Where does inspiration come from? My answer can sound like I read books: Francis Coppola’s Live Cinema, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Psychomagic, Werner Herzog’s Conquest of the Useless. But let’s be honest, my lifelong hunt for mentorship can feel like distraction.
Today, inspiration comes from my sister Nina, and her journey to San Quentin.
As I’ve been battling the vagaries of the film business to bring Brother Verses Brother to the public, Nina asked who I can turn to when the world doesn’t give me what I think I need. My answer was open water, and then it turned back to my sister herself.
The Debate on Water Courage
I used to tease Nina because she wouldn’t jump in the freezing San Francisco Bay with me.
My pitch was simple: the cold is good for you! Chemicals and pollutants jack up your immune system! To prove my point, I’d remind her that I’ve survived weird water everywhere: a frozen Latvian lake, a polluted river in Lithuania, a shipwreck in Haiti, even the shopping-cart-and-syringe extravaganza of the L.A. river. New York beaches that hire cops to stop people from swimming because they “can’t afford lifeguards.” And the creek in Ukraine where our grandfather’s family was shot.
While traveling I always find the nearest blue dot on a map, bushwhack to it, and jump in. Police, rangers, property owners, or passersby yell at me for swimming. I get to feel like a rebel, shouting as I float away that water can’t be owned.
Swimming this way, I said to Nina, is a masterclass in the interplay of preparation and action: you don’t always know what’s in there, but there’s only one way of finding out. Then, when working on my films, especially with the grand musical improvisation of Brother Verses Brother, I could count on the muscle memory: You’ve been colder and more scared than this. So leap, then look.
Nina’s Plunge
Nina has made a different leap. She transitioned from stage actor to yoga and meditation teacher, and then made a pivot that might frighten some people: she became a facilitator at the GRIP training institute (Guiding Rage into Power) inside San Quentin. She works with men—often lifers—to face the roots of the worst thing they’ve done. The courage of sitting in shame and guilt, refusing to look away, and taking radical responsibility, changes these men completely, and it has changed my sister.
She called bullshit on my cold-water pride. I endure physical shock for a few minutes, and then get out and brag about it (sometimes to seagulls). Could I imagine smelling the SF Bay for 40 years from a prison, and not being able to swim because I’d made one terrible mistake?
GRIP requires radical truthfulness to work. Meanwhile many of us, me included, have difficulty admitting to our dentists that we don’t always floss. Can you imagine having the courage to speak about a murder or rape you committed? And then listening with an open heart to the victims of similar crimes, who come in to share their wounds?
Nina guides incarcerated people through a toolkit to alchemize violent past behaviors, towards deep understanding and accountability. The program has an astounding 98.8% success (non-recidivism) rate, and its participants achieve a level of presence that’s rare in our outside world. To facilitate, Nina has to keep her soul open every second she’s in the room.
She rarely finds that level of presence outside.
The Teachers of the Deep
Though I was losing the argument, I pressed my case to Nina, that my habit of finding inspired presence in water wasn’t just a solitary selfish stunt. It leads to connection too.
In Latvia, diving into a hidden forest lake, I was stopped by a furious salmon farmer whose land I was trespassing on. After two minutes of wild gesticulation, the man offered me tea, and I ended up staying for two weeks, helping him build a meditation hut in the shade of a family of storks. The risk of the trespass led to human connection.
And once, learning to surf, I ended up right next to a pod of dolphins hunting (or surfing). We waited for the wave which comes when it comes, and then sprung into action. In my case, surfing meant jumping to my feet and wiping out. But they seemed cool with that. They didn’t laugh at me. See, Nina? I can sit in my shame with dolphins! Is that courageous enough?
Why The Effort?
Cold rivers, cold waves, San Quentin—none of it matters until we agree to risk our ego by being fully there with the beings around us. Making a 90-minute improvised real-time film with my brother and our dying father required sustainable courage, not cold-water bravado—I can’t bullshit for that long.
It’s not easy for me to be present - half the time I’m somewhere else, working to crack the nut of movie distribution, or maybe just melting my brain on Instagram. Unfortunately for my distracted nature, Nina can instantly sense, when I’m on the phone with her, if I’m looking at the damn thing while talking to her.
With Nina, and with movies, being present is required. The men in her “tribe” (as they call it), some of whom may never leave San Quentin, do not live any other way. No phones. Just men, their shame, their power, their love. Courage to speak, courage to listen.
Inspiration may be any tide we jump into, to see if we can breathe into the freeze without panicking.
Then, only then, can we get carried somewhere real.
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🎥 Welcome, FilmStack readers! My new movie, a one-shot improvised musical set in the streets of San Francisco, is executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola.
🎥 You can see Brother Verses Brother at a festival near you. Say hi in person, or in the comments, or here. Ok!
Nina is amazing and a lovely tribute from her badass brother. xx
Always a pleasure reading your posts, Ari. Nice learning about Nina and the super cool work she does at San Quentin.