Carmel Valley filmmaker Conall Jones was the lead creative producer on the Netflix documentary All The Empty Rooms. The film just won an Academy Award for best documentary short film. It explores the enduring grief of school shootings by bringing viewers inside the bedrooms left behind.
“Sometimes I'll just go and look around, and look at all her little trinkets and stuffed animals and shells that she collected,” said Jada Scruggs in the film. Jada is the mom of Hallie Scruggs, 9, who was killed in the shooting at The Covenant School in 2023 in Nashville.
The subject of gun violence is deeply personal to KAZU’s Erika Mahoney Bates. Her father was killed in a mass shooting at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, in 2021.
She recently spoke with Conall in KAZU's Green Room about grief, change, and making the documentary.
Click the audio player at the top of this story to listen to the interview or read the highlights below. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Erika: Welcome.
Conall: Thank you. Happy to be here.
E: I just wanna start by acknowledging the title of the film, All the Empty Rooms. What does that phrase mean to you now after the film?
C: I think about all the other empty rooms out there, in the country, who's gonna tell their story? I think also, as a country, we don't know how to process grief. I think this film has resonated with a lot of people because we need ways to process grief, and by focusing on these rooms and these spaces where you can remember and mourn is helpful.
C: I'm curious, do you mind me jumping in with a question? How did you deal with your father's room?
E: Well, I'll never forget this moment after the shooting. I found his laundry in a basket on his bed, and it had just been washed, and it just felt so strange…it's sitting there waiting to be folded, and I just remember grabbing up all the clothes and, and crying into them. And seeing his hiking shoes just waiting for him to come home. It was so surreal.
C: Yeah. There's those details that we notice, too. It's just, like, things. It's not like the room is staged for this permanent, like, a permanent exhibit where everything's supposed to stay where it is. It's waiting for the person to return. Bed's unmade. Toothbrush is still laid out, you know? Wow.
E: Yeah. And that's what comes with the unexpected loss. They were there, and, and now they're gone, and I think it really takes the brain a long time to catch up to reality.
Well, I'm so curious about your background. You've worked on a number of documentaries, Fahrenheit 11/9 and Super Size Me 2. What drew you to documentary storytelling, and also how did you become, specifically, involved with All The Empty Rooms?
C: Yeah, so I think my documentary background starts here in Monterey. My dad's a chef, Michael Jones, and I grew up in the kitchen. And in the food industry, storytelling is a big part of your day, 'cause you're cutting and, you know, cooking and, yeah, people are shouting, but they're also just telling stories about what they did that day. Always loved that, and was trying to find a way to communicate those stories. Went to San Francisco State, they had a great film program, and got really interested in documentary filmmaking with a social justice kind of bent to it, and haven't looked back, basically. Love telling stories of people who don't have a voice. So that's why I gravitate towards films with Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, and most recently with Joshua Seftel and All The Empty Rooms.
So I was the lead creative producer on the film, which means Josh and I would talk through the story, and I'm like his sounding board for ideas. He's thinking about, "Okay, how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna film it? How long is it gonna be?" We just talk through all that. Kind of translate the creative into the logistics. And then on the post-production side, I help him with the story and digging through the transcripts and what people said about subjects he might wan to include in the film.
E: Did you go into any of the rooms to film?
C: Yeah, I went to all four of the rooms that are in the film, yeah.
E: So the film follows CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp, and they visit bedrooms over the course of many years. Seven years?
C: Yeah, I think in total it was eight years. They started, he started after Parkland. Steve, for a long time, for 30 years of his career, he was assigned to, to tell stories about mass shootings, and Steve's whole shtick is he's the good news guy. He got tired of that approach, and felt like he was kind of contributing to the problem… he's whitewashing the issue and people were caring less and less as he continued telling these stories. So after Parkland, it was a breaking point for him, and he asked Lou to go down there and just take photos.
E: I want to play a clip when we visit the bedroom of nine-year-old Jackie Cazares. Her room has pink and purple walls. It’s covered in beautiful portraits of Jacie in angel wings. She was killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School in 2022 in Uvalde, Texas.
“This is her room,” said Gloria Cazares, Jackie’s mom, in the film.
E: In the clip, her mom, Gloria, is talking about what Jackie wanted to be when she grew up.
