Title:
Trailblazers in Film: The History Making Movie ‘Daruma’
Subtitle:
Groundbreaking Representation in Hollywood | Tobias Forrest and John W. Lawson
Transcript:
Alycia Anderson: Welcome to pushing forward with Alicia, a podcast that gives disability a voice each week. We will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.
Let’s go.
Welcome back to pushing forward with Alycia. I’m Alycia Anderson. We have actors in the house today. Two of them. I’m so excited. Welcome Tobias Forrest and John W. Lawson, the stars of Daruma. Did I say that right?
Tobias Forrest: Sure.
John W. Lawson: Sure.
Tobias Forrest: Now, which part stars or Daruma?
Alycia Anderson: Both, that’s a great question. Very cute. They are both groundbreaking actors in Hollywood, making history with this film as two leads, both having disabilities, changing the narrative of representation in Hollywood, CNN was quoted for saying this film is making cinematic history to star two leads with disabilities.
In a narrative that’s not about disability, which I absolutely love. It’s about fricking time. Welcome to my show. I’m so excited to meet you, John, and to see you again, Toby, my friend from a long time ago. Welcome.
John W. Lawson: Thank you. Thank you. Groundbreaking actors. That means we were ditch diggers before.
Alycia Anderson: No way. It means you’re leading the charge and making some change in the industry. I’m totally into it.
Tobias Forrest: John has definitely paved the way, We’ve known each other for years at this point. I think he was definitely out there in the entertainment world and acting far before I was. And he was out here paving the way and knocking down doors in Hollywood, trying to make it in this entertainment industry.
And that’s really what we want is the opportunity to at least authentically represent characters like ourselves, and then hopefully represent characters that just You know, happen to have a disability or maybe don’t have a disability and you never even know it about John and I, hopefully the next movie is that, maybe they’ll digitally able body us.
Who knows. Instead of digitally disabling a bunch of other people.
Alycia Anderson: AI able body I guess or something like that.
John W. Lawson: Yeah.
Tobias Forrest: But yeah, John, I wouldn’t be here without him. He was doing an audition, got an audition for Daruma, and was over at my house, and I was reading it with him. After his audition, he said, Hey, why don’t you audition for the other guy?
It’s a wheelchair guy. I said, no, it’s a paraplegic. I’m a quadriplegic. I can’t do all that stuff. I’ve been down that road. And they said, nah, do it anyway. I said, I don’t know the lines. He said, I’ll tape it to my forehead. I said, just do it. I said, fine. So we did it. And we ended up doing this amazing film after a few years of development and all these things.
John W. Lawson: Seven years.
Tobias Forrest: Seven years, seven year itch right there. And we would not be here without Kelly the writer, producer, and her husband, Alex, the director, and they are just, they created this incredible machine for us to jump on board and I wouldn’t be here without John, so he paved the path and I’m following in his lead.
John W. Lawson: I think that’s just a nice way of saying I’m old, but thank you. But yeah, it was, it’s been a long time and Toby and I auditioned for this almost over seven years ago now. And they stuck with us and we stuck with them and we’ve got this remarkable piece of art that we just can’t wait for everybody to see.
Alycia Anderson: I love it. I love that the history has been so long, seven years. That’s a, that’s quite a bit of time to be committed to a project. Tell us about it. Why what drew you to the story or this project specifically? Was there something? That was calling you?
John W. Lawson: To me it’s a well-written script and especially the film, with two main characters with disability, but the film’s not about disability at all.
They’re just fully realized complex characters that are on this journey of discovery, both physical and emotional, and they’re not reduced to the. Outdated tropes that we’ve seen in films in the past, and it’s just a film that dives deep into the human experience where the characters just happen to have a disability.
It’s not a moral lesson movie, but an inspiring story about connection, survival, and finding humor in life’s challenges.
Alycia Anderson: What I love about that is It’s not a moral lesson. There’s humor in it. It’s talking about life’s challenges and it’s embedding disability in a very natural, organic way, which is how we live.
