0:09

Hey there, beautiful people. And welcome back to another

0:11

episode of That's, How We

0:14

Role, a biweekly podcast,

0:14

where I talk with motivating

0:18

and inspiring women, who are

0:18

professionals, entrepreneurs,

0:22

organization, leaders,

0:22

artists, and so much more.

0:26

This week's guest is the

0:26

multi-talented and the multi

0:30

-hyphenate Sophia Romma. Sophia is a playwright

0:32

screenwriter and a film

0:35

and theater director. She is a producing artistic

0:36

director of Garden of the

0:40

Avant-Garde Productions. And she's also a member of the

0:41

New York City Bar Association,

0:45

working in human rights. She was the screenwriter and

0:47

producer for the International

0:51

Art house film, poor Liza, which

0:51

won a Garnet Grand Prix Award.

0:57

The film stars, Emmy and

0:57

Golden Globe Award winner,

1:00

Ben Gazzara and Emmy and

1:00

Academy Award winner Lee Grant.

1:05

Sophia has written and directed

1:05

three films for New York

1:08

university's Tisch school of the

1:08

arts dramatic writing program.

1:13

Outside of film, Sophia has

1:13

written 14 different stage

1:17

plays, which have been produced

1:17

either off Broadway or off-

1:21

off Broadway Sophia's latest

1:21

project, which is currently

1:25

streaming on Amazon Prime

1:25

is Used and Borrowed Time.

1:29

It is a 2020 time travel film

1:29

about an aging actress who has

1:33

magically returned to the year

1:33

1965 in segregated, Alabama.

1:39

I'm so glad to

1:39

welcome Sophia Romma.

1:43

Sophia, thank you so

1:43

much for being here.

1:46

Thank you, Avis. It's a distinct pleasure.

1:48

Thank you. Well, first of all, I'd like

1:49

to say congratulations to you

1:52

and your production team on

1:52

this, this film that's on Amazon

1:55

prime used and borrowed time.

1:58

Thank you ever so much. Thank you.

2:01

Good. Can you tell us a little bit

2:01

about the film and how Used

2:04

and Borrowed Time came about?

2:06

Yes, of course. So I am a child of La Mama

2:07

experimental theater, but I

2:12

was introduced to the late

2:12

great Ellen Stewart, or as she

2:15

allowed me to call her mama for

2:15

the select few that she did.

2:18

I had a professor at NYU

2:18

who quite frequently worked

2:22

with Ellen Stewart and his

2:22

name was Colonel Leslie Lee.

2:25

He wrote the first breeze

2:25

of summer for which

2:28

he was nominated for

2:28

a Tony and Obie award.

2:30

And he won the Obie, a wonderful

2:30

African-American playwright.

2:34

And he was my mentor. I worked with him for

2:35

25 years in the theater.

2:37

We produced three of my plays

2:37

and he was the director of them.

2:42

And he basically, he went

2:42

to Ellen and told her that

2:47

I share this notion of what

2:47

intolerance means because I

2:52

come from the kind of culture. That was also, you know, hounded

2:54

and persecuted and I'm an

2:58

immigrant and refugee and I,

2:58

and he suggested that, you know,

3:01

I, I take a trip out to Alabama

3:01

just to see what it's like.

3:04

And I always traveled with my grandmother. So I traveled with my

3:06

grandmother from New York to

3:08

Alabama on the Amtrak and on

3:08

the Amtrak train, there was this

3:12

wonderful chef and he prepared

3:12

the collard greens and beautiful

3:17

scrumptious, luscious lamb. And we sat there and

3:19

we got to talking and

3:21

he was very personable. He sat down with us and of

3:23

course my grandmother was very

3:25

old and he said I want to tell

3:25

you a story about my life.

3:29

And he had grown up in the

3:29

sixties and he had a cousin

3:32

that fell into the hands of

3:32

a white supremacist's family,

3:36

oh, horrific, terrible tale.

3:39

And, and, and what transpired

3:39

because of the fact that he was

3:43

in love with a with a young...

