← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
A New Docu-Series Takes a Fresh Look at an Infamous Crime
00:29:37
Director Jason Hehir joins to talk about his docuseries, "Murder in Boston," which revisits the Charles Stuart case where a white man blamed his own crime on a Black man.
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A
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B
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live, streaming or on demand, I'm really grateful you are here today and I love snow we have a bit of a post MLK Day theme going on today. We'll hear about a rarely screened film from 1982 that follows James Baldwin as he traveled around the south in 1980 and evaluated and contemplated the impact of the civil Rights movement while also head to rural New York, upstate New York, where it's not unusual to see symbols and flags touting far right ideology. A new podcast from North Country Public Radio takes a look at extremists upstate. I'll speak with the co hosts and reporters of if All Else Fails and we'll start with a race related story that captivated the nation for all the wrong reasons. 35 years ago, a murder case exposed a raw racist nerve in Boston. A white man almost got away with a killing by using long held Beantown bigotry to hide his guilt, which led to lives being destroyed. A new HBO docu series explains it all. On October 23, 1989, Charles Stewart called 911 to report that he and his pregnant wife Carol had been shot in their car in Mission Hill, a predominantly black part of town. Carol and the baby died. Charles Stewart survived and told police that a black man in an Adidas tracksuit had jumped in their car and held them at gunpoint before shooting and robbing them. The police the Boston police targeted black neighborhoods using stop and frisk techniques. Two men innocent of the crime were arrested. Police never really followed up on Charles Stewart's story, which we all came to learn was false. A new docuseries from Last Dance director Jason Hare explores Boston's racial wounds and the lasting effects of this case. It's called Murder in Recent Roots, Rampage and Reckoning. Our colleague Linda Holmes at NPR said of the program, quote, this is what a docu series should look like. Events are covered efficiently, context is given, room to breathe to occupy the space it needs. A lot of such projects are disposable and sensational, offering less light than heat. But this one, this is one that gets the balance right. All three episodes are available to stream on MAX right now. And Jason Hare joins me now. Jason, welcome back to the show.
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A
Thanks for having me, Allison.
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B
So you were, you're from Newton, Mass. Right?
- [03:35]
A
I am. Just outside of Boston.
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B
Yep. Kind of a fancy suburb outside of Boston, sort of Montclair to New York City. When this was all going down, what do you remember hearing about the case at that time? Were people in your life following it?
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A
Yeah, it was all anyone talked about. I mean, Boston is known for its rabid sports fandom. So normally in the fall you'll be talking about the Patriots and the Celtics are firing up their season and things like that. But all I remember from that fall, I was in eighth grade, was first of all, every single day was on the COVID of the Herald in the Globe. And at that point we only had a few news outlets. It was channels four, five and seven, the three affiliates and then the Globe and the Herald. And it was top story on all the affiliates every night and it was on the front page of the papers every day. So anywhere you went, whether it was in school or at a restaurant or at home, certainly around the kitchen table, that case. And this poor man, Charles Stewart, who had lost his wife and his baby and was fighting for his own life and how scary it was now to think of going into Boston where these things were happening to suburban people. That's what people were talking about for those 10 weeks when they were hunting for the quote, unquote killer.
- [04:39]
B
So now as an adult, looking back, what did your 13 year old self think about it and when did you, when did your thoughts about it mature?
- [04:52]
A
Well, to answer your second question, I think everybody's thoughts matured the morning of January 4th when they fished Chuck's body out of the water. And we all realized that we had been duped. So obviously being 13, I was a little bit young to appreciate the context of generational racism in Boston. But I just like everybody else who was following the news, especially where I'm from, which was, as you said, kind of a fancy suburb. You know, we were all saying what a shame it is that this happened to this poor Man. And we kind of bought the story hook, line and sinker. And for years, that has stuck with me. As you know, I certainly don't consider myself or my family or my friends racist. But why do we all believe this without even considering that it's possible that there was no black man and that this guy did it himself? Why were we so quick to believe his story?