And I think that’s the best way to transcend the lived experience is combining all of those things together, which is super powerful. I’m really excited to see this film. Toby, I know that you have experience in accessibility, you’ve been an actor, you’ve been on the stage for literally a long time.
I knew you when you were a baby actor. What from your background drew you to this project?
Tobias Forrest: Like John said, the proof is in the writing, right? And to have, A story that feels like it’s not pushing anything, like it’s not pushing a narrative, it just lives. And to be trusted with the opportunity to go, Hey, you’re going to be in every scene and Hey, you’re going to have a range of emotions and Hey, your character is going to have a journey, both literally and, figuratively.
And it’s going to be a challenge to me physically as a quadriplegic, it’s three hours just to get up and into my wheelchair in the morning. So you get a 7 a. m. call time. And you’ve got to drive there, that’s, waking up early and you’re going to have a long day. And throughout that day, there’s only brief moments where you get to bring this thing to life.
And the rest of it is just. the haul of waiting or, getting to the next spot and having no real time to go what is the script? Can I break down because no, there’s no time. I got this scene and then boom, we’re doing that scene. And then we got this with John and thank God I had John because He not only was my great co-star in this thing and a friend, but he was always there for me almost as my own personal assistant.
He was, he knows what I need as and as another guy with a disability who happens to have a disability. We’re able to look out for each other. And that is a dynamic that’s a story within the story, right? It’s there on screen, there’s this story of these friends, but behind it, there’s this even deeper story of these two guys who have struggled just to try and live life as an entertainer.
And they’re helping each other throughout this process. So that was this really little golden ticket on the side of it. And then. The boost that I knew the result would be is that one, not only will this movie hopefully change some perspectives about inclusion in this industry, but more importantly, it will inspire conversations between fathers and daughters or family members that will hopefully heal years of miscommunication.
And that’s the power of entertainment. One is to educate society and two is to inspire conversations. And so hopefully I know Daruma is already doing that. So we’re really excited about bringing this to the world.
Alycia Anderson: So I love what you just said about community and bringing conversation not only on the screen, but behind the screen.
And I think number one, one of the biggest hits of representation and understanding of our path is that communication piece that is oftentimes missed out of fear. But on the back end of it, it’s so powerful as a disabled community to lean on each other and to feel like we’re part of a larger whole. So I, it gives me the chills actually thinking about you two on the back end of this film, supporting each other as you’re navigating your disabilities and the workload, like that is a thing difficult for us.
Tobias Forrest: And John knows like We are a powerful force, the disability community John? In entertainment.
John W. Lawson: Yeah. I…, and I have been, I got hurt over 35 years ago. Coming up this February it will be 38 years that I lost my hands and I was in the hospital going, you know what, I’m a trained actor.
There’s going to be plenty of roles for a guy with no hands, just playing the storekeeper or the lawyer or whatever. And unfortunately, that wasn’t what the reality was, little did I know that it would send me into spending the next 35 years as an advocate for people with disabilities in front of and behind the camera.
And as Toby said, we met many years ago and we had a lot of mutual friends and then we ended up only living about a mile and a half from each other. So we always helped each other read for parts and when we’re taping auditions and, we developed this deep friendship that I think came through to the director and to Kelly, the writer, and that’s what they saw was the real friendship that was already there, that we had.
In the film that we develop over from the beginning to the end, the arc of the film has a lot to do with families, not just the ones that you’re given by chance, but the ones you take by choice. And so that’s what I think comes through in the arc of this film with Toby and me.
Alycia Anderson: The families that you’re given by choice.
I love that. And you just said another key word, advocacy, specifically in the entertainment industry. Can you talk a little bit about, you’ve been, you’ve both been in the industry for quite some time. Can you talk about what advocacy is meant to you? What that word means and the progression that you’ve seen where we’ve come from, where we need to go?
