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Veteran's Affairs Plus discusses the issues that veterans in Las Vegas deal with on a daily basis. Your host, David L. Washington connects listeners with relevant community resources and information that they need to help veterans or themselves.
Announcer 0:00
This is a K-Unb Studios original program.
Wesley Knight 0:04
You're listening to special programming sponsored by Making Moves Life Coaching Services. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and Moore, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Music 0:30
You can see what's going What's
Dave Washington 0:50
great day, Las Vegas, great day. This is Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 jazz and more. I mentioned on the previous show that I would have my daughter Angel on to talk about what a documentary she did on my journey with cancer, and also I had mentioned on the earlier show, the earlier segment, I should say, and I did mention Amber, but I didn't mention in the second segment, so she's, oh, I don't have to be, oh yeah, you do, we need you, so once again, I have two daughters here, Angel Washington, Amber Armorgon, and we're going to talk a little bit about the documentary, and I think it's important to one shares always do birthdays, and I had a whole list that my wife, Marcia, had sent me, I don't know where it is, but I do want to express condolences to the family of Phil Collins, Philip Collins, a church member over at Victory. Condolences to his family on the loss of that young man, and also understand tentatively the services for Dr. Ruby Duncan tentatively again is may 23 at Second Baptist Church, so just want to get that out there to folks. So once again, this is Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 jazz and more. Angel, I'm going to start with Amber. Amber, I want you to just very briefly talk about the business that you and your husband had, that's that's another reason why I brought you in. And then we're going to, then we're going to roll into the documentary. Go ahead and Amber,
Amber Washington 2:33
well, you have to always be ready for the curve balls, because I was not ready for that.
Dave Washington 2:39
Should come up. Go ahead.
Amber Washington 2:42
Well, my husband has a business called Good Works. It specializes in hospitality, and it's almost like Uber for hospitality workers, and he's doing really well, really expanding to many different cities and states, but it's going very well,
Dave Washington 3:05
excellent, excellent. I think that's important to plug there, because Nathan's doing such an outstanding job, and as Amber mentioned, it's a hospitality type business, and it's doing very, very well now. Drum roll for our great producer, Director Weskin can relate to this, you know, telling Dave what to do. So, Angel, tell us, how did it come about your thought with it? And then I think it's important to share with our listening audience some of the processes that you had to go through to even get the thing into a film festival,
Angel Washington 3:44
so the idea was inspired behind your desire to write a book about your journey, and just let you know to let everybody know what you experienced as a patient and what you experienced as you were supported and uplifted by your family, so that's where the idea came from. And as far as the process of getting it into the film festivals, this was all new to me. The whole thing was new to me, outside of making, you know, short videos for, you know, the poetry stuff that I do, or even work videos. Putting together something of this length and magnitude was new to me, but not very different in terms of the film festivals, it was just an idea that popped up in my head, and I kind of like stumbled upon Film Freeway, which is what houses all of the film festivals across the world, and so you get on. To film freeway, and that is how you are able to select which film festivals you want to participate in.
Dave Washington 5:07
Interesting, so there's multiple ones that's all over the world,
Angel Washington 5:11
all over the world, even the big ones. You can submit your film there, like Cannes and Tribeca, and all of those things you can submit there as well. But you know that's a little intimidating. I'm not there yet, so
Dave Washington 5:24
right. So, Amber, what did you think about it overall from the experience, not only it being completed, but also just being a part of the preparation to getting it together,
Amber Washington 5:42
I I know the Lord has something so special in store for Angel that she does not even have a clue about, and the Lord uses Angel in such a great way with her poetry, just the fact that she can just put together anything, you give her like five minutes, three minutes, she can come up with anything that is like most people would take like weeks to do, or like you know, but I think with her having this vision, or you wanting to write the book, and then she's like, "Well, let me just do this documentary on us, and like for her to just include us, which we were all there. We are very supportive family, and the process of doing the documentary was, was it just made us relive everything, you know? It had already been, I think, a year since you had had the surgery before she started, actually, you know, getting us and recording us and everything, but it just made you think about it, and then watching it, just watching it, you know, it, I was crying in the theater because I'm just like so thankful to the Lord that you were still here, you know, so that that's that's what I was thinking about.