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B
You worked with the Boston Globe on this project. What resources did they have that helped you figure out the arc of the film?
- [05:47]
A
Well, for one, their institutional knowledge. That was the most attractive part to me. Besides their reputation, obviously. The Spotlight team at the Globe, their reputation is impeccable. I believe they're the reigning Pulitzer Prize winners for investigative journalism. So it was a thrill to work with them as someone who grew up reading the work of the Globe for all those years. Their institutional knowledge, their knowledge of the ins and outs of city hall and the police department in the media within the city, their Rolodex is, you know, greater than anything that we could have for. And then they were the ones who uncovered literally thousands of pages of grand jury testimony, which was, up until that point, under lock and key. Around this time last year, I rented a place up in the woods in upstate New York and went and just read all of the. Those grand jury testimonies. And that's when I came back to New York. That's when I had a really, really good sense of exactly how this case went off the rails. I mean, obviously, I knew that Chuck was the killer and that Willie Bennett had nothing to do with this. But it took reading through all that testimony to see exactly how this case unfolded in all the wrong ways.
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B
In the title of the docu series, the subtitle Roots, Rampage and Reckoning, you spend a lot of time on the roots, on the roots of racism in Boston, the dark side of Boston specifically. You spend a good deal of time on busing. Let's just. In a perfect world, what was the original intent of busing? If it had worked, if it has worked as intended, what was it supposed to do?
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A
In the 70s, busing was supposed to integrate schools to, quite frankly, give black kids the same chance that white kids were having in the city. A lot of the schools, most of the schools in the quote, unquote, black neighborhoods in Boston were filthy and decrepit, and the kids in the white neighborhoods were just getting better opportunities educationally. So it wasn't that the black community wanted to integrate it. It was just that they wanted a fair shot. So when Judge Garrity made that Ruling it was met with a lot of, let's say, antipathy in the white community because people liked their neighborhoods the way they were. They liked their kids going to the schools in their neighborhoods. And they were sending white kids to black neighborhoods and black kids to white neighborhoods and integrating the schools that way. So that was kind of the. That's why we call the first episode roots, because that was really the modern day roots of the powder keg of racism that exploded in 1989.
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B
The failure of busing was national news. It was, it was. I'm old enough to remember. It was a. It was a huge story, even though I was a little kid, because my mom was in education and it was. I remember parent. My parents talking about it. But what is something about busing that was uniquely Boston that only people from Boston would understand? There's this subtext there.
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A
I think it's so. Boston is so provincial and the edges of the neighborhoods are so. Are so sharp. You can be walking in Roslyndale and then make your way into Jamaica Plate and all of a sudden you're in the wrong part. People would say of Dorchester, or if you're in Roxbury, Mission Hill. It's very, very easy to see not just from the color of people's skin, but the architecture and the layouts of the neighborhoods. And especially old Irish Boston, which I am an Irish Bostonian, but old Irish Boston and places like, you know, that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have made famous with their movies, those are neighborhoods that are very, very close knit and they don't like outsiders coming in. It's one of the things that impeded the investigation into Stewart is that he lived in a place called Revere and they didn't want media or cops going up there to ask any questions about his possible guilt in this matter. So I think that all. All big cities have some level of segregation in them. But in Boston's it was, at least back then, a lot easier to see and people were a lot more protective of their turf.
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B
Is outsiders a word for black people or is it outsiders? Outsiders?
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A
No, I think it's outsiders. Outsiders. I mean, certainly what I would call the worst of busing is opportunistic racism. You had some families. You know, I can see raising a family in a neighborhood that I worked a couple of blue collar jobs to pay their rent or to pay a mortgage to live in that place. It's where I went to school. I want my kids to go to school around the corner, to be able to walk them to school. Every day. And now if you tell me, aside from the, the racist aspect of it, just logistically, if you tell me my kid now has to go to school in Roxbury, I have to get him on the bus every morning at 6:15 instead of walking him at 7. Those people had legitimate gripes, but what you saw were opportunists who hated black people and were out and out, capital R, racist. They came out of the woodwork and they were the ones literally throwing stones at, at school buses full of black children, you know, spray painting the N word on the side of school buildings. There was one student. I'm sorry, there were no students who showed up at South Boston High. No white students showed up at South Boston High the first day of busing. That's how clear cut the lines were that the white community was against this on all fronts.