3:45

she was blind, but so she was,

3:45

you know, impaired in that

3:49

way, a Jewish girl and they

3:49

were taking this hostages and

3:53

this was a true story and it

3:53

touched me so deeply, but at

3:56

the time I was involved in so

3:56

many different projects and

4:00

I decided to, to write it. And I wrote it as a short

4:02

10 minute play on a dare at

4:06

The Players where I belong. It's a club in Gramercy

4:08

park for writers and

4:10

theater practitioners, and

4:10

they, it was performed.

4:14

And a gentleman from

4:14

Astonia came who was a

4:17

filmmaker just by accident. And he happened to

4:18

be there watching.

4:22

He was invited to the players

4:22

and he liked, it said, Hey.

4:26

I'd like to see this

4:26

as a film and that's

4:28

really how it came about.

4:30

Oh, wow. That's very interesting. I did love the trailer,

4:31

so I can't wait to really

4:34

sit back and watch it. And it's in two parts, correct?

4:37

It is, it had

4:37

to be Avis, because it is

4:40

three hours and 36 minutes. And I also had, it also could

4:43

be a mini series, which we

4:46

have done and chopped it

4:46

up into, into six episodes.

4:50

Just for fun, just in

4:50

case, you know, Netflix

4:52

rolls around or something.

4:53

Well, let's go

4:53

ahead and say Netflix.

4:56

Okay. Netflix, Hulu. Here I come. Welcome Sophia with open arms.

5:01

Yes. I hope so. Fingers crossed.

5:04

Praying to God.

5:05

Yes. Yeah. Well, how did you get started

5:07

in the business because you

5:10

know, you have this career

5:10

path, you went to law school,

5:13

you're a member of the New

5:13

York city bar association.

5:17

And, but you're, you are such

5:17

a, such a visionary and such

5:21

a in your multihyphenate, as I

5:21

said earlier, and you have all

5:25

this, this background in writing

5:25

and producing and directing.

5:29

So what was this path

5:29

and how did you get

5:31

started in the business? And which one and which

5:33

one did you do first?

5:36

You taught me a new word. I didn't know, multi-hyphenate

5:37

cause you said it, well, you

5:41

learn something new every day. How did I get started?

5:43

So I, I immigrated

5:43

from the former Soviet

5:46

union as a refugee. So I may have of Romany

5:48

and Jewish ancestry

5:52

from Poland and Ukraine. In Romania.

5:55

And we were basically hounded

5:55

back in the back in the day.

5:59

All my family members as

5:59

is typical, pilgrims

6:02

and what have you. And when I came to this country,

6:04

my mother So all the money

6:08

she had and told me to go to

6:08

the movies with my friend,

6:13

cause you can come with me. She was, you know, she was

6:13

cleaning other people's homes, even though she was a

6:15

microbiologist back at home.

6:19

And I, and she said go, you

6:19

seem to like television.

6:22

We had a little television set

6:22

with those antennas back then.

6:24

No really rural controls

6:24

and very bad picture.

6:28

And I went with a friend

6:28

when I was about, six, seven

6:31

years old and I watched ET.

6:35

And I didn't leave the theater.

6:38

She had to drag me out. My friend, I was glued to

6:39

the chair to the point where

6:44

she was like, the credits

6:44

have rolled, everyone's left.

6:46

Your mom is going to be worried. And I just, I couldn't get

6:48

myself away from there.

6:51

And I knew that I had. Love for the allure and

6:53

sort of the, the lurid part

6:57

of of what cinema and what

6:57

celluloid had to offer.

7:00

When I saw those images, those

7:00

frames, the, the human stories,

7:03

the humanity about cinema.

7:06

I fell in love with it,

7:06

with such a passion and

7:09

such art or that I that's

7:09

all I ever wanted to do.

7:12

And, and then there was a traveling troupe. My father had.

7:15

Had the pleasure. He was in the, he was in the

7:16

arts and he had gotten together

7:19

a group of people from all over

7:19

the globe to perform here in

7:24

the United States and tour. And I fell in love with

7:25

theater because these were

7:27

theater troups, and I got

7:27

to go behind the scenes.

7:31

And I was with them all the time. So they lived a very

7:33

caravan, like a very kind

7:35

of, you know, not a piece

7:35

of term of very gypsy lies.

7:38

I won't say it, but you know,

7:38

very kind of Romany life.

