The walls never knew what hit them

Nostalgia doesn’t have to date back a decade or more. In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and say it doesn’t have to even go back five years. 

January is the hangover month for a lot of people when we are all waking up from our holiday fever dream of out-of-control indulging and playing nice with a dozen people we only see once or twice a year. In my world, it is also festival season in the movie industry. I promise there is a great payoff at the end, so stick with me.

Back in April of 2024, I was driving back from Tulsa, Oklahoma, from shooting the “Chiefsaholic” movie. I get a call from a woman named Pam Griner who was bringing a documentary crew to Des Moines to capture the National Speech and Debate (NSD) competition. I know nothing about speech and debate outside of taking speech in high school and participating in a debate during my political science class. It sounded boring to me, but 2024 was not a great year for the film industry, so my mantra became “Got money? Will travel.” The film at the time was called “1000 Words.”

Fast forward to June. NSD arrives in Des Moines. Like most any event that comes through town, all the hotels are packed. The team was loaded in at the Hilton on Park Avenue. We had more than a dozen people in our crew. There were three camera operators, two sound mixers, four production assistants and two camera assistants. We also had two directors, two producers and then me as the production manager. I know most readers here have no reference to compare these numbers to, but this is a lot of people for a documentary shoot. Normally, these are about four or five people at the most.

Day one arrived, and as I sat and did prep work in the lobby of Hilton, hordes of kids were arriving. Everyone was standing in line to check in, and a selection of parents were already gathering around the bar hoping to ease the pain brought on from the long drive across the country in a minivan full of teenagers.

Our director/cinematographer, Guy Mossman, was already out with a small team about 20 miles south of Des Moines in Osceola rigging up one of the cast member’s vehicles with GoPro cameras to capture their arrival at the hotel. I was being told consistently that the first real day of shooting was going to be crazy. As a veteran of shooting with documentary crews during the Iowa Caucuses and the Iowa State Fair, I was not super-worried about it. The morning of, we were loading our camera carts with gear, and everyone was doing their personal meditation to get ready for what was to come.

We had a 10-minute walk from the Hilton to the Iowa Events Center. We pushed three carts full of equipment through the skywalk. I could hear the commotion getting louder as we got closer. What was ahead was finally setting in. A thousand voices were all speaking at the same time.

We turned the corner into the main hallway, and a sea of people were moving in waves before us. Competitors were talking to walls to practice their speeches. The emotions were so high. The walls never knew what hit them. Every passion these kids had was coming out. It was unbelievable.

We broke out into three teams so everyone could follow a cast member. As we all separated, I watched my fellow crew members disappear into the oceans of people. I could hear the different speeches being practiced. Some were about pay inequality for women, racial prejudice vs. societal privilege, and even one on the exploitation of trauma. It was a lot of emotion all at once, but I can say without hesitation that it was the first time I ever felt that type of passion in a room. All these kids believed in the words they were saying, and they were willing to fight tooth and nail for their respective causes. These were the future leaders of the world — lawyers, activists and the loudest people in the room. Everyone on our team had surveillance headsets on so we could communicate with each other. I had to run into the restroom to attempt to hear what people were asking for, and sometimes there would be a student practicing and the reverberation would be elevated by 10.

This whole circus went on for nearly 12 hours. I remember getting in my car at the end of the night and shutting the car door. Silence. It felt foreign to me. This went on for four more days. On the last day when we wrapped, I realized it was the whole picture wrap. Not just the wrap for Iowa. All the work these people put into this was done. It was four years in the making. That emotion I saw on people’s faces on the floor were now on our crew. After four years, all of this had come to end, and our crew here in Iowa was a part of it.

Now, here in January, this film that ended here in Des Moines will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. It has been retitled to “1000 Words to Speak.” ♦

Kristian Day is a filmmaker and writer based in Des Moines. He also hosts the syndicated Iowa Basement Tapes radio program on 98.9 FM KFMG. Instagram: @kristianday | Twitter: @kristianmday