Rally Caps: How a Baseball Movie is Shifting Perspectives on Hearing Loss

Welcome to this Week in Hearing. I am Shari Eberts, and this is going to be a fun episode because we’re going to be talking about the film Rally Caps. Many hearing loss movies focus on the capital D, Deaf experience, but Rally Caps is different. Its accurate portrayal of the hearing loss experience, including the use of hearing technology of all types rather than sign language, makes it a great film for educating the mainstream about hearing loss. How better to break down stigmas and generate conversation than by showing characters with hearing loss just living their everyday lives? And now the film is available on streaming platforms like Amazon and Apple TV. So today we welcome Jodi Cutler, the co author of the book that inspired the film, and Lee Cipolla, the director of the film. So thank you both for being here and congratulations on your beautiful film. It’s. It’s very impactful. Thank you very much for having us, Shari. So let’s get started with you Jodi, as the writer. What inspired you to create Rally Caps? And then I want to hear from Lee on that one as well. It’s a very long story that has everything to do with my father and my son in terms of writing the book. My father came to me with a short story about him being hit by a baseball bat. So his part of that inspired the writing of the book. And as my son was diagnosed with profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss in Italy, I was working on helping him learn to listen and use spoken language. He immediately was fitted with hearing aids in Italy. And that started our journey. It was a long journey and it was a difficult journey, but we had a lot of help. I met with from medical professionals, speech therapists, and friends in Italy. And there was a certain point where he was no longer getting benefit from his hearing aids for his specific type of hearing loss. So I looked into cochlear implants. He, at that point was a cochlear implant candidate. So he received his first cochlear implant and was an outstanding recipient and did amazingly well with his cochlear implant – to the point where he became more autonomous. And during that time, when I told my dad I had thought that his short story could be a good book, every time I spoke to my father, he would say, write the book. And I was trying to help my son learn to speak. So it wasn’t really the greatest time in the world to do that until my son received the cochlear implant. And I realized when I was looking through literature, seeing if there was an opportunity for my son to see himself in literature. There had been no character in literature. So at that point, I said to my father, okay, I’m ready to write the book, but I want there to be a character just like Jordan so he can see himself represented in literature. And we went back and forth for like, a year and a half writing this book by email until we managed to finish it. And I was able to thank the medical professionals that helped us, and my son was able to see himself in literature, and that is how the book was born. That’s incredible. And it’s such an important thing for people to be able to see themselves in literature on film. And you’re just carrying that tradition on with the film, so it’s wonderful. All right. So, Lee, how did you get involved in this? What inspired you to say this would be a great movie? Well, Stephen – Stephen Cutler, Jody’s father, who’s the co writer reached out to me back in 2008. And so this story spans over 12, 13, 14 years before we made the movie of that relationship and knowing about the book and him wanting to adapt it. And so there’s a lot of ebbs and flows that changes over 12, 13 years. Right. Not just with your own wants and purposes, but the industry and what the industry wants. Right. So the answer that I always give, I guess what always attached me to this was, you know, number one, I. I grew up watching The Sandlot, the 90s classic Disney movies with kids in baseball and, you know, stories that involved families of all ages. Right. And so that was always a driving force. But when I picked up the book back in 20- 2008, 2009, and then several years later, when we kept in touch and we. We kept in touch and tried to pitch it to Disney and other, you know, companies, and, you know, didn’t get anywhere in terms of the studio system, but we stayed in touch. But what always, you know, I think that, you know, I felt was fresh to the genre was the relationship between Jordy and Lucas for all the reasons that Jody just expanded on you know, with her son story. And I just, you know, Lucas is a very unique character, but also being a mentor figure to Jordy where typically characters with disabilities are the ones that have. That’s their plight in the story. And it’s always, like, a focus. And so here it’s not. He’s just a really talented baseball player and a mentor. And really, his arc is about learning to become a leader not about overcoming his disability. It’s just a part of who he is, a trait but also, you know, Jordy’s character with anxiety. So there’s. These are two kids that are overcoming adversity in unique ways. But how they connect and them being a pitcher and catcher and then really the character driven aspect of it, I felt like here we are, we have a sort of a canvas to work with where the backdrop is. All these things that I’ve ever always wanted to do. Kids and family and baseball in summer. But it’s a character driven film. So it’s an independent movie set in that world. I think that was a really fresh perspective. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And that’s really, you know, one of the things that I love about the film is that there’s Deaf and hard of hearing characters, like you said, but it’s not what the film is about. And that’s pretty special. That’s pretty rare in the world of hearing loss films. So, you know, it’s a baseball movie first. But it really does a good job, I think, depicting real life experiences of living with hearing loss in an authentic way. And so how did you make sure, Jodi and Lee, that the people with hearing loss in the film were portrayed authentically and didn’t become stereotypes or anything like that? I think that having lived the experience with my son, I knew the ins and outs of hearing devices and auxiliaries and all of the opportunities we have nowadays thanks to hearing technology to live a typical life. So partnering with Phonak and Advanced Bionics, they gave us the opportunity to incorporate hearing technology in a natural way, so that it was so natural that it didn’t take away from the story. And it gave our characters the opportunity to live their lives in an authentic way, the way they do every single day, without it being awkward or strange. And by having that type of representation, the authentic representation, the real hearing technology, the real deaf actors who wear the hearing technology, it was a natural opportunity to have representation in a mainstream film that only baseball can provide. And Lee does such an incredible artistic, phenomenal job of editing and really seeing that character representation to make it seamless in the process. And I mean, I’ll never forget my son, when he went to school, it was very awkward for him to use an FM system. And. And the opportunity to have that type of character in the mainstream means that when a child with hearing loss goes to school, they can say, here’s my Roger On. And the teacher will say, okay. And the kids won’t ask a million questions because they’ll know from that scene in the movie that the Roger On is used to help communication and facilitate the process of communication in noisy environments. And that is what the goal was. And Lee did an unbelievable job achieving that. I love that. That’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie, actually, is when he’s, you know, on the pitching mound and the catcher is listening to, like, the secrets that he’s telling about his sister. And so it’s. Hopefully it’s a warning to the teachers, too, that they have to turn it off, you know, when they’re gonna have a private conversation. You’ve lived that experience like my son did when his teacher went to the restroom and was having a conversation, and he could see here inside the classroom what was happening outside. So these are real situations that happen in everyday life. And finally our kids are going to understand the inside joke, and then the other people will get it. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I’ll say that. You know, Jody’s experiences in it being based on her own son and her being very well entrenched in that world. I was basing. I mean, I adapted the screenplay from the book that they wrote, and so I already had a text that, you know, that it was accurate in the text. So you know, my job was not to screw it up and, you know, make, you know, make it inaccurate. And if I did you know, Jodi and Stephen were right there reading every draft to every draft to make sure that it was accurate in terms of all of the, you know, intricacies of wearing cochlear implant and some of the verbiage and all of that stuff. But to take it a step further. And I always, you know, tell people that I don’t want to sound cavalier in doing this because I think that there’s been a big movement in the industry to cast, you know, people with disabilities playing roles with disabilities. Because for many years it was, you know actors that didn’t have disabilities pretending. And I’m just going to talk from a consumer point of view. It. It really annoyed me growing up even though a lot of these actors were phenomenal what it took me out of the story to watch an actor pretending to be deaf or pretending to be blind because, like, I liken it to, like, you know, you don’t fake knock on a door if someone was sitting there. Like there was a door, an actor was, and they, you know, knock six inches from it or said they were eating pizza and didn’t eat pizza. Like, it would be ridiculous. Right? So why is it different in this sense? So that’s all just to say that when we started casting we knew. And when I say we, this is myself, Jodi and Stephen and everyone involved. It was all of our sentiment to make sure, I mean, Lucas was going to be casted properly with an actor that had hearing loss. And there was no if, ands or buts about it. I think even if we were offered some incredible deal to go make this movie with with a lot of resources and a lot of money and to not do that, we would have held strong. I think, you know, everyone would agree to that. That’s just one thing that we couldn’t do. Now, that being said, it was difficult. And we sort of, We, We. We got a casting director that, you know, reach out because not only did we have, you know, did they actually have to have hearing loss, they also had to you know, have talent as an actor in chops, but they also needed to play baseball. So those three, the triple threat. Triple threat in that way, it’s not easy. And we, you know, we, We did a pretty wide reach and didn’t really land anyone. And then it came all the way back around to Stephen Cutler’s relationship with Curtis Pride. And his kids happened to be in theater, happened to be the right age. I say his kids because his Noel Pride plays Nikki in the movie and she was Colton’s sister. And they, you know, they were both the right ages for those parts. And we started with, you know, started with Lucas. So it just, you know, I think that obviously I. It was the right time, right place, and we got super lucky. And we really, after casting Colton and meeting Nikki I don’t remember the order, but I, I’m pretty sure after we met Noel, we. We wrote that into the sister character as well because she’s not deaf in the book. But I think that, you know, this was a collaboration the. With me and Stephen and Jody, and we were like, this is just a great opportunity to expand upon that and why not? And so, yeah, that’s how it happened. So there was luck involved. But we also were very sure that we weren’t going. To cast someone that didn’t have hearing loss. Right. Well, it worked out great because they’re very talented actors as