Keep Sweet: The Cult of Warren Jeffs and FLDS
The Netflix docuseries Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey tells the chilling story of Warren Jeffs and his rise in the Fundamentalist Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), an offshoot of the mainstream Mormon church.
FLDS members practice polygamy and assign women husbands by divine revelation to the prophet, in this case, Warren Jeffs. The church turned into a cult under Jeffs' leadership, and its practices led to concerns from outsiders about underage marriage and statutory rape.
But no one was prepared for the shocking crimes perpetrated by Warren Jeffs himself, who remains the prophet of FLDS to the present day, despite being in prison.
The docuseries, directed and produced by Emmy-winning filmmaker Rachel Dretzin, looks at both the ways in which Warren and his father transformed the group, but also at the hunt for, and ultimately, conviction of Warren for crimes against children.
“The strongest thing about this story is that it tells you a lot about human nature and the ways that these things can happen.” - Rachel Dretzin
Time Stamps:
00:00 - The trailer for Keep Sweet: Prey and Obey.
04:55 - A synopsis of what the docuseries is about.
06:09 - The main practices of the Fundamentalist Church of Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
07:20 - Warren Jeffs and the disturbing practices he was involved with.
11:55 - What life was like for women in the FDLS.
14:28 - Who was responsible for unearthing the crimes that Warren Jeffs was involved in.
17:05 - The ‘chosen members’ Warren Jeffs brought to Texas.
22:45 - How people can be brainwashed to such a large extent.
24:57 - How Rachel Dretzin got involved with the making of Keep Sweet: Prey and Obey.
28:39 - The difficulty of having victims relive their trauma for the documentary.
31:15 - The continuation of the FLDS and Warren Jeffs.
33:15 - The next projects Rachel Dretzin is working on.
Resources:
Keep Sweet: Prey and Obey (2022)
MovieMaker Magazine
Innersound Audio
Alamo Pictures
Connect with Rachel Dretzin:
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Transcript for Factual America Episode 103: Keep Sweet: The Cult of Warren Jeffs and FLDS
Rachel Dretzin 00:00
I'm Rachel Dretzin, and I am a documentary film director, directed this four part Netflix series, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, which was released on June 8 on Netflix.
Speaker 1 00:14
In our minds, the police, even the president of the United States, had no authority over us. Warren Jeffs was our president, he was the Prophet. And how could you place a human over God?
Speaker 2 00:27
Known as FLDS. It's a far offshoot of the Mormon Church and supports the practice of polygamy.
Speaker 3 00:36
The more wives, the more children you have, the higher in heaven you'll be.
Speaker 4 00:41
When you're taught something from birth from your mother and your father, you believe them, because they're your parents.
Speaker 5 00:47
It was for our salvation, you did whatever it took, even if it was wrong.
Speaker 6 00:52
One day, my name was brought up, and I was to be married. I was 14.
Speaker 7 01:00
Warren Jeffs took over this religion and turned it into money and power and sex.
Speaker 8 01:06
Young girls were like a commodity owned by the church.
Speaker 9 01:11
Warren had himself 78 wives. Twenty-four of those wives were underage.
Speaker 10 01:16
We're gonna go after the criminals, and we're gonna go after the child abusers.
Speaker 11 01:18
To stand up against a multimillion dollar church. You're going up against a lifetime of conditioning and fear.
Speaker 12 01:25
He took their families away, took their homes away. Might as well just have lined 'em up against a wall and shot 'em.
Speaker 13 01:33
You don't fight the priesthood. You don't fight the Prophet. But it was so much bigger than just Warren and me.
Speaker 14 01:40
It happens to everybody, eventually; you will come around and see the light.
Speaker 15 01:48
We love you.
Speaker 16 01:49
I love all of you.
Speaker 17 01:52
And go what the f***
Speaker 18 01:52
[Singing] Sweet spirit of prayer.