Dave Washington 7:01
You say you was crying, I was too, and I'm like, that was my third time watching. The second time I was cool, and I'm like, why am I shedding these tears? Every time I wipe them down, wipe them off, more will come down. It was like a, like it was raining up in here, but, uh, the creativity in, and just the way you structured it, Angel? I think was it was good in that, and again, like I like, I tell people when I explain to them about it, it's about faith, family, and friends, and all my friends lying on them, man, you so strong, man, you have no idea, the strength comes from the people, and we've always, as I've indicated to a lot of folks, we've always been a very public family. So soon as we got the diagnosis, we start telling folks, let's let it be known, because I do believe in the power of prayer, even though what little I do know about the Bible, prayer is for us, God gonna do what God gonna do, whatever it is, but I think the family and friends support to include, and I told some of the guys, some of the Sunday golf guys, I said, "Y'all in there, man? Y'all, you know, when they was out there, that's when I first discovered that something had to be wrong with me. It was on a Sunday, it was cold, it's all get out. Only three of us duck showed up to golf, and I go and wash my hands in the restroom, and my ring falls off. I'm like, something right. So that's when I call Dr. Paulette, and he again said, we got to get some things checked out, get a blood work, get the blood work done, and I'm like, what's all that red stuff on my chart? He said, you got problems because I'm like, you know, I was cussing as I saw this, but I ain't cussing with so don't worry. So anyway, that's how it started to, in terms of just getting myself checked out. So Angel, in terms of the overall preparation and just don't have to be precise, but kind of, what kind of hours do you think you put into this thing? Just generally speaking, ballpark.
Angel Washington 9:13
Oh my gosh, I don't know. I really don't know, because every free moment that I had, I was working on it. So, once the recording was done, and you know, the recording went all the way up until just about when I was done, because I was adding and changing and doing different things. I really don't know, but I will say that it took us a total of three months for everything, which was gathering the footage, and thank God for your youngest, because she's very good, as we know, with keeping photos and videos and everything. So, I would say probably 75% of those photos came from Amber, you know,
Dave Washington 9:59
that's what. I, I was led to have her on the show, you know. One of the things that I find is that when you're doing something like this, I bet it gives you a different perspective and a different, a different respect for movies, because I'm telling you, when you, when you start grumbling about how many times you had looked at this stuff, you know, editing, etc. etc. And speaking of that, I talked to Jason. He's the operations guy, Jason Beatty, he's the operations guy. He's going to hook me up with the TV folks, the students, and see kind of explained to him, you know, what the process was, and we'll see what we can do about that. I told him it was done at a very low level of tech, not well, not low level technology, but expense wise.
Angel Washington 10:46
Well, yeah, they just didn't edit it to their fullest capability, because we paid, you know, the baseline fees for it, and that is, I don't even know that going through that company we could have done something different, only because, because they are affiliated with these particular festivals, like the Indie Vegas Film Festival, and the other ones that fall under their umbrella, they're doing all of the videos, unless you actually have a DCP already, so if you don't have a DCP, which means putting it on a bigger screen or formatting it for the bigger screen, David.
Amber Washington 11:25
While,
Dave Washington 11:25
no, I'm just.. I'm just, you know, she's getting.. she's becoming a professional. Will you tell us what the DP
Angel Washington 11:32
DCP? The DCP is just the format for a theater,
Dave Washington 11:38
okay? So
Angel Washington 11:39
they had to take my file and format it so that it would fit a theater screen, and because of that, some of the things in transition just I don't know what happened, but as you all know, there were a few spots that were very undesirable, I was furious, but I mean, you know, although they were there, when it comes down to things that I put out to the public, even when it's poetry, if I don't read something correctly, if I stumble, I biggest critic, yeah, I'm my own biggest critic. I beat myself up about it. That's why, when I went home after, I was so tired, but I watched it again, because I was like, I know dog on well that was not there,
Dave Washington 12:24
the little glitches that
Angel Washington 12:26
right, those glitches weren't there, the sinking was not off, and I was very upset, but even, even in that, I didn't want to beat myself up too much, because I know that it was well received, everybody experienced every emotion that we wanted to target when they watched it, and so I just, you know, I had to let that
Dave Washington 12:47
go. I don't think we talked well. Maybe you did. I don't know. Do you say targeted their emotions? Well, I thought it would..