John W. Lawson: I recently gave a talk at, I was on a panel at MGM Grand Amazon and a few weeks ago, and I actually was looking through some old hard drives and I found this file from where I started about 35 years ago, one of the first speeches that I ever gave. And at that time, disability representation and film or in television and film, of course, it was only the three networks at the time was nine tenths of 1 percent so less than 1%.
of the characters that you saw on television and film were someone with a disability. And I don’t even know about the authenticity. That was just the people that were probably able bodied people that were sitting in a wheelchair. We flash forward now 35 years later, and the latest study from USC Annenberg showed that about 2 percent and it’s a 2.
2 or 2. 1. Whatever they are over streaming over network over films. All of it together is right now at about 2%. So we can look at that in two different ways. One is that. Oh boy, we’ve doubled. We’ve doubled our representation. We’re up to two percent. Or the other one is, it’s we know that the numbers are about one in four, or about 25 percent of the people in the United States have some form of disability, and yet only two percent, they only see themselves in two percent of the characters that are represented in film and television, the entertainment that they bring into their home.
And That segment of the population represents billions of dollars in discretionary income that they can buy tickets to go see movies or they can download and stream products that they bring into their home.
Tobias Forrest: Daruma. Daruma, good segue. November 15th, that’s when we’re going to be not only in select theaters but we’re also going to be like John said available online.
So you’ll be able to go to Amazon. You’ll be able to get our movie for what is it, John? You said less than a cappuccino. $5.99.
John W. Lawson: And that’s less than your morning latte.
Tobias Forrest: And also just so you guys know out there on November 8th, we’re going to have a trailer drop. So if people go to darumamovie.com, they can… one, not only see all the showtimes and the information about Daruma, but they can also sign up to check out the trailer drop and we’re going to have an amazing host.
We’re going to have some good special guests.
John W. Lawson: Christopher Titus, Mr. National Comedian himself.
Tobias Forrest: Christopher Titus. And some other surprise people on there. So it’s going to be exciting. We’ve got games that go along with the movie. And there’s going to be some premieres in November in different cities.
John will be at most of them because he’s a great representative. I will definitely be at Chicago and in LA. We’re looking forward to it.
John W. Lawson: Yeah, it’s in the select theaters of 15th through the 21st. If you’re in one of the major cities, like Toby said, you can find it on darumamovie.com. D A R U M A movie dot com.
And all the information is there. There’s even like a bingo game that you can play for things that happened in the movie. When you see them, you get to cover a square. But the trailer dropped. There’s swag giveaway, swag bags. People are going to win. Swag bags that and that we’re giving away during the trailer drop as well.
Alycia Anderson: Nice. And like we were talking about in the beginning, and we talk about this a lot on the show, how can we support each other as disabled people and allies of the community and beyond. And we are talking about the streaming and how powerful something like that is to support a film like this. So you can have the data to show the power and the interest of our society and wanting to learn these and learn more about our community and the lived experience and beyond.
I think that’s a really important note that it’s the way that we can support this movement to continue it and to move it forward.
Tobias Forrest: The other really cool thing about Daruma is that it’s really all inclusive, so not only is it audio capture or captioned, but it’s audio described as well.
We’ve got a great company audio eyes that’s done our audio description. So it’s like available to everybody and it’s, that’s really like creating the mold. For what the rest of Hollywood and the entertainment industry should be already doing is creating all inclusive stuff, right? And that not only has.
Guys like us, or, people, folks like us who happen to have disabilities on screen, but you’ve got people with disabilities working behind the camera, in the crew. You’ve got across all levels in the industry, hopefully people with disabilities working. You’ve got audio description, closed captioning.
And also what Kelly and Alex have proved. is that you don’t need this extraordinary huge budget and a story that really is driven by using disability as a narrative to pull at people’s heartstrings or whatever the intent of it is, and that you don’t need to digitally disable people in order to tell a good story.
