Filmmaker Brian Morrison presents his documentary ‘Bastards Road,’ sharing how he used his background in video production to document a Marine veteran’s cross-country walk to reconnect with fellow servicemen and fallen comrades’ families, exploring PTSD, grief, and the healing power of storytelling. Morrison reflects on his own ADHD diagnosis, his family’s emotional silence, and how filmmaking became his primary vehicle for expressing feelings he struggled to articulate verbally.
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Transcript
[00:47:40] hey give it up for one more time y’all
[00:47:48] all right coming to the state
[00:47:50] stage i said i was doing the next person how you gonna steal my glory
[00:47:55] we just talked about this listen if you don’t know by now i’m about that add life
[00:48:01] i got the i got the h with it i got the adh you got the h on it though yeah all right that’s
[00:48:06] extra that’s why i’m mad because i’m hyper you won’t let me do my part all right all right
[00:48:13] six years man you’re just gonna take my part so coming to the stage give it up for
[00:48:21] brian morrison give it up for him y’all
[00:48:27] i’ve got that adhd life too big time
[00:48:31] but not until recently did i understand i i had uh you know a proper diagnosis of that i have a
[00:48:41] hard time communicating in words so bear with me uh i i use filmmaking as a way to kind of express
[00:48:48] feelings and emotions mark
[00:48:50] it out with a lot of courage and i do a lot ofсяi try not to make it any worse but i um i entered i i’ve
[00:48:59] done video and film for since i got out of college so that’s what like 15 years ish but um i
[00:49:09] i it took a you know when tyler said like find your people find your tribe like it took me a while
[00:49:14] while to figure out like kind of where my heart was in the process and as one of my clients in like
[00:49:19] assisted living and nursing homes um was asking for content to kind of tell stories in that
[00:49:26] industry i i kind of stumbled upon doing documentary style and i just fell in love with talking to
[00:49:32] people and in in my kind of childhood my family my family my mom my dad my sisters like nobody
[00:49:40] talked my friends didn’t talk at all like i i like legit i’ve never seen my parents like hug
[00:49:46] and but they’re still married they’re like they’re they’re good great good um but uh
[00:49:54] but i just i’ve always had a hard time expressing my emotions that i use like film and video as a
[00:49:59] way to kind of get it out and um i always like wanted to do movies i did music videos i did
[00:50:06] i’ve done wedding videos uh cheesy car commercials around the area everything
[00:50:10] everything name it i’ve done it but um i it was 2016 when my wife and i had noticed a guy that we
[00:50:20] went to high school with was traveling across the country uh he was a marine veteran he’s from
[00:50:25] maryland and he was he was walking kind of you know to you know deal with his own issues of
[00:50:33] post-traumatic stress and reconnecting with marine brothers that he had served with families of their
[00:50:39] fallen and
[00:50:40] i kind of thought like whole holy like if nobody’s doing a documentary on this like this
[00:50:46] kind of needs to happen he was popping up on a lot of like local news specials that’s where i found
[00:50:51] out about him because people were sharing it on facebook and so chelsea and i realized that our
[00:50:58] next door neighbor was uh one of his closest friends growing up and so he put us in touch
[00:51:04] and kind of felt him out and um we talked back and forth for a little while but made that
[00:51:10] first trip and um kind of felt an immediate kind of connection with each other i didn’t really have
[00:51:16] any particular story i was trying to tell i was really just trying to investigate like what
[00:51:21] was going on with him and um and really kind of just give him a platform and so
[00:51:29] as as we kind of started and we realized like okay i guess we’re doing kind of a documentary
[00:51:36] thing uh i don’t know if it’s gonna be a short or a feature or whatever
[00:51:41] um
[00:51:44] and um
[00:51:47] his
[00:51:48] some of
[00:51:48] his
[00:51:51] um
[00:51:54] random
[00:51:55] guy
[00:51:56] uh
[00:51:56] that doesn’t know anybody to be invited into
[00:51:59] their home to like share
[00:52:02] in this
[00:52:02] really like
[00:52:04] um
[00:52:04] emotional
[00:52:05] and
[00:52:06] sensitive
[00:52:07] and
[00:52:08] um
[00:52:08] and
[00:52:08] reunion
[00:52:09] like
[00:52:09] and
[00:52:10] and
[00:52:10] the
[00:52:10] uh
[00:52:10] case of that first meeting john hadn’t seen the guys since they got out of combat like john served
[00:52:16] in um the second battalion fourth marines and they were one of the heaviest hit units in iraq
[00:52:21] uh one out of four was wounded or killed so a lot of those guys like were were struggling and um
[00:52:29] i thought it was going to be about post-traumatic stress but the more i kind of learned about it it
[00:52:35] just became so much and i think for me one of the bigger takeaways was how much anxiety i had like
[00:52:42] talking to them because i don’t have any personal experience uh with with with trauma with uh
[00:52:50] with any immediate family members or friends that have served in the military but i just kind of um
[00:52:56] i just kind of tried to be use my ignorance as an advantage and and just be there emotionally
[00:53:02] for them and i was kind of shocked by how
[00:53:06] comfortable they made me in sharing their stories which was pretty humbling and um
[00:53:12] mark uh mark stafford’s over there he’s got the gandalf beard
[00:53:18] mark i i would like feed footage on these trips and just throw it at mark and and he would watch
[00:53:24] and you know he kept asking to see more stuff so i kept sending it to him after it was like seven
[00:53:30] trips it was uh john when i first john had walked like almost two thousand miles by the time i
[00:53:35] hooked up with him for the first time and he ended around six thousand just shy of that and um i made
[00:53:40] seven trips out um and uh yeah it was just the most rewarding experience ever the the film is called
[00:53:48] bastards road it’s available almost uh anywhere you can rent or purchase a film so i encourage
[00:53:54] everybody to go check it out please help numbers uh it was really a a um uh an effort of uh it was just a passion project
[00:54:05] really and and it grew because people believed in it and people um just kept kind of kept wanting
[00:54:13] to help and uh and yeah so it was we released it last summer so yeah i i hope i have the opportunity
[00:54:20] to get do it again it really um it really kind of made me fall in love with that doc documentary
[00:54:28] you know uh format and also just telling stories about mental health and having conversations that
[00:54:33] i really didn’t have when i was growing up so that’s something i am very proud of so i’m really I hope you guys enjoyed that video. Thank you.