well. Right. So it was like a win, win, win. I’m glad you took the time to really get it right. That’s wonderful. But what was it like to work on set, you know, with deaf and hard of hearing actors? Was that something that was new to you, Lee? And so did you have to make any special accommodations or, you know, how did that process go? Nothing. Nothing really changed once in a while I you know, if Nikki. I mean, sorry, Noel. Like, I think she had her back turned or something like that when she wasn’t looking at me directly or something like that, like a couple of times. But really, I can’t. I only remember one instance where Yeah, we were. I think we were shooting near the lake and she had her back turned and I was calling out and someone was like, you know, reminded me. But really other than that, like it. There was nothing. I think it was just about, you know when, you know, building the script and the story to make sure things were realistic in the way that they were portrayed on, you know, on, on, on paper. But it’s just like working with any other actor. Nothing different. Yeah, I couldn’t say that it changed any of the process. It’s just like working with any other actor. I experienced, in addition to what Lee said, I experienced a couple of situations because I was like, basically a production assistant. The whole thing. I was running, getting water, studying everything, trying to work with the actors, the actresses, making the kids feel at home. And so I’m running around in a million different places in wardrobe and stuff. And there was a scene at the lake like Lee was talking about. What happened was her battery died, Noelle’s battery died. So we had to do a quick exchange of the battery. And I remember she felt pretty uncomfortable because she didn’t feel like her voice was the same when she had her cochlear implant on and working and when the battery died. So her mom was on set and her mom helped her with the, with the battery change. And then there was another scene when we were doing the movie, the movie night, when they, the kids are all seated and they’re showing Curtis Pride’s history, which comes during the credits of the movie. So if anybody’s watching it and you watch the movie, make sure you watch the credits because you’re going to see a really good video about Curtis Pride. And there’s a scene in there where Noelle looks at Carson, and Carson looks at Noelle. And during the shooting of that scene, Carson was helping Noelle because there were a couple moments when it got dark and it was a little bit more difficult, and there was noise and there was a little bit of, you know, craziness in that dynamic. And whenever there was a situation that Noelle was having difficulty, the other cast members really were sensitive to that and helped her out. So it was. I mean, for me, it was really refreshing to watch those moments because the kids, they really got along and loved each other and just had the best time on set. And that was a great part of the making of Rally Caps as well. Well, and that shows with the power of education. Right. Because the other children, other cast members maybe didn’t know about hearing loss in this way or how to assist somebody with hearing loss when the filming began. But over the time they learned how to do that, and it happened just so naturally. And so that’s. I would imagine, one thing that you’re hoping will happen just for other children. Right. In other situations that can all learn from what they saw in this film. So I did want to ask you just about the impact, you know that you hope for this film that it’s going to have on mainstream audiences. I think now especially that it’s on the streaming platforms. You know, what is your hope that this film is going to achieve? Well, I can say that we’ve. One of the greatest parts of this is receiving the emails and the texts and the comments about what a difference it’s already making in the lives of children with hearing loss. But not only that, people that we may know who have seen the movie, who write us saying, I had no idea the impact this movie was going to have. I have a friend who’s a librarian, and she’s, like, our biggest fan. She’s trying to get the book in all of the libraries, and now she’s trying to get the movie in all of the libraries. And so far it’s just been an amazing feedback from people who get it, because I was really hoping they were going to get it and see the place and make the place and make the room and. Because when we have movies like this, it generates conversation. And the only way to truly smash stigma is to generate that conversation. And this film is giving people the opportunity to do that. Anything you want to add Lee, on that? Yeah, no, I’ll just, you know, second that. It’s. It’s. It’s really exciting to see some of the reactions and the reflections of the movie from, you know, complete strangers. Weve got a few already that that wear cochlear implants or have family members who do, and they were thankful to have, you know, a character and representation of it. And I think the goal is to normalize it, you know, not just in movies, but in. In life. You know having, you know kids who have disabilities playing amongst kids who don’t should be normal. Normalized. And, you know, hopefully this only supports that. Yeah. Well, that’s terrific. So can you guys talk a little bit about the process? Getting the movie picked up, you know, on these streaming platforms? That’s a. That’s a great accomplishment for a film in general. Right, but a film that is not about hearing loss, but has hearing loss as a component of it. Was that more challenging or what was that process like? And how did you finally push through any barriers that you faced? I think in terms of distribution and everything if anything it helps Which I don’t know. I think that at least from a business perspective, distributors look at what the demographics are and they’re like, you know, hey, this is the community. So it’s great. You know, this is. So in that sense, it. I think it’s helped. And look, you know, I. Just Speaking on the nature of