'd say I, I feel like this is a kind, a level of sound design that. You would typically get out of an incredibly high end audio post experience. I don't wanna say Skywalker Ranch, but I came outta television. I've worked in a lot of big studios for sound mixes, for commercials.
And and Jesse, and in some ways is a self-taught audio engineer and she just did an a beautiful job. And then I think Sean's direction in terms of what should be in that, cuz he built a soundscape as a director to parallel the visual scape. That is part of what makes it such a, it creates a world in the absence of voice, cuz there's very little voice in the film.
Sean: Yeah. Interestingly, I think the sound because we're making this for the hearing audience too, right? Interestingly, the sound helps you enter into their life. The life of the silent world of of the deaf community, right? Which is a weird thing. But, we rely so much on, on hearing.
I, I think that it's just the amount of information that we get from hearing so you can tweak that and play with that to help somebody enter into, to, into that world. The, and I have to say I watched that film the Sound of Metal and they just really, that was just an amazing film.
And so that was I'm like, Hey Jesse, we gotta we gotta get close to this. Cuz they just set the bar and it's like incredible. And she really, yeah like John said, super proud of Jesse's work.
Austin: Yeah. Great. Great recommendation for Sound of Metal. I saw that at AFI Fest. 2020 times a blur.
And then I think Riz Ahmed also made like another one, where it was like Mogul Mowgli, or something like that. That was a similar tone, but yeah, that sound design is incredible, especially when Ruben...i, I feel like we could spoil a three year old movie when Yeah, you get to hear what Ruben hears, and I think you have.
Correct me if I'm wrong. The last week's been a blur but I think you have a similar moment in this where you hear a little bit of what Troy hears.
Sean: Yeah. So we're taking liberties there to help people understand that This is Troy. This is Troy's character now, right?
And so we gotta have moments where we peak the imagination of the hearing audience to enter deep enter into his experience a little better. And we use this. We used the sound that inspired by Sound of Metal where, you know, their sound engineer, their recordist thing. He is a crazy guy.
Like he was recording like, in like with mics, like inside of the body and stuff. So we're listening to that stuff and and that was the inspiration.
Austin: Yeah, I think I may have talked to the sound editor post Oscar win about that, where no, it was the film editor for Sound of Metal that won the Oscar.
But yeah, super interesting decision there. And then, I, there's. As much as this is about Troy, it's also about his relationship to his father and, how did you approach trying to balance those two aspect of aspects of his, of the documentary the, what did I call it, bioshort.
John: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, go for it, Sean.
Sean: From. From our perspective, it's all about his father. And that's what Troy did when he received his award, it was like this dedication to his dad and he opened the doors to this story and it's oh my God. This is who is this guy?
And what is Troy's story, right? He said he was his hero. And he said that He was the best signer, right? He was a hearing family and that he got in tragically hit by a drunk driver, right? And then he was paralyzed from the neck down. And so he couldn't sign to him anymore. This, that, that relationship.
Was right that's what this story's about is the relationship of his dad and him, and. From the point where he was born and they realized that he was deaf to the point of the Oscars. And clearly it's there, there was something beautiful there that we had to explore.
Dad Saves America is the project that John started. And so when. When I didn't watch the Oscars but our CMO, Mack, came in the next morning and he's man, did you see that? And I was like I just saw like the Will Smith episode. And I was like, is that what you're talking about?
No. Troy Kotsur dedicated the Oscar to his dad. And so yeah, that's how we approached it. Yeah, like just delving in.
John: There's a lot of personal connection to this story from everyone that's worked on it. My dad was rear-ended by a drunk driver, and it had a, it transformed his life.
It didn't paralyze him, but it did hurt him in a way where he could he's a surgeon and he couldn't continue to practice medicine, so it had a dramatic effect. One of our members of the team actually has a father who was pa -is paralyzed from the neck down, like Troy's dad. And then when our assistant editor Julia learned sign language in college.
And so Troy was this sort of rockstar for her. So there, I feel like there was so many stars that aligned to bring this team together around this story that it felt like we had to tell it. And we had to shine a light on the role. One of the things that we do with our show Dad Saves America , Troy appeared on, as part of the early parts of the process is try to draw attention to the role we play as fathers in modeling how to overcome the challenges we face in life.
