de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 0:00 This is Episode 28 of Ethics and Culture Cast from the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Welcome to Episode 28 of Ethics and Culture Cast. I'm Ken Hallenius, the communications specialist at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. In this episode, we chat with Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon, the Hollywood producers and directors who brought the feature film "Unplanned" to the big screen. They were on campus recently, along with Abby Johnson, whose story is told in the film, for a panel discussion hosted by the de Nicola Center. Let's sit down with Chuck and Cary for this fascinating conversation. Well, Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon, Thank you kindly for being with us today. Chuck Konzelman 1:01 Thank you for having us. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:02 So tell us a bit about yourselves. I know, Chuck, you have done time in South Bend before? Chuck Konzelman 1:08 Yes, I know what this wintery March weather looks and feels like. It was not a surprise getting here. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:14 The Fall spring. Chuck Konzelman 1:15 Yeah, yeah. Until the the actual eight minute spring shows up. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:20 That's right. Chuck Konzelman 1:21 I graduated in '82. And so I've been gone for quite some time. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:25 And what have you done in the meantime? Chuck Konzelman 1:26 I did. I mean, I started off in public accounting of all things for a few years, realized that my life shouldn't be spent there, dabbled with a couple other things. And then around 1990 Cary, who is my best friend, and we've been in another business together, said, "Hey you want to go make some movies?" and constructive naivete. We're like, yeah, that sounds like a really good idea. Having absolutely no idea how tough it was going to be. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:52 What you were getting into. Well, Cary, tell us a bit about your journey. Where are you from? And what have you been doing? Cary Solomon 1:58 Originally, I was from Brooklyn my mom and dad divorced, unfortunately. And my mom moved out to Jersey and her proclamation to me was we're going to have a place to live that has grass on it. And concerning that all I knew was concrete, steel and broken bottles in Brooklyn, the high water mark of New York, this was exciting, you know, and it was a different world. But when I moved in, the kid next door, that was Chuck, and he's been following me around ever since. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 2:32 That's awesome. And where did you study? Cary Solomon 2:36 Yeah, okay. Chuck Konzelman 2:37 I'm interested to hear this one. Cary Solomon 2:38 Yeah, this is this is a good one. Unlike all the smart people, I studied in Brooklyn, very prestigious place. East 15th Street and Kings Highway. Right on the corner. And that was the extent of my schooling. So no, I never went to college. I never had a fascination you know, I don't know if it was the New York chutzpah or the hustle. But it's a different world. You know, I wanted to go out and make it in the world. And college seemed to me like a detour from that. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 3:17 Well, so now how did you get into movies and eventually drag Chuck in? Cary Solomon 3:21 We just we were you know, I've known Chuck forever, since like I said, we grew up as kids and and what happened was, we were in a business, we were very successful. But there was something wrong on the inside. It just didn't seem right, I believe was the Holy Spirit, to be honest. Because I think that the Lord, we had matured to a point now where we were ready. And I think that we had learned all the stuff we were supposed to learn. And this one day out of nowhere, I mean it just drops. I know. I mean, I never wanted to make movies. Chuck never wanted to make movies. And then suddenly, I just looked at him. We were at a big convention that we were speaking at. I said, you want to go to Hollywood? And he looked at me and said, "Yeah." And that was it. Next day, we know you know, a couple days later, we're in our, in a jeep and we have a u-Haul, which you're not supposed to do. That's a whole 'nother story. Pulling stuff through the mountains in the snow and stuff like that. And like the great pioneers of the past, we arrive in Los Angeles, de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 4:24 "Go west young man," kind of deal. Chuck Konzelman 4:25 That's right. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 4:26 Wow. So let's talk a bit about "Unplanned" since that's, of course, why why we're all here together this week. Why this story? What inspired you to choose and bring to the screen? Chuck Konzelman 4:39 I don't think we chose, I think we got chosen. We were sitting about I don't know, maybe six years ago, you know, our usual haunt, which is a coffee shop sitting against our own shadows on the wall, because it's how much time we spent there. And a woman of our acquaintance, Megan Harrington came up and she handed us a book and said, you guys need to make this a movie. And so we were like, okay, and I read it and was impressed by the story. It obviously wasn't a Hollywood story, per se, right. You know, it's an ardently pro-life story. And we worked in an ardently pro-choice town. But we felt that there was something important to be said, there. So he read it, felt the same way. We went about trying to acquire the rights, we actually got stalled for a bit, then did and then went out to Texas to interview Abby and her mom and dad and her husband and spent about a week or 10 days there interviewing everyone in her life. And then in prayer, we kind of got put on hold again for a couple years. Cary Solomon 5:46 Yeah, well, Chuck's giving you the sanitized version. Basically we're sitting in the coffee shop, and we're planning to do a Western. Again, we're going to do it with Clint Eastwood. We have everything figured out. It's all gonna work. And, you know, we got a great, great project, and we're really excited. And then Megan drops the book on us. And I look at the book and I'm like, Yeah, okay, chick flick. Not gonna happen. Okay. And but I made the mistake of praying on it. Chuck Konzelman 6:15 Those prayers are trouble. Cary Solomon 6:16 And I said, Lord, we're making a Western, right? And God was like, no. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 6:21 Went from "Unforgiven" to "Unplanned." Cary Solomon 6:23 Yeah, right. Yeah, the "un's" have undone us. And so he's like, no, you're gonna, I want you to do this. And I'm like, Okay, let me just ask that in a different way. Because I figured out you see, being from Brooklyn, we figured that--and from New Jersey, New Jersey after that, that if you ask something in a different way, maybe the Lord will change the answer. I've learned that doesn't work. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 6:44 That doesn't work. Cary Solomon 6:45 He's smarter than we are. But so I said, so we'll do the Western first and then we'll do "Unplanned," right? No, do the "Unplanned". And so I was like, Oh, man. So I read the book. He actually came into the office the next day, and he had that look, of someone who was like, convicted by the Spirit. Very quiet, very, you know, to himself. And he's like, you need to read this. And I'm like, oh, I've seen this before. That means we're doing this. Chuck Konzelman 7:13 We've known each other way too long. We know what this looks like. Cary Solomon 7:16 Yeah. And that was it. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 7:19 Well, so now you've alluded to some of the challenges in bringing this to the screen, what would have been some of the some of those challenges? Because I know, the production was really very quiet. Cary Solomon 7:31 Well, you know, there are certain, I mean, if a person has any thought of God, and the devil, and of right and wrong, you know, there comes a tremendous burden, when you decide to take on, like the Bible says that this is the devil's world. So when you decide to go against every concept that he's pushing, that is not an easy thing. So even if you don't believe in the devil, per se, we do believe in that. So you have adversarial attacks, you have spiritual battle on every front, every moment. But even if you didn't believe in the devil, like I said, you still have a good part of society and the world that is in total opposition to what you're doing. So we've had to deal with raising money. You know, the cable channels will not take our money for ad buys. Chuck Konzelman 8:28 Yeah, we finally finished our marketing raise last week literally, it's been a two and a half year process. Cary Solomon 8:34 And we're two weeks away from the movie coming out. Chuck Konzelman 8:35 And right the movie comes out in ten days. Lifetime will not accept our advertising dollars. Hallmark will not accept our advertising, HGTV will not, K-Love will not, AirOne will not. So that's how pervasive this resistance is that basically, you don't get to speak against abortion in our culture. Cary Solomon 8:42 Or on a lot of other issues as well. I mean, one of the things that we all you know, we're dealing with the fact that you know, the internet, there are certain things that are happening on there, we've been closed down, you know, the MPAA giving us an "R" rating, which also makes us by the way that you know, a new thing now is we've been, we can't advertise on radio till after nine o'clock in the evening. Chuck Konzelman 9:20 It's absurd. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 9:21 Because of the R rating. Cary Solomon 9:22 Because of the R rating and and that it's a Red Label. So you know, and we have no profanity, no vulgarity, no sex, nothing in there. But here we are. It's a political "R" so we are politically taking on the powers that be. Chuck Konzelman 9:38 And just for your listeners, just so that they know not to be afraid of the "R". You know, we've had Glenn Beck come out and say this is a political "R" this is not. Reverend Franklin Graham has endorsed it, Sister Rose Poquette a nun in a habit is basically saying, you need to go see this. And we have Archbishop Naumann, who is the pro-life secretariat chief for the for the Catholics of North America. Yeah, he has said, he actually said during the Vigil Mass before the March for Life, "If there is one movie you see this year, you must see, Unplanned." And he gave, he just went on raving about it. And he's actually got an article endorsing the film that's slated to be published in the "Wall Street Journal" the day before we come out next week. Cary Solomon 10:21 And you gotta remember, I mean, unless you're not paying attention to the culture war, which is kind of difficult not to be nowadays, right? There are great forces of antagonism that to our position on life, overall, family, traditional values and stuff like that. But one of the things is there are such things as political motivations in Hollywood, the MPAA is run by a former Obama Assistant Secretary of State, he's pro- pro- pro-abortion. Chuck Konzelman 10:52 And you know, they'll fall back on saying, well we get 10 parents to come in and look at it. Well, yes, but those are parents from the 90210 zip code or thereby adjacent, so the odds of finding maybe more than one of them being pro-life are pretty remote given Southern California. Cary Solomon 11:08 Well you are actually interviewing two out of the three pro-life, conservative Republicans in California. Chuck Konzelman 11:16 And the third one's our confessor, so. Cary Solomon 11:18 We hope. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 11:20 Wow. Okay. So in spite of the challenges, this film is coming out. And I guess, you know, the question is, what are your hopes for the impact that this film can have? And I know, that's a very broad question. Chuck Konzelman 11:37 Well, there's a couple different things. I mean, the big, kind of overarching hope is that this can become "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for this issue. That basically by virtue of presenting the issue of abortion, allowing people to see what it looks like, yeah, and these are the least invasive forms of abortion. These are first trimester abortions, a suction abortion, and an RU486. These are not you know, second trimester dismemberment, these are not third trimester. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 12:07 The born alive kinds of things that are in the news. Chuck Konzelman 12:09 Not that. This is the routine, you know, every day form of abortion. We're hoping that we can kind of dispel this willful blindness that's taken hold over society that this isn't a person. This isn't a human being. You know, Abby saw this. She was eight years an abortion clinic director and it changed her in an instant. The great irony is that almost no one ever sees one of the. She was performing an ultrasound guided abortion. She was holding the wand. Ultrasound guided abortions are incredibly rare, incredibly rare. Most abortionists have never seen an abortion, they operate blind. And ironically, ultrasound guided abortions are much safer for women. There's far less chance of damaging the uterine wall. That's why that particular abortionist did it that way. The reason it's not done more frequently is that it would cost an extra three to four minutes per patient, three to four minutes. And you know, Planned Parenthood when they schedule a surgeon for Saturday mornings, typically when they'll come in, they're scheduling maybe 35 or 40, procedures. 30 to 40. And when you take four minutes times 40 procedures, all of a sudden, that's a lot of extra hours, you maybe have to hire a second surgeon, nobody wants to do it. Cary Solomon 13:32 Cuts into their revenue. Chuck Konzelman 13:33 Cuts into the bottom line, you know if they have to hire another surgeon. And their stance is, Well, the process is completely completely safe. So if it's completely completely safe, why would you have to try to make it safer? Cary Solomon 13:43 Additionally, I think what we're looking to do, is we're not looking to blame, this is not a movie of condemnation, we're not saying look at them. They're so terrible. We tried to show the truth on both sides. Everything you're going to see in the movie is true. Everything was written either in her book, in interviews, or court transcripts. And there'll be a lot of people say no, no, no, then but we know that it is. The thing, what we're trying to do is bring a movie about redemption, about hope about forgiveness, about love. We're saying, look, we will all have problems in our life. We've all done things that are terrible, or contemplated things like that. That's not what this is about. What this is about is that you have since 1980 1.5 billion, that's with the "B", children who have been murdered across the world. Now just put that number in your head for a second. And then realize that's without the RU486 pill, which probably doubles that number, but let's just say it's 1.5. That's a seventh of the human population on the earth. Okay, so let's, let's remember, what the devil is doing here is he's extincting mankind, which is his exact goal. Okay, that's number one. You know, I like to ask people, what's the first thing that the devil did after Jesus's birth? And they kind of think about it for a second, slaughter of the innocents. Why? Because it hurts God the most. So this movie is about redemption, especially for anyone who's been involved in an abortion. Now, would we like it to stop young kids from doing abortion and ruining their lives? Yes, of course. But and it's for men as much as this is for women, because in our screenings, we've seen 40 or 50% of the men come out. They're totally devastated because they realize they drove their girlfriend to get it, they forced her to do it. So it's about redemption for these post-abortive women, there must be a billion of them in the world, since you've done a billion and a half abortions, right? Yeah, so there has to be a billion post abortive women. So what we're hoping for is that the movie allows them to go down to the train station, with this baggage, wait for the train to come in. Okay, and leave the baggage on the platform, get on the train, to freedom. And what we're finding is that women are saying, I'm free. I, I get it, I, this has saved me. These women are suffering some of these women that we've talked to 50 and 60 years ago, they had an abortion. So this is an epidemic. This is not something. And we just want to reach out and, and, and love on everyone who's involved because we're all in this together. Chuck Konzelman 16:30 We had a female psychologist who, and we all know that there's this epidemic of antidepressant use out there in America right now. Her contention was that 100% of her adult female patients who were using antidepressants were post-abortive, she said there's a straight flat one to one correspondence. And this is we should be expecting this because this whole idea of celebrate your abortion, shout your abortion. GIFs appropriate for someone who's just had an abortion, as human beings we know this is wrong. We sense this is wrong. You know, G.K. Chesterton, who was here at Notre Dame for a while, what he said of abortion, he said, You know, it is murder, not just of the stripe of Herod but of the stripe of Cain. That is we are slaughtering our own flesh and blood. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 17:17 Our own brothers and sisters. Chuck Konzelman 17:18 And then kind of in tandem with that he also said that every political act is a is a religious act. And this whole idea that as Catholics we get to ignore this out there you know, and and and what this stuff is coming home to roost because the pre-med students at Notre Dame if they think they can go out now into future careers and not have not be forced into participation with this stuff, that's a fantasy world. We're quickly losing in American society, the ability to raise an objection of conscience and society is really starting to gang tackle and I remember the governor of the state of New York saying, pro-lifers are no longer welcome in New York. And this, you know, this goes back to his father, actually, who spoke here a couple times at Notre Dame. I mean, ironically, I had heard him when I was an undergrad and then I actually recently called up and read his speech here, which was a couple years after I left in 1984. And he was presenting the nuance, how abortion was so nuanced. And it would be terrible if the government didn't provide it for low income women if high income women had access to it, and how basically, you know, he's like, well, we need to find something better. But in the meantime, we need to subsidize abortions. And, you know, we need to go forward in a big way. And there was a very strong hope that the bishops would not come out and condemn any political party that was trolling support of it. And that's a, that's borne bitter fruit. And now, you know, we're living in the world of what that advice, you know, has brought to pass. Cary Solomon 18:46 What I think that "Unplanned" is going to do is, I think that on March 29, I think the world as we know it, and I know that every filmmaker wants to believe what I'm about to say, this is not us. We have we have no part in this, you know, we were the vessels, the Lord used to get this out. I mean, there was miracles on set, there were healings, there were all I can tell you things that would take hours, which if a person denied the presence of God, they would become a holy believer, if they were on set. It was unbelievable. But I will tell you that I think what's going to happen on March 29 is all the rhetoric, all the lies on both sides, all the marketing like hamburger company that markets its hamburgers, okay? You know, they're very efficient, right? People drive to a McDonald's because marketing, right? And, and they like this, well, Wendy's, or Burger, or whoever it is. Any form of marketing, you know, the lie about it being a clump of tissue, the lie about it not being terrible, the lie about it's, Oh, it's just like cleaning your teeth, and when you go to the dentist, is all going to change. Because what you're going to see for the first time is you're going to see, without a doubt, the Absolute Truth, that this is a baby. Now, what you do with that, you can either kill it, or you can keep it. But there are no more choices after this movie. In other words, kill it, or keep it. Once you know, you can't un-know. And so if you choose to kill it, that's between you and your Creator. If you choose to keep it, obviously also between you and your Creator, but there will not be anyone who will come before the Creator or before their friends or anyone else and say, Oh, I didn't know it wasn't. So what the Lord is doing is a divine, I heard this the other day in, in church, and I thought it was great. The priest was talking and he said, We are in a time of great mercy. And the Lord it has been prophesied that there will be many acts of great mercy that the Lord is going to do to enlighten man so that he can save as many of us from destruction and from despair in an eternal Doom. Right? This is, is a divine act of mercy. Because when he shows you the truth, once you know you can't un-know. My dad is an 84 year old, Jewish, atheist liberal. Now when I talk liberal, I'm talking I don't know if there's anything bigger than the the the L and the capitalized "L"? Well, if there is my dad's there, okay, right. My dad calls me up. And he says to me, Hey, baby, baby, what are you doing? And I said, I'm making a movie Dad. And he said, Oh, send me something, send me something. So I sent him a clip of this something we call a barrel scene where they're actually wheeling the babies out in barrels to throw them away. And he starts to choke up and says I call you tomorrow, and hangs up on me. Chuck Konzelman 21:46 And just for the listeners they understand too and this happens in real life, it happened to Shawn Carney. It happened at the clinic where we go sometimes and pray, the pro-lifers will typically ask the driver of the medical waste truck to just park the barrel for a few moments while they can pray over it and give those hundreds of unborn children the only funeral or the closest thing to a funeral that they will ever have. And it's heartbreaking when it happens. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 22:10 Very powerful scene in the film. Chuck Konzelman 22:11 Yeah. Cary Solomon 22:11 And so my dad calls me the next day, very somber. Now you got to remember, this is a man who when I was a boy, would set me up with women and say, don't worry about it. Don't worry about if you get her pregnant, we'll just have an abortion. I didn't know better. I mean, here's my dad telling me, you know, running up to girls do whatever. Oh, okay, I'm 12 years old, 11, 13 whatever it was, I don't remember, 14, 15. So anyway, so that's how far liberal he was right. And my dad calls me the next day. And he very quiet says to me, that that thing, that piece of the film you sent me? This movie is going to change the world. He says, and then he kind of pauses for a second, cause he's choked up. And he says, and this I thought was profound. He says, You showed us what we didn't want to see. And I was I was struck when he said us, well, who is us? Because I'm talking to my dad on the phone. He's talking about the other side. And then he says, we need to make laws to stop this. And this is my dad, pro-choice for 84 years. Okay? I mean, from the moment he came out of the womb, he went pro-choice, okay. And this is because once you see it, you can't unsee it. And so that was why I believe this is divine act of mercy. If you can take a person like that, and in 10 seconds, change his position without having to argue, amazing. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 23:43 Well, I was going to ask you gentlemen, about the vocation of the filmmaker. But I think you've actually just answered the question right there without asking. Cary Solomon 23:50 Yeah, we're in for life. This is it. And I would say to any of your listeners who want to get into film or TV or radio, or. It's a mighty work, because I will say that the media is the most profoundly powerful thing. I believe that if Paul, or John, or Peter, or James, or any of the apostles, Andrew, were here today, they wouldn't go door to door preaching the gospel. I'm sure they would do that in their extra time. But what they would be doing is they would make a movie. Because a movie, right now I can I can take my movie on my cell phone, and I can send it to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world, and I can reach tens, hundreds of millions of people. And the profound effect of media is when I was growing up, I was poor. Like I said, I grew up in Brooklyn moved up to New Jersey. There's something called Life magazine, used to have these magnificent pictures on it. I'll never forget one day I came down from my the tenement I was in and on the on the stairs was a Life magazine. And it showed a Vietnamese man on his knees with a soldier blowing his head off. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 24:58 Very famous. Cary Solomon 24:58 Very famous. It ended the Vietnam War. So I will say to the people out there the civil rights movement or the segregation and so forth in the 60s, when the the African Americans were being oppressed, right? What is the visual image that you remember? And I guarantee you everyone will say, I remember the water hoses, the German Shepherds in midair, and the batons beating down these people. Changed the world, right? Because once you see it, it leaves a profound effect on the soul. That's the power of the movie and why people need to see this and show this to everyone because it will change the world. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 25:39 Well Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman who've brought the film "Unplanned" to the screen, thank you kindly for coming to Notre Dame to be with us. And thank you for telling the story. Chuck Konzelman 25:48 Thank you for having us in. Cary Solomon 25:50 Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. God bless you and everyone. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 25:58 Thank you to Chuck and Cary for the excellent conversation. Find links to video of our panel discussion event with them and Abby Johnson as well as details about the movie "Unplanned" in the show notes. Subscribe to Ethics and Culture Cast so that you can always get the latest episodes by visiting ethicscenter.nd.edu/podcast. We would love your feedback. Please give us a review wherever you get your podcasts and email your suggestions to cecpodcast@nd.edu. Our theme music is "I Dunno" by grapes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. We'll see you next time on Ethics and Culture Cast. Until then, make good decisions. Transcribed by https://otter.ai