distribution right now we’re in a very, you know, strange place in entertainment in the movie world. I guess you. Everyone will say that at any time. It’s always crazy. But things are changing rapidly. And we finished the movie around the time that the strikes were happening and that delayed a lot of the process. And yeah, it’s been a struggle, but when you get a distributor believes in it and things have opened up in the industry again. We have found some avenues to you know, to. And. And it. We’ve seen the doors open a little bit. So. And now, you know, as we speak now. Yeah, like you said, we’re, you know, on Apple and Amazon and it’s out there. And so, yeah, I think that the beauty of where we’re at now is that, you know, anyone in the world can access a movie or content with a click of the button, you know, and that’s great. But now the challenge is really getting attention. For lack of a better term, it’s showing that you exist and you’re here and people recognizing and finding our film. So we think it’s going to be a slow rollout. But we’re proud to be that. We’re proud to be an underdog. The little engine that could. And just keep growing from here. Amazing. Are there any future plans that you have in mind that you can talk about or what’s next for the film? Well, all I can say is that we have been concentrating so hard for the past four years to get it through distribution. And now that we’ve made it, I think we’re all just pausing, taking a beat and then getting creative. So we’ll see what the future brings. But we do have definite goals and we are moving in that direction of those goals because for example, my story started in Italy and Italy still can’t watch it. So that is the next goal for me. Other than that, we’re in like the UK, we’re in Australia, we’re in Lee. Where else are we? We’re in a bunch of different countries, but I want to be in every single country. Yeah it’s a slow rollout. So like, you know, as Jody said, you know, it’s been four years of just straight hustle for us and then, you know, we finally have had a chance to breathe now. You know, we, we have some exciting announcements coming up in the future, so stay tuned. But I also, you know what my hope is that in addition to wherever it goes in distribution and how it’s consumed by the world I think it’s a, I think it’s a really good event movie in terms of, you know, little leagues, getting together, all kinds of different organizations and watching it together because it’s really you know, I’d like to think that it taps into all generations. There’s representatives of every generation in the movie as it is in the book. Thats another thing that always attracted me was the multi generation aspect to it. Right. And you’ll see that with Judd’s character and Amy Smart’s character and then you know, the main character it’s and even Rob the older brother. It’s like you add in a fourth generation there. So I, you know, my hope is it’s something that, you know, Little League organizations will want to watch, you know, at events and you know, and whatever. So maybe it’ll stand the test of time. I love that. Well, and it deals with anxiety as well, which is something that a lot of younger children unfortunately can really identify as well. So I think there’s so many avenues, so many opportunities. So I’m glad you’re taking a little breather, but I can’t imagine knowing both of you, that it’s going to be that long of a breather. I know you guys are very excited about getting this out into the world in every way possible. So there’s also in talking about anxiety, there’s also Coach Ballgame, who basically plays himself in the movie. And he is someone who is bringing back the great way to coach kids and focusing on reducing anxiety and on parents having an intelligent approach to cheering their kids on. And one of the comments that he’s made in our question and answer sessions is that this movie gives little boys a. To express their emotions, which so often we try to shut down by saying, oh, you’re fine, get over it. Instead, it really gives young boys a chance to have feelings, and this movie makes it okay, and it gives them the opportunity to talk it out and to ask for help and to let all of the kids out there. That help does exist when you ask for help. So that’s another really important aspect of the movie that we want to make sure families are aware of and to be able to use this movie as a tool to talk about the important situations that kids nowadays find themselves in. Yeah, no, I love that. Do you have a discussion guide on your website or anything that people can use at home or when they’re watching it with groups of people to guide a discussion about that? No, but that’s an outstanding idea. And one more thing for us to get our teeth into. Thank you very much. No, no, that’s amazing that you’re right. That’s an incredible idea. We haven’t even thought of that. So thank you. Yeah, yeah. Awesome Well, I’ll look for. I’ll look for that, because I think that would be really helpful for people just to, you know, not just to enjoy the movie, but to be able to talk about it and really learn all of these messages from it. So I really appreciate you. You having us on your podcast because I know all that you’ve been through, and, you know, you’ve also created a documentary and you are, you know, have written a book. And so I really appreciate everything you’ve said about the movie because I know that you’ve been through a lot of what we’ve been through. So thank you for having us. Thank you. No, I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. I think it’s wonderful to see just all the creativity that’s happening around hearing loss. The more that we talk about it, the more that we normalize it, the better it’s going to be for everyone. So I’m really very proud and pleased to have you guys to talk to today. So thank you both for being here, and I wish you lots of continued success with the movie. And if people watching want to learn more about it, they can go to rallycapsthemovie.com so thank you so much. Great to see you guys. Thank you so much.