“There's this one video that, um, that's probably one of our last videos that we have of her with her dogs before May 24th,” Gloria said.
“And she wanted to be a vet?” asked Steve Hartman.
“Yes. Because of the love of animals that she had... there's no way she would've done anything else besides helping animals, and that was her dream, to become a veterinarian.”
C: I cry every time I watch the film. I've seen it probably 300 times. Yeah, I have two kids, so I thought about it when I wasn't working on it, but also, I got a lot of inspiration from the parents – that they're able to continue and, and for some of them, speak out and actually, like, try and stop what's happening in our country. Yeah.
E: Well, today, firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the U.S. What i- what does that reality say to you about our country?
C: It's really sad. It's horrific. Originally, it was cars and safety in cars, and there was a big push to make cars safer. Seat belts, airbags, and we just can't come together to figure this one out? I hope we come to a point where we can actually just, like, sit down and have a discussion about this issue. And that's, that's what we're hoping for with this film. It's 30 minutes. It's hopefully an opportunity for everyone to just stop what they're doing, acknowledge that these were real kids, and it's a major issue that we need to work on. Just work on it. Don't – we don't have to tell you what it is, but let's do something.
E: Yeah. Interestingly enough, in the film, you never mention the word gun. It's never said. This feels very powerful and intentional, and I'm just curious what was behind that decision?
C: There was a crossroads. We came to a point where we were bringing the film together, and we were thinking about should we start talking about the politics of this? And we had an edit that had some of that in there, and it just did not feel right. I'll be honest, a lot of the families have different points of view about the topic. They are all concerned about guns, but they also are focused on, like, mental health and other issues. So it, it didn't feel right to the parents to advocate for one specific thing. So we decided let's keep this out. And the main intention, too, was maybe this way more people will watch it. Maybe we can get someone to really think about this that has been pushing it away, that thinks that everyone's gonna take their guns, or, um, is just numb to it. So it was to make the film appealing to the broadest audience possible.
E: So this March, you traveled to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards. Take us to that moment.
C: Well, there was this whole campaign, too, leading into it, 'cause we watched the nomination with the Muehlberger family. They were on the call, and, they just, like, burst into tears. They started crying so hard, 'cause their daughter wanted to be in film. And so we've shared a lot of those experiences with the families, and we made damn sure that they were all gonna be there.
You don't know the run of the show of that night until right before, and we found out we're kind of in the middle, and we're waiting, and we're waiting, and we get closer and closer to the category, and then they're gonna read our category. Then they said –“All The–” and it was like huge applause, and I just was like, "I wanna get Gloria up on that stage safely so she can speak.
Gloria: "My daughter Jackie was nine years old when she was killed in Uvalde. Since that day, her bedroom has been frozen in time. Jackie is more than just a headline. She is our light and our life. Gun violence is now the number one cause of death in kids and teens. We believe that if the world could see their empty bedrooms, we'd be a different America. Thank you." [applause]
E: How does it feel to receive such a prestigious award for a film centered on such a difficult subject? It's actually pretty conflicting, 'cause our goal was attention to this issue, and the Oscars was just a tool to do that. Like, that's why we had Gloria speak, because 18 million people watch the show and. And then it's like, oh, you get this gold statue also.
It brings a lot of people joy to see the statue, but I don't look at it and think about my career or some achievement of mine. I think about the four kids that are missing, that are not here, and their names should be on that Academy Award. I've actually looked into changing the plaque on the front, and I've been sharing it with them, too. The award went to Uvalde. It's gonna go to Nashville. It'll go to Santa Clarita as well. I see the kids in that statue.
E: Right. It's balancing the joy and the celebration with the sorrow. But it's also a testament to the topic itself.
C: Yeah. Yeah. A validation and a confirmation that, you know, people care about this issue, they care about these kids, and hopefully something will happen. There'll be some change.
E: What do you hope audiences carry with them after watching All The Empty Rooms?
C: We hope with this film, when you, when you watch it and you see these bedrooms, you realize it could be your own bedroom. It could be your child's bedroom. It could be your loved one's bedroom. And when there is another mass shooting and school shooting, which unfortunately there will be, they think about that. And they empathize with the families and with the victims, and hopefully that energizes them to do something.
E: Well, thank you so much for being here.
C: Thank you for having me.