B (34:29)
The biggest single issue, if you get into the weeds, and I think it's an interesting point of debate, is whether or not Brigham Young knew and authorized this massacre. And the way the massacre played out in real life was different. How we did it in the film. In the film, we did it in, you know, one swell move like it just happens, and, you know, we filmed it in one shot and it's, you know, pretty intense, visceral, very fast event, and then it's over. In reality, this. This wagon train was surrounded by the Mormon militia, the Nauvoo Legion, and some of these Native Americans. And it went on for about four or five days. And the Mormons dressed up as Native Americans. This is where it gets kind of. Some Mormons aren't thrilled that we pointed out the fact that they were trying to put the blame on the Native Americans. So they literally, Mormons dressed up as Indians to confuse the pioneers and in case there were survivors to say, oh, it wasn't Mormons, it was the Native Americans that did this. So they don't love that. But what. But what the Mormons claim, or some in the Mormon Church claim, is that during the three or four days that the siege took place before the actual massacre, and the details of the massacre are really fucked up because the Mormons pretended they were accepting a surrender. So they went in with white flags and they said, okay, the men walked this way. The women and children, we're going to walk you to safety because the Indians are going to kill you. Mormons said, we're here to save you. So they started walking them out, and then on someone signal, they just killed everyone really bad. But the issue of whether Brigham Young knew about it or didn't know about it, we imply that he knew about it. We never say that he authorized it, but we imply that he did know about it. And what many of the defenders of Brigham Young will say is that there was a letter written where Brigham Young said, do not harm these pioneers. Don't kill them. But the letter was sent by horse while the massacre, while the event was already occurring. So I've had people say he knew that that letter wasn't going to make it there in time. He was covering himself. Oh, hey, I wrote a letter. I knew it couldn't get there in time, but I wrote a letter. So there's plausible deniability. No one knows. It's hard to believe if you really start getting into this, and obviously I did. I know it's not on the top of everyone's list of things to give a fuck about, but it's really hard for me to believe that in 1857, a group of Brigham Young soldiers would act unilaterally on their own and commit a crime. That's horrible. Without somebody approving it. It's hard for me to imagine, but. So that's the single issue that tends to, you know, if I do. And I really try not to. Like, my girlfriends turned me onto Reddit. I never even really knew what it was. Oh, my God. Like, I don't. Like what? Like, Reddit is fucking crazy. Yeah. I was talking to, you know, Jack Carr, right? He's getting into, you know, making movies, and he's doing all this cool stuff with the Terminalist, and I think he's a great guy. And he was talking to me about reviews because it was the first time he was ever getting reviewed, right? And, you know, any filmmaker who says they don't read the reviews is lying, okay? They're just fucking lying. And we do read reviews, and we care, and they hurt, you know, and he's like. I guess he's gotten, you know, read something he didn't like on the Terminalist. And he's just called me. He's like, how do you handle this shit? I want to kill this. I can't. I mean, he's freaking out, and I'm. I mean, I'm not. He wasn't really freaking out that bad, but he was pissed. And I'm like, jack, you know, welcome to the world of what we do. You people are gonna. Are gonna talk. And, like, I'm like, you don't understand. What. Like, before Reddit and. And comments and all the things, back when we first put movies out, man, there were three critics that mattered. Like, when I first started making movies, there was this guy, Kenneth Turan in the LA Times, there was Janet Maslin in the New York Times, and then there was Siskel and Ebert, right? Thumbs up. And, like, they had so much power, right? So you'd make a movie and you'd spend tens of millions of dollars and you'd put your heart and soul and, you know, like, we never try to make bad movies, right? Like, that's Never the goal. We're always like, you know, we want to win something. It's hard to make a good movie, but you put all your heart and soul into these movies, and then it's fucking three critics that control your fate, right? And I was telling Carr about, you know, my first movie was called Very Bad Things. It was about this bachelor party that goes haywire.
