It’s Thanksgiving and I know it’s Thanksgiving because of the attempt at a Thanksgiving meal that I’m being served. Slimy green beans from a can, potatoes that must’ve originated in a box, a roll with cranberry sauce. There were some other things–less traditional–because I think they’re trying to fill my plate. I’m a vegetarian, there was no turkey.

It’s Thanksgiving and I’m in the ICU alone. My nearest family is 1,500 miles away. All of my friends are scattered throughout the state and the country visiting their own families. I move my food around on my plate with a fork and then give up, push the green lunch tray in front of me and crawl back into the covers.

I was thirteen the first time that I remember the feeling that was later labeled depression. It started as adolescent dissatisfaction with life. I waited for the phone to ring while simultaneously crafting the excuse that I would use to decline the invite–whatever it might be. I had this recurring experience when I was about that age. I lived in this bedroom with my two sisters, and it was large. Our three beds were spread out across this–i mean it felt like it took up the whole upstairs of the house. Had green shag carpeting–dark green–and lime green walls. I lie on the bed at night and the hallway light was on but the bedroom light was off, so the way that the hallway lights fell on the walls made it feel like I was sinking into the bed. Like everything around me was getting bigger and more pronounced and I was getting smaller and smaller until I was just barely visible.

In the lunchroom, I’d just quickly grab one of those small chocolate cartons of milk, and go to the hallway, and if I wanted to talk to anybody I’d talk to the lunchroom aides. And the small joys that existed at that time were the ice cream cart, which surely Michelle Obama has nixed from school lunchrooms. But there was an ice cream cart that came–I think once a week. And the elderly lady that ran it would chat with me while she dumped one scoop into my cup, and then I piled on top of that every possible topping that was available to me. But other than that there was a dark heavy cloud that hung over me constantly.

And as time went by it got heavier, and heavier, and lower, and lower, so that if you looked out it just blocked the view of anything that you could possibly imagine was in the distance. I figured out a way to leave the group of friends I had at the time, cause they just knew me too well, and I found my way into the background of the popular crowd. And the thing about the popular crowd is you don’t actually have to be vulnerable or real, and they don’t have to know you. You just have to go to some necessary parties–pretend to participate. And then you fake it, and it works. I basically quit everything–most things that mattered at the time. There were piano lessons and because I was from the midwest I was an ice skater. There was gymnastics, there were other things.

And when I thought about wanting to die, I would hold on to these little things that I had scheduled into the future. So, for example, I had Dillon tickets one summer. And I remember saying to myself, I’ve got to make it through summer cause I should see Dillon before I die, obviously. And then there was like this sense of obligation sort of mixed with a tiny bit of hope. So, I would think, well, I should graduate high school, and I did.

And then I moved to Montana and the relationship that brought me here sort of ran it’s course, and I was alone. And the more time I spent alone the harder it got to hold onto those things, those Dillon shows, those–you know, obligations. And I spent a lot of time in my seventh story apartment of this very building which at the time was nice, but far less fancy than this. And I would look out at the city, down Higgins, out at the Clark Fork, into Caras Park, and I would see the life of this city that I loved. And I would feel empty. And I sat in the open window of that apartment, which I’m–this is probably still true–there are no screens on those windows and it’s seven stories up. And I wasn’t–that obviously didn’t bother me, but it’s just weird now that I think about it. And I looked out, and I thought–I saw these people like engaging in a world, and I just couldn’t figure out what it was that they were feeling that made them want to do that because I wasn’t feeling that. And on the days that I felt like leaving the house, I’d walk aimlessly around downtown with my nose in a book. And the books were Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and you don’t have to tell me that those aren’t the best choices when you’re already losing it.

And it became a daily or nearly daily occurrence where I thought about dying, and I thought about ways to die. And the heavy cloud that hovered over me was so pervasive, and I couldn’t see anything into the distance. And the days that it wasn’t emptiness, it was pain. And then I decided I couldn’t think of any other way to make it stop, and I was sort of done trying to figure that out. So I tried to die, and when I woke up in the ICU, and a few days later it was Thanksgiving. I wasn’t feeling particularly thankful. I was exhausted, and the idea of going out into the world and trying to figure out how to do this, how to engage, how to connect, was so overwhelming, and so ridiculously frustrating.

But I got discharged, and I went home to my parents house. And my parents house is the perfect midwestern home. The lawn is manicured so gorgeously, and the white couch and the white carpeting is so perfect and so clean. And the piano–which is constantly dusted but never played–displays all the pictures and all the things a perfect midwestern family has in their home. And we didn’t talk about it, not really, not directly. And I stayed in the bedroom that’s just across the hall from my parents. Which is funny, because it’s not where I normally stay. It was clear they wanted for me to be close. And I put records on really loudly on my headphones. I listened to To Ramona, over and over, until the piercing harmonica was painful because I wanted to feel something. And I read and I wrote letters, and I tried to sleep.

And then one day I came across this search history in my mother’s computer, and it said suicide, depression, and I’m pretty sure it said, cure for depression. If there is a magic wand she wanted to find it, so she could wave it. I eventually convinced my parents that I was Ok enough that they could buy me a return ticket home to Montana. That I would be better here than I was with them. And when I got off the plane I was a little bit better. Not because my mother waved a magic wand, or because I found one, but because I had to be. It became a daily practice to find the times when the cloud lifted just a tiny bit. And then take in that breath of fresh air and look at whatever I could see that just was barely in front me, and I did that, and it’s working.

And this is where the story ends if I tell it ten years ago, or five years ago, or two, but because I’m telling it tonight it doesn’t end here. Because then my friend Mikey died, and the pain of that was unbearable and confusing. It was the first time in my adult life that I saw suicide from the perspective of someone left behind. And Mikey was a husband and a dad, and like a wicked smart hilarious guy. And I know everyone says all of the good things after somebody dies, but this time it’s true. And I felt all of the empathy that I was going to feel you know, that I knew that I could imagine his pain, and I could imagine the emptiness, and I could imagine the desperation of wanting to go. But then I also felt angry, I felt angry that he couldn’t access all of the things that I couldn’t access when I chose to go. His family, the beautiful faces of the people who loved him, all the things everybody says to you about why you should stay. I felt angry that he couldn’t access that, and I felt angry that he was gone. And that was really confusing because I only wanted to feel the empathy.

And so all of a sudden my mother’s magic wand, and the people who said to me, “You know but don’t you want to stay for me, and aren’t you so grateful?” It all came flooding back to me, and it didn’t seem so fucking weird, and so selfish. And there’s not a lot I can do about that. There’s still not a lot I can do about it, all I can do is get off the stage, hug my people, and stay. Thank you.

Hi, guys. So, a few years ago I decided I was going to do a race, and I’m not the type to do races, so this was unusual, but I had a crush on an Australian, and he wanted to do the race so I did too. It was a good decision.

So, this race was unusual. It was at night, and it was a snowshoe race–or a skiing race–and it was across a frozen Lake Superior. So I was sort of getting in deep–I didn’t realize it. The day of the race I actually wasn’t speaking to the Australian anymore. We had sort of fallen out, but I decided I still wanted to do the race.

So, I drove five hours to Lake Superior. I was pissed at a friend, so I fumed the whole way. And when I got there I couldn’t find parking, and I–it just seemed very chaotic–I didn’t really know how to do a race. I put snowshoes on for the first time in my life, and I think I peed on myself in the porta potty. So, I was not feeling the race. I don’t know if it was a–a grand gesture is what was in my mind–but I kind of figured I’m not going to do it. I know I drove five hours, but I don’t want to do it. And I’m going to go look at the starting line, and I am going to bid it adieu, and go find a hotel and sleep really well.

And so I trudged on the frozen lake in my snowshoes for the first time, and kind of followed the crowd–because I think that’s what you do in races. And I was looking for the starting line, and I think it took about ten or fifteen minutes, and there was no starting line–but there was a mile marker–and I had made it about a mile into the race. And I was too embarrassed to turn around, so I just kept going.

And I love telling that story because it took me hours to do this race. It was a 10K, I’d never worn snowshoes before, I was alone, and I finished it, and it was awesome. And I tell people this, and they’re like, “You’re so brave”, and “That was great”, and I’m like, “But it was an accident!” And I love that. So, I did this race when I was living in Minneapolis, and it was–I think it was in 2014.

I grew up in the middle of Montana on a farm, and I think I sort of had a certain understanding of loneliness because of it. And I became very interested in people, and developing relationships with people, and getting inside somebody else’s head that wasn’t mine. So moving to the big city of Minneapolis was a big deal for me. It was an experience unlike anything I had had before. And I loved it.

I mostly loved it because there were a lot of guys there that I could date, and I did. I had an online profile, and I dated a lot of people, and I sort of met the city and developed into my twenties through all of these dates and these relationships. And that was really important to me. That’s kind of–that’s what I wanted for myself–and especially for my twenties.

I knew that the town that I came from in Montana–it’s Lewistown–maybe some of you have been there. (Cheers) Oh my God, I’m shocked. It’s a town of 6,000 people so–and it’s a retirement community, and there’s a lot of farming around there. So, I just couldn’t myself living there. I didn’t think that it was a place that you lived in the prime of your life. It was a place to live if you wanted to raise a family, or raise cats. So, I wasn’t ready for that. So, I was really determined to at least–I love my family, I love Montana–and I wanted to probably move back eventually, but not until I found a partner. So, I wasn’t going to.

And then, life happened–as it happens to a lot of us. And my sister who had been struggling with drug addiction, for the majority of her life, ended up overdosing on my family’s farm. And I had no choice, I felt like I need to be around the family. I needed to reconnect with my roots, and within a month of her death, I moved back home. So, it was a big change. I think in my head it was sort of like the end of my twenties, and I was only twenty-four, and that was very scary for me. It was hard to accept that at a time when I felt I should be exciting–and I wanted to date a lot, and I wanted to be immersed in a culture–that I was stuck in a town where the biggest news the week I moved back was the Chinese buffet, that it had reopened. And there was so much rejoicing! And I couldn’t–the week before–the month before I’d been in Minneapolis, and Obama was visiting, and it was like the same energy in Lewistown. Everybody was so excited.

So, it was such an adjustment. Even though I grew up there I just–I wasn’t ready for that. So, this all happened roughly a year ago, and I spent the last year maybe adjusting my expectations or realizing opportunity. When I moved home to central Montana–Lewistown, by the way, is the very exact geographical center of Montana. So we’re on all corners, right in the middle of everything. Living here I decided it would be a good idea to start a blog. Just like a private online journal, and I titled it Stuck in a Sneeze, because I felt like I was in that space where you kind of realize you had to sneeze so you look at the light. And then you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and somebody else talks to you and you’re still just waiting–waiting for something to happen. You know either you want the sneeze to happen, or you want the sneeze to go away, but you’re just kind of stuck in that middle area that’s uncomfortable. And that’s how I felt a lot of the time living in Lewistown. My twenties were over, and I was waiting for the next best thing–something to begin, basically.

I think when you’re in a point where you have no options you have to get creative. People ask me how I survive in a town that’s listed–not even kidding–on epodunk.com–and you get creative. There are about seven sit down restaurants. So I now am learning how to cook. Which is really great. I don’t go out clubbing, but I do subscribe to Club W. Which gives me wine every month, and I don’t–my social life really revolves around my family’s business. which is what I work for. We have a manufacturing company. It’s very interesting as it turns out. So, I hang out with my friends there, and I get to play bingo with my mom every Tuesday, and I go play pool with my dad every Thursday. So really, I do feel like I’m winning, kind of in a way.

I’m not trying to say that the experience is seamless, and everything is lovely, and that I’m happy being single. I think it’s hard to be single. I don’t know why this happens, but when you’re single you sort of get into yoga. It’s like, you get into it, and I am, I’m getting into yoga. And it’s really great. I also–like I said in my bio–I ordered a Playgirl puzzle. And I’ve never done puzzles before, but I’m really excited about this one. Yeah, it’s really great. The penis is one piece, though, so it’s not that great. But, you just sort of get creative. I make a lot of soup, and I’m really happy. So, I think – it has only been a year, and I’ve had to make some significant adjustments in my expectations of my twenties and myself. And I had this quote in college that came to me a lot, and it’s–it stuck out to me then, and it still sticks out to me, and it’s:

“You’re looking for things that don’t exist, things like beginnings, ends and beginnings. There are only middles.”

I think Robert Frost said it. And so it’s just a really nice concept that–yeah maybe I’m here in the middle of Montana, in the middle of my twenties, and I’m upset that the Amish kids didn’t hit on me. And embarrassingly the most action that I’ve got is from a metal gate that I tried to climb over, but I was too short. And it’s like, “this is my pathetic life”. But I’m right in the middle of it. I’m in the middle everything, and I don’t need to wait for something to begin, because kind of, I’ve already metaphorically started the race. Thank you.

Tonight’s theme is Illumination Revelation. Coming home from work I turned the corner, a block away from the house, and I could already see the candles, flickering in the windows, and I was concerned initially. Did someone leave candles burning, and the house is on fire? I let myself in through the back door. And I could smell all of the different, vanilla and Christmas spice, and cinnamon blends, and all of the different candles that my wife Michelle loved to buy at one of those big-box stores.

When I was seventeen I started dating Michelle. I didn’t believe anyone would ever love me. She was my first girlfriend. She was a sophomore in college–at a Christian college. I was a good Catholic boy. She was the first person I kissed. We’d go out on dates with her friends, and the hostess would–we could only afford things like the olive garden–and we would go in, and the hostess would say, “Table for four?” And her friends would say, “No, table for 3 with a booster chair.”

When I got married my only responsibility that day was to go and buy a pair of black shoelaces. My black shoes–the shoelaces were brown, because the black ones had torn when I was tying them too tight, because I was nervous at the rehearsal dinner. She said, “All you have to do is show up and say yes.” I showed up, and because it was a nice huge Catholic wedding, there were all of these readings, and one of the people doing the readings was the person that I was in love with.

I didn’t love my wife when I married her. I married her because I thought that the “‘til death do us part” thing would be really easy. I thought that I could live with her for two or three years until she died, because she had been diagnosed with Lupus–which at the time we thought was going to attack all of her organs, and they would turn on themselves and slowly eat her alive from the inside.

We dated for five years before we got married, and it was supposed to be the thing to do. That’s what you did in a Catholic household after you had been dating for so long, and then you get married and have children and you get a job. And I’m thinking about all of these things as I walk through my kitchen, and I can hear our song playing–she picked it not me. Remember Jefferson Airplane and how awesome they were? Well, then what happened to them, Jefferson Starship, and then, Starship–and our song was, Set the Night to Music. Like I said, she picked it, not me. That was on.

I walk through the dining room, it was dark. I walked into the living room, and there were hundreds of candles lit all around on every convenient horizontal surface. It was like a Sarah McLachlan video, or a Police video. She was sitting on the floor. The house was immaculate. She was sitting in her wedding dress, and it was spread all behind her. And all around her wedding dress were many of our wedding gifts. A big crystal clock–that’s heavy and it will leave a dent in the drywall if it’s thrown. Luckily we had plaster walls. We had an old house. All of our wedding photographs were also spread all around her.

And I was remembering a couple weeks before–or a couple of weeks after we had gotten married, one of the gals that I worked with at the grocery store–one of the cashiers–grabbed my wedding ring, and said, “I’m mad at you for this.” We used to go on long drives together. Nothing ever happened because I was a good Catholic boy.

And I’m remembering this, and I’m wondering if she finally realized that all those long drives I was taking weren’t by myself. And she turned to me amidst the illumination of the candles, and she said, “You’re leaving me aren’t you.” And I said, “Yes.”

Thank you.

Since the day my professional career began, I have been in debt. We walked out of the University of Montana and we walked into Butte this gaggle, this rabble of gypsy artists and decided to produce original theater in that town. We had nothing. We had no money. We just had this vision of street theater, which quickly became a vision of our own place, and we went out looking for just a little spot. A little hole in the wall. Within a month, we had multiple locations.

My entire family had stepped up to the plate and offered money, and then the city of Butte came forward and gave us a five story red-brick church for a grand total of one dollar. And my family came forward with another $250,000 for renovations and they told us that that was not nearly enough. That it would take $3,000,000 over the course of two years to renovate this building into a functional theater. And with the work of my father and my mother and my counterparts and Bob Lackala and Big Chief we grinded out $3,000,000 worth of renovation in seven months.

And that is my family giving up every single solitary second of their free time to paint this building. My mother to design the layout. She sewed every single curtain in the building by hand. My father was up on extension ladders 45-50 feet high in the air painting single pipes, re-plastering the ceiling, building in the stages. They drove to Southern California to a Baptist church and picked up 229 used lime green theater seats and drove them all the way back to Montana. We buckled them down to the floor and we rushed and we scrambled and we cut corners and the city came out and they gave us grants. And the population came out and they gave us money to fund everything and the thing about our group was we were writing all original, but we were also writing things that were multi-disciplined.

We mixed film with live theater with live music with recorded music but the film meant that we had to be out in the community. And again, we are flat broke and so the community donated every single location. Every single property came out of the Butte Thrift Store, or a Butte antique store. Our meals were provided by our family, and over the course of four years, it came to the point where my parents actually evacuated their own home and allowed–and slept in the basement for four months so my rabble of friends could overtake their house and live in it and create insane theater.

And over the course of those four years, I mean the amount that were offered for was truly unbelievable and it ended up eventually crashing in a bad way and we kept on moving right through into the film Seven Eves,  Mark Nordhagen’s film which was primarily shot in Butte, Montana. And the city of Butte, Montana came forward, they did road closures for us, they offered us money and incentives, and every single location that that film was set in was provided freely to us. My uncle pulled out his vintage cars, Mick O’Brien used car dealer offered us up a white Cadillac. We burned and shot the hell out of another used car that we got for $150. We were offered literally 16 full giant boxes of hardback books for $100 from the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store, which should have really cost us like thousands of dollars, but they were like, “Please get them the hell out of my face.” And they offered that up. And then the local talent that comes in works for free, and offers their bodies, the Cavalier Lounge, the Finland Hotel, the Silver Dollar Bar. Over the course of four months, we shot in every single beautiful place that we could think of in Butte, Montana. We were never charged a single dime for any of it.

Skip forward to–to The Triangle. And we go out into the middle of nowhere, and again there is very little budget for something like this. This endeavor is psychotic and we are in very real need of a friend and Gabe Clark’s aunt and uncle step up to the plate and provide us land. And they provide us time and they provide us resources and the bus that so many people have come to love and work on. That comes forward, and that’s offered up and our community of gypsies comes out and offers their time basically freely, and the town of Winnett, Montana offers us this backdrop and all of these people come out and they give testimonials. And the bartenders are just welcoming to us and they throw parties and we have it out, and we don’t have a dime.

We move out of that story and into The Orphan Girl last year, where the city of Butte comes out for this major production as far as the town is concerned and we are offered up locations that are so unique that they could never be duplicated anywhere else. Giant freestanding galas frames that over the course of the last 80 years have been restored and reclaimed and kept beautiful. And architecture that you couldn’t possibly duplicate and it is offered up to this band of people that no one really knows, save for four or five local artists that are affiliated with the film. People bring us into their homes, they offer us meals, and these are local working families with five children of five different age ranges that are mixing in – creating this huge meal for 40 people in their house while shuffling their children off to soccer practice and Taekwondo and they are embracing to us and they push us through this insane process that was actually very costly, but still it wasn’t costly in terms of what the community received.

We move forward into Love Like Gold, and I show up into Eureka, Montana –- which I had never been. And the people are instantly warm, and every craftsman, fine craftsman in this community step up and they are making knives and they are making space for us to sleep and they are providing us with food, and they are bringing us into their homes where we are shooting the film while someone is actually cooking the meal. And we are sitting with their children and we have nested in with them and they are welcoming us into their homes and into their hearts and it is amazing.

And I wonder you know, why? Why do these people in our communities step up to the plate to gift us these things? To offer this stuff forward and you know, is it that there’s this, this hope for economic boons, or that they’re -– you know, are they bored out of their minds and here, this is going on. Or are they interested in the film industry? Or is it just in, simply in their nature to give to something that needs? And I think that that’s true, but I think that the heart of the reason is that they hope so genuinely that one of these young people in their community might just crawl out and find some poor in this insane industry and break through and become something successful. Something grand, that they might just do it. And through that they would well up with pride and that pride would just impregnate the entirety of their community and it would drive the next generation of artists, it might inspire them in some way and they would know that they had a hand in fostering that thing.

And we look at these communities sometimes as something outside of the project. It is where we are doing it but they’re surrounding it, not immersed into it and that is just not the case. I feel like when we are immersed in these communities and they’re giving over to us that they are as much a part of our team. As much a part of the company as anyone else is, and they deserve to share in the congratulations and in the glory of that project. And I’m not sure that I have ever offered that up, and so I want to, I want to, I want to shout that from the rooftops. I want to say Butte, Montana look at the team we are! Missoula, Montana man, it is a hell of a thing to have you at my hip! Hey, Winnett, Montana, my god! Look at what we’ve done together! Eureka, stand up look out, congratulations, we’ve done it! We’ve freakin’ done it!

And I hope they feel that, I want them to and that congratulations is just a petty thing. It’s a beginning of a greater conversation that we need to have as an industry. I think that we need to make it an industry standard that we are giving back to these communities as much as they are giving us and we need to begin that conversation from a place of sincerest gratitude.

So when I was visiting, earlier with these guys about what kind of stories to tell, we decided to do a classic film technique and focus group my three stories. so, you get to choose. My stories probably could use the guidance of Mr. Grady’s crow, and here are the titles: “The Day I Took the Producer’s Dead Cat to the Veterinarian”, “The Jungle Room”, and “How I Shot the Last Sleeping Deer on the Crow Reservation”. So, you get to pick! [AUDIENCE SHOUTING SUGGESTIONS] “The Dead Cat”, oh good. We love the dead cat!

Alright, so I come from a ranch and farm in Eastern Montana. My grandfather came here in 1915, and I grew up on the Assiniboine – Sioux Indian Reservation. So, I’m a little pragmatic, I guess is the word for it, and so I come from films from a production perspective. It’s all about getting things done, and my goal is to get things done.

So, I’m on location in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and in Milwaukee — I’ve been traveling around the Midwest making movies, and I happen to be on the 100th anniversary of Harley Davidson. And we had been filming this Harley Davidson extravaganza, with pretty cool people. Like, I’m not into motorcycles, but I got to take Jay Leno through like the Harley Davidson Motorcycle Museum. We like [whispered] “tell it’s his motorcycle”. So, I’m having a pretty good day, and we survive the last night of the Harley Davidson extravaganza, in which over 100,000 bikers gathered in a field to watch the headliner of the Harley Davidson concert, who was Elton John. Does the word riot come to mind? Yes.

OK, so I have been with this major New York production company who has been hired to produce the behind the scenes – all the big stuff on this screens we’ve been shooting, we’re crazy. And what we have done is the good people of Milwaukee have wisely packed up and left town, wisely. And we have rented an array of houses in the Milwaukee University district. Big beautiful three- four story Victorian ten bedroom houses, gorgeous houses. And today is Sunday, and we are packing up and leaving town, so we have editing equipment, and crews and truck and people and flights, and there’s a lot of stuff going on. So, I am running a whole crew of people who are going to clean out all of these houses and put all of their furniture back, and put all of this editing equipment into trucks and we’re going to drive away from Milwaukee. Think Keystone Cops, doors doors doors doors doors, stairs stairs stairs stairs stairs, trucks trucks trucks trucks trucks. OK, I have my whole day planned. Chugga chugga chugga chugga, alright.

So, I go down to breakfast, 7 o’clock in the morning, and I hear someone weeping, and it is my producer, who is this lovely woman from New York, who has brought her pets out from her – from New York. And one of them has been ill, and it turns out over breakfast I find out that one of her pets has died. I’m like OK, I’m very sorry, your pet died, breaks my heart, I really need to go. I have stuff – I’m really sorry, but I have stuff to do, and you have a plane in like three hours, like you need to be on a Milwaukee airport plane, going to New York. Tears, tears, tears. And I’m still, you know, work friendly with this woman to this day, um, so I go off and I start preparing my day and I’m waiting for my crew to show up, and I’ve got people coming in to do all of these things. And I turn around and she’s holding a towel. And in this towel is an object, and the object is her dead cat.

And she’s weeping, and she’s like, “What do I do with my cat?”

And my Eastern Montana brain says, “Um, well. You can throw it away – I mean it’s dead, right? It’s dead. No one cares about your cat anymore.” I’m like there’s a garbage bin out back, I can throw it away. I can freeze it and mail it to you, through the Postal Service. $17.95 – one dead cat. I’m like, “I can dig a hole in the backyard and bury it, or I’m like you know, you can have your cat cremated and they can send your ashes to New York.”

And I turn around and I dash off to do something. A couple of minutes later she tracks me down again, and but this time I’m like, I have so much to do, why are you still talking to me? And she’s like “I want you to find a veterinarian and cremate my cat and have the ashes sent to New York.” I’m like “OK, whatever.”

And she says, “I want you to have this taken care of before I leave on the plane today.”

Uh huh. Did I mention it’s Sunday? Yeah, when 10,000 people are leaving Milwaukee. Uh, so all of my work comes to a halt, this is the producer. I’m like, “Mike, I can’t get fired. It’s really impossible.” I was fired once for losing a piece of paper that I never had, um, that was entertaining. But yes, I’m like, “Mike, I, I cannot get fired. Because people don’t fire me that ask me to do crazy things like find veterinarians for their dead cats.

