The Hart Family Tragedy
The movie based on the Hart Family showed they had the perfect American life. At least, that is what their social media accounts showed the world. But the reality was very different.
A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy documents a family’s spiral into abuse and despair. Ultimately, Jennifer Hart and Sarah Hart decided to drive their family SUV off a California cliff in Mendocino County by the Pacific Ocean, killing them and their six adopted children.
How could this happen? The Harts' social media accounts were full of beautiful images – the Hart's family home, playing in the garden with the kids, trips out on a frozen lake or cozy nights by the fire. And everyone thought they were living the perfect American life.
As the film reveals, however, Jennifer and Sarah Hart carefully curated their family's online personas. As a result, they were able to hide a life of mental illness and abuse. That life eventually led to the tragic loss of their six innocent children.
We caught up recently with the filmmakers, producer Rachel Morgan and executive producer Chuck Lewis. As they point out in the Hart Family TV series, A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy Netflix, it provides us with valuable lessons about not only the loss but social media, our society, the American adoption system, and the mainstream media onslaught.
Rachel and Chuck note that when society's addiction to social media began it became partly responsible for addressing mental health issues.
“This story needed to be told. There were a lot of people speculating, a lot of very strong feelings.” - Chuck Lewis
Time Stamps:
02:19 - What 'A Tread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy' is about and what it teaches us.
02:52 - How our guests are handling the lockdown conditions.
04:21 - The tragic story behind the film.
05:59 - What caused this tragedy to happen.
08:32 - The first clip: The Hart children.
12:59 - Who are the interviewees and what are their connections to the story.
14:07 - What the documentary really is about: social media addiction.
17:32 - The second clip: the psychological effects of social media on the family.
21:39 - How the filmmakers managed to get access to family footage.
23:34 - How Rachel got involved with the production of the film.
26:33 - How Chuck got involved with the project.
28:46 - The backlash to the film and its effects on Rachel and the filmmakers.
32:00 - The timeline for producing the film.
32:43 - Why people choose to ‘troll’ these types of films.
36:00 - Some of the problems with the adoption system in America.
39:10 - The different lessons that the film provides.
41:43 - The final clip: the pitfalls of social media.
43:51 - Who Christopher Worth is, and how he brings people together.
46:20 - How the release of the film went.
47:16 - Where the film can be streamed.
48:22 - What Chuck's goal is looking into the future.
Resources:
Watch a Thread Of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy
The Hart Family TV Show on Hulu
The Heart Family Movie on Amazon Prime Video
Watch Atlanta TV Show Hart Family on Hulu
Worth Music
Alamo Pictures
Connect with Rachel Morgan:
Connect with Chuck Lewis:
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The Hart Family Movies - Transcript for Factual America Episode 15
Rachel Morgan 0:00
My name is Rachel Morgan, CEO of Sharkeye Productions and producer on "A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy".
Chuck Lewis 0:05
I'm Chuck Lewis, president, CEO of Align Entertainment and also an executive producer of "A Thread of Deceit".
Speaker 1 0:15
Neighbors last reported seeing the Harts at their home on Friday, March 23.
Speaker 2 0:20
The picture that is floating throughout the world captured the moment.
Speaker 3 0:23
They both decided that this was going to be the end.
Speaker 4 0:27
I don't know what to look for. Yeah, I know like what signs to look for if your kid gets abused, your own kid, how their behavior changed.
Speaker 5 0:35
There was a lot of turmoil in the family and a lot of suffering and a lot of tragedy that they had to get over.
Speaker 6 0:41
They took my love away from me.
Speaker 7 0:45
Every memory I have of them is just a big hug.
Speaker 8 0:53
The cause of the crash remains a mystery right now. Investigators have said the weather was clear at the time.
Speaker 9 0:59
I realized really quickly that no matter what I said or didn't say, there was no way I was coming through this unscathed.
Speaker 10 1:07
They were put under a microscope in a way that I don't think anyone deserves to be put under.
Speaker 11 1:13
I unfortunately think something horrible happened to him.
Speaker 12 1:19
I thought maybe I would see the kids again. And I can, I just want it to hold on to let them know there was somebody who fought for you.
Speaker 13 1:25
Jen and Sarah lived the kind of lives that made it easy for them to hide their behaviors inside the house.
Speaker 1 1:31
All we know is that the vehicle ended up at the bottom of 100 foot cliff.
