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You're listening to Comedy Central. Please

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welcome Jeffrey Rights. Wow,

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it's Campton here. Yeah, this is an amazing audience.

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You're kidding me. Guys are amazing. Can

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I just say, I mean, I've I've known you for

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a few years, but it's always weird

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speaking to you post West World

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because there are moments when I'm not sure if you are

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you And I'm

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sure you get this from many people. You are so good

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playing that role, Like has that just become

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something that you accept? Now? Is people waiting to

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see if you twitch? I

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do glitch from time to time. I give

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myself away. I actually as well. Uh

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have a little bit of metal in this knee

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now, So I think that's kind of an upgrade on

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my my form. Because you like surgery.

1:02

About a month ago you had to fix an old a c

1:05

L injury. But that's where

1:07

you went away. Okay, we've

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seen the show. They take you away, they repay you, and

1:12

then you come back. We get it, we get it.

1:14

But you're here for a very different reason. And I guess

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on a timely date. You know, in the United States,

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people are remembering veterans

1:21

who fought in in World War One and

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your documentary We Are Not Done Yet, is

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in a big part about people who have survived

1:29

fighting in the war, you know, veterans

1:32

who suffer PTSD. It's

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it's a powerful story. And what you do is

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you you connect all of them to us

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and to each other using theater

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and poems. How did you even stop this process?

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It's a good question. I you

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know, over time, I guess I kind of grew

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up and became a little more

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aware and a little more appreciative

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of the men and women who serve. I

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think one of the mistakes that was made

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after Vietnam was that some

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of us conflated the politics

2:02

of that war with the people

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who answered the call. And I think

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that would be a huge mistake right now.

2:10

Um, So I've just

2:12

uh my respect um,

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based on relationships that I developed with

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people who were veterans, based on an

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experience in Seri leone, going

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over there in two thousand one during

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the war peace uh ceasefire at

2:27

the time, but the first war zone that

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I had ever experienced. And

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it changes your thinking.

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Uh, those things that you once took for granted,

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like security, you no longer take

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for granted. You don't take for

2:40

granted that when the order falls

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away, somebody has to work to restore it.

2:45

So there are a number of experiences over time

2:48

that that increased my respect.

2:50

And I was doing a group

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of of readings called Theater of

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War. It's a guy named Brian

2:56

Dorris who uses the Greek tragedies

2:59

as a platform arm for conversation about the consequences

3:01

of war. And he does it in military communities. He

3:03

even does it in uh intercity communities

3:06

around gun violence. He he, for

3:08

example, argues that Ajax story,

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that's an examination of what we

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might contemporarily call PTSD.

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And so I was doing those and

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I went down to d C for one of these

3:19

readings and there happened to be some people from the Pentagon there

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and I asked, Hey, is there any way I can get

3:24

more closely involved. And in fact, a

3:26

couple of weeks before that, um

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I had been out in Colorado at

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an airport, rural airport when my kids

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coming home from vacation skiing, and

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there was a guy sitting in a wheelchair all

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you know, all the decorations there, and

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he was a triple amputee and he recognized

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me, and I went over and I said hello, and

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we talked and he talked about the people from my line

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of work who had visited him at Walter

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reid Um. He had been hit

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by a mortar shell in Afghanistan and

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it just like rocked me. I was like, man,

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what am I doing with my time that I can at least go

4:00

down and see if I can be useful too.

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So when I did this reading in d C met these folks

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from the Pentagon, I said, hey, you know, what can I

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do? They called me back. Somehow I passed

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the vetting process for the Pentagon, uh

4:12

and they introduced me to a woman named

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Seema Raisa who runs a

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writing workshop veterans who

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are working through their trauma through

4:21

poetry. And one

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of them had the idea to put on a staged

4:25

reading of collective poems that they had written.

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And I was asked where I come down in the direct and direct

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them? So, well, I don't, you know, I never served,

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but you know I know something about the theater. So I

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came down and it was a

4:36

life changing experience working with them. It's interesting

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that you say there are certain things we take for grand

4:41

such a security. A lot of America's

4:45

military and a lot of the troops have been politicized

4:47

because of who is in power and when and how. One

4:50

thing that is apparent is that America seems

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to discard many of its troops when these

4:54

people come home. You see so many people that are

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you know, that are lorded and applauded when they're out

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fighting. But when people come home, they struggled

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to find jobs, They struggled to find their place in society.

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And time and time again we see these conversations where

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people are saying, is America doing enough for

5:07

the troops who are no longer active? Is

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it as important? What did you find when

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you spoke to the human beings behind the uniforms.

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The answer to that question is no, um.

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And I think one of the things

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that I'm proud about about this film

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is that it gives voice to

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those men and women who know best,

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those men and women who put

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themselves on the line. And these

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are veterans who experienced PTSD

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from combat but also sexual assault

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related to their military experience.

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But we don't hear from them,

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and we hear from the politicians and the blowhards

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who actually use these men

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and women to divide us. So we have

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a conversation about police brutality,

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and all of a sudden, the troops are brought into

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that conversation, conversation about immigration.

5:56

All of a sudden, we're deploying troops down there

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who are going to sit and do uh

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fire on women and children. Um.

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Can you imagine the optics of something like that?

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Can you imagine the act itself? So?

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Uh, But we we we hear

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the troops manipulated and the vets manipulated

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for political agendas, but we don't

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hear from them, and those very issues

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that are used as as

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political tools, um, are

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not addressed. So you still have twenty

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vets per day dying from suicide.

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We heard a lot about that during the campaign,

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not so much anymore, but the rates are

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still the same. It's a powerful program

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that you put together. And what's great in watching

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this documentary is you see the human

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side and all of these people come out. You know, for so

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long people have looked at them as only troops.

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I always see people saying thank you for your service, and that

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becomes the thing. It's a it's a it's an archetype that people

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hold up, but the human comes out on the

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other side. Why was poetry

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so powerful? Why do you think the arts was

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something that helped a lot of these veterans

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well, because I think they have

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story ease and maybe as

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a result of the military culture, stories

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around vulnerabilities and stories

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around injuries that they can't

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communicate within that space.

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But there's a need to communicate it otherwise,

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as they describe, it will kill them. So

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they need to get it out. They need

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to purge themselves of the shame

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of what they might not have been

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able to do, perhaps the shame

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of what they did, uh,

7:29

the the the injury as

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a result of losses that they experienced,

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uh, sexual salt as

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well. They have these things that they

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need to release in order to free

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themselves of these demons. And they

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need to be heard so

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that one um

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they can perhaps be validated

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and perhaps be seen without judgment. But

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also what they describe is they

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they want to speak as

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a show of leadership for others who are like them,

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because there are thousands like them,

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you know. The we I think what we

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do at Veterans Day is wonderful

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to honor the vets. Of course, we

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honor the men and women women who put

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themselves in harm's way on our behalf.

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But I think at the same time, what we

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do, perhaps too much, is we impose

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our sense of who they are onto

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them. Because there was a there's

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a really stunning moment when we were working

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together in this piece, and we show it in the film in which

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one of the vets is reading a poem words

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that he's written, and he comes to the word

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heroic and he can't say it because

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he doesn't he's conflicted about

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what his heroicism,

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what that word means for him. And

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so rather than listen to

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them and here that

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they may be in pain, they may have

8:52

shame. Uh, they

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just perhaps um,

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are confused or whatever the emotions

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are around this. It's not what

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what we perceived them to be. Um.

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It's not so easy. And the thank you for

9:06

for your service is great, but they

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need a little more. They

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first need to be heard so that

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we can begin to understand them. So I mean,

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I think what we do is we either

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kind of claim them as our own,

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we misunderstand them, or

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we ignore them. Uh.

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And the problems that they're facing,

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our generational homelessness,

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uh, suicide. Um. And

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if we're going to solve those problems, we're not going to solve

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them by talking ourselves. We're gonna solve

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them first by acknowledging them,

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by hearing them, listening to them,

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and not making assumptions based on our own

9:42

misperceptions. Well, thank you so much.

9:44

The documentary does that on more We're

9:47

Not Done. We're not done Yet. It's

9:49

currently airing on HBO and is available to stream

9:52

on HBO Now and HBO Go. You really want

9:54

to watch a Jeffrey Right Everybody?

9:59

The Daily Show with gouvernoah Ere's edition.

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