So, from there, I met you in a very strange, wonderful way.
The film comes out in 2020 and you’re here because you are in my second chess feature documentary.
It’s a film because it’s as long as a film and it’s filmed like a film, even though it’s a documentary.
And we have such amazing…
The director has won Peabodies and Emmys.
Zach Zamboni, you know, he was with Parts Unknown for 20 years and whatever.
It was such an amazing, amazing crew.
But that came from Critical Thinking.
And that’s why, you know, it’s not a coincidence.
Chess doesn’t have coincidences in it.
Chess has brainiac power in it and wonderfully devious, in a good way, calculating.
So what happened is, okay, it didn’t get into South by Southwest, but it did get into major international and national film festivals.
They just couldn’t be shown on the screen.
So it was really crazy and very sad.
However, Bianca saw the film and met me on a podcast, but I do not remember her because it was a very big US women’s chess podcast.
Sabrina:
Okay.
Yeah.
Carla Berkowitz:
And John was on the podcast with me.
And she then, at 15, reached out to me on a private message on LinkedIn.
And how was she going to know that I was going to answer her?
I had just done this big movie and she’s 15.
But there was something about the way that she asked me.
And by now everybody knows that Keanu Reeves was my producing partner, but I wasn’t allowed to say anything for all these years.
And she never said a word to me either about that.
She said, “Would you executive produce…
I have an idea to do a chess documentary about female chess heroes.
My whole life I’ve learned about Bobby Fischer, Kasparov, and all the others, but we never really…”
So I said, “A second chess movie? I’m in.”
So, what I loved about this one and what we crafted it to be after we wrote it and crafted it was that we realized that every girl that was in this documentary, and unfortunately some that couldn’t do it because some were having a baby, the lessons that chess had for them took them from, for example, the poorest of the poor and the most horrific childhoods to then running a major corporation.
I can give you Rusa, for example, which everybody will see in the film.
I mean, she was in the country of Georgia.
She escaped at 8 years old, or a little bit older.
She had a terrible childhood there.
But she was a chess prodigy.
And she escaped and got to the United States and now she works for BlackRock.
I mean, stuff like that.
And it’s not so much that these girls, including you, ended up being successful financially.
It was just the lessons that helped them get away from their situations and got them, including yourself, to the point in life where you could choose what you wanted to do in life.
And I believe that even if you or the other girls don’t realize it, it’s not in the front of your minds.
It’s deep inside your DNA by this point.
That’s just how you act.
Sabrina:
Yeah.
Carla Berkowitz:
All of you.
That’s how you have been trained, like an athlete, like a gymnast.
It’s second nature.
Sabrina:
Yeah.
Carla Berkowitz:
So that’s what happened.
So, I got this documentary and it took a while, you know, a while to do because everything does.
And here we are.
It was hard, but here we are.
And I’m just very excited because tomorrow night it’s being premiered.
World premiere.
So, yeah.
Sabrina:
Since we’ve been talking obviously about chess and life lessons and you’ve taken 20 years to create an amazing movie, I would love to talk about how you were able to stay so resilient for so long and determined to do it.
Because I think what I see with entrepreneurs these days is that they see something exciting.
They say they want to do something, but they kind of half-ass it.
You know, with the way that things are, we said it earlier.
People want instant results.
They want speed.
They see things on social media.
Carla Berkowitz:
Shiny object syndrome.
Sabrina:
Exactly.
It is completely shiny object syndrome.
Everyone’s got it because they see on social media all this stuff happening and they do it for a bit.
“Oh, it’s not working.”
And then give up and move on to the next thing.
Carla Berkowitz:
That is not satisfying to me.
Sabrina:
No, it’s not.
And I think that old-school entrepreneurs don’t have that.
And I really relate to that.
I will stick to something.
I’m still here.
I’ve still been doing my agency for the last 15 years despite other people going up and down.
I’ve pivoted a little bit.
I’ve adapted with the times and I’m still going.
And I’m doing other things on top of it, but I’m still here running my same business for the last 15 years.
