 I'm on. There we go. Susanna, thank you so much for doing this. We're thrilled that you could be with us. Your film is absolutely astonishing. I can't remember the last time I learned so much from a single viewing on a single topic. Oh, thank you. It's it's quite a remarkable piece of work. I'm wondering what you learned while making it. Well, I kind of learned everything while making it. I mean, I learned a lot before I well, I learned. I learned the beginning of it, you know, when I went to get treatment for my daughter. So I learned a little bit then. But what motivated it was that once I knew what was happening to her and I started talking to people about it, I discovered that so many people I knew had migraine and didn't talk about it. I didn't know they had this, you know, condition. And I realized how closeted it was and how nobody was talking about it and how there was a need to talk about it. So then when I began when I decided to do a film and I began talking to, you know, experts and doctors and, you know, all the people I did, I, you know, I learned more than I ever imagined I could have. I also the biggest surprise, I guess, which is in the film was learning that I had had abdominal migraine. Once I discovered there was such a thing and putting those pieces together and going, oh my God, that happened to me. Why do you think the stigma is so powerful? Why do you think it's been such a well kept secret? I think probably the biggest reason is because it's seen as a disease of women. It is, you know, 75 percent of people who suffer from migraine are women. I think because you can't see it. It has a lot of the same associations as, you know, hysteria and the sort of, you know, melodrama that is attributed to women when they are not believed. Sort of like breast cancer was for so long, such a dirty secret. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to ask you some questions now that came from the audience the night that we showed the film. Great. Why don't doctors tell parents and patients straight away what migraine symptoms are? Believe it or not, I think a lot of doctors don't know what they are. That's still a big problem. You know, I think there's a doctor in the film that says that he teaches one hour on headache in medical school. So unless you're going into the specialization of headache medicine as a medical student, you're really not going to learn very much. Plus, there are a lot of symptoms that are still being discovered as being associated with migraine, you know, because it's a neurological disease. And I think it's been so hard to break out of the sort of paradigm of headache, which is obviously only one part of it. If if if them, you know, and there's some people who don't even have headaches from it. So it's a very steep learning curve for doctors. Wow, it's so amazing. How did you choose your subjects? Well, I chose my main subject because she's my daughter, Emma, who was I had easy access to, you know, I was just I thought, you know, we were sort of testing it out. Is this can we make a film like this? Is this what's this going to be like? She brought to my attention Joan Didion's essay in bed. And that gave me the idea to try to contact Joan Didion and choose her. And she said yes, which was amazing. What made you shoot Joan Didion so extremely close up? Well, her extreme close up was just reading the material if she was kind of in a normal frame for the interview. I just wanted to be in her experience. I just wanted nothing else to exist for the moment. But that and her face is so expressive. And and you can see her pain. She was actually having a migraine while she was. We that was actually in the film at one point. Yes, it was. Is it in it still? I can't, you know, you edit a film for so many years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's in a one time. She says I'm having one now, right? Anyway, she's just such a vivid sort of experience of what she's talking about. Mm hmm. So how long did it take you? I'm still reading these from the audience. How long did it take you to make this film? I hate to say this, but from beginning to end, eight years. And that was because we had so much trouble raising money because nobody was interested in a film about migraine. I mean, the film, the film community didn't get migraine and the migraine community didn't get film. So it was like, where do you go? We we got sort of our biggest kick at the beginning was a grant from the Migraine Research Foundation. We met, you know, we would go to conferences and we would meet all these people. And we would talk about what we were doing. And actually one of the doctors, you know, we got, I can't remember where we got the first little bit of seed money from, but we had a little bit of money that we started out with. And we went to a conference and we met some doctors. And then they, you know, they knew where the money was and who was in that world of funding for research. And it was one of the doctors in the film who suggested the head of the foundation. And then we got to her and then there was another foundation. I mean, we got a lot from foundations and actually also family foundations, private families who had children who suffered from it and recognized the incredible value of film in order to, you know, some people think, well, if it's not medical treatment, then what good is it? But, you know, particularly mothers, there was, you know, there was one couple where the father was like, why, what, how's the movie going to help my daughter? And the mother's feeling was it's going to help her not feel so alone and isolated and devastated. And it's going to help, it's going to get attention to the subject. Another audience question. How did you cast your film with such a great geographical variety? That was very deliberate. And that's kind of back to how did you pick who you were casting? Yeah, I mean, you know, actually the geographical variety wasn't as deliberate as the gender, race, age spectrum. Right. That was very deliberate. We were, I mean, a couple of our subjects were in the south. The couple were in the northeast, trying to even remember where we went. You know, we had doctors, you know, we have a doctor from UCLA. We have to, you know, we do the doctors were from wherever the great headache doctors are, the great neurologists who would convene at whatever conferences and then we just, you know, go wherever they were. And why is there such a paucity of