Matthew 1:38
That is the trailer for the recently released documentary, "A Thread of Deceit: the Hart Family Tragedy", and this is Factual America, a podcast produced by Alamo pictures, a production company specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for an international audience. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood and every week we look at America through the lens of documentary filmmaking by interviewing filmmakers and experts on the American experience. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Alamo pictures to be the first to hear about new productions, to find out where you can see our films and to connect with our team. "A Thread of Deceit" is a gripping film about the horrible tragedy that befell a seemingly perfect American family. But it also provides us with valuable lessons about social media, our society and the American adoption system. As we found out when we caught up recently with Producer Rachel Morgan of Sharkeye Productions and Executive Producer Chuck Lewis of Align Entertainment. Rachel Morgan, Chuck Lewis, welcome to Factual America.
Rachel Morgan 2:43
Thanks for having us.
Matthew 2:45
Hey, in times like this. I think it's, instead of jumping right in, let's, let's ask how are you doing? Rachel, first to you.
Rachel Morgan 2:53
I'm okay. I dressed today. So there's, I'm not in my yoga pants. For now I'm doing, I'm doing okay, we're still, we're still at stay at home, here in Los Angeles.
Matthew 3:07
And for our listeners and watchers around the world tell them what time it is.
Rachel Morgan 3:11
It's 7AM, yeah, just past 7.
Matthew 3:15
You took the one for the team.
Rachel Morgan 3:17
Yeah. You can edit out my sleepy way today.
Matthew 3:21
No problem. Whatever you want. And Chuck, how are things in Atlanta?
Chuck Lewis 3:25
Things in Atlanta are pretty much the same. It looks like the, the quote, the death curve has slowed down. And people are still sheltered in place, even though our governor has lifted a lot of the restrictions. But most people believe it's a little early for that. And most people are still hearing to shelter in place. I know I am.
Matthew 3:53
Well, I talk to people around, the around the globe, and it's one, it's the great leveler, this whole crisis. Everybody has exact same boat. And, so I get that you're not going to the tattoo parlors or the spa.
Chuck Lewis 4:06
No.
Matthew 4:07
Even though the governor said that's okay. All right. Well, welcome again. It's great to have you. The film is, our listeners and watchers have seen the trailer, is "A Thread of Deceit: the Hart Family Tragedy". Rachel, it may be hard to believe, this was a, you know, this is a big story. It was national and international media. But maybe you can give us a little background on the film. For those of, those few out there who don't know what this film is about?
Rachel Morgan 4:42
Sure. The film's about Jen and Sarah Hart, who tragically drove their children off of a cliff in Mendocino County in California, in Northern California. The film, so everyone knows that story, it was international news, as you mentioned. But the film really focuses on the backlash of that and how media and social media really took that story and chewed it up and kind of spit it back out. And, yeah, so we kind of, we dive into a lot of like what happened after. And leading up to to the incident, but we really focused on what happened afterwards.
I mean, you've already said, you've mentioned the Harts. They were actually there in the limelight even before this incident. I guess it's fair to say not many comments but, I could say they were sort of, people now say as woke, it's a bit of a pejorative term these days, but definitely in a certain certain scene, if you will. But, you know, what happened? I mean, they seemed like the perfect family in many ways. And yet this, I mean, like, I guess it's certainly why it's a tragedy, but how did, you know, what happened there?
Right. Well, I'm no one could really say, you know, like what was going on inside the house and that's, that's, um, that will always be a mystery to everyone even after 10 films are made on the story. No one really knows what happened in the house, but after the tragedy happened, they did a huge investigation for a year and then had a public inquest to kind of come to a conclusion of what happened. And in that inquest it was revealed that they had actually been running away from CPS and moving from state to state to escape abuse charges and get away with child abuse that was happening behind closed doors. Now on the outside their friends and family on the outside had no idea that was that was going on for the most part. So it really is a story of deceit, of putting on this mask and and curating this picture perfect family. Especially with like social media. Everyone knows that, you know, what I show on my Instagram is not what I'm going through every day, you know. And same with everyone, right like we post our best days, we don't we don't post when we're depressed on the couch eating cheese puffs, you know. And I, I think that's a huge part of this story is how they were able to curate this picture perfect image of themselves and of their children. And, especially being you know, a queer couple adopting six black kids. It's just like, oh my gosh, this family's amazing, look, look what they're doing, you know. And now what I can't really talk on or really ever know is how deep the depression was, like what was going on with with Sarah and Jen. You know, as far as just mentally goes, You know, I don't I don't know and no one may ever really know that. You know?
You've mentioned Sarah and Jen but I think obviously there's the, there's the six children. And I think, as we were all here at Factual America, we'd like to show clips from the films and you've, as producer, you've gracefully allowed us to show a couple clips, I think it would be great. There's a scene where you, early on in the film, about three minutes in, I think, where you introduced the children. And maybe you could set that up a little bit, and then we will go to that clip.