Whereas people don’t even last 15 months.
They’ve given up.
They change.
They go, “It didn’t work.”
You didn’t give it time for it to work.
You didn’t let it percolate or marinate.
Carla Berkowitz:
Exactly.
Marinate.
Exactly.
But you spent 20 years.
Now you’ve got two super successful films and so many more in the works.
Exactly.
And I know why I kept at it.
I mean, when you deal with people, when you’re telling a true story about people that have families and come from not the best circumstances, they had to leave Cuba on a lottery or on a raft or however they got here, whatever.
There are many times in this story in particular…
You have to give respect to people that don’t realize they even deserve the respect.
And the respect I gave them was I promised them that I would do this.
How can you not do it?
I mean, what is it about someone that would just say, “I’m sorry.
It’s just took too long.
It’s not interesting to me anymore.”
Whatever.
That would never have come to my mind.
It would have killed my soul and I wouldn’t have been able to be me.
These boys and this coach did extraordinary things for 10 years.
And I promised them.
How can you not?
So that fueled me and it got into me to the point where it’s not just 20 years.
It’s 28 years now.
And why is that?
Maybe a little longer because I’m either doing a part two or a TV series.
I’m still working with them.
I’m still doing chess.
So, it’s actually got into my veins.
They got into me.
People are like, “Oh, you changed their lives.
You made them immortal.
There’s a movie about them.”
I’m like, “I don’t think you get it.”
They changed my life completely.
So, I will always love them.
Some of them are coming tomorrow night.
Don’t make me cry.
And I saw them grow up.
And they deserve this respect that they never thought anybody would ever give them.
And to me, they are just…
Yeah.
So that’s why I didn’t give up.
Sabrina:
How did you get the big names to come be part of it?
Because obviously, like you said, John was part of it.
And I can’t help but call him Omar because I love The Wire.
[laughter]
And it’s very sad because he died right after.
So tell me about that.
Michael K. Williams was a gift.
Carla Berkowitz:
Yeah.
A gift from God, I think, in that movie.
A gift from God.
I can tell you that when he was in a room, he sucked up the oxygen so much people had to get out.
I remember one scene where he yelled at his son.
It was such a yell.
We had to do a take two because there were so many people behind the camera.
We were like…
It was just so…
We had to vacate.
He was really an exceptional artist in the sense that he just lived the character.
But every character he played was so mean and so awful.
And yet that was the opposite.
I remember he said to me, “Madam EP,” which was so lovely.
And he didn’t really mean it, but he did.
He was such a gentleman.
And he put his arm out and I put my arm on it and we were walking.
Everybody on set was like, “What is happening?
What is he saying to her?”
And he said, “I would like to donate to this community.
This is my community.”
Yeah, he was very much not the characters he played.
Very special.
I got very friendly with his entourage.
And when he died, it was very personal.
I didn’t know him long, obviously.
But when you’re on a film set and you’re together for like 18 hours a day or whatever, for days and days and days, you become fast friends.
Sometimes the friendship lasts.
Sabrina:
Yeah, of course.
Obviously, it didn’t because he passed away, but it was sad.
Carla Berkowitz:
But yes, he was a gift.
And so was Rachel Bay Jones, who had won the Tony for playing the mother in Dear Evan Hansen.
An interesting story is that since I was a theater nerd, as I told you, I had seen her in the remake of Hair.
Sabrina:
Oh, wow.
Carla Berkowitz:
And the remake of Pippin years and years before.
You would have given me a million dollars and I would never have thought that that woman that I idolized, that gave me an autograph, was going to be the star of my film.
And we became good friends too.
This film had a lot of things like that.
And if you talk to any of the crew here in Miami, everybody says that it was a bubble set.
Like it would never happen again.
It hadn’t happened since and it will never happen again.
I don’t know.
It was just very special.
And I think it had to do with the people.
We were talking about these boys.
Sabrina:
Yeah.
I remember you telling me a story, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you had to change the first scene of that movie depending on where you aired it.
Is that correct?
