Best Of: 'Spider-Man' dir. Destin Daniel Cretton / Novelist Harriet Clark

From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today. What is happening to me? Did you miss me, Spidey? The film Spider-Man Brand New Day continues to break box office records after having the biggest U.S. opening weekend in history. Today we meet the film's director, Destin Daniel Cretton. Before Marvel, he worked in a group home for at-risk teens, an experience that shaped everything he's made since then and became the movie's short-term 12. Also, we hear from Harriet Clark. She was 11 months old when her mother was a getaway driver of a robbery. The robbers were members of a radical offshoot of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. For 37 years, Clark spent Saturdays visiting her mother in prison. She figured out how to mother me in some of the most difficult conditions possible. That's coming up. on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. At the end of the last Spider-Man movie, No Way Home, back in 2021, Peter Parker makes a choice. To save the people he loves, he had everyone on Earth forget he ever existed. My guest today, filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton, picks up the story years later in the latest Spider-Man, Brand New Day. Peter is still Spider-Man, but years after everyone he loved, has forgotten about him, he's living almost completely alone. And when strange things begin happening to his powers, there's no one in his life who knows him well enough to even know something is wrong. I'm losing my mind. I am totally out of control. I gotta fix whatever. This is right now. That's Tom Holland as Peter Parker in Spider-Man, Brand New Day, and it opened with the biggest debut in box office history. Director Destin Daniel Cretton came to Marvel from a very different kind of filmmaking. His first job out of college was at a group home for at-risk teenagers. He turned that experience into the 2013 film Short Term 12, which featured young actors Brie Larson, Rami Malek, and Lakeith Stanfield. Cretton went on to direct The Glass Castle and Just Mercy, about attorney Bryan Stevenson's work Defending Men on Death Row. His Marvel debut was Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, the studio's first film with an Asian lead and an Asian director. He also created the Marvel series Wonder Man. Destin Daniel Cretton, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. Okay, 23 million people went to see this movie the first weekend, and a movie that's been around for a long time, and a movie that's been around for a long time, and a movie that's been around for a long time, and a movie like this, I mean, it has enormous expectations. There are, of course, the studio expectations, because this is a franchise, it's a brand, and in many ways, these stories have to carry each other from film to film. But there's something in particular that you have to bring to the film as well, your sensibilities as a director, knowing that you're stepping into an established story. Was there a moment or any time during the beginning of the process where you said, this is the film, and this is my. my stamp, my place in it? There were a few moments in the development process where I felt like I now understand the heart of this story. One was in the writing process. We were trying to really understand what the internal story was of Peter Parker. And I was reflecting a lot on my 20s when I left university and when I didn't know what to do with my life. And I was reflecting a lot on my 20s when I left university. And when I didn't know what to do with my life. I didn't really have a real direction in life when a lot of my friends were going off to other things. And it felt like a lot of people were moving on without me. It was easy at that time to feel completely alone. That was around the time that I was working at that group home for at-risk teenagers. And when I think about that particular time in my life, I don't know, I just felt like that was Peter. That was the stage where. You're looking back at the things and the places that you've been, and you don't know how to define them to move forward. And so to be able to look at Peter and watch him redefine kind of the pain and the things that he's been through and actually use them as part of the things that make him strong was a very therapeutic experience. I actually want to play a clip. It's a scene where Peter Parker, as we said, he's been erased from the memory of everyone who loved him. And he crashes a house party thrown by MJ, the girl he loved, who was played by Zendaya, and Ned, his best friend, played by Jacob Batalon. And neither of them knows who he is. It's the first time we kind of see them all together. And it's a real trippy experience because, you know, of course he knows and we know the whole backstory, but they don't know who he is. And Peter is, at that moment, unbelievably lonely. And he loves these two people so much. You know, he's been following their lives on social media and he's at this party and he sees MJ and she speaks first. Let's listen. God, there's like 50 people in our apartment. Statistically speaking, that means at least two of them are sociopaths, which is kind of cool. Nice flowers. Oh, they're a housewarming gift. Really? Yeah. Oh, okay. Most people just brought beer and chips. It's very. Very nice. I'm MJ. I'm a. I'm a. Maynard. A Maynard. Oh, you two don't know each other? No, I'm a neighbor. Friendly neighbor. That cough, that's a scene from Spider-Man Brand New Day, directed by my guest today, Destin Daniel Cretton. Of course, the friendly neighbor is a play off of the whole Spider-Man brand new day. Spider-Man franchise. But this is kind of what you're talking about, about those growing pains of getting to the next stage of life. Because, of course, this is the device where they don't know him and that's a big part of the storyline. But it's also something that is very ordinary, too, where you grow out of your friends at a certain age in life. Maybe the people that you have kind of been on the journey with, you're now kind of, you know, separating. There's a certain grief that lives in that. Mm-hmm. And it also just feels. It's so, to me, so relatable. At that stage in life, I remember being in those parties. I remember being surrounded by people who all seem like they have it together and seem like they are having the time of their lives. And I remember certain times feeling very alone in the middle of it. But it was really. It was actually really fun to explore that. And, I mean, Tom playing awkward, there's just nothing better than watching Tom play an awkward scene. Yeah? Why? How? Yeah. He's just. His comedic timing with his awkwardness, I think, is one of the most brilliant things about him. It's so relatable. It's not just comedy. It's just like a feeling and situation that I just feel like I've been at. This movie also introduces Jean Grey into Peter Parker's world. And for people who don't know her, Jean is a mutant who can enter people's minds. She can hear their thoughts, live inside their memories. And she is one of the X-Men. And, you know, so everyone is talking about this. It's like, oh, okay, this is setting this up for me, for the next movie here. But I've read that it was actually the other way around. It wasn't the studio who was pushing you for this. This was something you actually wanted for yourself. You wanted her to be a part of this storyline. Talk to me about why she was important to introduce, to kind of reinforce all of these themes that, you were so interested in exploring. When we were writing this movie, we wanted an antagonist that would be a real reflection of Peter Parker and where he is in his emotional journey. And we went through a lot of potential villains. And I cannot think of a better reflection than where we landed. I was really interested in having our antagonist be somebody who is younger than, Peter, who really represents, in many ways, what young people are going through right now, what young people are feeling. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton. He directed the new movie, Spider-Man, Brand New Day, which is in theaters now. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to my conversation. Let's get back to my conversation with filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton, director of the new movie, Spider-Man, Brand New Day. He also directed Just Mercy and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and created the Marvel series, Wonder Man. His breakout film was Short Term 12, about the staff and teenagers inside of a short-term group home, drawn from the two years he spent working in one after college. Let's talk about this time that you were working in this group home. There's a story that you tell about how cocky you felt as a young man when you got this job. You thought like, these kids are going to love me. I'm going to be in some ways a savior. And you got a rude awakening. I sure did. What happened instead? It was a job that really threw a lot of things back into my face. It was by far the most difficult experience that I had up until that point and also the most rewarding. I grew up on Maui. I didn't realize how sheltered I was until I was working at that group home. I just was not exposed to the type of experiences that these young people had gone through. I also wasn't ready for the people that they had become because of their experiences. These young teenagers were young. In many ways, much more mature than I was. But then they were also very, you know, they had very real, real pain from their past just right under the surface that they were always dealing with. So it was very quickly a very humbling experience for me. I want to actually play a clip from the film. And it was your second film. Short Term 12 is the name of the facility. In the film. And the kids stay there until they find somewhere else to live or until they turn 18 and age out. And in this clip, the scene is Rami Malek. He plays Nate, a new staffer on his first day. Is he a proxy for you? Yes, he is. He definitely is. Okay. Yeah. And he is talking with Brie Larson's character, Grace, who has been working there for a while and shows him the ropes. Let's listen. These are the files on our kids if you want to see what kind of crap they've been through. How long do they stay here? Supposedly less than a year, but we have a few that have been here a little over three. We just keep them until the county figures out where they're going to go next. Tom, go brush your teeth. Remember, you're not their parent. You're not their therapist. You are here to create a safe environment. And that's it. Got it. And since you're new, they're going to try and test you, see what they can get away with. So just say no for a while. No. Okay. Kind of got to be an a**hole before you can be their friend. You're going to be fine. That was Rami Malek and Brie Larson in the film Short Term 12, directed by my guest today, Destin Daniel Cretton. When you took that job, what were your aspirations? You know, I graduated with a communication degree and I was making short films. I would do a short film once a year and I would just save my money. So I worked at a group home for two or three years. I taught high school video production. I worked at a hotel putting up their media, their projectors and things. I had a lot of odd jobs to pay the bills, but it was all really a way to just pay the bills while I made movies as a hobby. Okay. Because you were very clear at that time that you wanted to make movies. I was very clear that I wanted to keep making movies as a hobby. I wasn't really chasing it as a career. I feel very surprised and lucky to be where I am. I tried moving up to LA early on, but I found it to be a little too overwhelming. And so when I moved back to San Diego, where I went to school, it was also an admission. To myself that I was not going to make it in the industry. I was going to go back and just try to find a way to do what I loved and continue to do it without getting paid for it. So I didn't see that as a failure. I saw it as like a way to survive psychologically as an artist. Mm-hmm. I want to switch gears to talk about another film of yours. First off, I just want to say thank you for just. I watched that with my children during the pandemic. And surprisingly, I think it's surprising for me that they still reference that sometimes. And for people who don't know it, it's based on Bryan Stevenson's memoir about his work defending men on death row in Alabama. And this scene features Jamie Foxx as Walter McMillan. And Walter is a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Alabama. And Michael B. Jordan plays Bryan Stevenson. And at the time, he's a young lawyer just out of Harvard who has taken on this case. And the two are meeting for the first time in the visiting area of the prison. And Walter basically tells Bryan Stevenson, I don't really trust that you can help me and get me off death row. Let's listen. Rich boy from Harvard, you don't know what it is down here when you're guilty from the moment you're born. And you buddy up with these white folks and make them laugh and try to make them like you, whatever that is. And you say, yes, sir, no, ma'am. But when it's your turn, they ain't got to have no fingerprints, no evidence. And the only witness they got made the whole thing up. And none of that matter when all y'all think is, is I look like a man who could kill somebody. But that's not what I think. You know how many people have been freed from Alabama death row? None. What make you think you're going to change that? I ain't doing this again. Mr. McMillan, we're done here. Mr. McMillan, please. I'm here to help. That was Jamie Foxx's Walter McMillan and Michael B. Jordan, who played Bryan Stevenson. What is it about filmmaking that's your language, that is your way to express? Because you're touching on something with these people, especially Bryan Stevenson, who just recently he had this, he was talking about how this moment that we're in is a moment where we are taking the record. It's narrative change. It's through storytelling that we're able to make change in this generation, in this moment. And I'm just wondering for you, what is it particularly about filmmaking that is your language? I grew up on Maui, a small island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And I found connection to the outside world in movie theaters. As a kid, I would watch many movies with my dad, with our family. And that is how I traveled. That is how I was exposed to other cultures. That's how I understand how kids grew up in high school on the mainland. And one of my biggest takeaways was not how I was raised, but how I was raised. And I think that's one of the things that's so important to me. Not how different we are, but how similar we are emotionally. The things that, you know, when I watched E.T. and the things that I see this young man going through in his family, in his school, were things that I went through. And I have always found movies to be a way of peering into other lives that I would never otherwise experience, to peer into other worlds. And find those things that still connect us. And I feel lucky that I went from being a spectator to then just kind of getting obsessed with doing this as a young kid. And I think over time, I have just become, I don't know, become very addicted to the process of exploring a subject, of jumping into it and understanding it. force us out of the house. And because of that, we had to find our own ways of playing make-believe or making up plays or making up dance routines or fight choreography. And then we'd perform it for my mom. And we used to do that when I was really young. And then around 11 or 12, my grandma loaned me her VHS camera. And I got, that's when I got addicted to making movies. And so my mom wouldn't let us watch TV, but she allowed us to make as much stuff as we wanted. So that's when I started making movies with my siblings. And honestly, the process has not changed. We would make a, we would spend all day making, making a short film or a commercial or whatever. And then I'd put it together. And then I'd make a movie. And then I'd make a and then we'd have a little premiere, but the premiere was just like my mom or my mom and dad. But that, that feeling remains the same. I'm still like kind of buzzing and have those, those butterflies in my stomach before I'd show it. And then my mom claps and it's like, that's the full process. And that's still the same creative process that I go through. And your mom, she didn't allow comics in the house. Nope. The lore is you had one little beat up Spider-Man comic. Yeah. That was more from my, that, that my grandpa had some comics. Um, and, and of course my, my friends, you know, right, right around the time I was 10 was like, um, that was like the Todd McFarlane days. And I remember, I remember those Spider-Man comics, um, and, and sneaking. I, I have a memory of, of sneaking one, um, that was potentially, yeah, my grandpa's house or, or it was from, from one of my friends, but it was like, that was Spawn and Spider-Man were kind of the big thing when I was like 10 or 11 years old. Do you know why your, why your mom didn't want you to, to read those or you and your siblings? I think there's, I mean, my, I think she was, she was, anytime she would see something that was violent, she wasn't into it. So fighting wasn't cool. You know, sexiness, probably she, she wasn't into that when I was a kid. Um, so, and it, it goes hand in hand with her being pretty protective of the, the things that we would consume in any type of media, TV, movies. Um, but, you know, as you, when you're a kid, you find ways to, to sneak. Your Marvel debut happened in 2021, directing Shang-Chi. The first Asian superhero. And this was, you said this was the first time in your professional career that you walked into a space and everyone was Asian, just about. Describe what that was like for you and what that meant for you at that particular moment in your career. Yeah, it was one of those things I didn't really know I was missing until it happened. And when I, when I stepped onto set once, you know, once all of our, our stunt performers were there and all of our actors were on set and it was kind of that first day on set. It, it was, I mean, it was cool. It was just like this, there was something about set that just felt homey, that felt so comfortable, um, to be able to have conversations with people that fully understand what my grandma is like and what, what growing up, um, in a, in an Asian culture is like. So I didn't know that that aspect of myself could be a part of my filmmaking. You know, I always sort of compartmentalized my upbringing and my culture and growing up in Hawaii as sort of a, a separate thing than, uh, my experience as a filmmaker until I was on set for Shang-Chi. Um, it was very special. You know, in addition to this theme of family in your films, there's also something about young people who feel alone and have had to deal with the loss of loved ones. Um, and that theme is in short-term 12 and Spider-Man, Peter and the young villain in the movie. Um, also in Shang-Chi, he went through the same loss and violence. Um, that also seems like that's a pretty, pretty strong through line. Yes, I agree. Is there a reason that you, you, keep coming back to making films about that? Maybe this is true for many artists. The experience I think of my childhood was made up of so much joy and also quite a lot of pain and hardship. The experience that I had, uh, having a, a, a very complicated relationship with my, with my dad who passed away a few years ago, um, was an experience that many times left me feeling very isolated and alone. But really the, the, the thing that carried me through was my relationship with my siblings. And they have always been there when I was, at my darkest moments in life. And so I don't know, somehow that's probably just ingrained in me somewhere and it just, and it comes out subconsciously when I'm writing or it is, uh, a story that I, I personally don't feel I will ever get old examining in different ways. Um, but yeah. Can you share more about what you mean about the complicated relationship? I think in many ways, most of my movies have something to do with my dad. My dad was a very passionate man. I don't like to diagnose people, but I think we all suspect that he was undiagnosed bipolar on some level. Um, he was very passionate, very wonderful to be around, very loving in moments and could also be very dark. And very angry. And it just depends which dad you are going to get on the day. You know, I grew up along with my siblings, learning to navigate those emotions, those real intense peaks and valleys. And when my dad would come home, I learned to become very sensitive to what state he was in. I have found over the course of my, career that I, I have so much to thank from my experience with my dad. I am so grateful that he, he really was the person who instilled in me, my love of movies. I mean, while my mom wouldn't really let us watch TV, my dad, who was a big action fan and he loved Clint Eastwood, he loved Schwarzenegger, he loves Stallone. I would hear the sounds of, of guns and explosions going off downstairs late at night. And he would be watching the latest Schwarzenegger movie or whatever. And I would sneak downstairs and pretend I was going to the bathroom. And then I'd go and hide behind the couch and watch him, you know, as he's watching the running man or total recall, or I have some of my fondest memories with him. I going and we watched the fugitive together in a theater. And that was the first time I saw him. And I was my first like PG 13 movie. And it was so exhilarating when we, when we came out of the theater. I mean, this was so my dad, we came out of the theater and my dad just raised both fists in the air and screamed the fugitive, but that's the type of like passion he had, you know? And, and so I have those memories. Um, but then I also have a dad who was often depressed. I come home and just want to sleep or not talk or, um, and then there was, there was also the, the angry side who could be very intense and very scary. So aside from my love of movies, my experience with my dad did other things for me. It really allowed me to not be afraid of any person, no matter how intense they are, no matter how quote unquote powerful they believed themselves to be. I feel like nobody compares to the experience that I had with my dad, but it also allowed me to subconsciously create the skill of feeling other people's emotions, which I, I find I use all the time as a director. The moment an actor steps on set, I feel like I just know what state they're in and I know what they need. I've learned how to bring down a very intense situation. I do feel like he was a very wonderful and troubled man, but I am so grateful to have had him as my dad. Destin, thank you so much for this conversation. It's been great to meet you and great to talk about all of this. Thank you for having me. It's such a lovely conversation. Destin Daniel Cretton, his new movie, Spider-Man, Brand New Day, is in theaters now. Coming up, we hear from writer Harriet Clark. Her mom was a getaway driver in a robbery and a member of the radical group The Weather Underground. Her new novel is based on her experience visiting her mother in prison for about 37 years. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has our next interview. Here she is. One of the last actions of the extremist left-wing groups with roots in the 1960s was the Brinks robbery of. 1981. Two militant groups, one an offshoot of the Weather Underground, the other an offshoot of the Black Panthers, robbed a Brinks armored truck carrying over a million and a half dollars. It ended in a shootout in which one security guard and two police officers were killed. Judith Clark was a getaway driver who was sentenced to 75 years to life. It meant leaving behind her 11-month-old daughter. That daughter, Harriet Clark, is my guest. She's just. Harriet published a novel that draws from her own experiences being raised by her grandparents and visiting her mother in prison every weekend for most of the 37 years her mother was incarcerated. It required traveling about an hour from New York City to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison for women. Harriet knew her mother would never get out, but she did get out after being granted clemency and released on parole in 2019. Harriet Clark's new novel is called The Hill, a reference to the prison in the novel being on top of a hill. It's her first novel. Harriet Clark, welcome to Fresh Air and congratulations on the book. You're an incredible writer and I'm glad that you wrote this. It is an absolute trip and thrill to be speaking with you and I'm so grateful to be on the show. Thank you. I'm honored to hear you say that. I want to start with a reading that I think will help set up your story and your mother's story. And this is from pretty early in the book when Susanna, the child, the main character, is leaving the dentist's office with her grandfather and her grandfather has just had one of his teeth capped. So this is as they're leaving. My mother had robbed a bank, the first woman said. No, the second woman said. My mother had expropriated funds for the purpose of revolutionary struggle. The woman's tone suggested that she was possibly defrauding her mother. She said, no, the second woman said. And possibly mocking her. When my grandfather emerged dazed and swollen, it did not seem right to press for explanation. But he must have heard what the woman said or the anesthesia must have caused his mind to wander because on the drive home he spoke to me for the first time about my mother's crime. A misguided attempt, he called it, to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Then an elaborate explanation of the insurance mechanisms of banks and further clarification that many people had money in banks, not just the rich. When this lecture got into the weeds, he shifted gears into another regarding imperialism, racism, militarism, also materialism. All the things he said that he and my mother opposed and that, he assured me, I opposed as well. His face was very close to the steering wheel. Your mother took it too far. How old were you when you first learned why your mother was in prison? How was it explained to you? I don't have a memory of coming into awareness of my mother's crime. It must have been explained to me, but I don't recall who explained it. My mother made clear from when I was very young that she was in prison because she had been part of something that cost three men their lives. So I think I knew from the beginning that she was in prison. I think I knew from the beginning that before I even knew what I knew, that people had died and that my mother was in prison because of that. And she, in that sense, always raised me to understand that in some ways she was guilty and that was why she was in prison and that she would always be there. But I'm not actually sure who explained to me the details of the crime. When you found out that she was part of a revolutionary group and that the robbery was supposed to be a crime, what did you think? To support the revolutionary cause. What did you make of that? Did you know enough about politics when you learned that? Did you know enough about radical movements and where this robbery fit in? Yes and no. I, unlike Susanna, I continued to have a relationship to the women in my mother's collective. I had a half-sister and so I returned to that collective every three weeks. For the weekend. And they were still very actively political. And so I did grow up inside a far more political atmosphere than Susanna does. She's really in the aftermath of politics. And I grew up inside active organizing. So I think I did understand something about the particular movements and commitments they had. But again, you know, for 40 years, every conversation I ever had with my mother occurred in a crowded room that was surveyed by officers or on a phone line that was recorded. And so we didn't have the privacy to talk about some of the things that might have been hardest to talk about. And for most of my life, you know, my mother had to make prison a place I wanted to come to. You know, our visits had to be enjoyable. And so in that sense, too, it was very rare that we were sitting there getting into the nitty-gritty of her crime, especially when I was young. You know, fundamentally, she was trying to play with me and have fun with me and let me feel close to her. The prison was like your home or your second home because you were there every Saturday. Susanna, in your novel, vows to keep returning there for the rest of her mother's life since the assumption was she was going to be there for the rest of her life. And that gives Susanna a sense of security, of routine, of safety, and of purpose, and of course, of connection with her mother. Did you feel that way, too? I mean, yes and no. I think that there is a way that the prison was a holding container for me and is meant to be a holding container for Susanna. I think in the prison, she's existing inside the prison. And so I think that there is a way that the prison was a holding container for her mother. And so I think that wasn't quite as steady as Susanna's is, though I do think that I had an experience of peacefulness by virtue of the fact that I knew nothing was ever going to change. My mother had been in there as far back as I could remember, and she was going to be in there forever. And so that felt like a kind of steady peace for me and made me feel different than the great difficulties the kids around me were in. Was it a good feeling to know she would be there forever? I mean, it was prison. On the other hand, she was always there. She was always waiting for you. You always knew where to find her. Yes, I think that I did experience myself as having a peace that the children around me did not have. Because, you know, most children lose their mothers to prison within their active awareness. You know, they had a mother at home. Most women in prison were the primary caregivers for their children. Most women in prison are mothers. And so they lost their mothers. And that is obviously an incredible trauma that I felt fundamentally spared. And most kids, even though their mothers often had long sentences, their mothers were actively trying to come home. And I never envied that. It seemed like another form of torture to me, the way these kids were always hoping, you know, they would at the end of visiting hours, they would say, will you be there this weekend for my recital? And some of the women would say, I'll try, you know, or will you be able to be? Will you be there for my graduation? There was always this possibility on the horizon that to me seems so torturous. And so I felt grateful to be spared a certain kind of hope and waiting. As part of my research for this interview, I read an article in the New York Times from early in your mother's incarceration. And it was a profile of her. And it describes her as reluctant to have been incarcerated in the Brinks robbery because you were a baby. But she felt she needed to prove her commitment to the revolutionary cause. She was in the getaway car. She didn't see the shooting. The money was thrown into the car. And the Brinks robbery, she was in the getaway car. And the Brink's truck was carrying like 1.6 million dollars. I don't know how much was actually stolen. And she portrays herself as a very kind of insecure driver and a really bad getaway driver and doesn't really know where she's going. And I think maybe gets in a little accident at the end. Yes. So did you read that? I don't know how much she told you. I don't know how much she wanted to talk about participating in the robbery and being the getaway driver. So like, the more you learn, how did it affect your opinion of your mother? I mean, one thing I'll say is that my mother was a getaway car driver. She wasn't the getaway car driver for the primary van that was used. But I worry that I do share certain qualities with Susanna in terms of a kind of willful unknowingness. I mean, I have made myself unknowable. I don't understand better the details of my mother's crime. But one of the things I had wanted to dramatize in the book, you know, there's a chapter where the grandmother who believes you should look things in the face, you know, she's always saying to Susanna, do you go out of your way to know nothing? And Susanna keeps saying, yes, you know, and that's a lot what the book is about, you know, what feels so threatening about knowing things about our loved ones, like knowing their mistakes or their sufferings or their histories. You know, in the novel, the grandmother really doesn't want the burden, because it feels like the burden of raising Susanna after Susanna's mother's in prison. Is that the vibe you got from your grandmother that she wanted to be free, but she was tied down taking care of you? You know, the older I get, the sadder it is to me how little I knew my grandmother, not only because she died a month later, but she died a month later. She died a month later. Almost 30 years ago. But also because I really knew her in the wake of the two greatest tragedies of her life, which were her daughter's life imprisonment, and then her husband, her great love's death. And so I think I knew my grandmother in incredibly grief-stricken years. And so my somewhat embattled with the life she had. But it's hard for me to source exactly where those feelings came from. And I will say the grandmother in the book is not my grandmother. But also, the fundamental thing I had wanted to dramatize in that book was, you know, my grandmother did not want the life we had. And to some extent, I did. I loved my grandmother, and she felt like my whole life. And so, you know, there's a moment in the chapter where the grandmother is fantasizing about how their life should be if the mother hadn't committed the crime. And Susanna says, I want to live with you. And the grandmother says, then you're wishing a man dead. And I think that was a real conundrum to me in my life, that sense of how can I value my life if it's based off of a tragedy and suffering by so many other people. And so that was one thing that I. I felt I was trying to look at in the chapter. And also, the fact that my grandmother and I did have this difference, because she always knew we were inside a tragedy. She always felt this should not be as it is. And I fundamentally did accept the life I had, and still found much of it meaningful and delightful, even. I recently interviewed Zaid Ayers, who's the son of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn. And I said, I want to live with you. And she said, I want to live with you. And she said, I want to live with you.