One thing I noticed early on in creating this film is that the voices of the children were really lost. And the focus was on how horrible these women were, or you know, like, there's just like this, this media uproar that really took away from the fact that the world just lost six beautiful, incredible children. And it was just so tragic and so horrible, and we really wanted the children to be seen because again just like when you would look up the story, it's just like, you know, kind of dateline ages like Jen and Sarah Hart tread, you know, like it was just so, just like, just kind of disgustingly told, that it took away from the the actual tragedy of losing these children and the innocence that these children, these children had and those closest to the family fell madly in love with these children. And it's why it had such a huge impact on that community in Portland where they were for the last couple years, they were in Portland in Washington, but this this tragedy had such a huge impact on that community because they had fallen in love with these beautiful, graceful children who just wanted to spread love to the world. And, and we do feel that that was genuine and it wasn't forced upon them. You know, we do feel that they were they were genuinely trying to spread love.
Speaker 1 10:04
They were all just a big hug. And every memory I have of them is connected and punctuated by the same moment of just a flood of them arriving and us all hugging each other in one big ball. Every time and no pretense. No dishonesty, just totally present and completely full of like this effervescent, intoxicating, love. That was just undeniable.
Speaker 2 10:42
All of us thought Devonte was gonna be the president. You know, and Markis, God bless him. You know, I mean, Markis never talked. I knew Markis for four years and he has head in the books all the time. The most excited I ever saw him was that when that bird landed on the podium at the Bernie Sanders thing, he was like clapping, and he was like smiling, and I was, I was working. Devonte, he reached out, but he was also like the most sensitive of the group.
Speaker 3 11:07
Hello Michy, how are you doing today? I missed you, thank you for that birthday message I loved it so much.
Speaker 4 11:17
Makes him being today for my siblings.
Speaker 6 11:22
To me, it seems like these children were so joyful and well adjusted and engaging. I mean, they were all different. And Marcus and Hannah were much quieter. They were much, much more observers and peripheral and the part of me that prefers the edges related to them in that way. And then Devonte and Jeremiah and Sierra were always right up in there, engaging with everybody.
Speaker 7 12:02
She's washing her hair, I think
Speaker 2 12:09
Devonte was definitely the most outgoing and charismatic. You could tell that within him, that he is a very old soul. But as we got to know the rest of the family, I really feel like Jeremiah and Abby would jump out of their shells and they just be these characters.
Matthew 12:29
Okay, I don't think you have to be a parent to be touched by the, by those those scenes of those, of those children. Rachel, you interviewed many family friends as part of this this film. I mean, for the most part, who are these people? Are they all from the Oregon Washington area? I noticed they all seem to music links, was it on purpose? I think you have a musical instrument in every shot.
Rachel Morgan 12:54
Oh really? Never noticed that. Interesting. Yeah, they are, most of them are from the Portland area or were at the time that Sarah and Jen Hart Hart lived there. And it is this this community of mostly musicians, actually, who really came together. Musicians who really, just have a love and passion for the world and spreading positivity honestly. Like I, they, they do go to a lot of festivals together as well. But I think most importantly, they that's where Jen and Sarah were going to these festivals, meeting these people and they, they became a part of that music community in Portland at the time that they lived there.
Now, I think, as we were discussing previously, there's there's no spoiler alerts with this film. We already know the tragic ending. But all good documentaries are about so much more than the subject. Chuck, you and I had a chance to catch up, I think it was last week. And I just wanted to ask you what, what is the "Thread of Deceit" really about?
Chuck Lewis 14:07
Well, I think if you look at "A Thread of Deceit", there are two major factors in this Hart family tragedy, which is absolutely one of the worst things that that can happen, is parents taking the lives of their children. But I think clearly, there are two aspects of this film that Rachel told very well and very eloquently. One is the effects of social media on the day to day lives of individuals. Their social media addiction. You have, in the US, you have the average American spends over two hours a day on social media. Social media has been linked to other mental illness disorders, or enhancing issues that are already present. For example, low self esteem. As Rachel said, who actually knows what happened, but these are things that we do know are occurring. That individuals that have low self esteem, they are, they are tremendously affected by what happens on social media, they crave for attention. They, if their posts don't get enough likes, then they, they express it internally and externally. So I think the whole aspect of studying the effects of social media on our everyday lives, it's a clear indicator that this film is right on point and what can happen when individuals over involve social media and allies. Now, I'm a baby boomer, we spend the least amount of time on social media so I don't have to worry about my addiction because I'm totally not addicted to it. But, people with low self esteem, often spend more time on social media than people that do not. 71% of kids that spend over five hours a day on social media, 71% of those kids are more apt to commit suicide. 71%. So you couple low self esteem with social media. And oftentimes, there's not a positive outcome that comes from that. And that's why you have kids that are so affected by bullying over social media. The second piece is the adoption system in the US. Obviously, it is flawed. And that's something that we can explore, Matthew, a little bit later if you'd like.