So, um, this is pre-Internet. I mean the internet is like a baby with one tooth, um, it’s like AOL or nothing. Um, and there’s no smart phones and there’s no text messaging. So I find a Milwaukee phone book in this poor woman’s house we’re living in and I call every single veterinarian in Milwaukee. I find a veterinarian that is open on Sundays. Yay, angels! I get in the minivan, well no, I don’t get in the minivan yet, but I make an appointment because you have to make an appointment to see this veterinarian. So in the meantime I have to wait for my van because someone else has it down the street, so I’m hanging out on the front lawn where I have all of this work to do with cleaning out all of these houses and turning them back to the good people of Milwaukee.

So as my crew shows up for the day, they say, “what do you have in your arms?” and I’m like “Wanna pet the kitty? Right here.” They run in horror, I maintain my hold on the lovely cooling dead cat, and finally my van shows up. Kitty cat goes in the passenger seat, I considered a seat belt and went eh, whatever. Off I go, like this is me and the producer’s credit card going to the veterinarian. Off I go, I drive and I drive and I drive and I drive and I drive, now I’m 20 minutes away from my location and I have found the veterinarian and I go into the veterinarian’s office, with my package and I say, “Hi! I am here with my – my deceased animal, who needs to be turned into a little box of ashes and sent to New York.”

And she goes, “Great! Sit right over there and you’ll be next up in a few minutes to see the veterinarian.”

I’m like, “Uh, can I just give you my cat?”

She’s like, “No, you have to see the veterinarian first.”

She obviously has no joy in her job.

So I take my towel wrapped package and I sit down with all these other people with their cats and their dogs and their birds, and I wait. And I wait. And then I wait some more. And pretty soon I am very anxious because by this time, the clock is ticking, because one of our houses is owned by a lawyer who has taken his whole family to Colonial Williamsburg for the week who is returning at noon, and expects to be able to walk into his house as beautiful as the day he left it. Only he doesn’t know that we have completely destroyed his house. We’ve moved all the furniture, we’ve rearranged all the rooms, we’ve taken down all the curtains, and 35 people have been living in his house. And I’m the one responsible for turning this house back to him at noon. OK, finally my turn comes at the vet. I’m very excited, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp.

I go over, he says, “Oh, put your pet on the table.”

And I do this, and I’m standing and I’m like, “Come on, I have places to be!”

And he unwraps the cat and he looks at it and he pulls out his little stethoscope and he puts it on the cat and there’s a moment and he looks at me and he says, “Ma’am. This cat’s dead.”

And I’m like thank god! The Cat’s really dead! And I said, “Great, how much does it cost to cremate him and send him to New York?”

And he says, “That’ll be $100, fill out this form.”

So I’m like, fill it out, fill it out, fill it out, fill it out, fill it out. Great and I said, “Is there anything else I need to do?”

He’s like, “Do you want the towel?”

“No! You can keep the towel, donate it to the cats in the back room.” Great, this transaction is finished. I look at my watch, I’m like, I have got to get back!

So, I dashed back and we do a Keystone Cops routine. Up and down the stairs and stuff and stuff and stuff and the housekeeper shows up and is like, “Oh no! All this furniture’s in the wrong place!” And we move it around and move it around and move it around, meanwhile the producer keeps calling me to find out when the cremated remains of the cat will arrive in New York City, and I’m like, “At Tuesday, right?” I’m lying, I don’t care. And we close the front door to the house as the truck full of equipment backs out of the back door and the lawyer and his three nice children drive in from Colonial Williamsburg. Ugh, thank god. And that is the day that I took the producer’s dead cat to the veterinarian. [CLAPPING]

Amazing to be in such company. I’ll start by saying that. I want to tell you a story about a crow. It’s kind of a transformative story as well.

I’m a drunk and a horse thief. Wait, it gets better. That’s actually how a lot of people in the sober community refer to themselves when they straighten up, fly right.

I started drinking when I was 21 years old, by the way, this is not an AA meeting. I started drinking when I was 21, and that first experience I blacked out. Which should’ve told me something, but I really took to it, or rather it took to me. However you want to look at it, and off I went.

Let me back up real quick. I was born in Browning Montana. I’m an enrolled Blackfeet Nation member. My parents died when I was very young, just a baby, and I was adopted off of the reservation by an Irishman and a woman who was Swedish German. Beautiful people, some of the most beautiful people that I know. I grew up in Catholic school and public school, like many many people in the United States. The suburban central Arizona, Indiana, Washington. Parts of Montana. My father’s a professor of electrical engineering dragged us around the country. Very smart man.

To get back to the story, after taking those first drinks I drank for the next 17 years. I started my day with a jug of wine, and that was my lunch, my dinner, my dessert, that was actually my life. There’s a son in there as well, who was born at the beginning of this downward spiral. And the downward spiral started very, very quickly, much to my chagrin. I was homeless throughout most of that, disconnected from my kid. We didn’t connect with each other until much later on in life.

Public school did a deplorable job of informing me about Native American people. I was a little bitter about that. I don’t have as long an acting career as many of the people here. My first role was the Native American in the Thanksgiving pageant as a child and subsequently every Thanksgiving after that. That being said, by the time I was out of high school and had graduated, I was over mascots, the Bellingham high school Red Raiders. I was over the Thanksgivings, I was over the Columbus days. I was so freaking sick and tired of it, because I had no idea who I was.

The only person that I had ever connected to, who was Blackfoot, in my life, was James Welch. It was a book that I had found when I was a child called the earth, Riding the Earthboy, Riding the Earthboy 40. It was a book of poetry, and there was one poem in particular that stood out to me. I won’t share it with you tonight. Suffice to say, that was kind of a huge role model for me. Something I was very disconnected from.

Moving forward, I went on from high school, to this lengthy homeless tirade. Where I went through friends, I went through women, I went through jobs like they were going out of style. The last job I lost was right here in Missoula, Montana. A little restaurant that had just opened up.

Subsequently, I had been fired for being drunk on the job. I had been kicked out of the home I was at. I had lost connection with my son again. I hadn’t eaten in three days I was sort of lost. A couple bottles of wine in my bag, my backpack. That’s where I lived, was used to living there.

So at the end of this, I was sitting in a field, in a little place that’s now known as the Old Mill District, I think that’s what it’s called. It used to be an open field with nothing but crumbling concrete, weeds, refuse, old broken buildings. Quite appropriate for how I was feeling. Felt right at home.

As I sat there that day, drinking my breakfast of wine, feeling like I’m going to go back home to Washington with my tail between my legs and my kid off somewhere. I don’t know what’s going to happen. After a short while, this kind of fog lifted, if you will. It’s like the booze wasn’t working. It’s like it was just very clear, and situated to my right, on this concrete piling, this old sort of slanted broken piece sticking up out of the ground.

There was a crow, there were several others around. They were flying around, but this one was a little bit different. It spoke to me. I didn’t know what to do with that. So I continued, I had this conversation if you will. Talk about an existential crisis. There I stood, or sat rather, with this bird, and it was telling me things.

As it spoke something became very clear to me. I was thinking about Native American history. Thousands of years of Native American history. Suddenly, just hit me like a fist, like a memory almost. There was a clarity to it, a deep fulfilling breath. I asked the bird, “What about all of this religion stuff, and stuff I grew up in? I’m lost and I don’t know what to do.” “Give it up. Put it on the ground and leave it. Leave it for the spirits.”

Ok.

Well, I kind of went on. I listened a little longer and after a while, I was just sitting there alone. I was drunk, felt like I had just come out of a blackout. Which I had done many, many, many times in my life. Except for I never remembered any of the blackouts. That stuff was just sort of lost to the world, but this was crystalline in my head, what had happened. It was clear, and the thing I realized in that moment is that I don’t have to do this anymore.

So, I stood up and I went across the river and I checked into this hotel. I had a couple hundred bucks in my pocket, and I rented a room. I detoxed in that room. I spent about a week in there convulsing, seizing, throwing up. By the time I could keep a glass of water down, and a little bit of food, my time was up in the room.

And what I realized at that moment was that it doesn’t matter if I’m homeless, penniless, jobless, no prospects. I’m going to stay here, and I’m going to be with my kid. I’m going to figure it out, because I’m going to listen to that bird.

I moved on, of course, and I haven’t, that was October 11th, 2006, and I haven’t had a drink since. Thank you. Turns out this is an AA meeting. Alright, this doesn’t have to stay here by the way.

Alright, so, I have this experience and I’ve every moment since that point, I take that with me. I wake with it, and I say thank you. I think about that bird. I go to bed I thank that bird. I’ve been through school, I’ve acted. I’ve been around amazing people. The first role I was cast in was Winter in the Blood, a James Welch story. It was a bucket list moment, full circle.

The thing I’ve come to learn throughout all of this, aside from being an actor, not being an actor, telling stories etc. is that the Blackfeet are storytellers. That’s who we are. We share with community, and that’s the thing I took away that day with that bird. Ever since that moment, all of that disconnect, and loss is completely gone. I feel like I’m part of a community. It’s unbelievable, for a guy who was looking at the possibility of just checking out.

I’m going to end with this real quickly. I was invited to the home of Lois Welch, where James used to sit and think, and I sat for a moment, out by this, on this wood carved seat. And it wasn’t like everything had started to make sense. That feeling of being part of something actually became real. I felt inspired. I wanted to help my friends. I wanted to be a part of something much larger, and it was the most humbling experience of my life. To be in that place in that moment. So I thank that crow for all of these experiences, whatever comes next. I’m going to capitalize on it. I’m going to make the most of it. Life is really juicy now, I really love that.

Anyway, that’s all I have.

So, I had a very very large career shift this last year.

This is Reel Stories R-E-E-L, play on words, “reel” being film. Something that stands out to me especially after Mike saying it, film does kind of, it’s there forever, crystallizes these moments in time.

So, to give you some context, last year, in, well this last year in April wrapped on a film that was then called the Untitled Kelly Reichardt Project. Those of you that don’t know Kelly Reichardt, she’s a fantastic independent director who shoots film 16mm now what is called “Livingston”. It is now in color correction, and with any luck, with any luck and a lot of talent, it will maybe be at Sundance. It will maybe be screening in lots of festivals around the world.

So, this is not the first incredible film or reel story that I can tell, but it is a strange little holding place right now. So, just going to share what I know as an actress, three things that most actors can identify with. Your work is not compelling or interesting if you don’t have objective, if you haven’t made a choice. Good stories rarely happen if there’s not something about them that feels a little …magical, a little by chance. And three, you get really, really used to rejection. After the rejection happens it’s like getting thrown from a horse. It’s like suffering an injury. Your character is really defined by, do you get back on the horse or do you just let it go?

So after being an actress for the better part of my life, facing lots of rejection, I kind of reached this point where I decided that a lot of the roles that I’m going to be going for are not ones that I am going to be too excited about. The ones that I am excited about come by rarely. But can I build a life on that? So, I decided maybe make a choice to do something different than acting.

Now about this time last year, those of you who want some context this is my second Tell Us Something this year. And I won’t say much about it, but go to the Podcast and I have an episode that’s there now called “Choice and Chance”. There’s a recurring character that pops up in my stories now, both as the person, and as the concept of Chance. About this time last year, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life. Stay on the horse of acting where you continually get bucked off and hurt and heartbroken and then just dust yourself off and get right back on. And I was seeing, a guy, very briefly, who I’d taken to call Chance because that’s kind of what he represented in a way. And, I’d been bucked from a horse earlier that year. A five and a half year relationship ended. So, this essentially was a rebound, and it was awkward.

We were having a conversation one morning where I was just not wanting to process any of it. He was trying to make small talk, admitted that he had looked me up on Google, saw my IMDB page, and was asking me about some of the films I had been in. I didn’t really want to talk about it, because it was kind of heartbreaking to give up acting, but seemed like the responsible thing to do. So, I didn’t really talk about it much, and then he asked me, “Well, what do you think about acting?” And I just looked at him and all that I could think of was the rejection. The committing to characters that you maybe half believe in. Not the case for a lot of my work, but a good part of it, and I just looked at him and said, “I fucking hate it.” And I knew I was lying but I also knew I was telling the truth, and then he was oddly really encouraging. He was saying, “Well it looks like this film Winter in the Blood might be doing pretty well. Maybe you should ride it out a little bit.” And I said, “Yeah, I love it, it’s great. I’m doing everything I can to make it get out there, but I don’t know.”

After this conversation, the next day, People Magazine featured Winter in the Blood as a People Pick. So that was a nice little, “Oh, well, maybe I should stay on the horse a little longer”. Chance and I saw each other for a little bit after that, but I got thrown from that horse too, and it really hurt. Almost more than the horse that I had gotten thrown from earlier that year. I spent all fall shaking the dust off. Healing my breaks. And I did so at home with my folks, processing.

Do I want to move somewhere where I push the acting career? Do I want to commit to a community that I love? Do I stay here in Seattle and be the kid to my parents for awhile?

And at one point I just looked at myself, I looked at my parents, who had been struggling with some health issues, and decided that if I’d stayed I would end up being there forever. I would be the only child taking care of my aging parents, and that would be my story. So, their fine. It’s kind of the story I was telling myself.

So, I ran from home. Not too far, though, came back to Missoula here. And one thing I love about this community, and particularly the community that was built around Winter in the Blood, was written by one of my favorite authors of all time James Welch, adapted by the sons Alex and Andrew Smith of Annick Smith a producer of A River Runs Through It. And she has a film, Heartland, screening in the festival. So when I was transitioning back to Missoula I was staying in Annick Smith’s cabin. And an origin story of Winter in the Blood is my friend, and dear community member of this lovely film community, Ken White was watching her place in the middle of winter, snowed in with a bout of insomnia, pulled Winter in the Blood off the shelf and decided that it needed to be made into a film. That’s where that one started.

So I was in Annick’s house. I was feeling the sacredness of this place. All of the creativity that had been seeped into the rafters over so many years. And I just did not want to make my choice. I didn’t want to choose acting, I wanted it to choose me. I wanted Chance to choose me. So, I just, let go. I was in Annick’s house. I let it go to the house. Whatever magic was in this place, whatever creative spirit lives in this house, It’s up to you. Either I stay here and I build a career working with kids, fostering and supporting their creativity, or I push my own. But I don’t want to decide, Chance can decide for me.

Next day, I get an audition notice for the Untitled Kelly Reichardt Project, and it’s an ethnically specific role. Which I’m used to seeing Native American and white, but it’s not typically what you see in projects like this. I recognized Kelly’s name immediately. I love her films, one being, Wendy and Lucy, Old Joy, Meek’s Cutoff, Night Moves. Couldn’t believe it. I looked at the cast list for the other characters. Oh, Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, Michelle Williams…OK. Well, let’s just see what this character is about, probably about five minutes of screen time. Last thirty-five percent of the film, leading role, compelling story of a ranch hand who was snowed in, in a cabin, over the winter. Kind of in the throes of her first existential crisis, in my opinion. Deciding what she wanted to do, and by Chance, a really beautiful opportunity passes through.

So, I submitted my audition. I got cast, and I don’t really know what’s going to happen, but the real story behind that character when you’re if, and I know that people are going to see it. It kind of goes back to that conversation that I had that morning with Chance. I don’t fucking hate acting, I love it. I’m really thankful that Chance is the concept, even if Chance’s character chose me, deemed me worthy, and gave me this incredible role where my character refuses to get thrown off the horse. It happens over and over again, but she always gets back on. That’s all I’m going to say about that film. Look for it when it’s out next year. It’s called “Livingston” starring Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, and Lily Gladstone. Thank you.