SXSW Interview: Executive Producers of Oscar-Winning Doc ICARUS – The Lagralane Group

In the middle of all SXSW Conference and Festivals hubbub, I headed to the cozy lounge at the Stephen F. Austin hotel to meet with the creative heads and co-founders of the Lagralane Group, Jason Delane Lee and Yvonne Huff Lee. A married couple, Jason and Yvonne are both actors who have moved swiftly into production. Over the past two years, they’ve torn onto the documentary scene in a blaze of glory with an envious lineup of films, acting as executive producers on recent Oscar-winning doc Icarus as well as critically acclaimed docs like Dina, Serve Like a Girl, and This is Home. 

Showing no signs of stopping, I caught up with them while they were at SXSW to promote their latest documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? which tells the story of the much-beloved Fred Rogers. We chat about their journey into film finance, their favorite past productions, what they have coming up next, and what their values as a company are…

(This interview has been edited for clarity and time.)

Jacqui for Film Inquiry: So, you guys were here last year right?

Jason:  Yeah.

Were you here for the year before at all, or…

Jason:  No. Last year we had, uh, our, our, our narrative, Lucky, and two docs. And then we have one doc this year, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the Fred Rogers documentary.

Which is obviously close to I think everybody’s heart.

Yvonne: God. Realizing how much he actually affected my life, Mr. Rogers… I remember being so excited about it. So it was a nice remembrance of that time.

Jason: And we have three kids: eight, six and two. And they’re all about Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, so to see it passed onto this other generation…

Yvonne:  Oh, it is cool!

I mean, you guys must be exhausted with three kids and the whole time production on all this stuff.

Yvonne: Yeah, my mom is like totally instrumental.

Jason: We aren’t anywhere near where we can be without the support and love of her mom. She’s home with the kids right now.

It seems like you’re a very family inspired company…Is that accurate?

Jason: 100 percent. It’s ingrained in the DNA. Lagralane is a merger of our middle names. With everything that we do… if we’re going to be involved in the project, if we’re going to take a project on or if we’re going to develop a project, we’re always mindful of the impact on our family.

Yvonne: Yeah. I mean some people say, “Oh, I can’t have kids that don’t have enough time.” No, no no. Have kids. Then all of a sudden you’ll see how much time you actually had because you’ll say no to a lot more people than you did yesterday because you have to be so clear about what is it you want and what you’re going to do. How does that affect the family? We know for sure that what we want to create is really about creating a legacy for our kids and whether they decide to be storytellers or not, they’re supported in some kind of way and then they’ll make sure their children are.

Jason: They’ll always know who mom and dad and then God willing, grandparents were based on the choices that we’ve made. And also, I mean, everything’s personal, right? We’re actors. You know, I’d like to think that we’re both good actors at that and we are because we take things very, very personally, we take it to heart…and this whole doc space that we’ve examined these past 24 months… it’s blown that actor hat off and created this whole wild world of storytelling and the characters that are cool and quirky and funny and it’s been a great work.

Yvonne: Yeah. The choices that we’ve made in terms of the doc space, you know, Serve Like a Girl, why did we do that? Because my dad was in the Vietnam War and his (Jason’s) dad served in the war. Dina. Why did we choose that? Because we have friends with children who have autism. Night Comes On, why did we choose that? Because of the narrative space – Jason was a foster kid. You look internally and you’re trying to figure it out… So within our own unique way, we realized that, oh, we actually have really multi-layered lives and it’s from there that we kind of decide how to choose what to invest in.

 You actually answered a question I was going to ask, which is awesome. And I want to just take, take one second, first of all. You guys want to be floating from the Oscar?

Yvonne: Yeah, it was like, oh my God.

Jason: So stunned, so shocked.

Yvonne: That that was pretty exciting, winning that because it happened so early on and I’d forgotten it was that early.

Jason : (laughing) It’s the fourth award. We were at the Elton John Party with a group of other producers in the project…and it’s 6:00 that night, right? That’s when they announced the doc and we explode! And then we have eight hours…We’re the only ones there, that won… There’s hugging, people are running over!… It was extraordinary. The other side of it is with our kids. Our oldest Grace is like, “where’s the Oscar?” I explained the industry a little bit to where we were, like, we’ll get a picture of it maybe eventually, but she’s like, “hmmm.” (laughter)

So, congratulations for the that. But I also want to say, my favorite doc from last year was Dina. And I really think it should have been nominated. My nephew is autistic and so I recommended that my sister-in-law show it to him. I think it’s great for children with autism to see that they can have normal lives.

Yvonne: And it’s their life, their rules.

Jason: The power and impact of what you just said, that’s awesome. It made me jump to another one of the docs that we have been involved in, Unrest. Jen turns the camera on herself and in doing so, in going through social media, it does just that. It gets the community, a global community of those suffering from the same ailment a platform to share and discuss in that idea that we’re not alone, that we’re all in this experience together in one way or the other is also the powerful impact of these of these films.

On the back of that (Oscar win) with Icarus, that was very much a financing thing. I understand that you are moving into production?

Jason: So we’ve always called ourselves the film finance and development in the first two and a half years, we’ve been very focused on the finance side…and we were extremely successful in that space. So much so that it took us to the Oscars and beyond. It was a cannonball blast of an experience these past two years…Yvonne and I have always had shared stories in mind to develop, so we have several in development now, several narratives and a couple of docs. One narrative is Lifeline, inspired by my personal story – I was adopted. I’ve met my birth parents. Just happenstance the year I met my birth mom, my mother who raised me passed away a decade later, coincidence or not, the man who raised me, my dad passed away and I met my birth father.

Yvonne: And each of our children, I was either pregnant with them or they were born shortly thereafter.

Jason: So the family, impactful element of that, of those truths…I wrote a short film about meeting my birth mom years ago. Never shot it. We’ve hired a writer, Richard Kahan, who we met on Lucky… to write us the script. And we have a second draft, we’re very proud of it. The structure he’s given is a wonderful look at these themes of family, of race and class, of identity over a 30 year period. We’re hoping to attach a director to it soon.

Yvonne: And then another narrative is A New York Story which is actually the very first one that we ever invested in. We’ve finally attached a director. The story with that is we actually were on set, the third day of shooting in New York, and we get a call from Rosie who was one of the producers. Her husband is the director. They were at the hospital.

Jason: He had a headache.

Yvonne: He had a headache but we come to find out that they never let him out. And he passed away a year and a half later. So this is really 14 or 15-year passion project of ours.

Jason: Beautiful story, beautiful people. That project … our first steps into film production. We lose a friend and we’re then we’re also faced with an act of God insurance claim. Like we’re like, welcome to film production. This is crazy.

Yvonne: You want to be in independent film? Bam!

Jason: So we’ve navigated through that and like Yvonne said we’re recircling it now to shoot it, hopefully eventually, sometime soon. We have a book adaptation, we’ve hired a friend of ours, a playwright, actress, Nambi Kelley…to adapt for us Wallace Thurman’s Infants of the Spring, which is his look at the Harlem Renaissance written in ’28. He takes a look at the writers and poets and artists in Harlem. Just so happens Nambi herself lives three blocks away from the boarding house where Thurman set this kind of Kerouacian style – Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Countée Cullen are all characters in the book. And I’ve always just thought it would be a great movie, you know, Harlem – the music, the sights, the sounds of 1920s.

Yvonne: And on the doc we’re investors in a documentary about the history of the Apollo Theatre.

Jason: We’ve kind of with all with the 15 films that we’ve had, basically from January of 17 to now, we’ve had 15 films go through the circuit with the film festival circuit. We’re very proud of each and every one. We’re attempting to take that energy that we’ve experienced through that and turn it into a more focused look at these projects.

 There were quotes from each of you that I was actually really interested in. First, Jason, you say, “Filmmakers have a responsibility to tell their story with the utmost truth that they could bring.” And I was wondering if you could expand on that a little. What does that mean to you? I guess, what is truth?

Jason: That’s a great question, I think that basically comes from my perspective as an actor. I’m a method actor. We’ll get into a conversation about what we use in our art, right? Like how we, how we use it, how we use the truth that we experience to embody certain characters, right? In the craft of acting. So I can tell when people are lying, I’m a poker player. I’m a damn good poker player.

Yvonne: Unless you’re playing against me.

Jason: (laughter) Unless I’m playing against my wife. I can tell when people are being really real, especially on stage or on screen. And I think that what I mean by that is simply bringing your God’s honest truth to the projects that you’re involved in.

Yvonne:  It also means like lack of ego…

Jason: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Sometimes I think people can get – this happens to me all the time, this happened to me at our panel yesterday. I wasn’t as prepared as I wanted it to be and I tried to rely too much on what I like to think is my charm. And it failed me,

Yvonne: (laughs) No, you did great.

Jason: Oh, thank you. I think I’m also my worst critic myself… I like to think that I know when I’m being as honest as I can be, and if I’m not I beat myself up, especially with regards to the work that I do and I can’t lie to my kids, you know, they see right through it. That’s kind of what I mean by that. (laughing) Yeah, kids’ll see right through it all.

(laughing) And then Yvonne, you talked about.. it was something I picked up on – you talked about if a little girl came up and said you were her hero, or if it was a little white girl or a little Asian girl. And I actually thought, I mean, there’s something deeper there. I’m not the person to say it but do you feel that we’re approaching a place in society where a black woman can be a hero for a white girl?

Yvonne: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think it happens probably more than you think it does. I think there’s a certain generation where maybe that won’t be true for them, but for little, little white girls, absolutely. I think that’s important for there to be cross race heroes. So that when they grow up, a little white girl can see that something’s not going right with that black woman or that black boy that they recognize that person as a person of value and they take action. In our current culture, there’s been a demonizing people that particular race, and if there was more ‘hero-ising’, you know, you’d stand up with people just believe the narrative that people kind of feed you. But I absolutely think that it’s possible. And I think that when a little white girl can say that about somebody who’s Asian or black or latino or a black girl can do exact same thing, that that’s what we’re really seeing progress. I think it’s happening now, it’s just that we’re not always listening to those young people talking about it.

Jason: If I may just add in, to go political for a split second, to look at the attacks that the Obama family received from a certain section of this of this nation to kind of the acceptance of what the Trump family represents, exposes a, not to sound fatalistic with it, it exposes the opposite side of that coin. Like until we can really kind of truly judge the character of the individual by the individual themselves, “I don’t think so” really would be my answer. I think that there a section of society that will always look straight at race and not be able to get nasty. I hope that through story, through film, through storytelling, we can push that envelope some. But I do think that’s the challenge. And I think the current administration represents what we’re up against and the previous administration represents what we had for us.

Yvonne:  I think the power of film can do that, you know? If people hadn’t seen Harry Bellefonte, or Sidney Poitier, or Cicely Tyson…if you were not seeing those people in your film, you would not know that there was something outside of what you think being black is. For me, just being biracial, growing up in America, it’s important that kids of all colors look up to people help colors and gender orientation and say I see value in you, and I want to emanate that.

Because it’s a taught thing. Children won’t see that naturally.

Jason: Yeah. It’s learned behavior.

Yvonne: Yeah. And then also to question it too, you know, like I don’t want it to be like a propaganda type of way that we’re just going to show pictures of people in this particular way. But also that those little kids will ask questions about what they see. You know what I mean?

Absolutely. Yeah. It kind of builds on an earlier that thing you said which was this idea of not a single palette… I get that sense from your films that it’s true diversity in filmmaking… And is that something you strive for?

Jason: Absolutely. Lucky is a ninety-year-old atheist who comes to purpose and meaning at the end of his life. [This Is Home] is Syrian refugees trying to settle in Baltimore, [Served Like a Girl]  female soldiers coming back from war, trying to be a wife, a mom, a sister. I mean you could go through the entire slate and examine each and every one. But I think what it represents for us and our children in our decision making, is I’m proud of our open-hearted, open-armed approach to the subjects that had been presented to us because what it speaks to is the truth and the honesty in their storytelling that we respond to as investor-producers. If somebody is brave enough to tell their story. Yvonne has been saying this recently about me and she’s my wife, so thank you, but you’ve been saying recently about being brave enough to open myself up to the story with Lifeline, with my adoption tale. I mean ripping open your yourself to [be] expose[d] as an artist is, is sometimes a scary place to live in, but it’s important and we need everyone to share their truths.

Yvonne: And it’s also, it’s really about being curious right? Talking about all the different palettes and all the different layers of life, and the colors of people that are out there. I’m born into a place in the world by virtue of being a woman, and Filipino, and having an immigrant mother. You know, I think about that stuff all the time. It’s not something that I enter into because “oh I should care about that” it’s because I wake up every day with that.

Jason: Daily experiences, yeah.

Yvonne: At the forefront of my mind, even as an investor or a storyteller is how are we making sure that all viewpoints are being seen…who’s in front of the camera, who’s behind the camera? Who else is investing with us? What do they look like, what is their life like? And I think that when you take the time to ask those questions you end up with a richer story.

Jason: A more honest story, you know as a man who has daughters… I’m a dad, right? And I don’t know, I will never know what the experience being a woman in this world is like, but I can see it through my daughter’s eyes now and that’s a game-changing moment for me and so I sometimes then just shut up and listen instead of trying to over explain it. You know? And I think the more that we can all kind of do that when faced with subjects that we aren’t immediately familiar, which is somebody else’s complete truth. I think we’re better people when we allow that to happen.

That sounds like a great place to end.

(laughter)

Film Inquiry thanks Yvonne Huff Lee and Jason Delane Lee of the Lagralane Group for taking the time to speak with us.

Learn more about the Lagralene Group on their website.