Ep. 23 - Motivated by Independence

[00:00:00] Alright everybody worldwide you're now tuned into Motivation and Confidence where we help you do your daily best and I'm your host Tom Danger. This week we're interviewing independent filmmaker Chris James of the film Miss Independent Woman. Let's get into it. What's going on? What's going on y'all?

[00:00:19] Everything is good so so you know the movie is the documentary excuse me is very deep so I want to ask you to start it off one what made you choose a documentary format and what made you choose the topic of Independent Woman?

[00:00:37] Well I was having a conversation I was conversing with one of my lady friends she's actually from Russia. My family her name is Kat and basically you know you know with me you know when I speak to

[00:00:58] like women and things of that nature we always get into the topic of relationships and boyfriend and girlfriend and husband and wife and things of that nature and what happened was she said you know her lady friends that are African-American

[00:01:15] Africans black things of that nature said well you know how can you keep up like man why what is it you know and we both came to the point where we said well it's not about nationality it's really about personality so you know

[00:01:35] we should not fall into the stereotypes you know so that's where it really came from it's basically saying it's not about nationalities about personality so on the film I have an Asian woman on there saying I'm not submissive because you know culture wise sometimes we stereotype Asian women

[00:01:56] right to think that they're all submissive and we stereotype black women African women African-American women to say and stereotype them to say that they're all angry which they're not right it's the personality that that

[00:02:14] that you should be choosing when you meet the person you know if you need a woman and she's about Gucci this about Gucci dad about now you gotta expect expect to spend the bag right personally you get what I'm saying if

[00:02:32] you need a woman that just like walks in a park or things of that nature no matter how color creed religion race whatever then you know that hey look she's simple you get one of the things so it's about personality and choosing so

[00:02:48] that's how the film came about it's not about nationality it's about personality and dealing with personality traits within women you know okay different okay okay and as far as the vast range of personality types that

[00:03:06] you had in the film who are some of the people that that were featured well um some of the people that were featured uh swing cash she actually great time champ got about two to three olympic gold medals okay you know she's definitely

[00:03:27] she she played for the New York Liberty you know and she played for other teams too but she just retired from the New York Liberty and she's working in the sports field now like you know like ESPN on that level I have Camille little

[00:03:42] WNBA about a three-time champ to Tanisha right their champions WNBA women I have James Brown daughter uh Dr. Yamagrown um I have I have to Natasha breed on there that's uh emcee breed the late great emcee breed um wife you know hip hop wise man

[00:04:07] I have so I have RL from next I have Steve canal from Coors light I have uh Kevin brown um I have his HVAC specialist HVAC engineer uh Ron L rock from Cornell I have Jawee also from the uh brick city documentary he was just on the

[00:04:30] Khalid Browder documentary uh that jay-z put out so and he was just in a Tupac movie so Jawee he's very he's a um he's an author and he's like a top like

[00:04:42] gang member but he changed his life around you know man I have so many different people man uh man I have uh Debbie she's a great person Melissa I have so many different people in there man I

[00:04:55] I can't even I can't even name them all Britt Edie she's an entrepreneur she's actually uh Rick Ross ex-girlfriend too so I have a variety of of people in there uh

[00:05:09] you know that you know the film is great man I wish I could name everybody I wish I could name everybody because I have I have a pleasure of different personalities I have from black white

[00:05:25] Asian you know uh Sri Lankan I want the whole I want the whole the whole spectrum of it when it when it dealt with like you know racial got you you know now I I noticed in watching the film

[00:05:43] that there was a general consensus by a lot of the women of the various nationalities that independence was somehow equated with finance would you agree with that statement like a lot of women spoke and said you know I'm independent because I could pay my own bills

[00:06:03] independent is because I can do for myself independent is I don't have to wait on no man independent is you know and it was very few women that were featured that said independent

[00:06:14] is being free of your own thoughts no one controls your mind you know and I just thought that it was interesting to see what most people or what most women thought of independent to be

[00:06:28] would you agree with that yeah I like like when I look at the whole inter independent spectrum um I do feel that whether a woman or a man they're independent within their self however

[00:06:46] when y'all come together in a relationship y'all inter dependent like y'all depend on each other right um I feel like no one person could run an island and I feel like you know we're in

[00:07:01] we're in this day and age where you know women are doing big things right you know they're they're they're becoming entrepreneurs at a high level um they're graduating college at a high level right um and they're and and and they're and I'm gonna be honest with you

[00:07:25] they're giving some men a run for their money when it comes to business absolutely so I feel you know at the end of the day I feel like in somewhat they have a right to feel like

[00:07:43] they're independent now how when I bring my opinion in there the queen makes the best moves on the chess board right and the king guides right you need each other right you get you get

[00:08:01] what I'm saying and don't think you could whether it's man or woman husband wife boyfriend girlfriend don't never think you can do it without each other right like I like the brother who said um

[00:08:16] like when you first said 50 50 he's like nope hold on y'all each got to bring a hundred to the table well don't don't don't bring half yourself you gotta each person got to bring a hundred

[00:08:26] I thought that was a pretty good statement right right that was a great highlight of the film I liked when he said that too it was like he was like hold on yeah we're gonna bring 100

[00:08:37] percent because if you think about it you know which out which our respect is coming you know if you bring a hundred percent of yourself right to a situation and the other person bring

[00:08:51] 100 percent of their self to the situation that will make life much easier now do you know because y'all both proactive that's true what I found very interesting you know you had the dynamic of

[00:09:06] the men talking about their perception of what they thought an independent woman would be and then you had the woman who would naturally state that but correct me if I'm wrong they appear

[00:09:17] to be a lesbian couple in the film is that correct yes correct now now now that was deep right right I wanted to get that so I've never seen that happen right but even with the two of them speaking

[00:09:34] it didn't seem as if there was a male female complex in that relationship even though visually you could sort of see who was the more dominant one but when it came to speaking independence they didn't speak differently as opposed to like how

[00:09:50] men would say oh you know a woman thinks that she should be ex it was it was a very interesting dynamic did you do that intentionally well I wanted to get there I wanted to get their vision

[00:10:03] because think about it like this now I was like okay you know in that life in the lgbtq community right when you're looking at women getting into relationships with each other you know

[00:10:19] some of them are films some of them are studs you know that's their language right so I wanted to get a dynamic to where okay I want to know myself right give me the understanding of

[00:10:34] how can they have two independent women in a relationship with each other and how does that work out because you know sometimes they say you know in the world we grew up in right they said

[00:10:47] women are more emotional right you know what I'm saying they're more the nurturers they're more the carers and things of that nature I want to know how a household would be like with two independent women in a relationship with each other and how does it work right

[00:11:03] right so what gave you what motivated you to start this film and correct me if I'm wrong you said that it took you three years to complete this so I noted it wasn't an easy task yeah it took me

[00:11:19] three years to complete it um you know uh I'm really big on not judging a book by its cover okay you know like even with me I live a simple life um I'm gonna give you an example

[00:11:35] let's talk let's talk like even let's talk about in a in a dating spectrum we know we know who Mark Zuckerberg is right when you say Mark Zuckerberg that brings a bell right yes

[00:11:49] however when I say shaw map do that ring ring a bell to you no exactly so we we we deal with that daily where people are judging book by its cover or you know because they may

[00:12:04] not know what level of success that person may reach because they wanted to live a simple life a life in the you know a fallback life not really in in the public's eye so you got Mark

[00:12:17] Zuckerberg you got shaw map okay we know Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO and one of the founders of Facebook guess what shaw map is one of the founders of Facebook too also shaw math is

[00:12:35] one of the co-owner co-owners of the Goldman state warriors also he's one of the investors in tesla and he only has 2700 followers on instagram wow so by numbers let's let's just say a person would

[00:12:51] judge that person right right say okay 2700 followers that person is a nobody there so that's where the film come out it's like don't judge a book by its cover meet the person find out who the

[00:13:07] person is seek the person's personality you never know right you never know what level what personality like if you just say oh well that person is black you know that person has

[00:13:20] bad credit like even bringing up the credit if I walk in a place where I'm just you know I got sneakers on jeans on um and let's just say like a regular shirt and I'm going to say hey you know

[00:13:36] I'm going to run my credit you know it's a big you know you know they judge you by your nationality right oh yeah you know what that person that person is uh uh as of a African descent

[00:13:51] he has he has bad credit yep absolutely so they eat you cannot and you cannot assume you have to investigate okay okay so when people watch this film what is the one thing that you

[00:14:08] want them to take away from this film the biggest thing I want them to take away from the film and you know it's not judging okay by its cover um even when you think about relationships right

[00:14:21] you know you know with with let's say even in our culture where you know we get sued and it's not everybody and don't investigate you know um with the film I want people to

[00:14:37] network more I think the I think the biggest thing now is that people you know they say they socially networking but they're really socially un-socially networking right now break that down because that was deep well socially un-socially networking is we're plugged in to the matrix

[00:15:05] social media facebook instagram snapchat things of that nature but we're not talking to each other no more we're not we're not getting to find out about each other's personality no more we all think you know in our mind that if I see Tommy danger you know on instagram

[00:15:26] you know that oh yeah I spoke to him you know because I spoke to him and then in person we've seen each other and we're being socially un-social got you you know what I'm saying you know

[00:15:38] you know like even in a dating spectrum now like you know a person you know it's like uh it's like everybody's just plugged into where that they're scared to be social in the real world

[00:15:53] got you so it's like we'll like a picture we'll post a comment but then when we're in the room with each other we're still staring at our phones we're not talking to each other

[00:16:02] exactly so so so where can people check out the film follow you on social media reach out to you give us all that good stuff okay um you could check out the film on amazon prime okay you know um

[00:16:20] if you have amazon prime you could stream it for free if you don't have amazon prime if you rent it is a dollar ninety nine if you want to purchase a copy on amazon prime or amazon is four

[00:16:32] ninety nine also you could get a signed copy from me um for 20 bucks nice you get what i'm saying um yeah so you get the signed copy because you never know the the signature might turn into

[00:16:48] you know billions this is true this is true so you know so tell us about the next so tell us about the next project that you have coming out i have two i'm i'm juggling i'm juggling uh two um you know one is about dating you know um

[00:17:11] it and it and it and it one is about finance okay so i'm juggling right now