So as I sat down with my guest today, Garrett Connolly, a film starring Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Lucas Hedges, and many others that told the story of his life, was playing in theaters around the country and around the world.
The name of that film is boy erased and is based on a memoir that Garrett wrote that actually started out as an essay that he never thought would be seen by more than a handful of people in a small classroom where he was studying and writing.
It tells the story also of his life growing up in the south and discovering his sexuality and then going through a pretty horrific experience called conversion therapy.
And it's also, it has started a conversation about gender identity, faith, family, love that is deep, nuanced, challenging, and really, really excited to be able to share my conversation that takes you back into Garrett's life and his own explorations, and also brings the sort of Zoom, the lens forward and explores, well, what happens when this story actually becomes public, first as an essay and then as a memoir, and now on major screens around the world, especially for a person who is a pretty private person, is a pretty introverted person, and then becomes thrust into the role of public person and to a certain extent, activist for a point of view.
Really excited to share this with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
We are both living in New York City these days.
We come from radically different places.
I'm from the area you're from a place really similar with.
Small town in Arkansas.
Yeah, small town Arkansas.
Actually.
The first town I grew up in had 100 people in it.
No kidding.
My dad's business was the only business other than a grocery store in town.
And that was like barely a grocery store.
It was like one of those.
You could slice your deli meats there, you could get a few frozen items.
That was about it.
And my dad ran a cotton gin that had been in my mother's family for.