Matthew 02:04
This is Factual America. We're brought to you by Alamo Pictures, an Austin and London based production company making documentaries about America for international audiences. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood. Each week, I watch a hit documentary and then talk with the filmmakers and their subjects. This week, it is my pleasure to welcome Emmy winning filmmaker Rachel Dretzin, the executive producer and director of the hit Netflix docu-series, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey. The film tells the chilling story of Warren Jeffs and his rise in the Fundamentalist Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints. Members of the FLDS Church practice polygamy and assign women husbands by divine revelation to the Prophet, in this case, Warren Jeffs. These practices led to concerns from outsiders about underage marriage and statutory rape. But no one was prepared for the shocking crimes perpetrated by Warren Jeffs himself. Stay tuned as we learn more about this horrific story and Rachel's efforts to bring it to the screen. Rachel, welcome to Factual America. How are things with you?
Rachel Dretzin 03:08
Very well, thank you. And thanks for having me.
Matthew 03:11
Well, thank you for coming onboard to the Factual America podcast. It's great to have you. As our listeners and viewers will have heard or seen, we're talking about the film, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, streaming on Netflix. It's a four part docu-series. So, congratulations. This is a regular fixture in the Netflix Top 10. At least whenever I'm checking. Have you been surprised by the reaction?
Rachel Dretzin 03:39
I have to say I have been a bit. I've been surprised by how well it's done, which is obviously very gratifying. It's been high up in the Top 10 for almost two weeks since it initially was released, which is great. And I've also been, I would say a little bit surprised at just how disturbed people are. Disturbed in a way that I think is valuable and important and meaningful, but still very disturbed. There's a lot of true crime, and a lot of horror, out there, and I think part of me thought audiences would be more inured to what they see in the documentary, but in fact, they're not. At least the ones that are expressing themselves on Twitter and Tik Tok and other social media seem to be really shaken by what they're seeing.
Matthew 04:29
Well, I can understand - having seen all four episodes, I can understand that reaction, actually. Well, it's interesting. We're going to talk more about that. I mean, maybe before we get started in that discussion, maybe you can tell us for our listeners or viewers who haven't had a chance to see it yet, what is Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey about? Maybe you can give us a synopsis.
Rachel Dretzin 04:55
Sure. Well, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey is about an extremist, fundamentalist, polygamist offshoot of the mainstream Mormon Church, called the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. And it's essentially a religion that became a cult under the leadership of Warren Jeffs, who was the Prophet of the FLDS from 2002 until the present. And it looks at both the ways in which Warren and his father transformed the group but also the hunt, and ultimately, conviction of Warren for crimes against children.
Matthew 05:40
Indeed. So, you started telling us a bit about the FLDS Church. Maybe, sort of, and I think it's fair enough to say as you say, it's been certainly transformed into a cult. But maybe its beliefs or practices people may not be aware. What are some of the main practices that, maybe, people would recognize the FLDS by.
Rachel Dretzin 06:09
Well, the FLDS, being fundamentalist Mormons, believe, literally, in some of the original precepts of Mormonism. Central to the FLDS is the belief that a man has to have multiple wives, in fact that a man has to have at least three wives in order to be able to achieve eternal salvation. That's really the most important belief of the FLDS that distinguishes them from the mainstream Mormon Church now, and it's certainly at the heart of what we look at in our series.
Matthew 06:42
Okay. And as you've already mentioned, at the center of what the documentary explores are the Jeffs, and I mean that in terms of their surnames. It's Rulon Jeffs who, I guess, is referred to as Uncle Rulon, and then Warren Jeffs. Maybe, you - Well, I mean, I think when you're talking about the reaction you've been receiving, I think it especially comes down to Warren Jeffs, in particular, but maybe you can tell us more about the father and son and this family that has basically run the FLDS for many years.