Angel Washington 12:56
I will say, I will say unintentionally targeted, right? We, when we watched it as a family, you know, just so that we could see if there was anything that we caught, we knew that there were going to be points where they would laugh, just based on what we saw, for sure, and we knew that there would be points that where people would cry just based on what we saw. So I won't say it was an intentional target,
Dave Washington 13:16
we just put it together that we
Angel Washington 13:17
right,
Dave Washington 13:18
true, genuine, authentic from our family's perspective, from what has occurred with me. Let's see how professional that was. Amber, once again, this is Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 Jazz or Moore. I have producer, director, and she won't give me any credit, Wes, for being the executive producer of my own documentary. Amber, so your mother is lining up something for June.
Amber Washington 13:43
Yes, I believe it's going to be june 13, I think,
Angel Washington 13:48
or the 20th. Yeah, it's going to be that Saturday, one of either the last Saturday in June or the third Saturday. She particularly is hoping for the 20th because it's Father's Day weekend, so that's what she's hoping for,
Amber Washington 14:02
but I tell
Amber Washington 14:03
her it's Juneteenth. Juneteenth is on,
Dave Washington 14:06
yeah, but yeah, because this is news to me, because I thought it was a 13th, but you're saying now it's one of those two days, and moved it thinking about Father's Day for the 20th. Okay, so any further thoughts, Amber, in terms of just the pictures that you have taken in the videos,
Amber Washington 14:25
etc. I just was happy to help, you know. Look, there's a reason why I take all these pictures, because you know, down the line I'm able to pull something up for somebody. Everybody I have something, I'm still trying to find these pictures of this Pali trick trip that Cassar took in fifth grade with Tyron and my deceased friend Daphne Woodson, but I mean, I know I have them. It's just, I just have so many pictures, it just got to catalog them some kind of way,
Dave Washington 14:59
right. So angel back to the process of putting it together, you said about three months or two, and I think we should share this, because one of the things that I believe when you have a platform you share, because there may be someone else out there, and one of the things that I wanted that I mentioned that I would have probably said had I been rather than impromptu, when what's his name, Peter said, 'Oh, y'all want to speak? Well, yeah, I would have asked again. It would have been a rhetorical question, but I know we're not the only ones, because some guy came up and said, 'Man, you're my inspiration, man. I'm going through, I'm going through it right now, man. And, and just, man, you just noticed, man, but hey, that's that's part of the purpose of why we did it, I think, because I think that there's so many people go through things, and then I've learned that I've had a lot of a number of, not a lot, but a number of friends who've gone through the cancer journey, and it just went through it, I'm like, no, man, I want as much support as I can, because it uplifts you to include, and again, due to HIPAA laws. I won't mention my friend in San Diego's name, but I can tell you that he has been an inspiration to me, and I talked. In fact, I talked to him today, and he said Dave, continue to pray, and I said, yeah, you was on our prayer last night, as we do our Monday night prayer session, it's important for us, I believe, to share this information, because it could only inspire people, not only dealing with a medical issue, but I've had a couple other people on
Amber Washington 16:39
here who've done
Dave Washington 16:40
documentaries, but this young one, young lady, hers was 20 minutes and hours,
Angel Washington 16:46
is an hour and 15.
Dave Washington 16:48
I thought it was 14,
Angel Washington 16:50
an hour and 14 minutes and 54 seconds.
Dave Washington 16:54
Oh, really?
Angel Washington 16:54
Yes.
Dave Washington 16:55
Well, I'm just all I'm doing is reading what I saw on the description when they put it out, but it was almost, it was almost
Angel Washington 17:02
about one, yeah, it was six seconds shy.
Dave Washington 17:04
Oh, why didn't he just say one?
Angel Washington 17:05
Because I had to tell them
Amber Washington 17:07
exactly,
Angel Washington 17:08
exactly
Dave Washington 17:08
what it was.
Angel Washington 17:09
Yeah,
Dave Washington 17:09
so this particular group now also, you say you submitted to 344, and accepted by two for review,
Angel Washington 17:21
correct.
Dave Washington 17:21
And then the other one we just learned,
Angel Washington 17:24
right, that it was not selected.
Dave Washington 17:26
Okay.
Angel Washington 17:27
Well, so it was submitted to four, but five categories total. It was selected for three categories to be reviewed, and it was, it won just one category, so we were not selected just for two of them.