And that is what Troy's dad does in the movie to such impactful effect for Troy. Troy is born deaf. He's born into a world that is fundamentally gonna feel alien to him. He's always basically like a, an immigrant in a sense to the world of the hearing. And There's a lot of ways you can take that kind of experience individually, and it can be very difficult and debilitating or the, or you can take it the way Troy's dad modeled in his own life.
You can say you have potential, you have dignity. You can listen to your spark and go for it. And then the thing that's so powerful about what happens when, after his accident, Is that he doesn't re-retrench, he stays engaged in the community. He, he stays someone who believes in life and the power of life.
And so that lesson in Troy's dad, I think is so powerful for everyone because we all face tragedies in one way or another. We're all gonna eventually lose our parents and it's so powerful and so painful. And so I think that's what makes this such an important story to tell.
Austin: Yeah.
Sean: Yeah. Troy, one thing that Troy mentioned after one of the screenings, he was he was like this film is super important for everybody, right? Because it can help people come to overcome their challenges. There's a lot of people that really need to see stories. Where they are persistent and pursuing and they have a faith that carries them through and so like in his case this is this beautiful epitome of this of how a dad can just really devote himself and give everything so that his son can thrive in the hearing world.
Austin: Yeah. And you talk about it being far reaching. Funnily enough, the last note I wrote while watching the movie was, I think it's gonna be the hit of the short lineup. Because it's so far reaching where, you could go into, where people can connect to the story of your dad being the most important thing in the world.
You could or through you, you could view it through the lens of Troy's experiences, or you could view it through really any way I viewed it through my experiences with my dad. And I'll tell you what, I'm not gonna give away. I, is it giving away something that if it already, if it's like a biography yeah, I don't know.
John: One of the challenges, one of the challenges when you try to make a trailer for a film that's 20 minutes, Is if you want the trailer to be any good, you spoil the whole movie in terms of plot points. So I think the beautiful, the reason to watch this film is because the experience of it takes you on a journey.
Even though if you've seen anything about Troy's story, you know where it ends up. And we don't hide that. And that was a, that was story storytelling conversations we had from the beginning. Like, how do we introduce Troy's win? Do we start right there? Do we save it? Is it in a world where people can Google and we'll probably find this on ultimately in, in some kind of news story or web feed that already gives it away.
These are the weird things from a storytelling perspective that the digital world breaks for us. We're now encouraged to put the best part first. So it's an in that these are there's no spoiling to be had here.
Austin: Yeah. So I was just gonna say that when Troy's dad dies, that was particularly affecting to me because I lost my dad.
Let's see, 2016, so it's been six, seven years this month. I hear that. Yeah, it was, it's still tough. Because I'm the one who found him and everything like that. And yeah. Yeah. He died due to complications with ms. Multiple sclerosis. And as you can probably imagine when Troy gets in his car, I was already an emotional mess by that point.
I'm like, all I see what you're doing and I'm just gonna let the emotions out, but but yeah, it's particularly affecting in that way. But yeah, I think people should go see it. You could see it at home June 19th through July 2nd via Tribeca At Home.
I'm not sure what the cost is, so don't quote me on this. And then if you're in New York June 8th, June 9th, June 14th and June 17th. I think those times are eight 15 on the eighth, two 30 on the ninth, six o'clock on the 14th, and 3:30 PM on the 17th. Awesome.
Sean: Awesome. Thanks for sharing that story about your dad.
That was awesome.
Austin: Yeah, just, yeah. Thank you so much for, making time out of, we're less than a week from Tribeca now. The sweats are, I imagine the sweats are starting to happen. I know they're happening with me. So
John: Bad sleep. The bad sleep started a couple days ago, so that's,
Austin: oh yeah. That, that happened last week. But yeah. But thank you so much.
John: Thanks for having us on Austin. Thanks for sharing that vulnerable moment with us, and that's what this movie's all about is. How to connect with those people in our lives that we love and that change us for the better and celebrate them.
And honor them.
Austin: Yeah, and I think that's the actual perfect note to leave that on. That's if you didn't write that, congratulations.
Sean: Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much, Austin. Yeah. Thank you.
Good to meet you. Thank you both.
John: Yeah. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
Until next time!