Rachel Dretzin 07:18
Sure. Well, Rulon Jeffs became the Prophet in the 1980s. And he was certainly less of a tyrant than his son, but he actually did sort of begin to initiate some of the more disturbing, you know, some of the more disturbing practices of the Church. Namely, he began to marry very young women, when he was in his 80s. And he had 65 wives, I believe, by the time that he passed away in 2002, a bunch of them were much younger. And most of them got married, not knowing anything about sex, or how babies were made. And in fact, some of the more disturbing scenes in the series, involve Rulon who would take these women to bed and try to have some kind of sexual relations with them. Despite the fact that they were very young and very innocent, naive, and this was not happening. This was largely happening against their will. And then, when he died, his son, Warren, who was one of his many children, but his favorite, sort of forced himself into power. There wasn't a clear line of succession in the FLDS, so, it isn't clear when somebody dies, who the next Prophet will be, but in this case, Warren was pretty manipulative about the ways in which he kind of insinuated himself into that position. And once he took power, he began a really kind of stunning concentration of power, that involved a very systematic process of sort of punishing people who resisted him or questioned him, and rewarding people who didn't - of controlling the way people dressed, their schooling, what they were allowed to do, think, you know, to the point of kind of astonishing extremes that really, sort of boggle the mind.
Matthew 09:35
I mean, it's not too strong to even use the term like Stalinesque, isn't it? I mean, it's like, full of - I mean, that's what I found surprising, you know, these purges; the way he was setting people off against each other, and trying to control people, not just trying, actually controlling people's lives was...
Rachel Dretzin 09:54
Yes, well, you know, he studied Hitler. He actually spoke German and carried around books written by Hitler, so he knew what he was doing. And, you know, he did have these kind of, these purges, in which he would not only, you know, throw people out of the Church, sort of at will, without any real cause, but he would - and we tell the story of one of these purges in the series - you know, he would tear them away from their families and not allow them to say goodbye to their families, and essentially throw them out of the Church without - most of these people had very little by way of education, skills, independent financial standing. So, they were just, you know, it was a decimation. And people who were thrown out of the Church or left the Church were considered apostates, and people inside the Church, were not permitted to speak to them or see them. So, this was like a real, a real trauma for a lot of families. And it ramped up over the course of Warren's rule, so that by the end, he was just tearing women from their children, children from their mothers, fathers from their wives. I mean, it was, like, constant and extremely widespread, and he created a generation of trauma in that religion.
Matthew 11:17
Yeah. I mean, I think that is - I mean, some of the scenes you're talking about, you know, there's that one scene where he basically does the big purge, at a meeting, I think, and that was quite chilling, and the surveillance and everything. And then coupled with sort of beliefs that people had about his power and where it emanated from. I mean, we've already - I mean, as you've already mentioned, what young women and we later know girls, face, but, I mean, generally, what was life like for women, or is like for women in the FLDS?
Rachel Dretzin 11:57
Well, the 'was' and the 'is' are quite different. And it has gotten progressively worse over time. You know, in the early days, you know, women were plural wives for the most part. But I would say they had a lot more freedom as plural wives, you know, they could dress, they all had to cover their bodies, you know, from neck to ankle, but they could pretty much wear whatever they wanted. And they weren't really tracked so closely. Over the course of Warren's rule, he started by telling women they couldn't wear the color - anybody - they couldn't wear the color red. And then women had to wear long underwear, you know, that just covered their bodies, under their dresses, they wore these floor length dresses, and then it became they all had to wear - no, they couldn't have any prints - and then he took away colors except for pastels. So, they all ended up in these like light pink, light blue, light yellow dresses, and they had to wear their hair in this incredibly specific way, which took hours to do. And no hair could be loose, no hair could be hanging, it had to be sort of poofed up in this very unsightly odd kind of oval shaped thing. And so, that was the kind of aesthetics of being female. But beyond that women, for the most part, didn't get to go to school, past fourth, or at most eighth, grade. They were valued only as wives and breeders of children, and beyond that they really were not given any autonomy or freedom of movement or thought. So, it was a pretty oppressive existence, and it got more and more oppressive as time went on. Then, you know, he started marrying women off at younger and younger ages. When his father was in power, women tended to get married, or girls tended to get married, when they were 18 and up, you know, 18 to 25, but Warren started sliding that age down. And by the time that he was arrested in 2008, he was marrying girls off as young as 12 to 14; had wives himself that were 12 years old.
Matthew 14:04
And is that what finally raised eyebrows and concerns? I mean, you know, this Church had been in existence for a long time in the wilds of Utah and Arizona. But what finally raised eyebrows? I mean, they could, you know, live this existence for so long, and then finally, people started snooping around and asking questions.
Rachel Dretzin 14:28
Yeah, I mean, it took a lot longer than it should have. There were a few kind of lone rangers out there. A private investigator named Sam Brower, who we feature in the series; a local journalist named Mike Watkiss; a few other people who were really, you know, started to get very suspicious and look for evidence that Warren was committing crimes and ultimately to try to get witnesses who'd be willing to testify against him, but the state and local legal authorities didn't really get involved until the sort of mid 2000s, when, yes, there were a few women who managed to flee, and were willing to speak up and testify about what had happened to them. And that was when things really began to tighten, and the state began to really pursue Warren Jeffs in a serious way, but it was difficult because so few of the girls were willing to testify because it would just, you know, what was in it for them, really, they would lose everything. And they were, as somebody says in the film, they'd be testifying against their fathers and brothers and husbands. I mean, this wasn't just Warren Jeffs, this was, you know, everybody was marrying younger girls. And so it was a really, it was a pretty widespread practice.
Matthew 15:50
Okay. I think that takes us actually to a good point for an early, early break. So, we'll be right back with Rachel Dretzin, director and executive producer of Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey. It's on Netflix, and it's a four part docu-series.
Factual America midroll 16:06
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Matthew 16:25
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with award winning filmmaker Rachel Dretzin, director and executive producer of Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, a regular fixture in the Top 10 list on Netflix. Rachel, we've been talking about the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, the FL - FDL - Why, I always get this wrong?! The acronym, whatever it is, it is the fundamentalist Mormon sect / cult that we've been talking about. So, at this point, not trying to just do this chronologically, but Warren Jeffs ends up on the lam, doesn't he? He's kind of on the run. And this interesting thing happens where he basically tries to move his flock - not just tries, he does move his flock to Texas...
Rachel Dretzin 17:21
Well, some of his flock.
Matthew 17:23
Some of his flock that's a good point.
Rachel Dretzin 17:25
He's very particular about who gets to go and who doesn't. Texas was a - it was a ranch that was in a very remote part of Texas that Warren purchased secretly with FLDS money and created an extraordinary compound there; almost like a little city. And nobody knew where it was. But everybody, most of his followers at that point were in Utah and Arizona. Right on the border between Utah and Arizona in a small community called Short Creek, and they began hearing about this place that Warren called Zion. And Zion was this mysterious place that was only - you had to be chosen. Actually, the way it was framed is, God had to whisper your name to the Prophet. And if he whispered your name to the Prophet, and if you were worthy enough, you would be chosen to go. And so, people were just disappearing. They would be told that their name had been spoken and that they were going to Zion and they wouldn't know where they were going, and they would be brought in the middle of the night, often to this ranch. And on this ranch, you know, they were supposedly among the chosen ones. And over time, more and more of Warren's followers were settled there to the point where there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people there including about 480 children.
Matthew 18:47
Yeah. And then that leads to, well, there's - I mean, for some people it was a highly publicized incident with the - I guess it was, what, in 2008 or so, somewhere in there, where Texas law enforcement gets involved and they take the children away and it's this incredible scenes of even people like Oprah Winfrey showing up and the members showing up on Good Morning America and all these staples of American television. Which is - it's quite amazing. It's quite a - I mean, in the context of - especially as you tell the story, that kind of part comes, I think, in episode three after we've heard all these things about - not all the things that we will eventually hear about - but, yes, they have their 15 minutes in the public eye, and it's a very strange situation.