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B
We're discussing murder in Boston, Roots Rampage and Reckoning streaming now on max. I'm speaking to its director, Jason Hare. So we have this one image of boss Boston as a liberal bastion. You have Crispus Attucks and Phyllis Wheatley and the first black senator elected after Reconstruction, Ed Brooke and the Kennedys and the universities everywhere, you throw a stone. But then there's this really violent history of racism. How do you explain that dynamic? As someone who spent a lot of time researching this, reading that grand jury testimony, listening to old school cops, old school reporters, do you get a sense of why there is that dynamic, that dichotomy about Boston?
- [11:36]
A
Well, the, the hatred is inexcusable. Obviously. I can tell you some of the roots of it were in that Italian Americans and Irish Americans were also persecuted when they came over to America. And once, once, especially Irish Bostonians got political power and got power over the police department. They were not going to cede that power in any way. So a lot of it is protective. It's what we just talked about with the neighborhoods. You're not going to change my way of life. You're not going to tell me how I'm going to live or where I'm going to send my kids to school. So that though bled into an ugly racism that remains today in Boston. I do think that the reputation that Boston has is unfortunate because the city, as maybe we'll discuss later in this conversation, is making a turn for the better. And the, the, the, the good people in that city who see the potential the city has are doing their best to bring it into 2024. And, and in a lot of ways, it's decades behind the rest of the country. But there is that underbelly. I mean, I. I know the bars that I could go to in Boston, in the neighborhoods that. That I would go to where if I wanted to, if I needed to hear the N word. Not that I need to hear it, but if you and hear the N word within the first 15 minutes you're there, I could tell you where to go. And those places still exist. I'm sure they exist in New York. I'm sure they exist in Chicago. But in my experience in Boston, having lived in New York for 25 years and grown up in Boston, it's still different to this day. So this was one of my ways to try and fight back against that and to dig into why that's the case originally.
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B
Let's get into the murder case. Let's fold this into the history part of it. So what was it that Charles Stewart initially told police had happened to him and his wife?
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A
Chuck said that after they left their birthing class at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Carol was seven months pregnant. That a black man had hopped into their car at a busy intersection, pointed a gun at him and said, drive, and led them into a remote section of the Mission Hill projects, fired the weapon at him, at his head and missed, then shot his wife in the head, then shot him in the gut, took all their belongings and ran into the Mission Hill projects. And he said that's when he used his car phone to call 911 and say, My wife's been shot. I've been shot. I don't know where we are. Please come help us. So that was his version of the events.
- [14:07]
B
And in the docu series, you hear the 911 calls. Yes, really quite chilling, and it's very interesting, and I won't give too much away. But we go back towards the end and re examine what exactly was said in the calls, which is really a it. People should watch it just even for that. So what was the police response like in Mission Hill right after the murder?
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A
That's where the rampage comes in. The police response was to believe Chuck's story 100% and to look for what he described as a thin black man with a raspy voice who had been wearing an Adidas tracksuit, A black Adidas tracksuit with a what? A red stripe. And he said that the guy saw his car phone and said, you're 5 0, meaning that he was police. And that's when he opened fire on Chuck and his wife. So the police believed this immediately, and they ran roughshod through all black areas of Boston, but particularly in Mission Hill, where Chuck said the so called assailant had fled.
- [15:07]
B
You speak to retired cop, a retired cop in this film. Billy Dunn, who worked the case, spent a lot of time Mission Hill. He's, he's unapologetic about how things were handled. What did he want you to understand about the case?
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A
It's difficult for him to this day to wrap his head around the fact that the police were as wrong as they were. And what he wanted me to understand was that no matter how much I thought I knew, I didn't know as much as he knew, because he was on the inside and he was on that beat in Mission Hill for decades. And the reality is that from my first meeting with Billy Dunn, he was incorrect about several of the key details in the case. He asked me how many bullets were fired in the car. I said, three. He said, nobody else knows that. The Herald didn't report that. The Globe didn't report that. It's common knowledge that three bullets were fired in that car. And it turns out that that shot at Chuck's head was. He fired that into the roof of the car on purpose to help his story. He just had an arrogance and an audacity about him. From the moment that I met him, that was really off putting to me. I wish we got more cooperation from a lot of the Boston police officers and detectives who were on that case, because I don't want Billy Dunn to be an avatar for the city of Boston because he's the worst of what we are.
- [16:25]
B
Yeah, I was gonna ask, you know, it's. I think people who aren't criminal justice experts, you know that if a woman is murdered, you should look at the partner. Right. As far as you were able to tell, was there anyone in the Boston Police department who looked at Chuck Stewart who wasn't sure about Chuck Stewart's story?
- [16:46]
A
The first, of course, Monday morning quarterbacking, everybody says, well, there were murmurs and we were looking into it. That, that, that's demonstrably not the case. The first two detectives who were on the case suspected him. And in fact, you know, had been, as we say in the doc, they were in his recovery room every day in the hospital grilling him. And all the doctors and nurses had their eyebrows raised like, all right, what is it about this guy's story that they're not believing? So it was pretty clear that these guys, the two Bobby's, they were called Bobby Tinlin and Bobby Ahern, both didn't buy Chuck's story, and they were very suspicious. They were pulled off of the case, and their superiors decided that someone else needed to be on the case because we had to find this skinny black man. And we couldn't waste our time suspecting Chuck because Chuck didn't do it. And this poor guy, we have to believe this poor guy. So it's unfortunate that the two. The first two cops who were on that case didn't buy it and then were unceremoniously removed.
- [17:42]
B
You have some very solemn and contrite reporters in this documentary. One woman who's a veteran journalist, she says she failed like the fourth estate failed. Where do you think the media failed the hardest?
- [17:57]
A
I think the media bought the story. You know, the information that. That we were consuming as citizens was from the media, obviously. But the. The cops were feeding the media that information, and I think that they got a little bit lazy and just believe whatever the cops told them or were leaking to the press. You know, Willie Bennett was never arrested for the murder. He was arrested for ancillary crimes so they could hold him. And Alan Swanson, the guy who was arrested before him merely for having a sweatsuit in his apartment. That's why he was suspected of this murder, is that he was a black man in Mission Hill with a sweatsuit that vaguely matched that description. That's why he was arrested. So I think the media got lazy and just believe whatever the police were feeding them. Michelle Caruso is the reporter that you're talking about. She was one of the few members of the media who were skeptical from the very, very beginning. And when she talks about. It's important to distinguish that. When she talks about her failure in this case, it's a failure to convince her editors or a failure to get someone on the record saying that they were investigating Chuck Stewart. That's all she needed to run a story like that, because her editors were so afraid that they would alienate the family of Chuck Stewart if they came out in the headlines and said that this guy may have done it. Because at that point, it was a race between those three affiliates on TV and the two newspapers in town to see who was going to get an interview with Chuck Stewart first. And the last thing you want to do is alienate the family. So I think they put viewership and I think they put readership above getting to the truth.
- [19:22]
B
My guest is Jason Hare. He's the director of Murder in Roots, Rampage and Reckoning. It's streaming now on Max. After the break, we'll talk about what happened in Mission Hill and to the residents there, as well as the role of politics in this story. Stay with us. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Jason Hare. He's the director of Murder in Boston, Roots Rampage and Reckoning streaming now on max. We've been talking about the roots of racism in Boston. Now let's talk a little bit more about the rampage, about how Boston police went searching for the killer of this woman, Carol Stewart, who her husband said where they were shot by a black man who fled in an Adidas suit. Here is a call we got, random call we got Jason from, I believe his name is Robert. He said, I lived in the South End, right down the street from Mission Hill Projects. Police had kind of mobile tanks set up around there. He said he was dragged by police and questioned. He said it was a bad thing to be a black person in Boston around that time. How did the police conduct their search for the killer.
- [20:39]
A
Maliciously and irresponsibly? I can understand in the first 24 to 48 hours if someone is shot in the gut and fighting for their life and wife has just been murdered and their unborn child is fighting for its life, I can understand an aggressive stance by the police. If the guy describes the assailant and says this is where he went, all right, let's go into that neighborhood and let's ask, let's knock on doors and let's ask everybody if they know anyone who matches this description. What followed happened for months. I mean, there were 10 weeks between when the shooting happened and when Chuck went off that bridge. So the civil rights violations that ensued are, in my mind, unforgivable and are the main reason why I wanted to tell this story. It wasn't the salaciousness of the twists and the turns of the case. It was to investigate where the investigation went wrong and to hold the police and the system accountable for what they did. I mean, there were kids who were crying, hiding in the community center, the Tobin Community center, who didn't want to go home. There were children being strip searched. These are 11, 12, 13 year old kids being strip searched by cops. It was, it was, it was done almost as a punishment to that community. And it was not done in the right way. So I would say lawless is, is how is what ensued.
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B
The mayor at this time was Raymond Flynn. He was thought to be a bright spot until this happened. Before the case, what was the reputation of Mayor Flynn when it came to issues of race and racism?
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A
He ran his mayoral campaign campaign and he was in the Second term as mayor, his second term as mayor, and had been on the city council before that. He grew up in Southie, which is the widest part of Boston, but he also grew up a tremendously talented, talented basketball player. And that exposed him to a lot of other neighborhoods and a lot of other kids and a lot of other cultures and colors in the city. And he was seen as a healer. The Boston busing crisis, the heat of it lasted from 74 to 76, and it was still lingering. That tension was still lingering well into the early 80s. And that's when. When Ray ran for mayor in 1983, Chief on his platform was uniting the city. It was economic populism that we're all gonna. We're all gonna get through this economic downswing together, and we're gonna put our racial differences aside, and it's demonstrable. The. The. The amount of racially motivated violent incidents in the city decreased dramatically. Black and white people both said that they thought that this was in the rearview mirror. These racial tensions in Boston was healing. So this was the worst nightmare for the mayor and his cabinet was for something like this was for a suburban couple to come into the city and have their lives taken from them by a black man in Boston. This was. This was the nightmare scenario.
- [23:28]
B
Where did he fail in leadership?
- [23:31]
A
I think he trusted his police department. He lost control of his police department. And once he. The morning after the murder, he said, we're going to put every. He instructed the. The Boston police commissioner to put every available officer on the street to find the animal who did this. Once he said that it was an abject failure, and it's something that the city is, in a lot of ways, still recovering from today.
- [24:00]
B
The two. There were two men who found themselves arrested, as you said, not for the crime, but for other things. And held. And particularly Willie Bennett ended up being the number one suspect in this case. And you spoke to members of his family, including his children. What's one thing they told you that that stays with you?
- [24:26]
A
I think what had the lingering effects on the family. One. One thing that sticks with me is, is Sharita Bennett, who was Willie's niece, told us that she's still hesitant to give people her last name today in Boston. As a black Bennett in Boston, regardless of the truth, as we know now know it, that name carries with it so much weight that she's reluctant to. To say her name. And she said that she'll go to doctor's offices, and if there's a black person behind the desk, they'll call her name, her first name, instead of her last name. She knows when people are leaving that last, last name out on purpose. That's how much of a cloud there is over this family. Still, Willie, as. As we demonstrate in the show, and as his own family says, Willie was not an angel. Willie was in and out of jail his entire life and was a career criminal, but he didn't do this monstrous crime. And his family did not deserve to be attacked, literally attacked by the Boston police the way that they were. So I think that what struck me the most is in talking to his. His children, his sibling, Willie's siblings, his children, Willie himself, who's got dementia now and couldn't be in the documentary, but I spent some time with him. It's clearly something that is. Is not. It's a stain that will not go away for this family, and it's been there for 35 years.