Dave Washington 17:47
So, in that award that they gave a certificate, tell the listening audience why it was that category. Well, more definitively, explain that, just explain why you got the award, because it says something about
Angel Washington 18:05
it connected most with the audience and those that watched it. It connected most with them, is basically what it is. It was the audience award for best documentary feature or best feature documentary. I'm sorry, that's what it was. So, documentary, I mean, I'm sorry. Feature means feature length, so it's the length of it of the film, because they had best documentary short as well, which
Dave Washington 18:37
is right,
Angel Washington 18:37
you know, much shorter,
Dave Washington 18:38
long. But I thought they also said how the reaction of the audience.
Angel Washington 18:42
Yeah, that's what I said first.
Dave Washington 18:44
Okay, all right. Amber, further thoughts about the documentary?
Amber Washington 18:50
I should have never been fired. No, but I'm just amazed, like I don't know if Angel even thought about two years ago or a year ago or any length of time ago that she would have been an award-winning
Angel Washington 19:15
Dr. Me documentary writer, you know, she, she won, she won first time, first try, and you know, shoot for the stars. Yeah, that's what's amazing to me. But what I do also appreciate, it appreciate about the documentary is that although they couldn't offer their endorsement, we got the support of MD Anderson. That's huge to me.
Dave Washington 19:40
Yeah,
Angel Washington 19:40
you know what I mean. Not everybody can do that, and with it not being, you know, something by Warner Brothers or some huge conglomerate, the fact that we got their support means a lot, and the fact that your doctor has supported you, I mean, outside of professionally, what she is required
Dave Washington 19:58
to do, right,
Angel Washington 19:59
she supports. Did you, on a personal level,
Dave Washington 20:01
absolutely.
Angel Washington 20:02
Yeah.
Dave Washington 20:02
In fact, as far as Dr. Maxwell, as many know, we were down last week, and I said, Doc, you know, my daughter seemed to have a little.. we had a little stumbling block when we.. I think she talked with your PR people, and she said, Oh yeah, they called me, said, "Did you get approval? She said, "I didn't think about any approval to be on a radio show, but I think it's good for them overall from a quote unquote publicity standpoint. And this was not about money for us, it's about a platform. When God gives you a platform to me, you do what you got to do, and it's about sharing the words with the people who, again, faith, family, and friends. When you have the support of people, it helps you to stay strong. And I've yet to call one of the guys who's an ancestor now, fire service colleague, Spike Jones. I got to call his wife, because she wanted me to tell her how everything had gone, and we had a shot of him in there, you know, which was, which was good, because Spike was quite a character, very, very wise guy, and one of our premier instructors at the Carl Holmes Executive Development Institute, and those guys gave me, and women gave me tremendous support throughout. So, we have some prayer warriors, Adrian Rutledge, Cassie Peters. In fact, both of them supported, as we know, we can talk a little bit about that too. We had a very successful, and I mentioned it several times on the show. We finally got the last few people who were dragging, there was still a couple other people who committed dollars that didn't come through, got tired of chasing them, but everybody's getting $4,550 that's for the Dr. William and Cherie Sullivan, they have a foundation here at UNLV to help the Upward Bound program ape April, y'all sisters are look back calls, which talks about and encourages people who look back and not allow their child to be left in the car in the heat or the cold, and then, of course, the Carl Holmes Executive Development Institute, those dollars will go into their endowment, so I'm trying to get them together to take a picture, Amber, and I want all three of us. Otherwise, if I can't get them all together, I'm just going to do individual pictures, but I just want to chronicle that in picture, because who knows down the line, as I mentioned to Angel and you guys, I am going to be doing something, even if I got a page. We need to do a documentary on my career with the fire service here in Las Vegas. So, anyway, outstanding job, Angel. And I think that when we do this, and I want to share this with our listening audience, something that that occurred when I went to my first, and this is on his second film festival that I went to. I learned through Brent Burton, who's one of our board members with the Carl Holmes Executive Development Institute, that there was a film festival in Santa Barbara, and I drove over to it, you know, just stayed overnight drunk bam, and I called a friend who lives in Carlsbad, former NFL guy, assistant coach. I told him, because he's putting together a documentary, and I told him, you should come to this, and one thing that I noticed, and that's why I was really wondering if we would get to do that, but now, since the one that's coming on the 13th or 20th, we're running that, so we get to do what we want, and the point is they had several of the people that were in the documentary, they came up on stage, you know, they have sound guys, they have, they had got who did the music to it, I was in here, did I say, no, I was in have music, it had just
Angel Washington 24:02
it had music, and very light, very
Dave Washington 24:05
light. Okay, so you had to get approved for that,
Angel Washington 24:09
it was free.
Dave Washington 24:10
Oh, okay. So anyway, they had people to come up, so that's what I wanted us to do at this one coming up that we're in charge of. We'll know that anybody who wants to participate, that's a part of it, come up and we answer any questions that people have, because I trust that people will have questions about how it was done, as well as some of the medical matters that that we went through. Further thoughts,
Angel Washington 24:37
I'm just, you know, I'm grateful to have a family who is always so supportive of each other, and you know all of our endeavors, and I am also proud to be part of a family who, although you know, we point out each other's talents, each talent is different and. It, we are all able to, I want to say, take advantage of, but we are able to, you know, receive something from each of those individual talents. I mean, like, who would have thought my little sister could hang chandeliers and things, you know what I'm saying. We don't have to pay an electrician, because we have Amber, who can do that? Who also sews, and who also changes batteries, and things like, you know what I'm saying. We have so many talents in our family. April, having been an actress, and now being an entrepreneur, I'm just grateful to be part of a family who is very, very supportive, and who everybody was willing to be part of this documentary, because all but the two of your grandkids that can't speak participated, so all of your children, all of your grandkids, a couple of your siblings, and you know, a couple other people, and again, could we have made it longer and interviewed more? Yes, but but I was not going to overextend myself,
Dave Washington 26:06
yeah. And then, plus, I think it was, it hit the nail on the head. I think the hour and 15 minutes was, was just right, it presented what I think you were hoping it would present as we all did again, given a platform, and now let's touch base and let's get the word out there to folks, so North Dave did very, very well in terms of how it affected people. Amber,
Amber Washington 26:34
I just continue to give the glory to the Lord, for like Angel said, a supportive family, as stated, all of us went down, even though our parents tried to say no, they could handle it on their own. We are a family that supports one another. Nathan surprised Daddy and came down, just flew down and surprised everyone there. I mean, and just to have a husband that supports, like, you're his, like, he said in the documentary, he sees you as another father, and I'm just so grateful for the family that the Lord has blessed us all with, and has given us all the mind to be supportive of one another. Nobody thinks more than one, and, oh, well, you this, and you that, and you know nobody. There's no jealousy. So you guys raised some wonderful children not to be jealous of one another or envious of one another.
Dave Washington 27:30
I'm
Amber Washington 27:31
grateful for my parents.
Dave Washington 27:34
Well, once again, this is Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 Jazz and Moorhead documentary, first time out,
Angel Washington 27:42
Wildfire,
Dave Washington 27:43
Wildfire. Yeah, see, we gotta even talk about, we
Angel Washington 27:46
didn't even say the name,
Dave Washington 27:47
we'll say it.
Angel Washington 27:48
The documentary is Wildfire, that is the title, and there is a little tagline, but I don't think we can say
Dave Washington 27:56
it. Yeah, we're so.. yeah, don't do
Angel Washington 28:00
it. We won't say the tagline, but that's the title, and it was titled that based on your 33 year fire service career, as well as the wildfire that was growing inside of your body that has been now extinguished.
Dave Washington 28:18
Well, once again, it's Veterans Affairs Plus on 91.5 Jasmine, you got more to say? Amber,
Dave Washington 28:24
happy Mother's Day to all the mothers.
Dave Washington 28:26
Oh, good point.
Angel Washington 28:27
Yes,
Dave Washington 28:28
absolutely. You
Angel Washington 28:29
didn't even say the birthdays, did he? He said it before.
Dave Washington 28:31
Oh yeah. So, anyway, there you go. You're trying to direct that. Oh my god, this is Veterans Affairs. This is
Angel Washington 28:38
my show. I do have something to say. One more thing
Dave Washington 28:43
to tag on
Angel Washington 28:44
to what Amber said. As far as keeping God first, the fact that we have continued to keep that Monday prayer going for over what, two years now, so that's a blessing as well.
Dave Washington 28:53
All right, once again, Veterans Affairs 91.5 Jazz and Moore, we're signing off, and Wes is over there chucking it. Man, this dude is dealing with his daughters on the show. All right, thanks, Wes, once again for a great show. Signing out,
Music 29:18
hey. All the smoke in the air till they hate when I stare all the pain that we bear.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai