We first learned about the documentary Escape Fire when someone mentioned it on Twitter and were immediately intrigued by the topic. Our curiosity caused us to dig deeper to find out who the filmmakers are and what had motivated them to tackle such a huge and controversial topic as American healthcare.
Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke, the directors of Escape Fire, put it this way: “We hope our film can help catalyze a paradigm shift in how our country views health and healing.”
The film’s full title is Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, and Heineman and Froemke wanted to address one of the most pressing issues in the US at this time: how can we save our badly broken healthcare system? According to the filmmakers, the film examines the powerful forces maintaining the status quo, a medical industry designed for quick fixes rather than prevention, for profit-driven care rather than patient-driven care.
Roughly 75% of healthcare spending goes to preventable diseases.
– Centers for Disease Control
As a graduate school of traditional Oriental medicine with the mission to lead the way for the integration of Oriental medicine in the modern healthcare system, we’d like to see the US healthcare system fixed so that it works in favor of patients, not big pharmaceutical corporations. In fact, in our teaching clinic, Emperor’s College Acupuncture Clinic, we see patients actively take charge of their own health by seeking acupuncture and herbal medicine treatments for disease prevention and health maintenance.
“More High Touch”
In Escape Fire, Heineman and Froemke interview medical journalist Shannon Brownlee who says: “If I think about what healthcare could be like, it would have a lot more care in it. It would be a very different system that probably would be less high tech. And more high touch. We have a lot more power over how healthy we are than we are willing to take credit for or willing to take responsibility for. And that’s part of what a really great healthcare system would do. It would empower patients.”
We couldn’t agree more with Brownlee’s statement which happens to reflect the essence of Oriental medicine. We stand behind Heineman and Froemke on their way to saving the health of our nation by supporting their film and inviting everyone to go and see it.
*Emperor’s College is expressly invited to the opening of Escape Fire on Friday, October 5, 2012 at AMC Broadway, Santa Monica, CA.*
Q&A With Directors Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke
What was the genesis of the film?
After an initial conversation with Donna Karan and Doug Scott, our executive producer, on the subject of our broken healthcare system, we spent six months researching the topic to try to figure out whether it was possible to take on such a huge topic. In our research we kept hearing from a wide range of sources that we had a disease-care system, not a healthcare system, a system designed to reward quantity over quality, high-tech over high-touch. How did this perverse system come to be? How could we find our way out of this mess?
These questions were at the root of why we made the film and we began finding characters/storylines that helped illustrate these ideas. As we started to film on the frontlines of healthcare, we grew more and more excited that there was an important film to be made.
Why are you personally interested in making a film about healthcare?
Healthcare is an issue that affects all of us, but it’s so misunderstood. Everyone knows what it’s like to get sick and put your trust in your healthcare provider’s hands. But most of us don’t think about our health unless we’re in the hospital or visiting the doctor. We wanted to show that we can empower ourselves to be healthier, as individuals and as a country, even before we get sick.
We all have a stake in the health of our nation because we all pay for it. We felt like this was a subject that would hit home for every American, so we made it our goal to reach as wide an audience as possible.
What was your single biggest challenge in developing or producing this project?
Besides the difficulties in gaining the intimate access we needed to tell this story, the biggest challenge we faced was the topic itself: healthcare. It’s a hot button issue. But when you scratch beneath the surface, it gets complicated pretty quickly. It’s also a polarizing topic – there’s a reason politicians dating back to Teddy Roosevelt haven’t been able to successfully reform our system.
So, from day one, we have acknowledged these challenges and tried to find storylines and characters that help tell the story in an exciting and interesting way.
Where does the title come from?
For over a year, we struggled to find a title for the film. How could we synthesize this complex problem and potential solutions under one label? We were stumped. Then we came across Dr. Berwick’s healthcare manifesto, Escape Fire: Lessons for the Future of Healthcare.
Dr. Berwick applies the “escape fire” analogy to healthcare, exploring how our system is “burning,” while there are solutions right in front of us. Upon reading the manifesto for the first time, we realized how perfectly it fit our subject matter. We knew we had our title and soon after we contacted Dr. Berwick about taking part in our film.
There’s been so much coverage of the healthcare debate thus far. What did you feel you could add to the conversation through the medium of documentary film?
Much of the traditional media attention about healthcare is focused on the partisan politics in our nation’s Capitol—from the contentious passage of the Affordable Care Act to the ongoing polarized debate about its impact. There are countless articles, news stories, blog posts, and tweets about this topic. And everybody in America, whether they like it or not, has been affected by our healthcare system in some way.
Yet, our country is still unclear about what is really wrong with healthcare and how to move forward.
ESCAPE FIRE addresses what might be done to create a sustainable system for the future. It is our goal to transcend the misinformation, the angry partisan debates and create a clear and comprehensive look at healthcare in America.
What would you like audiences to come away with after seeing your film?
Our goal with ESCAPE FIRE is to provoke a paradigm shift in how our country views health and healing. We hope audiences will come away with a clearer understanding of how and why our system is broken, the barriers to change, and potential solutions, or “escape fires,” that could help fix our system. We hope people – upset by the perverse nature of American medicine – will be empowered to help push for societal change and recognize the “escape fires” around us. We also hope people will walk away inspired to take better control of their personal health, realizing that in many cases they have the power to heal.
Photos courtesy of Escape Fire and Roadside Attractions
*Emperor’s College students, alumni, faculty, patients and friends are expressly invited to the opening of Escape Fire on Friday, October 5, 2012 at AMC Broadway, Santa Monica, CA.*