- [25:50]
B
Charles Stewart took his own life, so we'll never really know the full motive. There's some suggestions around it. There are people, obviously, in Willy's Band's family who still have great pain about this. What about Carol's family? Did them for the film. Did you talk to them on background?
- [26:09]
A
Of course. I approached them and through a representative. They were very cordial, very kind, but they declined to participate from the very outset of the project. And I understand why. I mean, I've been in this business for over 25 years now, and this is the hardest time I've ever had getting people to talk. Because when you look at the victim's family, it's understandable why they wouldn't want to revisit this. When you look at the Stewart family, I understand why they wouldn't want to sit down and discuss the horrible thing that their brother and their uncle and cousin did. And then you have the police department, the mayor's office, and the media, all of whom had egg on their face on January 4, 1990, once it was clear that Chuck did this and he killed himself and we had all been duped. So it was very tough to get people to sit down and give honest accounts of how they felt back then and how they feel now.
- [27:03]
B
But there were also victims in Mission Hill as well, and it was interesting to hear their side of the story. I don't want to give too much away because there are some big reveals. Current Boston Mayor Michelle Wu gave a formal apology to Alan Swanson and Willie Bennett for being wrongfully implicated in this murder. Let's listen to what Mayor Wu said on behalf of the Boston Police Department, the mayor's office, and the entire city of Boston, I want to say to Mr. Swanson and Mr. Bennett, the entire Bennett family, and Boston's entire black community, I am so sorry for what you endured. I am so, so sorry for the pain that you have carried for so many years. What was done to you was unjust, unfair, racist, and wrong. Say it again. Now let's hear the response from Bennett's nephew, Joey Bennett.
- [28:12]
A
And we just want to express our gratitude to Mayor Wu for the apology. Her courage in acknowledging the wrongdoings of the Boston police and offering a sincere apology is something we deeply respect and appreciate. It takes great humility and courage to acknowledge someone else's wrongdoings and to try to make amends. Your apology is accepted. Your apology is accepted.
- [28:36]
B
Having spent time with that family, will that apology help that family heal?
- [28:46]
A
Yes, I think that the city should, and from what I've heard, may offer more reparations to that family for the hardships they have endured. But I do think, you know, as embittered as they are and as they deserve to be, I do think that that that ceremony, that day went a long way towards healing some of these wounds that have been open for 35 years. I never thought that the mayor of Boston would stand up there next to the police commissioner in Boston and utter those words, having having, you know, I'm 47 years old, lived in Boston for the first 18 years of my life, and I've spent a ton of time there since. It's just not something that I've ever seen a public official do. I. I had heard rumors or murmurs in early December when we premiered our first episode that the mayor was interested in meeting with the family. So I thought it would be behind closed doors that she would offer some sort of platitudes to the family and that they would put out a statement saying that, that the mayor and the family met with each other and had a positive discussion, dancing around the word apology, because it's obviously, once the police commissioner comes out politically now you have yourself a firestorm. If the police commissioner is saying we handled this the wrong way, and I'm sure there's a lot of former Boston cops who are really, really angered by that apology. So as Joey said, and I agree with him, it took a lot of humility and a ton of courage for them to step up and do that full throated for her to say that this investigation was racist. I was shocked by that. And I think it was a day for Boston.
- [30:20]
B
The name of the docu series is Murder in Boston, Roots Rampage and Reckoning. It is streaming now on max. I have been speaking with its director Jason Hare. Jason, thank you so much for sharing your work with us.
- [30:31]
A
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B
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