7:41

Like my, my grandmother

7:41

on my father's side and

7:45

who, who was an actress. And I just sort of fell

7:47

in love with that life.

7:49

I wanted to be a part of this

7:49

majestic kingdom that I, that I

7:53

thought was, you know, theater. The only, the only closeness

7:55

that you would receive was from

7:58

the audience and God, so I, I

7:58

fell in love with all of that.

8:03

Majestic. That's not really what most

8:03

of us describe as theater,

8:07

especially just when you're

8:07

just doing some off Broadway

8:11

or off, off Broadway pieces. So that's how you got started.

8:15

So your father was artistic,

8:15

so that's what you did.

8:18

And, and how old were you at

8:18

the time that you decided that

8:21

when you started writing your

8:21

pieces, like when you decided

8:24

this is what I'm going to do.

8:26

You know I

8:26

really was quite young and

8:29

this may be the story of

8:29

most writers or most writers

8:33

that write for theater. And I spent 25 years glued

8:34

to the theater with both

8:37

heart, hands and eyes. But I I clawed my way into the

8:39

theater, but my real beginnings

8:43

were, I think at the age of

8:43

about eight, when I was in

8:45

and school and sponsored for

8:45

a refugee program because,

8:49

and that time we did live

8:49

in the refugee home on the

8:52

Upper West side with all these

8:52

eclectic different people,

8:55

a very diverse community. And I had had this, this notion

8:57

to put something down on paper

9:01

about the immigrate experience

9:01

and my father who was not

9:06

allowed out of the former Soviet

9:06

union he came two years later.

9:09

He, I had asked about my

9:09

grandmother and he had said

9:11

that she was that her three

9:11

children were shot on a train

9:15

in, from Eastern Poland,

9:15

during world war II, when she

9:19

had lost her first husband. And I thought that I wanted

9:21

to write stories that have

9:24

historical context, but always

9:24

put some folklore in it.

9:28

And so I sat down to write about

9:28

her story and I brought it to

9:31

my teacher and it was about

9:31

the last exit about that last

9:35

train ride, where my grandmother

9:35

had lost most of her family

9:38

at the hands of the Nazis,

9:38

she was spared because she had

9:41

had a hidden in the, in the

9:41

compartment while next to the

9:46

bathroom and they didn't check. So that Gestapo tale and

9:47

everything that the atrocity

9:51

that humanity can unleash

9:51

upon the, up upon other people

9:56

just simply because they're

9:56

different propelled me to

9:58

write an and my teacher said,

9:58

Hmm, kind of rhyme when you

10:02

write, you sort of have talent. She came up to my mother and

10:03

said, I think your daughter might be into poetry.

10:07

Pay attention. So that's really how

10:08

I, how I came to be,

10:11

but very, very young. I was.

10:12

Wow. That's a very interesting

10:13

story too, about your,

10:15

your grandmother. So yeah, I can see how by you

10:16

being creative, that that would

10:20

be something that a creative

10:20

tale that you would tell.

10:23

Yes. Yes. I felt really, really compelled.

10:26

I had this, this genuine

10:26

compulsion to tell it.

10:29

So that's what you did first. So you did the, so you

10:30

started writing and

10:33

so you're in New York. How did the law, you were

10:35

writing before you went to

10:37

law school, but what made you

10:37

decide to go to law school?

10:41

Yeah. Right, right. Well, so I finished.

10:44

I graduated from Tisch school of the arts. I always wanted to do film.

10:47

I had some wonderful professors. We were always under the

10:49

influence of Marty Scorsese who

10:52

came around quite often showed

10:52

us his very first film at NYU.

10:55

And then I had the professor

10:55

Spike Lee, who just, no, I hate

10:59

to use the term blew my mind. Literally the gentleman

11:00

is so di divinely talented

11:03

that I have no words. Really. He renders his films

11:05

render me speechless.

11:07

So I, I. I knew I was in the right

11:09

place and rulemaking, you

11:11

know, at that time we use

11:11

16 millimeter and we use a

11:13

Steenbecks to splice film. It's now we're all digital,

11:15

you know, we are we're in the

11:18

digital world, but before that

11:18

it was human connection and

11:21

all of the plays that I wrote

11:21

for La Mama and the later

11:24

online looked the cherry lane. And the lion theater down the

11:27

theater row, they were produced

11:30

either by La Mama or by Negro

11:30

Ensemble Company, for which

11:34

I served as literary manager

11:34

under Charles Weldon for who

11:37

was my great, great friend

11:37

and, and directed two of my

11:40

plays, one at the lion theater

11:40

and then one that cabaret

11:43

immigrate and then one that

11:43

Cherry Lane Theater which was

11:46

called a sweet word of advice. And the Meyer. And I started to develop

11:49

this notion that the world

11:53

is, is, is so biased and

11:53

there's so much intolerance.

11:56

And I wanted to, I knew that, I

11:56

always wrote about immigrates.

12:01

In fact, three of my cycle

12:01

plays at La Mama were about

12:03

the immigrate experience

12:03

as was cabaret immigrate,

12:06

although it was a satirical. philosophical work.

12:09

And I decided that it

12:09

would be a good fit for me

12:12

to work in human rights. I had worked in European

12:13

countries before where the

12:16

LGBTQ community was continuously

12:16

harassed, especially in

12:20

the arts and in sports. I wrote a play about

12:22

the, the constriction

12:24

of the 2014 Olympics. And So chi down at 13th street,

12:26

I tried to expose, you know,

12:30

the victims of this perhaps

12:30

even often unconscious bias,

12:35

but nonetheless, a bias and

12:35

prejudice, very strong enough

12:38

to marginalize people who

12:38

were already marginalized.

12:41

And so I said, okay, let

12:41

me check out programs that

12:44

dealt with human rights. And I found Fordham University.

12:47

And that's why I went to law school I was the oldest student there, actually.

12:51

Yes. So that's how I

12:52

found my way to law.

12:54

And knowing law or

12:54

learning law is, is great in

12:58

this business too, because

12:58

there are always contracts and

13:01

things like that that you have

13:01

to read in order to, especially

13:05

now that you are, because

13:05

Amazon is not the end for you.

13:09

So as you go forward to,

13:09

to the other, to the other

13:13

digital streaming services,

13:13

being a lawyer and knowing

13:17

certain things without being

13:17

an entertainment lawyer,

13:20

you still need to know

13:20

some of the terms and those

13:23

contracts are hard to read. So at least they'll

13:25

be easy for you.

13:28

It's just like flipping in a magazine to you. I'm sure.

13:30

So that helps you a lot.

13:32

Right? I mean, yes, you're

13:32

absolutely correct. And Avis you and I both know,

13:34

you know, fighting for women's

13:37

rights in, in the right to

13:37

have gender equality in the

13:42

theater in film is always

13:42

an uphill battle because

13:45

you belong to such prominent

13:45

organizations, yourself, the

13:48

deal with, and center around

13:48

promoting women as do I, that

13:52

it's important to be able to

13:52

know how to read a contract.

13:55

It's important to understand

13:55

that if a man is getting

13:58

a better salary than you,

13:58

then you have to speak up.

14:01

It's important that if

14:01

it's vital, that you

14:03

speak up, if there is

14:03

harassment in the workplace.

14:05

Because you are a female it's vital. And those organizations such

14:07

as, you know, the League of

14:09

professional women in theater,

14:09

where I was on the board and,

14:12

you know, we have a connection

14:12

and you being such a grand

14:16

part of the Women in the Arts

14:16

and Media Coalition, right.

14:19

Those are the very organizations

14:19

that deal with protecting women.

14:24

Protecting women from, from what

14:24

faces them in the workforce.

14:27

And I don't think that

14:27

especially women of color or

14:30

minority women, I don't think

14:30

people know what goes on.

14:33

And so therefore I think that

14:33

it's, it's important to be

14:36

able to read your own contract

14:36

and stand up for yourself or

14:39

read your fellow's contract,

14:39

read your girlfriend's

14:42

contract and help her out. And I've done so much of that.

14:45

So yes.

14:47

That's great advice

14:47

to have someone that an

14:49

accountability partner, the

14:49

other side of that is have

14:52

someone that can help you

14:52

get some kind of meaning and

14:56

understanding out of whatever

14:56

it is that you have in front of

14:59

you, because we all need that.

15:01

Precisely so well spoken. That's exactly what I meant.

15:05

Right. Right. And it is important for women

15:06

to bring this along with what

15:10

you said, just bringing the

15:10

plight of women and women

15:13

of color, just bringing this

15:13

plight to people's, to the

15:18

forefront because people don't

15:18

realize until they actually

15:22

know about something, they don't

15:22

realize that it's an issue.

15:25

And that can, that goes with.

15:27

Right until it's

15:27

it's overblown until, you know,

15:30

the paparazzi have overtaken it. And then there's somehow it's

15:32

watered down and diminished

15:35

from the actual, the actual

15:35

decrepitness of this issue, how

15:39

it torments people and how it

15:39

torments women in the industry.

15:43

Yeah, very true. What motivates you and

15:45

what keeps you motivated?

15:48

We're just coming into like

15:48

our actual a real summer.

15:52

Cause we didn't have that last

15:52

year where we could be around

15:55

people, be present with people.

15:58

What motivates you and

15:58

what keeps you motivated?

16:01

I, I, I

16:01

really would have to say.

16:05

Human stories, you know,

16:05

though it sounds perhaps the

16:08

now, or maybe it's definitely

16:08

not contrived people that

16:13

I hear talk in places in

16:13

cafes when cafes were open.

16:17

And now, like you said, they're opening up and I heard that in your last podcast,

16:19

which was wonderful all about

16:22

rebirth and, you know, the

16:22

re-emergence of going back

16:26

to our former normal, which

16:26

should be our new normal now.

16:31

Right. And going back to humanity,

16:31

I'm inspired by what I read.

16:36

If I read a New York times

16:36

article, or if I read something

16:40

that's going on globally, or

16:40

if I have a case in court that

16:44

deals with somebody desperately

16:44

running from persecution,

16:47

harassment in their own country,

16:47

or being limited to not being

16:50

able to, to marry the same

16:50

sex or religious persecution

16:55

or those stories moved me

16:55

because they're not only worth

17:00

telling, and it's not about

17:00

being political or by partisan

17:04

it's humanity, trying to carve

17:04

a slice of life for themselves.

17:09

And I think that those

17:09

stories inspire me, but also

17:12

folklore and legend and. Those are inspirational stories.

17:16

You know, the cosmos is vast

17:16

and I recently wrote a piece

17:21

called the virus Corazon. I think we, we did a zoom

17:22

kind of play about it.

17:26

And I only wrote the first

17:26

act, but it was about people

17:28

that had suffered through a

17:28

similar virus, but it was like

17:32

a love virus, not the, not

17:32

the virus that unfortunately

17:36

we were having a pandemic. But but it, it, it, everybody

17:38

ended up in, back in, in

17:42

a space kind of situation. And as we were floating up

17:44

to outer space and they were

17:47

putting colonies because

17:47

they were forbidden to love.

17:49

The emotion of love would cause them to outbreak any virus and that they

17:51

were living in colonies,

17:55

but they still found love. And it's. I'd say star Trek kind of

17:58

concept because I was very

18:00

inspired by the by the story

18:00

Sartre, Le Jeux Sont Fait,

18:04

which is the die is cast

18:04

where no matter what you do

18:06

with sort of predestined, so

18:06

you can try to fight against

18:09

life, but you're going to

18:09

end up in a similar space.

18:12

I was inspired by that story

18:12

to live out the reverse.

18:16

So let's not end

18:16

up in that space.

18:18

Let's change. Let's change the world.

18:21

Let's really not just say

18:21

to make it better, but

18:23

work inch by inch fabric

18:23

by fabric to so a beautiful

18:28

conglomerate world one, where

18:28

we have this understanding of

18:32

people that we all, we all. Need similar, similar things,

18:34

love, you know, compassion,

18:40

tolerance, understanding. That's what inspires me most.

18:43

Nice.

18:45

It's true. It's really true. You bring out the truth in me

18:47

because I have an affinity.

18:51

I think you feel very similar. You know, I think you feel

18:53

similarly to me about that.

18:56

Right. I do I do. Do you have anything coming up

18:59

aside from the Amazon prime,

19:02

anything in any other pieces

19:02

or anything that, because now

19:06

that the world is opening up,

19:06

so, you know, so are stages

19:09

so are small places that can

19:09

have these events that were on

19:13

zoom for the past year and a

19:13

half, now they are opening up

19:16

and we can actually be present.

19:18

So do you have anything

19:18

come up that you can

19:20

actually talk about. Cause I know so many times

19:21

we are not able to mention

19:24

projects that we're working on

19:24

for confidentiality reasons,

19:27

but anything that you can talk

19:27

about is something that you're

19:30

writing or something that you're

19:30

working on, that you can share.

19:33

Yes. So I am working on a commission

19:33

project and it is about, it

19:40

is a, it is the reaction to, I

19:40

will say to Lolita by Nabokov,

19:46

but from by Vladamir Nabokov

19:46

of from a female point of

19:50

view and, and I hope to finish

19:50

it by the end of the summer.

19:55

And hopefully we'll be able

19:55

to shoot by October, November.

19:59

And it's an important stance

19:59

with you know, my former film

20:02

was really again it was it

20:02

was a call to tell people,

20:05

Hey, look, anti-semitism

20:05

is on the rise globally.

20:08

People are desecrating, synagogues and desecrating the religion.

20:12

Also the African-American

20:12

community suffering desperately,

20:16

especially under COVID-19. I led the project that there

20:18

was such disparity among how,

20:22

how the healthcare system had

20:22

affected the COVID-19 crisis

20:26

in minority populations,

20:26

especially African-American

20:28

and Hispanic population. I was, you're heading that

20:29

project for the New York city bar association these days.

20:33

I just want to concentrate

20:33

on the Me Too movement and

20:38

project what, what happens when

20:38

men solve size, very young

20:44

ladies and that's my project.

20:46

And I think that hopefully

20:46

it will bear some meaning to

20:49

people that have been harassed

20:49

that have been violated

20:52

in a very, very bad way. Oh wow.

20:55

You're going to be very

20:55

busy and I am so glad.

20:58

I mean, that's such a great

20:58

undertaking that you're,

21:01

that you're doing with the,

21:01

you know, being a lawyer.

21:04

I love that. So, you know, and just FYI.

21:08

I'm going to include everything

21:08

that Sophia is talking about.

21:11

All her links to her

21:11

projects and any events

21:14

that she is having. It's got everything is going

21:16

to be in the show notes. So no one misses anything

21:18

that you're doing, because

21:21

it's going to just be

21:21

fabulous from here on out..

21:23

Thank you Avis.. Thank you so much.

21:25

What advice can you

21:25

offer, or can you give to

21:29

like to upcoming writers and

21:29

multi-hyphenates like yourself?

21:35

You know, I

21:35

would say, and life is not

21:37

a tuna and white beans. Life is, life is

21:39

very complicated.

21:42

And if you, but if you, if

21:42

you really aspire to write or

21:49

to act or to dance, Or to go

21:49

into space, explore, become

21:55

a scientist, whatever, from

21:55

wherever you are from whatever

21:58

walk of life, whether you're an

21:58

immigrant or refugee like me,

22:01

or whether you're, you know,

22:01

not of the color that everybody

22:04

else you know is, or whether

22:04

you have any kind of handicap.

22:09

I think that it's important

22:09

to realize your dream.

22:13

If a professor tells

22:13

you you're not good.

22:16

A fellow neighbor tells

22:16

you you're strange.

22:19

If there's a kid in school

22:19

that makes fun of you,

22:21

which is really my story. Just if you could really rise

22:23

above that because I think

22:28

people are so worthwhile.

22:30

It's such a worthwhile

22:30

investment in humanity.

22:34

Every single soul was an

22:34

individual game with something

22:38

to say something to portray,

22:38

whether it's in baking a cake

22:42

for somebody's birthday or

22:42

whether it's sewing a dress

22:46

or whether it's making films. Really adhere to your aspiration

22:48

because it might take 50 years.

22:54

It might take after your

22:54

lifetime, but it will, it will

22:57

take if you're persistent pers

22:57

perseverance is everything.

23:01

If you believe, if you have

23:01

faith in yourself, there is no

23:06

end to what you can achieve. I know that for sure.

23:09

Very true to. Just to just keep

23:10

going, no matter what.

23:13

And most of the world, a lot

23:13

of us that made it through

23:16

2020, we've done just that

23:16

we've reinvented ourselves.

23:21

We have changed directions,

23:21

not forgetting about any

23:24

direction or any path that we

23:24

decided to veer from, but just

23:28

broaden a lot of things that

23:28

make up that will make us.

23:32

better and that will make us

23:32

better for others as well.

23:36

Absolutely. You could definitely see the

23:36

humanity even through this

23:39

crisis, the way that people

23:39

came together, the way that

23:43

bells were wrong, every time at

23:43

seven o'clock for those lives

23:47

lost in Manhattan and the way

23:47

hospitals worked and healthcare

23:52

workers work, and actually

23:52

the way liquor stores worked,

23:56

they cater to your needs. And there's a fabric

23:57

of beautiful worthwhile

24:02

rhythm to, to human life.

24:05

And it needs to be harnessed

24:05

and fortified and protected.

24:10

And I hope that we don't

24:10

lose that the coming together

24:13

and that helping each other.

24:17

During the hard, one of the

24:17

hardest things that we've

24:20

gone through, you know,

24:20

in the world, I'm hoping

24:23

that we don't lose that.

24:24

I, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think less blame and more

24:26

positivity, you know, less,

24:30

less trying to blame each

24:30

other, pointing fingers

24:34

and more coming together

24:34

and working on something

24:38

that happens for all of us. Something that uplifts

24:39

all of us, at once.

24:43

Hmm. Do you have any words

24:44

of wisdom that you can

24:47

leave with us today?

24:50

Words of

24:50

wisdom, you know, it was a

24:53

very, very difficult year. I'm sure for everybody.

24:56

And we crawled out of it like

24:56

snails, but the light of the

25:00

tunnel, you know, the, the old

25:00

biblical saying this too shall

25:03

pass there's truth to that. There's the, the igniting

25:05

of a bonfire in your

25:10

soul with the prospects. The future holds some

25:13

sort of kernel of hope.

25:16

And I think that was also

25:16

what you had mentioned

25:19

in your last podcast. Hope is everything and

25:20

hope really does die last.

25:24

I mean, I had a play by that

25:24

title at LA mama, but it was

25:27

the first work I'd ever done

25:27

in '97, gosh I'm so old.

25:31

But you know, who counts

25:31

the chronological years?

25:34

I think that if the words

25:34

of wisdom would be that.

25:39

Please, please. Don't give up hope you know,

25:40

the day that you hear the birds

25:43

singing that day, that you go

25:43

out and see the blue sky and

25:46

you see the horizon and you

25:46

see the tequila, sunset, you

25:49

understand there's hope in life. And if that's everything,

25:51

so keep to your dreams

25:54

and, and keep striving. I think those are

25:56

my words of wisdom.

25:58

Well, they're beautiful words.

26:00

Thank you. Thank you.

26:03

Well, Sophia, I just

26:03

want to thank you so much for

26:06

being here with me today and

26:06

thank you for sharing your

26:09

words of wisdom and thank you

26:09

for sharing your craft to,

26:13

to all of us, to the people

26:13

that get to and, on Amazon

26:16

prime, you know, check it out. Thank you so much for sharing

26:17

your gift because what you

26:21

bring and what you are and

26:21

what you direct and, and

26:24

write and produce, they're all

26:24

gifts they're coming from you.

26:29

And thank you for the heart

26:29

that you put into each and every

26:32

project that, that you put out. And I really appreciate

26:34

you being here and

26:36

sharing that with us.

26:37

Oh, thank you

26:37

so much for having me, you

26:39

know, the crystal clarity of

26:39

your voice, your beautiful

26:42

soul shines through. And I. I would have to say, I

26:45

would implore everybody

26:47

to listen to your podcast. You are so very uplifting.

26:50

Thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure,

26:51

such an honor.

26:54

Thank you. Thank you very much.

26:56

Thank you.

26:56

And you're very welcome. So everyone please like

26:58

subscribe and share the

27:01

podcast with your friends. Thank you so much for

27:04

taking the time to listen,

27:07

checking out the podcast. Thank you for inviting

27:08

me into your space.

27:10

And until next time I hope

27:10

you will continue to thrive,

27:14

grow and be kind to yourselves

27:14

and be kind to others.