Rachel Morgan 16:40
Yeah. And I think you made reference to CPS for our listeners outside of most of the United States, because I think that's a pretty common acronym used throughout the United States, but it's Child Protective Services which is responsible for protecting children in troubled situations and in this case, the Texas CPS adopted out all six children to the to the Harts. I think you made a very good, I want to get back to this point about social media and mental health. I think the sort of, almost the flip side of this is why are all these people having problems with self esteem and thinking that their lives aren't what it should be and I think you've got a, well, you've got many great clips, but there's one I think we're gonna, we'd like to see now from the film, where a lot of people talk about this, but specifically, you've got your forensic psychiatrist Octavia Choi make some good comments there. So maybe you could, I don't know which one of you wants to set this up. Chuck, since you were already, you're already on the, in the docket, well, won't you, as it were, won't you set this up?
Chuck Lewis 17:54
Okay. This is a clip that speaks to the psychological effects that social media was having within this family. This is a particular family that lived their lives, as Rachel mentioned earlier in the interview, lived their lives basically on social media. The question becomes, is there any real substance behind those clips? Well, I think you gather, especially when you, when you hear from the psychiatrist, is that in the, as the movie suggest, hiding in plain sight. These are, these are flawed individuals that have all these beautiful, wonderful kids, that secretly and behind the scene, as the name suggests, are having severe, severe trauma issues among themselves. And they really live an unhealthy lifestyle.
Speaker 1 18:49
They moved in, I want to say May '17, 2017. I knew the house had sold and I had looked up that it had closed and they moved in shortly thereafter. We've had kids live next door before, you hear them, you see them. They speak to you, you know. And, so, this was completely abnormal. To have six kids that we never saw, heard or spoke to.
Speaker 2 19:13
Sarah didn't really tell us much about her family. I don't know, anyone that worked with us that new more than she's married to Jen. And she has six kids. I mean, she didn't really tell much about her family. And to me, that was a little weird because I brag about my son 24/7, you know, and besides knowing that she has six kids, we didn't really know much about her.
Speaker 3 19:36
One of the impressions I got when you sent me the photos, you know, their, of the Facebook feeds of Jen and Sarah is like how perfect they are, right. And the word perfectly curated comes up a lot. And you know what that implies is, and curation implies an active image manipulation, essentially. So they were, you know, they lived the kinds of lives that they can project this perfect image of themselves because most of their quote unquote friends were either through Facebook or there are kind of these temporary encounters at festivals where they could, on a temporary basis project everything positive they want to project about them.
Speaker 4 20:08
the pictures of them playing in the snow. Those kids were not outside playing in the snow. But yet there's this picture of them, you know, and it's so perfectly propped with Devonte. And I think it was Jeremiah. And they're sitting out in the snow and they have a mug in their hand and they're probably, you know, drinking hot chocolate or where they're on the side of a lake and they're turning around and blowing kisses to mom.
Mid-Roll 20:38
You're listening to Factual America, subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter at Alamo pictures to keep up to date with new releases or upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.
Matthew 20:58
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with Rachel Morgan and Chuck Lewis, the filmmakers behind "A Thread of Deceit: the Hart Family Tragedy". We've just watched this clip on, from the film, about the impact and the effects of social media. One thing that I've noticed is, you know, all this family footage I mean, no, no offense to the director of photography, but some of the best shots in this film all seem to be family films and photos that they took. They look like straight out of an online clothing catalog or Benetton ad or here in the UK we have something called Boden and they look straight out of there. Rachel how did you get your hands on this footage?
Rachel Morgan 21:39
Um, you know, honestly, a lot of it came from Jen's Facebook. So Jen, who for those of you who don't know was the driver in the vehicle within a couple, Jen took a lot of video and a lot of photos and she actually she ended up I believe picking up photography towards the end as well. So she actually has a lot of like really high quality photos of her children towards the end there. But, but Dana, their neighbor actually made a pretty good point that a lot of those seem to be curated like where she didn't see the children playing outside a lot, but then there'd be these picture perfect, you know, photos that are just absolutely perfect of the children, you know, with with the coffee mug and in the snow and with the dogs and everything. So, a lot of those, it is believed that a lot of those were kind of set up to to paint that perfect picture. Once again.
