Tremendously helpful as we strive for spiritual growth. Why are we the way we
are? Curiosity drove me to examine myself because my behavior seemed to prove that
I was a very different person than what I thought I should be. God
knows who we really are. When he said let us make man in our
image, he unveiled his purpose for all of creation. We often think of
our spirit as being our true identity as human beings, but being a person
means a whole lot more than having to endure a physical body before our spirit
is cut loose to inhabit eternity with God. Man is a complex mixture of
body, soul, and spirit. Anything less simply means being less than human.
We are none other than the pinnacle of God's created order, and his
plan demanded that we be fashioned in a specific way, since he could accomplish
his eternal purpose by no other means. Listen again to this message and others
at Communing with good dot Org and good morning. It is fifty nine degrees
outside eight forty one. Nathan Thompson here with you. It's time for our
community connection today and we have a repeat guest today, but we have a
really big something coming up tomorrow, So I think we really want to talk
a lot about that. Dane Warner, who is the creator between behind the
ken Zacher story that we'll be making its premiere here in Bartlesville tomorrow. Dane,
good morning, how are you? I'm great, Nathan, Thank you
again for everything you're doing to help promote this. Absolutely, it is our
pleasure. This is an important story and we are so lucky to be able
to have the facilities available here in Bartlesville to allow for this locally focused movie,
this documentary to make its premiere. Sure. Yeah, so let's talk
about first of all, for those who I don't know how they wouldn't know
about it. But let's talk about the movie itself, okay, and what
the kN Zacker story. Hardcore press, right, hardcore, full core court
press. Sorry, it's right. I've been up for a while, full
court press to Kinzacker story. What's the background on this movie, Dane?
Well, I'll try to summarize it pretty quick, because you're right, we've
had a really good media blitz on this. If you really want to read
more in depth on the story effect on the Barsel Radio, your website's there.
We had a big article two Months in a row and B monthly magazine,
The Bartical Community Center. You can go there and read about it.
Of course, you can go to our Facebook page, Into the Road Productions,
my personal Facebook page, Dane Mortar, all kinds of things about it,
you know, yes, but real quick in a nutshell, my hometown
Nowada. In sixty eight hired a phenomenal basketball coach, young man, and
he did great things for our program. He also did a great thing for
race relations, like a lot of coaches were doing back then. But we
had an incident over there and you can read about it. It did get
national coverage and it's something that needed healing still fifty years later, and we've
done a lot of that already with this film. So we have that element.
But the coach suffered from mental illness his whole life, and that was
kept under wraps, and the family is finally shared now what went on behind
closed doors, hoping they might could get somebody else to find strength to reach
out. The coach committed suicide at age thirty six, and so it's a
heart touching. It's an entertaining film from a basketball point of view if you
like sports. But we do have a mission that we're trying to accomplish with
this to get awareness for a lot of things that are very relevant to our
country today. So you know, I don't want to you know, not
really talk deep, but there's a lot of things. A lot of people
have already heard about this, but you can go read about it. But
the main thing I like talking without this morning is the premiere itself, because
it has absolutely been mind boggling the response we've got. The original we thought
we was going to have it at a Circle Centamon, Tulsa, because they
do a lot of premiers, but we wanted to have it here in town.
But they really pushed to have it down there, but we quickly outgrew
that facility, and I'm so glad we did because they only hold two hundred
people, and they said, well, for independent filmmakers, you know,
one hundred and fifty maybe hundred and seventy five is a typical turnout for a
premiere. Right now, we're looking at probably between eight and nine hundred people
it's going to be at this event. And so the bart of the Community
Center was perfect for it. You know, it's right here in our town.
This is where we should have had it. All along anyway, great
turnout. The excitement that's been buzzing since we set the premiere and especially this
past week, has brought the excitement back to what we were why we did
this to start with. The amount of guests that we have coming in are
staggering. They're coming in from all over the country. Some people that leave
the story back then, but other people that just caught the vision of the
mission. And so we've The film itself is going to be great, but
activities start at six o'clock. It's twenty five dollars for a ticket, but
it's for a full night of activities. It's not just the film. We've
got a red carpet arrival with the limousines, which is going to be really,
really fun. We're not playing big Hollywood, but we're all going to
have fun with that, you know. And the after the film, we're
going to have a question answer session. We've got some guest speakers. It's
going to speak briefly. One one that we just confirmed a few days ago
we were really excited about is the basketball coach head coach of the University of
Kansas for nineteen years back in the sixties and seventies, Ted Owens and he's
an absolute legend. He is in our documentary because he has had a part
in this story. But he's gonna he finally confirmed that he will be here.
And so even if you don't know anything about the people in the story,
it's going to be a very very entertaining night. And we promised this,
you're going to get your money's worth it if you can come out.
You know, we're selling tickets is not to put money in our pocket.
We have a place to try to fund this project. Sure as we try
to push it across the country, trying to get distribution so we can reach
more people with our message. And what an incredible message that this film is
going to bring. And we are so lucky, as you said, Dane,
to have these facilities here in our hometown. You know, this is
not going to be in the community hall. This is going to be in
the big auditorium at the community center that's seats what eleven hundred people and eighteen
hundred see I underreguated it. Well, you know what an incredible facility we
have. And it's so great to bring this movie home because I think you're
right, Dane, this movie is going to touch a lot of people,
and not only do you get to watch the movie, but that that question
and answer session with some mental health professionals during after the movie. I think
it is going to really change some lives here. You're right, and we're
we're very serious and passionate about why we did this. We have several mental
illness agencies on board with this, we have several churches that came on board.
That's going to you know, not to give too much away, but
we feel like that we are going to touch people. We've been told to
make sure there's plenty of tissues around that. We had a private screening a
couple of weeks ago to trying to get some feedback and and uh, they
said, we we did it right. So we we're going to have professional
counselors on site, you know, whether or not just to pass out literature,
but you know, we're gonna have there's a plea at the end of
the film to get help, you know, if you're struggling, and we
want to make sure that if we touch somebody, you know, we've been
told that if we have five hundred people in a building, the statistics show
one person is possibly considering suicide in that building right then, So we want
to start the motey and whether it's mental illness, whether it's issues that's divided
us through the years, maybe our family has been divided. Because we do
have other elements of the film. We're going to have prayer teams. Uh,
they're available, We've you know, the tables will be there. Basically,
you're not alone. If we can touch one more person, that's what
we're after. So we're that's that's the mission we're going to have for people.
They're ready to talk to people just in case we can touch home.
Other than that, we just want people to show up. The more people
in the building, the more people is going to spread the word absolutely,
and maybe they have somebody that they know they need to go talk to and
say, I know you're struggling, let's get some help. I think that
this movie, I haven't seen it yet, I plan to that this movie
really is going to touch so many lives in a positive way. I think,
and thank you so much for bringing this story not only to our hometown,
but to the world. I mean, you're right things that are going
on in this nation, that there is a mental health crisis. There really
is. Dane and I think it's important not to stigmatize that we need to
have those open conversations about mental health and really understand some of the warning signs.
Sometimes there's not any warning signs, but just understand that people struggle.
They struggle, and learning and talking to folks about this openly something that's been
a taboo subject for us so many years. It just makes an incredible difference
in communities across the country, across the world. Absolutely. And again,
you know, the other element is a rachel equality that we're shore because of
the incident that happened over Nowada, and we just you know, there there's
it seemed like that at one point, about three or four years ago,
I felt like our country was going backwards a little bit in some of these
areas. Yeah, people were just angry with each other, and you know,
we I've had several get togethers with some were large numbers, you know,
twenty thirty people in a room, and I knew they were coming to
duke it out, but as it turned out, they just end up loving
each other and talking it out, realizing we're all in this world together,
and you know, it's and you know, that's another thing I can't give
that away. There's some things that's going to go on in the reception hall,
the community hall after the film, and we were laying out that,
laying that out last night, and yeah, we've got some great things that's
gonna happen, and it's we're just excited. I'm you know, I don't
blame you for being excited. I mean that this is great. I drove
by the Community Center last night as well, and I saw a bunch of
trucks coming in and doing all kinds of things. I was assuming getting ready
for this premiere tomorrow at the Community Center. Why what just incredible. I'm
I'm excited to see the differences that we're gonna you're gonna be baking in people's
lives, not only for mental health, but also race relations. You're You're
right, it's it's been it's been tough here recently, and and it's just
not even a black white issue. It's not my My my two nephews are
bi racial, and I even saw it whenever they're going in to school,
and it's just heartbreaking that there were still in this mess. Oh that,
yeah, that's something we've said, you know, we talked about some of
this stuff happened fifty years ago, and I've used this as a teaser as
I've talked to people and I said, thank goodness, we don't have those
issues today, and everybody just looks at me and like I said, I
know, I led you into that, so let's talk about it. You
know, it's real quickly, the production level of this, of this project.
You know, when I first started this, you know, I bought
a camera in a black drape. I didn't know what I was going to
do. I was going to go around start interviewing people. Chuck Price,
our director that came on board very early. He had other obligations. He
would have been here this morning almost twenty years experience in Hollywood working under Ridley
Scotton associates and other big boys out there. That's it's just a blessing that
when he came on board, this thing elevated to a high level production,
not a homemade looking film. The reenactments that we did, which I hadn't
plan on doing that because I'm not a filmmaker. Right with Chuck coming on
board and some of the actors, local actors, you'll recognize them, absolutely
phenomenal, phenomenal job they did, and it's a I couldn't be prouder.
I'm happy, all right. Well, The ken Zacher Story premiere tomorrow the
Bartisow Community Center. Tickets twenty five dollars. Get out there six six thirty
or six o'clock, can't six o'clock, six o'clock, all right, six
o'clock. Get out to the community Center and witness this movie. You've been
listening to Community Connection. Nathan Thompson here with Dane Warner. We'll be back
with Alan Croun's forecast here just a moment. Our culture as zipping through NORTHI
in Oklahoma, southern Kansas. Strong northwest twins now at twenty to thirty miles
per hours, some clouds sticking around, but we'll have sunshine mid morning through
early afternoon. Highs today upper sixties and near seventy. Tomorrow morning starts in
the mid forties, increasing clouds. Tomorrow highs will be in the lower sixties
and a stout north wind at fifteen to thirties.