And they, with, With very little money, we’re able to create something that’s really beautiful on screen. It’s beautifully written, and hopefully John and I did a good enough job to bring some of that beauty to the screen.
John W. Lawson: And I must mention that Toby won the Christopher Reeve Best Actor Award last year at the Media Access Awards, where we’re both going back tonight to the Media Access Awards again.
But Toby won best actor, the Christopher Reeve best acting award. And so yeah, and I happened to win when we were playing a film festival circuit at slam dance. But as Toby was saying, we go to movies to feel something and Daruma is a movie that will make you feel, and it has a heart that anybody can relate to.
And it’s as I like to say, it’s a bit of a survival story and a rescue story and you’re going to laugh some along the way too. So…
Tobias Forrest: Yeah. Plus you’ll fall in love with Victoria Scott. Oh yeah. My daughter in the film. She’s an…
John W. Lawson: Abigail Hall who plays his love interest.
Tobias Forrest: I know I got very lucky. Yeah. And Barry Bostwick.
Come on. Damn it. Janet. How do you get that guy in the film?
Alycia Anderson: And if I could throw out another name, if we’re throwing out names, I understand that the executive producer also is a two time Academy award winner, Peter Farrelly, which is a massive,
John W. Lawson: And it’s an interesting story behind that.
Okay, he came to see the film. Toby and I invited him and we were a little worried that, oh my God, what if he doesn’t like it? This is going to be terrible. And Toby and I were sitting there and Peter after the film came up to us and he goes, This is the best film I’ve seen with disability representation ever.
And he goes, I want you to be able to put my name on it. If it helps get it out there to the world, because the world needs to see this. What you’ve created is just absolutely fantastic. So, and
Tobias Forrest: Peter is a pioneer in inclusion. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. From Kingpin to Something About Mary to, even all his most recent films and his brother.
Bobby has got a movie out Champions, right? And they are all about inclusion and our great friend, John and I, our great friend, Danny Murphy was another great actor, a fellow quadriplegic, my mentor. He was in pretty much all their movies. And from the very beginning, really those guys helped establish that, Hey, inclusion matters and we can do it on almost every level.
From having a big part to, peppering the film with smaller parts, people with disabilities, and you may not even know they have a disability.
Alycia Anderson: You know what, that’s really powerful that you have an executive producer that has, is so established with that many big movies, that now thinking back oh yeah, Kingpin and, That was about somebody with a disability and I haven’t even thought about that for so long.
And that’s really, that was a lot of foresight back then, right?
Tobias Forrest: What happened was Danny and Peter were friends growing up and Peter had shown Danny his film. One of his very first films. And Danny says, great, but where’s the disabled people? And he’s Oh, I didn’t re I didn’t think about that.
And then when he did Kingpin put Danny in the film as the guy who pushes… owns the bowling place, pushes the button and chops off the arm. Here, you’ve got a guy who’s going to play a disabled actor in the film, right? And an amputee in the film, but yet. The other characters played by a.
Quadriplegic, they don’t even make any mention of it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He’s just the guy that owns the place, presses the button and chops off the arm. And that in and of itself, that moment. It’s made a huge difference, believe it or not, in cinematic history. So
Alycia Anderson: I gotta go back and watch that movie.
It’s been so long and that’s actually right.
Tobias Forrest: Yeah.
John W. Lawson: If you flash forward now to this past year, Peter just did Ricky Sanicky. I think it was something like that. It was called, and he shot in New Zealand and. Okay, here we know about disabled actors, but in New Zealand, he looked and found actors with disabilities and put them in the film.
Now I’m just not talking about background, somebody rolling in the background in a chair. Almost every one of them had a speaking part in the film. So Peter’s been a real big representation or advocate or an ally for people with disabilities.
Alycia Anderson: I love these stories. It reminds me a little bit of Ali Stroker, even though she’s in theater, but I flew to New York.
I flew to New York to see her performance because it was so impactful to, for that to be happening. For me, and I know for all of us, but it was the same situation. Like they never mentioned her disability. They adapted the role to fit so perfectly. And it was… It’s giving me the chills. It’s so powerful as a disabled person to see you all do that stuff without going Oh, it’s the guy with the disability, and
Tobias Forrest: I think the problem is right. The industry doesn’t necessarily think that there is maybe an audience, right? And so until they realize, oh, there’s a monetary gain to be had by authentically representing folks, then it won’t necessarily happen. And. So to prove it is helpful. Hopefully it will change that perspective for me.
I’ve also done like consulting on sets. And so it’s to find out, okay, people go, Oh, it’s, that’s good. It’s not going to be accessible or we got to make it accessible. It’s going to cost money and all these other excuses. And the reality is that. Cameras are on wheels. Most of the equipment’s on wheels.
There’s ramps already. There’s… there’s carpenters that can build anything you need within a half hour. And you know what I’m saying? There’s…, there are no excuses. And there are only possibilities and answers and things that will improve this industry. I think that, geez if most of the crews out there learned ASL.
We wouldn’t have to worry about being quiet on set because they could say all that they wanted to across the room, imagine a world like that. Yeah.
John W. Lawson: And we, we also too, we’ve had a lot of questions people go where does the name come from? Why is it called Daruma? And it’s interesting because the Daruma doll is a lucky figurine gesture or symbolic of in, in Japanese history, it’s a lucky charm and it’s symbolic of the themes of perseverance and resilience.
And it comes in play. It almost is a character within itself in the film. When my character has a Daruma tattoo with one eye filled in, because when you get a Daruma doll, you make a wish, color in an eye, and when the wish comes true, you color in the other eye. And so in the film, and we won’t give anything away because there’s a bunch of little twists and turns to this story, but I have a tattoo with one eye filled in.
And it plays into the film because we’re both transporting this young girl across country. And it echoes the themes of, Overcoming challenges and staying authentic and perseverance and resilience, much like the symbols of the Daruma doll. So that’s where it comes from for a Japanese luck… a lucky symbol.
Alycia Anderson: I love the story of the Daruma doll. Oh, that’s up my alley. That’s so beautiful. I can’t wait to watch this film. I cannot wait. Seriously. Wow.
Tobias Forrest: Check out the trailer, November 8th.
John W. Lawson: Yeah. Sign in and watch the trailer, November the 8th. And we’re out and keep following, if you follow us on social media, we’re still dropping little little snippets here and there.
They just dropped the new one here yesterday, I think. I was at Paramount yesterday for a disability thing. But yeah, you can follow us both on social media. Mine’s JW Lawson, five, seven. It’s hard to believe there were 56 others like me, but yeah, JW Lawson, five, seven, and you can follow me on Instagram and I’m on there most all the time.
And Tobias is,
Tobias Forrest: yeah, you know me, that’s me. No, it’s if you want to find me on Instagram, it’s Tobias. Easy, E A S Y, Forrest, with two R’s. That is my middle name, believe it or not.
Alycia Anderson: I like it.
Tobias Forrest: And I’ve been trying to live up to it.
Alycia Anderson: You have.
Tobias Forrest: Alycia, it’s so good to finally See you again. It’s a little reunion for us and
John W. Lawson: you’re for me.
Tobias Forrest: Yeah. And it’s just really great. I think what you’re doing is amazing. You’re out there like just educating and making people aware and you’re bringing stories like ours out to more people in the world. So we really appreciate it. Yeah,
Alycia Anderson: I appreciate it. We’re all in this together and we’re all doing it in our own ways here and there, and we’re meshing them together.
And, it’s been a lifetime of advocacy for all of us, but, and there’s a long way to go. So I’m not trying to give any breaks to anyone, but man, it feels good to be in this space. That we are right now and feeling some trajectory. That said 2 percent in entertainment, though it’s doubled for disability representation, isn’t even close to where it needs to be.
So the work that you’re doing and what Daruma is going to bring to our popular culture, I’m sure is going to be massive. So congratulations on being like trend centers and change makers and just. People that are paving the way there. Cause it’s really important.
John W. Lawson: To close it out too, this isn’t just a film for people with disabilities.
This is for everybody because I’d like for viewers to see themselves represented in a way that reflects the reality of their experiences, whether they have a disability or not. And as Toby said, hope it will start conversations with fathers and daughters and maybe connect and make some connections for.
Families that it might’ve had that connection broken. That’s what I hope that it ideally will challenge the assumptions about what disabled people can achieve and showing that we belong in every aspect of life, including in roles that aren’t specifically about disability, just like this film.
So it’s for everybody, like I said, looking forward to your streaming. Whatever your famous streaming channel. It’s only $5.99. Yes, less than your morning latte. And those are metrics that we can then go back to studios and say, look at this film. Look what it did. Look how many times it was downloaded and viewed.
And that is a number that will impress the studios to go. You know what? Maybe we should jump on this bandwagon that these independent film producers have found. So
Alycia Anderson: I love it. I can’t wait to see the success. I’m going to be following you on the sidelines, fangirling the entire time. I’m just congratulations on this amazing project.
Thank you for wanting to come on this show and talk about it. I’m very inspired in my own space, listening to all of these things today. So thank you for that. Did we forget anything?
Tobias Forrest: I think we got it all.
John W. Lawson: Yeah, just DarumaMovie. com.
Alycia Anderson: DarumaMovie. com. Okay, so there is one more thing that we always end the show with.
The show is called Pushing Forward with Alycia, and I always like to ask my guests in the end if you’ve got a pushing forward moment, a mantra, a little nugget of gold that you can gift away to our community to motivate them or inspire them or You know what? I don’t know. So is there anything there that you can pushing forward moment?
You each get one.
Tobias Forrest: I use them all the time. I’m a metaphor kind of guy, love metaphors. I love little sayings, whatever, but for mine, for the longest time has always been. Optimism is free. So have as much as you want,
So yeah. Optimism is free. Have as much as you want, so yeah, the happiness can be a choice if you really want it.
Alycia Anderson: Happiness can be a choice. There’s two little nuggets. Thank you.
John W. Lawson: I’d agree with Toby that happiness is a choice. Every morning we wake up and we can choose to be happy or we can choose to be depressed. And I choose to be happy and I choose to surround myself with people that want to be happy.
So every morning’s a choice and you get to make that choice. That’s one thing you’re in control of and that’s what I used to tell my kids, when you get up in the morning, you’re in control of your attitude. And I think your attitude sets your altitude.
Tobias Forrest: Unless you get a parking ticket and then your parking ticket is in control of your attitude.
Alycia Anderson: Okay. That’s funny. But your attitude sets your altitude. That’s clever too.
See, you two are creatives. You can go. You can get there.
Tobias Forrest: Oh, we’re going to go. We’re going to go into a bumper sticker business after this.
John W. Lawson: Yeah.
Alycia Anderson: Okay. We are going to definitely embed all your show notes. Everybody’s going to be able to easily support y’all.
Congratulations on the film. And congratulations on having long careers in this space and advocating for us and showing the world what is possible in entertainment for disabled people and beyond. This has not been like a check off box for either of you. It’s been a lifelong commitment. And as a disabled person, I’m grateful for that work.
So thank you for rolling up your sleeves as Toby is right now. And Making it happen for us.
John W. Lawson: I wear short sleeves. I like it.
Tobias Forrest: Alycia, thank you. Literally pushing it forward. And it’s so impressive. Just, I once again, if people haven’t seen your TED Talk, go watch it. And John also has an incredible TED Talk.
I am TED less, but you can go watch Daruma. And we’ll both be there.
John W. Lawson: And we’ll both be there. Thank you so much Alycia.
Alycia Anderson: And thank you to our community. This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia and that is literally how we roll on this podcast. We will see you next time.