Rachel Dretzin 19:49
It's very strange, and it is really the first time that the FLDS became really known, I think, to the public in a big way. By that point, Warren Jeffs was actually already in prison. He had been convicted. He had two trials. Convicted in the first trial. But, you know, the trial happened in Utah. And His sentence was not a life sentence. And he continued to really run the church from prison. And so, there were still hundreds and hundreds of people on the ranch, but law enforcement, Texas, local law enforcement was definitely, you know, they were suspicious, they knew that the prophet of this community had gone to prison for underage marriage, they didn't really, they didn't have a reason to enter the ranch, but they were watching it and waiting. And then they got a call from a girl who claimed to be underage and to be pregnant against her will and abused. And so, they finally obtained a search warrant to go on to the ranch. And when they got there, they realized not only were there many underage mothers on the ranch, but there were hundreds of children. And so, they made this decision to remove the children and many of the women from the ranch. And that was an enormous operation and got the attention of a lot of media. What's interesting about it is that the Church mounted a really sophisticated PR campaign in which a lot of the women whose children had been removed, went on television and went on all these shows that they would never have gone on before and wept and actually, what ended up happening was they really won the public sympathy. And Texas ended up returning all of those children.
Matthew 21:42
But yet, eventually - I mean, a lot of times on our podcast, we're talking about spoiler alerts and everything. I don't think - I mean, I don't feel like I even need to say that with this, because we're not going to go into the details of the stuff that you'll see when you watch this, but it is - I think I had a similar reaction to many of the people you've been talking to who've watched it. I mean, these shocking revelations about what was actually - I mean, it's shocking, not just - it's shocking to people who were actually - well, at least the former members of the Church. I mean, they're aware of some of the things that were going on, but they weren't aware of all the stuff that was going on. And I just recommend that people watch the film. It's episode four, specifically, but all of the episodes, obviously, but, I mean, you've spent a lot of time on this project, you've interviewed a lot of people. How does something like this happen, you think?
Rachel Dretzin 22:45
You mean, how does such evil?
Matthew 22:47
Yeah.
Rachel Dretzin 22:47
Well, I think that that's really a profound question. And I think much of what I tried to do in the series was sort of explain or show the sort of methodical way in which this kind of brainwashing and mind control can happen. You know, these people were born, the vast majority of them were born, into this religion. So, start there. They didn't know anything else. And they were very isolated from the outside world. Even before Warren Jeffs took power, most of the FLDS lived apart, and they spent time with each other, they didn't interact. But once Warren took power, he forbade television, movies, music, internet, you know, people really - I mean, as one person in the film says, I didn't even know who the president of the United States was. So, you know, they were really sheltered from outside influences. And so, you know, with that - and he infected the religion with fear, because people knew that if they disobeyed or questioned him, they could lose everything, including their families. So, they dared not do it. So, you put all of that together, and you start to understand how actually very bright, rational human beings can, you know, support something that's so extraordinarily despotic. They also did not know the worst of what Warren was up to. Vast majority of people in the FLDS did not know. Some still do not know to this day. And they were told that the outside world were monsters, and were out to get them so they didn't trust the information that they got from outside of the cult. It tells you a lot, actually, about human nature and about the ways in which this kind of thing can happen, which is one of the strongest things about this story.
Matthew 24:53
So, how did you come along on to this project?
Rachel Dretzin 24:58
Well, I actually had never heard of the FLDS...
Matthew 25:00
I was gonna ask you about that, did you...
Rachel Dretzin 25:02
I hadn't, which is surprising, actually, but I hadn't heard about it. I mean, I knew they were polygamists, but I really didn't know more than that. Somebody in my - I have a documentary film company, and we have a vice president of development, a very talented man named Zack Herrmann, and he had spoken to a journalist named Alison Dammann, who's now one of our executive producers, about the story. She had essentially brought the story to him, and he brought it to me. And, initially, I was not, I was, you know, a little kind of, I don't know, I had a little bit of an allergic reaction to the subject matter. I thought, This sounds really, you know, really out there. And the kind of thing you see on, you know, junk TV, you know, I was a little hesitant to get in on it. Till I went, I went to Utah, and I met with the private investigator, Sam Brower, who's in the series, as well as some of the women. He introduced me to several people who had left the FLDS, and I was really astonished, honestly, by the fact that this still exists in 21st century America. I couldn't believe it. And I couldn't believe how relatable the people I met were. And I thought, you know, if this is so stunning to me, it feels like a story that needs to be told. And so, that's when I decided to start developing the story. It took me a long time to figure out a way to do it. And that took a couple of years, actually.
Matthew 26:35
And what was that main challenge that you were dealing with?
Rachel Dretzin 26:37
Well, I didn't want to, I didn't want to kind of succumb to the shock value of the material. It is shocking, but the FLDS had been covered in the media over the years, and it tended to be done, not across the board, but it tended to be done in a very sensationalized way. People focused on the sex, you know, and I really wanted to find another way in and it was really when I decided to tell the story, mostly from the perspective of women, particularly women who had stood up against the evils of the Church that I began to see a new way of telling an old story. And, I think, a story that had never really been approached in a kind of holistic, comprehensive way. I also really wanted to tell the story of the way this kind of totalitarian power was built, and that hadn't really been done. So, those were sort of my two goals.
Matthew 27:48
Yeah. Well, and certainly achieved, I mean, as someone who was, you know, we got you on, I was going to watch it, I was like, Okay - like you, What is this about? And it's anything but sensationalized, certainly. And it's extremely compassionate storytelling, I found, because it would have been very easy to, I don't know, I mean, not that that's what proper documentary filmmakers do, but it would have been very easy to put a lot of these people in a bad light and just make them all look like a bunch of bumpkins or whatever. And I agree with you, everyone comes across so well; it's very compelling from that standpoint. I guess the other main challenge, maybe, would have been - I mean, with something like this, how do you make women live through this again, because they do have to tell this story again, one that they've already maybe told in court, or maybe never have told at all?
Rachel Dretzin 28:48
It's a great question, and it was one of the most challenging aspects of making the series was having to interview these women about this trauma, which had happened for many of them over decades. Our interviews were very long. A lot of them ran 8, 10, 12 hours, which we would spread out, if we could, over several days, but it was pretty grueling. I felt like I did not want to edit these women. I wanted to allow them to do this their way. And for many of them, they were telling their life story. And so, it was really important to just take our time, give them space. We had at least one central subject in the film; after the first day - we got about halfway through the interview, and she couldn't continue for several months. It took several months for her to feel like she was ready to keep going. So, that was the other thing we tried to do was just be patient with them. It was very difficult, you know, it was very emotional, it was very difficult. Watching the series was difficult. Although, I'll say one of the most gratifying things about this experience for me has been that every single subject that we interviewed has reached out to us since the series aired, and expressed such gratitude, and really feels good about what they saw, which is really gratifying, because you know, it's a very dark story. But we really tried to put them at the center of the story. I think a lot of the time with true crime, you end up getting really fascinated by the perpetrator. And Warren Jeffs is quite fascinating, no question about it, but we tried to make sure that focus stayed on the victims and survivors.
Matthew 30:52
Yeah. Well, indeed, and I think it's - well, I very much appreciate it. And I think it's extremely well told and it's a story worth - in that regard, is certainly well worth telling. I mean, you've obviously spent a lot of time in sort of Arizona, Utah, and these areas, I mean, the FLDS is still going, isn't it; it still exists.
Rachel Dretzin 31:22
It does still exist. It is still going. Nobody knows exactly how many people still follow Warren Jeffs, but seems like 1000s. It's definitely lost a lot of its power over the years since he went to prison. And many, many more people have left and more and more people leave every year. But yeah, I met many people who are still in the FLDS. And still very loyal to Warren. It is extraordinary. But, you know, when you think about it, again, you're born into something like this. You never, ever learned how to trust anything outside of it, it's very difficult to leave it, you know, it's not an easy - what's miraculous is that people do leave, actually, that so many people do leave.
Matthew 31:24
Well, yeah, and we didn't go into it, but there's certainly so many - it's certainly told, you know, we see it in the doc, you know, efforts of people who did try to leave at least the first time and how they were brought back in and how they were found. And, you know, and as you say, the ties to family and all these things. So, no, it's very interesting. It's one of these very thought provoking docs because it gets you thinking, you know, it's not - it's, well, it is obviously about the fundamentalist Mormon sect, but it is so much more than that, in terms of human character and what any of us would be like if we had been in similar circumstances. So...
Rachel Dretzin 32:37
Exactly. I mean, that, for me, that was the big revelation was if I were in similar circumstances, I can't say that I would have done anything different. And that's not the way we usually think of people.
Matthew 33:06
Yeah. So, what's next for you? More true crime? Do you have any projects you can tell us about?
Rachel Dretzin 33:16
I'm not sure, yet, actually. I'm exploring a few different stories. I wish I were at liberty to say what they are, but they're not far enough along for me to say. I have a production company, so, we're doing a bunch of projects that I'm executive producing. So, that's been keeping me pretty busy. Couple of projects for HBO and elsewhere. But we'll wait, we'll see. Ask me in a few months, and I'll give you an answer.
Matthew 33:43
Well, we'd love to. Love to have you back on, once you've settled on a project or get something in production. But I imagine you might go for something that's not quite as dark. Could you do something like this again? Or anytime soon?
Rachel Dretzin 33:57
Well, that's an really interesting question. I definitely think I probably won't do something as dark but I will say that the territory is so rich. And in many ways, I don't feel done with it. There's so many stories around this group that we didn't get a chance to tell. And many of them are actually uplifting. They're stories of people rebuilding their lives, you know, and trying to reinvent themselves, and enter mainstream society. I mean, it's so rich. So, I'm not sure I'm done with that. I also fell in love with Utah. Utah is just the most exquisitely beautiful landscape. I mean, you see it in the series that just, like, it's almost godly, you know, you can understand why these people were so overwhelmed in a way because the landscape itself is so stunning and big. So, yeah.
Matthew 34:52
Well, we'll keep an eye out for another doc related to this and any others. And I know it will be done well if you do it. So, thank you again so much for coming on to the podcast. It has been a joy having you. Just to remind our listeners, we've been talking with award winning filmmaker Rachel Dretzin, director and executive producer of Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey. I tell you, I will never be able to hear that term, keep sweet, again. It's just, it's chilling. It just makes me - anyway, it's a film, it's on Netflix, it's a four part docu-series. Definitely give it a watch. Thanks again, Rachel. Love to have you on again some time.
Rachel Dretzin 35:37
I really enjoyed it.
Matthew 35:38
All right, take care. Thank you.
Rachel Dretzin 35:40
You too. Bye bye.
Matthew 35:43
I'd like to give a shout out to Sam and Joe Graves at Innersound Audio in Escrick, England, in deepest, darkest Yorkshire. A big thanks to Nevena Paunovic, podcast manager at Alamo Pictures, who ensures we continue getting great guests onto the show. And finally, a big thanks to our listeners. As always, we love to hear from you. So, please keep sending us feedback and episode ideas. You can reach out to us on YouTube, social media, or directly by going to our website, www.factualamerica.com and clicking on the Get in Touch link. And as always, please remember to like us and share us with your friends and family, wherever you happen to listen or watch podcasts. This is Factual America, signing off.
Factual America Outro 36:25
You've been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, specializing in documentaries, television, and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Head on down to the show notes for more information about today's episode, our guests, and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @alamopictures. Be the first to hear about new productions, festivals showing our films, and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk