>> Look at that. That's a beautiful red radish. Planting a seed, taking care of it, seeing the little green thing coming up out of the ground, all of it gives me a feeling of accomplishment and hope... It's terrible! For the past year, we've been filming our first steps into the food revolution. >> Time to go home. Let's go back in our house. Not that way! No, this way, that's right. >> And much bigger steps taken by food patriots who inspire us to keep going. This is way, way more than 10%. >> Hi, welcome to Director's Cut. I'm Pete Schwaba. That was a clip form Food Patriots, a documentary that encourages people to make better eating choices, to not only live healthier lives, but also help the environment and create jobs. We're joined today by director and producer team, Jeff and Jennifer Spitz. Welcome to Director's Cut Spitz family. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Tell us, what is a food patriot, and why are making certain food choices, how can that be considered patriotic? >> I can tell you what a food patriot is-- I'm sitting next to one. I'd never heard the term until she blurted it out a few years ago. And I thought, whoa! This is a person who is trying to change the way that Americans eat, buy, and teach the next generation about food. I have that on really strong authority, because she told me that's what she'd trying to do to our family. >> Did you coin the phrase, "food patriot"? >> I did. >> Wow, nice. >> Well, you know, we started along this journey when our son got sick eating chicken that was contaminated with antibiotics. The antibiotics failed. That's really what started us really paying more attention to where our food comes from. >> Sure. >> We're kind of neophytes in this movement. What I discovered was just this amazing social justice movement all around us of people who were doing great things to change the way that we eat. >> Through food, that's amazing. Just changing 10% of your diet you think will help? >> I do. If you think about it, food is connected to our health. It's connected to the environment, and it's connected to jobs. It's really a driving force in our economy because of our healthcare costs. >> How does it help the environment? >> Well, different agricultural practices create a build up of phosphorus and nitrates in the soil. That creates dead zones in the ocean. Naturally, ecosystems are very diverse, but because we do this concentrated agriculture, both in farming in crops and also in animal agriculture, it creates unnatural balances. It attacks our environment. >> Okay, so you're a food patriot, what is comfort food for a food patriot? What do food patriots pig out on? I assume they make healthy choices. >> First of all, we're not purists in any stretch. >> So the occasional Big Mac-- >> The whole idea is if we all make a 10% change towards more fresh, local and organic foods and sustainably grown foods and start to pay attention to that stuff, that we're change the commerce, that we'll change the the economy that way. We'll change the marketplace. We'll demand foods that are better for us and better for the environment. That will help improve things for everybody. >> Okay, so you're kind of creating a market in hopes that there will be jobs and suppliers will see this need. >> Even since we've been working on this project, look at what's happened in our grocery stores. Look at the expansion of the organic section in the grocery store, the conversation about GMOs, the conversation about antibiotics in animal agriculture and superbugs. These things weren't even on our radar three years ago when we started this project. So consumers are making an impact. >> You mentioned your son, Sam, got sick. We're going to see a clip about that right now. Let's see another clip from Food Patriots. >> A few years ago Sam got sick after eating some contaminated chicken. He got a bacterial infection that didn't respond to antibiotics. We watched helplessly as our son got sicker and sicker and doctors could only scratch their heads. >> That winter before I got sick, I, for the first time, was lifting weights, caring about what I was putting into my body, eating a lot. You know, I was 220 lbs. I was bigger than everybody else. I was fast, athletic, and I was thinking I might have a future in football. I won't name the restaurant, but I got sick eating a chicken Caesar salad. That's supposed to be healthy! I had campylobacter, food poisoning. >> Within four weeks, he'd lost 30 lbs. >> I thought I was invincible, so to have a serious ailment, and to watch my parents start to question whether or not I'm gonna get better, and to see me deteriorate so rapidly, it was frightening. I didn't-- I didn't think I was going to get better. >> It was a wake-up call. It forced us to ask a lot of questions about food. >> Concern amongst parents and pediatricians is growing. >> Everyone is worried that our children aren't going to live as long as we do. >> Childhood obesity. >> Environmental estrogen. >> Type One diabetes. >> Genetically modified food. >> Factory farms. >> Antibiotic resistant superbugs. >> Dissolved fertilizer from the corn belt. >> E. coli. >> Mercury. >> Cancer. >> The cautions about our food system are everywhere. It's alarming and overwhelming. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> My food tastes good, and it's cheaper than ever, so I'd really rather just ignore all this. But I can't anymore. >> Our children are literally eating themselves to death. >> We always try to end one clip per show with Meredith Vieira. It's worked out pretty well so far. Thanks for keeping that going. That's a scary time. I could see why you would make such a big change after something like that. Jeff, as the director, what were your challenges with having your entire family being part of the project, and on camera too? How was that? >> That is not something for the faint of heart. I've made a lot of documentaries and I've gone far from home, as far as the Navajo Nation, as far South Africa. Always my work was away from home. Home is where I felt relaxed, comfortable and where I didn't need cameras going except in terms of home movies. Then when she decided to get chickens that just opened up a whole new possibility for a home movie which was about our family going through a real change. I was the last one to sort of realize the potential for this. But by instinct, I jumped at the chance to film little baby chicks at my house. And these athletes coming around with my sons to handle two-day-old chicks. They all wanted play with them. The kids were athletes. They didn't care anything about food or food changes in their diet. They were simply drawn to these moving, little, furry creatures. To me they were gremlins. They weren't even real. So I was filming the gremlins running around. But I realized that these kids are completely disconnected from where food comes from, and so was I. I wanted to see if we could raise those chickens up and actually get an egg. Everyone said, of course, yeah, they'll be dead by October. >> That was a great moment in the film when you got to deliver the egg to your brother. It was just-- That's a neat camera too. You have that little head camera. I've never seen that before. Is that a standard documentarian device? >> Look, this is the fastest selling, most popular camera in the history of cameras. The GoPro is-- >> Because you look cool?
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>> Well, what do you think? >> It looks good, it suits you. Okay, so you teach documentary filmmaking at Columbia College. A lot of filmmakers have come out of there. How does teaching and actually being a filmmaker-- Do they go hand in hand? Do you learn a little bit from each? >> Oh, yeah. There isn't a better combination, in my opinion. You're not just learning from seeing what other people are doing in documentary, you're learning from the process of thinking through the steps of storytelling with very young people, 18, 19, 20 year olds, who want to grab these tools. They're eager to shoot and are eager to make films, but they don't necessarily understand story. It's really educational for a filmmaker to step back from the tools and from the screen and think about what people have authentically in terms of stories and how to connect them up with this art form so that they can move forward. I've always liked Cinma vrit. My students are interested also in jumping into the moment. Sometimes it's ready, fire, aim. But they have to be thinking of story. It's helped me to a great extent to recognize that a baby chick of two days old could potentially become a hen that lays and egg. There you have a beginning, a middle and, potentially, an end. Stories have to have structures. I'm always looking for structures. I'm teaching the search for structure and meaning. I'm engaged with young people who are also having to take breaks very now and then for food. >> Then you can throw in some food patriot stuff there too. All right, let's see another clip from Food Patriots. The thing that I keep reminding everybody, and what gets me up every day and makes me feel still positive and still energized, is that at the end of the day, the entire food business is there for us as individuals. If we ask for it, it will be there. In other words, when you run an item past the scanner, you're voting for the kind of world you want. And maybe you can't change all of your food purchases, maybe it's 10% of your purchases. But whatever it is, those purchases count. >> After his speech, Gary invited us to come visit him at his factory. >> No one should be embarrassed if they can only buy a few items here or there. Believe me, the power of those purchases, not just in terms of moving commerce that way, but signaling to business that, gee this is a consumer interested in that, it's the most powerful thing any of us can do. >> This is a lot of yogurt. I'd say on a given week, these days, we're probably shipping close to six million cups of yogurt a week. >> At the end of the day, we have all the power. I really believe in the power of one. I exist because one person with one spoon, one at a time, have bought, you know, all these cups of yogurt. >> Gary Hirshberg was really onto something. It's overwhelming to think about making a huge amount of change in your diet, but that 10% idea? That struck me as something I could do. >> That's the organic one. We sell more of this one than the organic. >> What's the price difference? >> This is $12.98 a pound, and the all natural is $9.98. >> That's not that bad. It's not so intimidating if you do a little bit at a time. The key is not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I'm going to buy 10% more fresh, local and organic foods. >> A food patriot is not only somebody who dares to dream that it can be different, but it's someone who is willing to act on it, to really put themselves out there and make the change that they want to see happen. >> You guys filmed in all kinds of different places. You were at the University of Wisconsin, the Athletic Department. You went to a US congressman's office. It looked like you were at a Target at one point, some other stores. How taxing was that? Was that a clearance nightmare, just from that standpoint? It's difficult to film sometimes in those kind of places. >> Yeah, a documentary is mostly about access. Getting access is part of the challenge. If you really like getting into places and figuring out ways to film in areas that you're not necessarily going to see on screen all the time, that's a puzzle that's fun to play out in advance and then to work your way through. We build relationships with our subjects in films, and with the people who allow us into their locations. We don't do adversarial work so much. So it's fun. We really genuinely like the relationships, with this one exception here!
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>> Hey, what the-- We're done! Get outta here! Who was in charge of all that? Getting clearances, was that you as a producer, Jennifer? Was that yours? >> No, that was actually more Jeff. And then we have a production assistant at the office who was doing a lot of the backend stuff. But it is about relationships. With something like Food Patriots, because it isn't threatening and it's something that everyone can be a part of, if you call a store and say, we want to film this show about consumers making better choices, they're like, great! Film in my store. Everybody wanted-- We didn't come across anybody that didn't want to be in it, even the conventional farmers. >> Right, I was surprised how, it just seems like nobody said no to you guys. >> Because what their doing is-- You know, that's the way our food is grown. They're doing everything right. In conventional agriculture they are absolutely as conscientious as they could be. >> Sure. Talk a little bit about your music choice. I always feel like in independent films, I see quite a bit of them, it's tough to find good music and it's so important, especially in documentary, with pacing and complementing the story. Talk about your music choice for this film. >> I'm glad you brought that up. We worked with an absolutely brilliant editor named John Farbrother, who should be a co-director of this film. He was stunningly talented all the way through. We hired John before we started filming. John felt really attuned with this family and with this story. He picked the music. We listened to his choices. And this has never happened to me before. I've worked with composers to score documentaries. This music is by a lot of artists, I think 12 different ones. John found these tracks that worked. We didn't want to spend more time emphasizing music. We, however, did work with musicians who were food patriots, who said, we'd love to give you tracks. One of those groups was Umphrey's McGee, a really popular jam band. Their keyboardist liked the work so much he auctioned off his keyboard to give us the proceeds to help us continue. We are in touch with musicians, but our editor felt the tone and the spirit of this film really well. He picked these great tracks that we listen to and said, wow. >> It's always nice when I'm watching, and I'm eating terrible food and jeopardizing my health, but I'm still tapping my foot.
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It's very upbeat. Let's see another clip from Food Patriots. >> Victory Gardens were gardens where individuals had their plots, and they'd raise food for their own use. Many cities across the country, you know, mobilized, to figure out how they could start doing Victory Gardens. And Chicago in particular was really well positioned for success in the Victory Garden movement. 1943, 1500 community gardens, 14,000 children's gardens, and 250,000 thousand home gardens. We rocked it, essentially. We wanted to see what it would be like to revive the victory garden model from World War II. We built it on the site of an original Victory Garden. We launched it via Facebook and Twitter, and within five days, we had a community meeting with over 50 people. Those people donated money to this garden, built all the raised beds. I mean, it was theirs from the very beginning. Whenever I talk about it, I get all goose-bumpy from head to toe. I mean, it is such an exercise in community. >> It's fun to meet different people. This is my second year here, and every time I come there's somebody new here. >> We're total amateurs. But I've gotta say, you know, it's easier than I thought it was gonna be. I was a little bit afraid at first that it would be like a total failure. But we've already got a lot of good stuff out of it, so. >> You have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people that now have gotten a taste for community and growing their own food, and they're gonna have to take that somewhere, right? They're gonna be able to teach other people. I never thought I'd be part of a revolution, but I feel like I am. >> So okay, Jennifer, you talked about what you guys want to do once the film is done, is have screenings and have people discuss afterwards. We talked about that a couple days ago. But the key, as you know, with any Indie film or documentary of whatever, is getting people to the screenings. How do you do that? That's your mission now, it seems like, so how do you accomplish that? >> We really feel like this is an important film to watch with people who you eat with and people in your community. It's like a zero-depth pool, into the good food conversation. There's so many good resources out there that scare the bejesus out of ya. This isn't one of them. This is a way that makes anybody feel like it's okay to step a toe in from wherever they are on the continuum. We work with community organizations, churches, school groups, college campuses, anybody who is trying to organize and grow their movement, grow their community gardens. We did a screening with Amanda Joy and their group, and they can expand the tent, bring people into the conversation, have a screening, have a conversation afterwards and feature their own work in that community and how people connect to it. >> That's great. So, are chickens legal in Northbrook now? I was a little unclear. It seems like you guys kind of got shot down, but your talking about-- >> We so got shot down. >> People didn't want to hear the clucking at four o'clock in the morning? That's probably a tough sell I would imagine. What do you do in the winter? It's great to see all these farms in Chicago and some of these inner cities now, and it's a great idea to use up all that land, but do you do in the winter? Do people not have jobs? >> I'm so glad you're asking me, Pete. Because I'm the last person in the world you should be asking that question to. But I'm in this picture because I have chickens. My chickens are surviving and my chickens have been around now through some bitter cold and they still lay eggs. This is a frame that just sort of reminds everybody that anyone could be a food patriot. >> It is a very patriotic looking frame. >> Anyone can be in this picture. >> Here, see? >> This is quite an honor, I have to say. >> There you go.
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>> You're in the picture. >> We bring these to events and people get their picture taken. We put them up on social media. We're also doing a screening that's a virtual screening with Consumers Union and they'll invite all of their members. Then we'll have a live Twitter chat afterwards. So that's another way to kind of expand the community beyond bricks and mortar and walls. >> Put the social media to work. You guys had your sons in this and I noticed, as the film went on, they looked different ages. And then you see these gardens in Chicago growing. How long did this shoot take you, the whole production, was it years? It looked like it was substantial. Talk about that a little bit. >> This project has a unique origin. The seed of it actually is in Madison. I was told that a group of people on the South Side of Madison were going to come together and start a garden. I didn't think that sounded like a film, but a friend of mine in Madison said this could grow into something. They're going to try and build a school on this garden. They're going to try and have farms all around the building and kids growing food. I thought, well, that's years in the making. But if we at least have some footage of that seed, maybe we can come back to it. That's the genesis of this whole process. Jennifer got chickens around that time. It started to make us reflect on what food stories really are. In fact, everybody has a food story. It doesn't have to be changing you food toward healthier choices. It might be taking the worst choices possible, blowing up, and realizing, hey man, maybe this isn't my story after all. Your story can change at any point. We got really into the idea that people have food stories. That helped evolve the whole project over three-plus years now. Now other people are telling their food stories on the website and sharing their changes. >> It's surprising how many people have food stories. That's great. >> Who doesn't? >> Let's see another clip from Food Patriots. >> John Dettman was the strength and conditioning coach when Sam came to the University of Wisconsin. >> The plan is to place our new weight room and nutrition area within the confines of Camp Randall Stadium. The kids called him "The Dett-onator" and now he's actually tearing up part of the stadium in order to put a nutrition center in the middle of the weight room. >> Ultimately, our goal is to not only help our athletes academically and athletically, but, you know, to elicit some sort of a lifestyle change that would carry over into their lives when this experience at Wisconsin is over. We'll break you up. We'll break you guys up into groups right here. It's nice and air conditioned up there, so you'll be okay. I grew up in Algoma, Wisconsin, small town, basically a little outside of Green Bay. I grew up on a dairy farm. Growing up on a farm, we raised our own food. A lot of the things, we grew in the garden. We had chickens. We raised our own meat. We took milk out of the milk house. We didn't buy it from the store. If we wanted cream, we skimmed it off of the top of the milk jug. All right, you guys come with me. I'm in an environment where we train athletes to recover and fuel their bodies properly. And yet, I wound up being very disconnected from what food really was. I had a sort of a metamorphosis when I went to hear Michael Pollan speak at the Kohl Center here, about two and a half years ago. The thing that Michael Pollan talked about that night that resonated with me was the term he called "Food-like Substances." They're basically processed foods. They're, you know, highly refined carbohydrate, lots of sugars, lots of probably unhealthy fats, a lot of things that you wouldn't recommend for your family to consume. What I did is I went home that night and I found a pantry full of food-like substances. I needed to find a way to get food, real food, not only back into my family at my own home, but back into the environment that I worked in, which was training athletes. The other thing that we like to recommend is Greek yogurt over regular yogurt, because it's lower in sugar, higher in protein, and has less fat. So anything that has a cartoon character on it in the yogurt category we want to avoid. >> No cartoon characters. I can still watch The Simpsons though, right? Let me ask you this, like any independent film, you've got to find your budget. How do you do this? Tell other independent filmmakers out there how they get their budgets. Is it all privately funded or do you get Mr. Hirshberg to throw some yogurt money your way? How'd you raise your budget? >> It comes from different sources. You have crowd funding now, so you do a Kickstarter campaign. You're familiar with those. We also have had support from documentaries through the years because we do a lot of work in communities on the public engagement side. It isn't just funding for production. It's with the understanding that we create ground swells, and that the film is ground zero. The community around it creates a ground swell. The ground swells are for change. So while we have fun making movies to a certain extent, if they're not about your own family and your wife isn't in it, we spend a lot of time thinking about impact, social change and community building. That is, in and of itself, a way to raise funds. People care about things that they're invested in, and you invest in things you care about. >> It's a feel-good investment, I'd guess you'd say. >> We also work in partnership with organizations. You know, if a university brings the screening there's a little bit of a fee for that. We get a lot of individual contribution. That is mostly how we fund ourselves. We're a little unconventional for a film company. We're not really on the foundation radar so much. >> Okay. You guys kind of touched on this before. We have about 30 seconds left. Talk a little about your connections to Madison and this film's connection to Madison. It's very prevalent. >> Well, I'm a Badger. My son, you know, played football here. That farmers' market was very informative. >> That guy was great. Robert was a great character. >> Robert Pierce. These things all kind of came together. One of our funders is here who's been involved in our work with Ground Swell or a long time. As Jeff said, he introduced us to Badger Rock and the South Madison Farmer's Market. All of those things kind of came together. Gary Hirshberg, when we first met him, he was speaking at the Nelson Institute here. That's how we got that entry to him. That took us to New Hampshire and that whole, kind of, 10% change idea. >> It sounds like it all started here in Madison. >> It did, it did! >> You guys were great. Thanks for being here. I wish you a lot of luck with the film. Thanks for being on Director's Cut. And thank you for watching Director's Cut. For more information
on Food Patriots please go to
wpt.org and click on "Director's Cut." While you're there, send us an email or find out how to submit your film. I'm Pete Schwaba, and I am now officially off Twinkies. We'll see you next time on Director's Cut. I'm a parent. So, when I start to look at our athletes, I oftentimes see them more as other people's children, than athletes. Because of that, I think that's probably been one of my main motivations to try to evolve this program. They're actually other people's children, and they're gonna have children. How that process evolves for them, not that it's our responsibility, but it could be.
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