Jacob Hirsch
Fighters For Fighters
2nd Social Justice Blog Post
Interview With Dan Lohas (Director of When Can I Come Home) On The Movie He Made, 11/19/14
On Wednesday November 19, our group was able to schedule a skype call with Dan Lohas, the director of a movie that we all felt connected with. We were so pleased with all of his answers and how he was able to dig deep into his personal feelings. Dan Lohas’s movie “When I Came Home” was a movie about a couple of veterans that come home to deep poverty and/or homelessness. There was one person who Dan really put the focus on his name was Harold Noel. Harold Noel has 3 kids and he was basically forced to live in his jeep because his mother took care of Foster Children and he felt the veteran shelter was not safe for his children. At the end of the movie a person saw what was happening while he was reading the newspaper and ended up getting Harold an Apartment and paid for 1 year of rent.
During our skype interview with Dan Lohas we we asked him what it was like seeing struggling homeless veterans. He basically said when the homeless veterans would break down in front of him or start talking about their struggles there are two sides of what’s going through my mind. He said on one hand, my film maker side, whenever someone is breaking down I want to get it on camera because it will make the audiences feel bad and want to help. Then the other side he said, “I’m still a person I can’t help but feel guilty watching a man cry in his car telling me he doesnt know what to do and I’m just filming it.”
Personally, I think Dan told us the most upsetting veteran fact we know. Dan told us that numbers show that more Veterans die from coming home and killing themselves rather than on the battlefield fighting. After that our group had a moment of silence we didn’t really know what to say, this might have been the most depressing thing I’ve heard of in terms of numbers.
At the end of our call Dan was nice enough to send us CD’s of his movie and he even emailed us some charities and people that would love to have our group help out.