funding from migraine research when over a billion people suffer from this disease? One, it's invisible to its women, primarily. Three, the that I think the term headache is really does a disservice. The association with headache does a disservice to the to the disease because it's so much more. And it's and it and and and it is not except in instances which do exist of suicide. It's not life threatening. I mean, there have been, you know, people who have killed themselves because of chronic migraine. I mean, they just can't live their lives. But that's, you know, that's rare. And so it's not considered life threatening. So how can the migraine myth be broken so people can realize the condition is so much more than having a bad headache? By watching this film, by, I mean, you know, people, people have to want to know or have to be exposed to it without knowing that's what's going to happen. You know, people sometimes people like get dragged to this film and then they go, oh, my God, I had no idea and it was so fascinating and it was so great to watch. And, you know, it's really hard to break the stigma and to break through and get the information out. And so, you know, we're we're placing this in medical schools. We have a grant to place it in medical schools all over the country that we're working on now. So at least there will be access to it. And we're, you know, trying to distribute it as well as we can. But, you know, you get the word when you discovered that you had suffered as a child from abdominal migraines. How did that affect you in terms of your thinking about your daughter? And how does a person cope with abdominal migraines today? I didn't really change anything in my thinking about my daughter. I mean, I had been so consumed by what was going on with her for so long. It was just sort of another interesting piece. It made me feel a bit of a kinship, maybe. Yeah, a connection. Yeah, yeah, even though mine are very different from hers. Is it genetic? Well, yeah, I mean, it is hereditary that migraine is hereditary. And I and I think in the film, I say that I was asked by the neurologist, you know, who in your family has it for that reason. And at the time, I said no one because I didn't I didn't know yet about abdominal migraine and I didn't realize that I that, you know, it was me that I had, you know, brought the genetic line to your parents. Did either of your parents suffer from any form of this? No, not that we know of. OK, so no other family member. I mean, probably, but not that I know of. And, you know, then there's the Emma's line that she couldn't that her doctor couldn't ask people, does your mother have migraines? She has to say, did your mother go into a dark room and close the door? You know, because people don't talk about it. So I don't know who's I mean, sure, I'm sure many people in my family and maybe even in Emma's father's family. Yeah, but right. How would we know? Right. So Emma's a social worker now. Yeah. How did her illness lead her there or did it? It did, actually. And she said this on camera and we just couldn't fit it in the film. It made her want to help people who are suffering in silence. So in fact, it inspired her so that she could be an example in a way to others. Yeah, it inspired her to help people who couldn't necessarily understand their own suffering or express it and help them do that. That's amazing. Yeah. When you say in the very beginning of the film, this was one of my favorite parts, you say, I had to make this film. That's a really extraordinary thing because a lot of people wouldn't say that. They know that their child is suffering from an illness, but they don't necessarily have the motivation or really the drive to turn it into something like a film or a book. So what propelled you? Well, I mean, I am a filmmaker, so I am someone who when I see a subject that I feel needs to be explored and is interesting to explore and that I have something to say about it, then that sets me off. It's not like I wanted to do it. It happens to me a lot in documentaries. Is it like a subject comes to me and it's like, oh, my God, this has to be a film. Right. I understand that completely. Yeah. So knowing all that you know now, how would you advise a parent, any person really, who is suffering from migraines or who has somebody that they love to suffer from migraines? Well, what would I say to them or how would I advise them? Yeah. Get to a headache specialist, get to a neurologist who is actually a headache specialist. I mean, there are some extraordinary doctors who aren't special headache specialists who are able to treat this. But I think if people are really suffering and not finding relief through normal medical channels, they need to see headache, a headache specialist. So tell us about the difference between a headache specialist and a migraine specialist. Who should go there? They're the same migraine and headache specialist. So what's the difference between a regular neurology? Well, neurology has many different areas and headache is one area of neurology. Headache and migraine is one area of neurology. But I have a really interesting story, which is that. We had, I mean, one of the great things about this film is how many people come up to us afterwards by us. I mean, my my partner, my producer, Jack and me. Yeah. You know, people come up to us and say I had no idea or I or I mean, we've had people who suffer from migraine, you know, hug us, weeping, my, you know, my my husband finally understands what I'm going through. I don't feel so alone. I had a guy say, oh, my God, my wife dragged me here. And now for the first time in my life, I understand what my daughter is going through. But we had a headache specialist, a doctor, a neurologist, headache specialist who came up to us after screening and she said, I'm a headache specialist. I don't suffer from migraine myself. This is the first time in my life. I have really understood what my patients are going through. Wow. Well, that's that's everything. I mean, how amazing. That's fantastic. Yeah, so not only are you able to allow the audience to empathize who may have migraines or know someone who has the migraine condition. You also gave a doctor the gift for the first time to really understand what it's like to wear those shoes. Yeah, I mean, most honestly, most doctors who go into headache medicine actually do suffer from migraine really dry leads them there, but some don't. And so, you know, it's something that's that's, you know, really hard to understand unless you put your mind to it. How is Emma doing now with her migraine? She's doing great. She's doing great. She's really managed. She's one of the lucky ones. I mean, she's had a few flare ups, but she basically. Well, well, it's actually really interesting. They they kind of transformed as they do. They change over time or they can change over time. They can get worse. They can get better. They can turn into sort of something else. And when she stopped getting headaches and aura. She started. She got IBS irritable balsam drug, which is a very it's it's it's not an adequate name for what it is. It's not an irritation. It's it's it's it's an agony. Yeah, no, I know. And so Bob Shapiro, who's the doctor in the film in Vermont, who does the gut brain connection research, he said, you know, his feeling is this is her the current manifestation of her migraine. So she was she had that for several years and her diet was really, really restricted. It was really very thin. Oh, it was it's really hard to know that on the camera. She was thin because of the drug that is not named. But I can say now is Topomax, which makes them thin and stupid. Right. But then, you know, she got off of that. And she got, you know, her. So this didn't change her weight, but it was just really a pain to. I mean, it was like impossible to go for her or go out to dinner. I mean, she wasn't living with me anymore. But she, you know, she had a very restrictive diet and she hated it, too. She finally did a self hypnosis course. Mm hmm. And she actually cured, not going wood, the IBS. Wow. With self hypnosis. And she's not like a woo-woo person. It's it, but it was like there's something called gut directed self hypnotherapy. She was desperate. She would have tried anything. That's fascinating. Yeah. And just further affirms the gut mind connection. Yeah. That is so cool. Yeah. Tell me about the epilogue and how that came to be. What's the epilogue? I can't remember. I haven't seen it in a few years, a couple of years. The of Emma. Yeah. How that came to. Oh, OK. So, you know, we did the film. We started the film. She was the first interview we did. And it was like really good. So we kept it in the film. Then then the other thing that's interesting about the filmmaking process is that for years, I was not a part of the film. I was not. And when I did the interview with her, I said, just don't talk to me like I'm your mother. Talk to me like I'm, you know, just a film interviewer. So I kept I kept struggling to find the narrative arc of the film. And. At one point. I realized that I had to be in it. And I had to admit that I was Emma's mother and I had to bring the personal thread in. I didn't want to film myself. I didn't want to be on camera. That's when we thought of the animation to make the that to make that Emma's and my story, the spine of it, and to do it to make me an animated character and to do our story through animation. So that gave shape to the film. That was kind of the solution to the film. That was the arc. So then we got through that and it was like, OK. Here's Emma. You know, eight years later. Right. Let's revisit this. Now, this is the this is the, you know, the final step of the arc. And I had access to her. So we did. And she actually said some really interesting things in. In the final interview, some of which I was able to use just the audio, but I couldn't I didn't want to bring the picture in until the very end. I didn't want you to see Emma now until right. We got to the very end. Right. And go ahead. I just I just have one more interesting film making point is when I put myself in it, she had already we already had had structured it around her starting the story of being in Paris and having your boyfriend come and having her migraine start again. What I realized the way in to bring me into the story. Was a line that I. That was true, but that I wrote and had her record, which is that's when I called you right and told you I had to come home. So it went from this objective story to subjective and it was directed at me and then I was in film and it didn't happen that way. She did call me and tell me she had to come home. But yeah, I got her to say that line. That's great. So what are you working on now? I'm working on a couple of things that I I'm a little reluctant to talk about one is the documentary, a short documentary. That's a very kind of it's like a little memoir piece of this woman who something happened to that I I'm not I can't I'm not really ready to talk about, but it's this story. It's it's it's learning something. Kind of awful, some learning something about her father after he died and reckoning that that she wish hadn't been true and not. And how do you reckon with that after the person's gone? Right. And then I actually am working on the other main thing is TV series, you know, a fictional TV series comedy. Great. And that is in kind of in I mean, I don't know if it will how far it will go, but it's very well positioned right now to possibly, you know, move forward. Right. But it's a it's a really it's kind of my it's it's my great relief from these dark and painful documentaries is to write comedy, which I do. Comic relief. Yeah. So is there anything else that you want us to know about migraines or being the parent of somebody who has this condition or a loved one or a friend? I mean, I would say that we did when the film came out, we did a lot of interviews. We did an interview in Marie Claire magazine. I think was where Emma said somebody asked her that. What's the one person you would say it was the opposite? What would you say to people to the family and friends of people with migraine? And she said, believe them. That was her answer. Believe them. God. And so I would say believe them. I would say, you know, to people who who might be watching this and not have gotten this not have been at the screening or not have gotten this information to go to our website, which is out of my head film.com. And aside from being able to rent and buy the film there and share it with friends and, you know, tell people, there's also a list of resources of, you know, headache and migraine resources and organizations to, you know, help people. So the website is actually more than just like a commercial site. It's full of information. Excellent. OK, Susanna, thank you so much for this. We really thank you. This is great. Thanks a lot. Bye.