two months in

i keep waiting for this to feel like progress in the way i pictured it when we started. instead it feels like running alongside a clock i can't see. we are making a film about women who are sick, some of them very sick, and the story does not wait for us to catch up. two months in, that's the honest version. not triumphant. just real.

i've spent a lot of these weeks in fire stations and interview rooms and one lab, watching people tell the truth about their bodies into a camera held by strangers. i don't have a clean way to sum that up yet. what i have are the things that happened, and what they meant.

the science

in june we drove to kansas city to sit down with dr. sara jahnke and dr. brittany hollerbach at ndri-usa — the national development and research institutes. dr. jahnke is one of the foremost researchers on firefighter cancer in the country, and getting her and dr. hollerbach on camera was a milestone i'd been chasing since before we started shooting. a film like this can be dismissed as anecdote if it doesn't also carry the science. now it does. we used the same trip to interview rick potter of shawnee fd and steven chick of cfd2, which pushed our interview count into serious territory across multiple states.

a few weeks later i got on a zoom call with dr. jooyeon hwang at uthealth houston, the principal investigator on the texas firefighter cancer study — five million dollars in state funding, six hundred participants, fourteen fire stations. it's the kind of study that could actually change what gets covered and what doesn't. then, on july 13 and 14, her team came to austin to collect biospecimen samples directly from austin fd firefighters, and i got to observe and film alongside them. watching the research happen in real time, in the same building where we'd be filming suzanne the next day, is not something i could have planned. it just landed that way. the science and the story sitting one day apart.

we go back to houston on august 6 to sit down with dr. hwang in person and get lab b-roll at uthealth's new helix park building.

the firefighters

we've now been inside more fire stations than i can casually describe without it turning into a list, so i'll keep this short. preston snider at lee's summit fd in missouri. amy thomas and alex young at leander fd. lt. brittany garner and maida garcia at liberty hill fd. and pflugerville fd, which has been generous with us in a way that still catches me off guard — chief nick perkins, vanessa frost, marisol salinas, paige walton, ariel zapata, all of them said yes and then kept saying yes.

walking into a station with a camera is a specific kind of intrusion. you're asking people to hand you something private in a place that runs on routine and trust. every one of these women let us in anyway. we had to postpone with emily pozzi and tina anthony at liberty hill — that one's just life, and we'll get there.

suzanne

lt. suzanne lafollette is the center of this film, and on july 14 we finally sat down with her at afs studio 2 in austin. suzanne is living with stage-4 gynecologic cancer. i'm not going to write about that clinically here — it's hers to describe, and she does, on camera, better than i could summarize. what i want to say is simpler: she said yes to this when she didn't have to. she gave us her voice at a point in her life where she owes no one anything. that is the whole film, really. one firefighter deciding that being seen matters more than being comfortable. i left that studio and sat in my car for a long time before i could drive.

the legislative moment

there's a reason we're moving as fast as we are. hb 1639 was signed on june 20, 2025, and the study results tied to it are due september 1, 2026. right now, female firefighters are still not covered under presumptive cancer legislation for reproductive cancers — the law hasn't caught up to the disease. we are trying to have this film ready to stand next to that legislative moment, not years behind it.

that same throughline is why we're filming at ground zero on september 11 with john feal and the fealgood foundation. john spent years fighting congress for the zadroga act, which protects 9/11 first responders' health coverage. it's the same fight, decades apart — someone getting sick from the job and the system being slow to admit it.

how to help

we're launching our seed&spark campaign with a new 8-tier structure, and it comes with challenge coins — a real fire service tradition, not a gimmick we bolted on. the design is a female firefighter stepping forward. a hundred are numbered for backers, #2 through #99 — i'm keeping #1. another hundred are unnumbered, set aside for the cast, crew, and advocates who got us here.

you can back the seed&spark campaign here: https://seedandspark.com/fund/brotherhood-rewritten

you can donate directly through our allyra page here: https://brotherhoodrewritten.allyrafundraising.com/

and if you can't do either right now, watch the teaser and send it to one person: https://youtu.be/ZiL7vDX5D_w

what's next

colorado, california, and massachusetts are still on the board. the women in fire conference at kalahari resort austin is september 18-20. we're aiming for a short film by august 30 and the feature at sxsw 2028. none of it is guaranteed. all of it is worth trying for.

more soon.