Matthew 22:34
It does remind me of a short I saw not too long ago about this guy actually in Ohio who collects undeveloped film. And he found all this undeveloped film from the 50s. And he finally developed it was from this one family and one thing that struck him was that people were just documenting their lives back then and now we're all about creating memories. And yeah, I think it is all about the social media, you know. It's even, the major theme park that will go unnamed will say, I remember an ad saying, that you'll create memories that you will always remember, you know, something like that. That's what it seems to be all about these days, this image that we're putting forward. I want to move to the project actually, the story behind the story really. Rachel, how did you get involved, what attracted you to do this? I imagine there's, there were plenty of people looking to make this film and you've gotten in there first.
Rachel Morgan 23:35
So, so I lived in Portland for 10 years, and I had a production company with my ex husband up there. And I was actually on the phone with him when this happened. And he had met the family a couple of times but didn't really know them them well at all. And, but he is very tied into this group of musicians and their closest friends toward towards the end of their lives. And so that is, so, in talking to him when it, when it very when it first happened, like it first hit the news. What really struck me was, what their loved ones were going through, because they they weren't allowed to grieve. They weren't allowed to voice their opinion or stick up for them at first because at first they didn't know that it was on purpose. At first, like when the news was first released, it was like, Oh my gosh, it's been a horrible accident. We just lost this beautiful family. And so the friends first had to like grieve with that. And then as news just started to come out about it being on purpose that she drove off the cliff, they had to deal with that emotion of like, Oh my gosh, one of my closest friends just did something that I can't even wrap my brain around, and then they were immediately attacked. And that is the piece of the story that were, as he was telling me all of this and as I was talking to others involved, really grabbed me. And I, and I had not met the family at all, just to be clear. I've never met the family. I'm not, I'm not as closely tied to that group of people. But my ex husband was and he just happened to be a filmmaker. So I actually called Jeff Mullins and, who's another executive producer on the film. So I called Jeff Mullins and Chris Kobin because we just got off a film in New Orleans. So we had all just worked together. And I was like, Hey, guys, there's a horrible story. I'm a narrative producer, but for some reason, I want to make a documentary on it. I don't know why. And I really just want to tell this story. It's horrible. It's tragic, but I feel like it's not being told the way it needs to be told. Because social media is full of trolls that are attacking everyone. And then the media tells it like it's a state aligning thing, and it just it drove me crazy how the story was being told. So that that was the goal going into it was to kind of shed some light on a little more of what was happening to everyone involved.
Matthew 26:09
And is this, this was your first foray into documentary filmmaking? Is that right?
Rachel Morgan 26:14
Yeah, I've done music documentaries back in the day. So we used to like tour with bands and do music documentaries, but nothing like this. Nothing heavy. This is the heaviest film I've ever done.
Matthew 26:25
Well done. I think it's, I mean, it's great. It's an amazing film. Chuck, I mean, how did you and Align Entertainment get involved?
Chuck Lewis 26:33
Well, Jeff Mullins and I are business partners at Align Entertainment. So, he brought the film and, and we looked for quality projects to get involved in. This was certainly a extraordinarily quality project. Rachel and Jeff had worked together on "Gothic Harvest", which is a wonderful film, by the way, the little plugin for Gothic Harvest.
Rachel Morgan 27:05
It's very different from this film, we should say.
Chuck Lewis 27:07
Very different.
Very, very, very different. Wonderful story. Just a very different story. Yeah, but, so this story - it needed to be told. There were, there were a lot of, I guess, people speculating. There are a lot of people that, that feel, that feels some sort of way regarding what these women did. And feel very strongly, very strongly. So it was a, it was a story that I think Rachel told it in the right fashion with the right pace and gave you a full 360 view of exactly what was going on there. And so, she gets accolades all the time. But, again, I'll give her the official accolades in this film. I thought this film hit the spot right on.
Rachel Morgan 28:08
I think you've, you've just alluded to it. And it's essentially what the, basically the last quarter, at least to the film is about, which is this backlash, that everyone in the film faces, wherever they are, whether it's the neighbor, the friends in this community, the festival goers, you know, whoever, it seems. And I think that brings us to an interesting point, I'd like to know, I'll start with you, Rachel. I mean, as a female filmmaker, what sort of backlash have you faced and maybe talk a bit about the challenges of making this film in light of that?
Sure, sure. Um, it was such a difficult film to not only produce, it was difficult for everyone involved, right. The editor, the DP, you know, we had a director on board and and she conducted actually a lot of the interviews, most of the interviews along with the DP. And I, we actually ended up with a micro micro crew on this, but it ended up just being myself and my editor Ethan Derner, finishing, finishing the film creatively at the end. And so it proved to be a film that I think for the entire, you know, year and a half that we were all working on it. We all had nervous breakdowns. We all just like, I remember calling Chris Kobin and Jeff, early on, when we were first getting backlash, where, and for us as producers, it was like, Oh, these greedy, greedy L.A. people are trying to make money off these dead children, you know, like, just like horrible, horrible things about us wanting to make profit off of or take advantage of this horrible story, which wasn't the case at all. But I hope I don't have to say that. Um, but, we were getting messages like that. The woman we had on, who was conducting a lot of the interviews actually had her home address posted online and saying we need to take her down. Like she's creating this film. So the threats were very personal and very scary. And that was something a lot of us had never experienced. But it was something that the friends of the family experienced already as well, you know, so they were going through all these messages from these trolls threatening them, telling them to eat glass and die, you know, like these really horrible horrible things. And so we just became a part of that, that group in the way that we were needing to get used to dealing with messages that make you scared for your life, you know, and make you make you question whether you're doing the right thing or not. And, and now that the film has been released, there are even more people. And when I use the phrase, trolls, I hope that's universal. It's basically just someone online bashing whatever they want to bash, getting really passionate and attacking people for their opinions or their views or, or whatever without actually having ties to the story. So these people did not know this family, did not know the friends of the family, but would send death threats and attack these people or the, or the filmmakers. So that was something that I'm still not used to, that I'm still, we're all still getting over is that. But it was a lot worse in the very beginning because we actually hopped on this film, I think within the week after the incident happened. And so I think that was a lot of people's issue with it, was it's like, oh, you're jumping in just to take advantage when actually we're like, what was making us jump in so quickly was how the story was being told than us wanting to tell it in a different way.
Matthew 31:56
Well, I mean, indeed, I mean, it was quite a quick turnaround, wasn't it? Because when did this exactly happened sometime in 2018?
Rachel Morgan 32:02
2018, yeah, yeah. Yeah. March, Yeah. So, we just, let's say, Gosh, now it's such a time warp. I believe we worked on the film for a year, a year and a half. And then we, our distribution company is 1091 media, and are fantastic as well. And they've been so great about, about getting it out there. And they had it for about four, four months or so. So, yeah, I think, I think we're, we just must say it's 2020. So we're, we just passed two years since the incident in March.
Matthew 32:35
And Chuck. Did you face any, have you faced any backlash? Certainly, as an African American executive producer?
Chuck Lewis 32:43
Um, I have not. Rachel is, carried the, the slings and arrows of that part. But I think that, you know, when Jeff and I were looking at some of the comments that we have, that we've seen online. A lot of the comments were from people that never actually saw the movie. And if they'd had actually seen the movie, some of the comments that they were making would not, would more than likely would not have been made. But it's, you know, as they say, is nuclear grade material. You'd be having a same sex couple, you have, that have adopted all these wonderful, young African American kids, who also have birth families that are out there, that, that their their pain is one pain that you see come across in the film, and a lot of, a lot of regret, a lot of inability to do anything about the situation. Once the court system got involved, when these kids parental rights were relinquished to the court system, which about the 15% of the kids that are adopted in the US are adopted from relinquished rights. And we have another 59% of kids are in the foster care system that become adopted. So the mass majority of kids are coming from very troubled and broken environments. But these kids have families, they also have people that care about them. You have the ones, this where the family member desperately tried to intervene and get get their, get their loved one into their family, and have the capability and the means in which to do it. We see no consideration. And yet these other people that come in that are strangers, magically are approved to adopt these kids. That's a very broken scenario. You've got a family member that has a healthy respect and love for the child and has the means to take care of that child, even though the parent may not be able to do that. How does that person get completely bypassed? And the child was awarded to others? You know, I think so you've got a lot of nuclear grade material, you've got all different kinds of components, it is going to draw, as I stated earlier, it is going to elicit a significant amount of emotional feelings one way or the other.
Matthew 35:29
I mean, you mentioned earlier, now you've more than alluded to it again, is this broken adoption system in the US. I mean, I have to say as the Texan in me agreed with the stepfather, I don't know how they let him go outside the borders. But you know, not to make light of it, I mean, Chuck, is your own personal feelings as an African American, what do you think of this whole scenario where, like you said, there was this aunt who was seemingly perfectly capable of taking the children, and just ignored. And they were adopted out to these strangers from way far away.
Chuck Lewis 36:11
Yeah, I think, I think that the fix to that is pretty is simple. And I've looked, I've done some research to try to find is all types of efforts to reform the adoption system. And I have not found anywhere where that particular aspect of a child being adopted into the system has ever been explored. And I don't think that it has anything to do with race, gender or same sex. It has nothing to do with any of those things. It's just a fundamental flaw. And if that flow were addressed, then maybe we wouldn't have had a Hart family tragedy. Maybe we would've had the young man in the film grew up to be this great innovator and, and bringer together of people, which he seemed to have had and enjoyed quite a bit of talent in doing so. So I think addressing that one specific aspect could save a lot of lives, a lot of tragedy, and actually help promote better mental health with the adopted child. Because the one thing that does often happen, is that the children that get adopted, they struggle to assimilate themselves into their new families, in their new families' lives. I'm blessed to have a great business partner in Jeff. Jeff, himself, executive producer of this film, Jeff himself, was was adopted and lived a great life and still continues to live a great life. Every kid didn't have the Jeff Mullins story. So it's not, it's not about race. And then adopting the kids. It's not any other issue. From the adaptive system standpoint, other than let's give the family a chance to take care of these kids. That's one piece. The other piece is the lack of continuity between the different states. So you got people that were getting in trouble in one state with these kids because of child abuse. And they're and they're moving not only are they picking up and moving from one state to the next, they also adopted more kids along the way. And they're bringing that problem and continuing to bring that problem along with them all the way until the ultimate end, which is a travesty. Again, going back to my first point, let's give these families a chance to take care of their kids. If they can't do it, or unwilling to do it. Then go to the next step and look for an outside family.
Matthew 38:57
I think that's a it's a very good point Chuck, you've, you've cut to the chase here in terms of what I was gonna ask about lessons to be learned from the film. And I think you've provided us with some good ones. Rachel, what do you want the audience to take away from this film?
Rachel Morgan 39:11
I think it's, we're at a time in history that, that's, it's fascinating because it's like, we have this tool. Social media, too, that can be used for good or evil at this point, and I feel that it's very, very divided. I feel there is kind of a movement that is heading towards the light on that where we need to find more empathy, especially with like, what's going on in the world right now. You know, I think that's actually brought the world together where we're all going through the same thing as, as you mentioned, that we don't understand our minds just can't really fully grasp what's happening in the world right now. And so we're finding connection in social media like we never have. Or using zoom, or like finding ways to connect with people around the world in a way that's really beautiful. And I think that it's very scary to me how dark social media can be and how like people when they're anonymous in their room behind their computer will say whatever they want to say. Because there is no punishment for it. There's no like, reprimanding them. There's, there's no, they're just anonymous. So they can, they have this confidence, this really negative horrible confidence that's abusive and emotionally abusive, to whoever they're attacking. And so I would say the lesson is to not only check in with your friends and family who seem like they've got it all together, because I think that's a part of the story too, where like, the, the depression and what was going on in that house was missed. She alluded to it to a few close close friends who actually speak in the film about it. But, um, when you see friends who have this picture perfect life, you don't think to check in with them, you know, you don't think to ask if they're doing okay. Because on social media, it looks like they are and I, so I think that's a big part of it too, is to just make sure you're checking in with your friends who look super confident, and they have all their stuff together. Because there may be something going on. We're all going through things. And so we all just need to be empathetic and connect with each other. I think that's it.
Well, I think, I think this brings us to a perfect point where I would like to show another clip, actually, that speaks right to this issue. You have, I think every documentary ends up with one, with a character that maybe even surprised you. But it ends up being sort of the sage of the film, a family friend named Christopher Worth. And he says some really poignant things very early on in the film about social media. So let's, let's go watch that clip now.
Speaker 1 42:02
I was struck when I went back and looked at how much interesting Facebook post about her family and how often she was doing that. That would give you a lack of privacy, you know, to be putting, posting that much stuff about yourself. I don't think she did it intentionally, but it's definitely cultivating the seeds to have a viral video happen for you, or a bio photo, that kind of behavior, putting yourself out there that much. Now, I see tons of posts about the kids, interesting snippets where it's kind of personal.
Speaker 2 42:35
I never understood that dichotomy. The what she would tell me about how much she didn't want to be in the limelight and then how much the posting and those types of things cause them to be in the limelight.
Speaker 3 42:48
I think this is an example of how that extremist and rapid environment of sharing information blows over and doesn't look back to check back in on parts of the story that don't maybe necessarily fit a narrative that is, that could go viral, that are more complex, more nuanced, and like, that's where our humanity is. The deepest truths about us are not totally black and white. There's a gradient, all the shades exist there. And like that is so important to be able to have a venue for discussing that and the mainstream media and social media are moving at such a pace that we don't even discuss in a context where our humanity can be understood.
Rachel Morgan 43:34
All right, I think that's a very poignant clip there with the the interview with Christopher Worth. I mean, he's a family friend, can you say anything more about him? He plays a, they all play a large part, but he plays a significant part in this film, Rachel.
Sure, sure. So Christopher Worth. He also goes by WORTH as well. His music is WORTH music. He, he's the one that actually knew for over a decade now. So I've known Christopher Worth a long time. He is a wonderful person, he actually, when I think of that community, he really does bring everyone together. And, and especially in times when when, of tragedy or when people need to support each other. He really, he really is so good at kind of coordinating everyone to make sure everyone's okay and checking in in on each other. And so I think that he not not only comes across as so eloquent in the film, but I think he also was such a strong backbone for people who were going through this tragedy and not knowing how to deal with it. He was really such a good sounding board and helping people because he has such his brain is just magnificent. And he has such a, such a way of like, kind of being logical but but also he's just so deeply empathetic and emotional as well. That is a really lovely balance, where he is able to feel such like deep feelings but also be able to communicate logically about it. And so I did find that that for this documentary, it was really like a perfect, he's kind of, he comes in throughout with that kind of sounding board on on logic. But also like, how he how he described social media, and also how the, how the children were just kind of lost in this tragedy. I feel like that's kind of the point of the film. That we just kind of watch is kind of the point of the film.
Matthew 45:37
And I think we could have let this whole podcast with just clips of him. He's, he's extremely eloquent. But I think he's got a quote there towards the end, where he basically says the, we may have discovered that the parents were not authentic, but what's not in doubt is that the kids were who we thought they were. What you see about the children really, that was true, what was, what we didn't know was that the parents weren't what we thought they were. It's hard to believe but I think we're coming close to the end of this, of this podcast. Just want to ask you a few questions. Have you, I mean, because of everything that's going on, have you managed to do any festivals, how did this work with the, with the release and distribution?
Rachel Morgan 46:22
So we did not really go the festival route with this one. We signed on with 1091 Media pretty pretty early on after the release. And, so at that point, they were able to turn things around really quickly and wanted it released, um, gosh, what year and month is it? Wanted it released this spring... Yeah, April, thanks. So yeah, so they wanted a really, really quick turnaround on their end and they did just such a fantastic job of getting it out to different outlets and media. We had a bunch of articles written on it. And it was important for us to get it out around the time that it happened as well. So we went down that route with 1091.
Matthew 47:10
Okay. And so it has been released. Where can we see this film?
Rachel Morgan 47:16
We can see it on Amazon, Apple, VUDU. Um, okay, gosh, I should have written down a list. There's a few others.
Chuck Lewis 47:26
Google Play
Rachel Morgan 47:28
Google Play, yeah.
Chuck Lewis 47:30
Did you mentioned that? You mentioned iTunes, right?
Rachel Morgan 47:32
iTunes, yeah, Apple iTunes and...
Chuck Lewis 47:36
Xbox.
Rachel Morgan 47:38
Xbox.
Matthew 47:39
Okay. Anyone, you just, I think if you just, well it's, it's entered into the lexicon. Well just people Google it, you'll find it when.
Rachel Morgan 47:52
You'll find it, yeah.
Matthew 47:53
Who ever likes to watch films. And how best can we, Rachel, how best can we follow you and your career going forward?
Rachel Morgan 48:01
Oh sure, um, I've got my website Sharkeye productions that I'm trying to, sharkeyeproductions.com that I, that I keep updated. I'm also on IMDB.
Matthew 48:09
It all gets back to social media.
Rachel Morgan 48:12
It really does.
Matthew 48:14
And we'll put links in the show notes. But, Chuck, how about you and Align Entertainment?
Chuck Lewis 48:22
Well our goal at Align is to continually bring to the public, compelling, interesting and entertaining stories. This story, a documentary, was a compelling story to tell. Other films that we are looking at future production for, may be somewhat different. We do hope to bring more documentaries to the table. That is one of our goals. Primarily our goal is to provide good quality entertainment vehicles that spread across many different genres. So just like the comedy horror film "Gothic harvest" is one brand where you see the versatility. But we also have other planned projects. So, you can find, I am on IMDB as well, as well as social media. I'm not addicted to social media but I am on it. Instagram is @chuckster6913 as well as Facebook, I can't remember how you get to be at Facebook but you can look up Willard Chuck Lewis, I'm sure and it'll, it'll bring me up.
Matthew 49:36
Okay, so I want to, I want to thank our guests, Rachel Morgan and Chuck Lewis for being on the Factual America podcast and talking to us about your great film, "A Thread of Deceit: the Hart Family Tragedy". I want to give a shout out to 1099 Media who provided us with the screener and just to ask all our audience, listeners and watchers out there to please do remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen and / or watch podcasts. This is Factual America signing off.
Factual America Outro 50:13
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 at Alamo pictures, to be the first to hear about new productions, to find out where you can see our films and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk