Hi {{first_name}},
Episode 3 is here. And it’s a conversation I’ve been excited to share with you.
Peter Farrelly has been making movies for over 30 years. “Dumb and Dumber”, “There’s Something About Mary”, “Green Book”, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and best Original Screenplay. He’s one of the most recognizable writer-director-producers in Hollywood. And he sat down with me and went somewhere he doesn’t normally go publicly.
We talked about what happened the night of his very first premiere, when his friend Danny Murphy, a quadriplegic, pointed out that there wasn’t a single person with a disability in the entire film. Pete said it ruined the night. He’s never forgotten it. All of his projects have been different since then.
We talked about how he checks the ending of every Dateline episode before he’ll commit to listening. He needs justice. He needs to know someone got caught. If they didn’t? He’s out. That’s one of the most intentional media consumption habits I’ve ever heard from anyone.
And then we went deeper. Pete shared that he’s been praying every day for almost 50 years. That he learned meditation from Jim Carrey and John Raatz. That driving cross-country alone with nothing but AM radio is what cracked his life open and turned him into a writer. While talking about near-death experiences, and what the people who've had them all seem to say: that life is what feels like a dream, and the NDE is the clearest thing you'll ever experience, he said something humorous and profound:
“I’m not Pete Farrelly. I’m a soul in a guy named Pete Farrelly.”
This is a side of Hollywood you rarely hear. And Pete said at the end that I opened him up in ways he might cringe about later. He assured me afterward that he feels good about everything he shared. I think you’ll understand why once you hear it.
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About the show
“Convos About Conscious Media With Kia” is a guided expedition into the conscious media landscape — solo episodes on research, ideas, and what I'm learning, plus conversations with filmmakers, festival programmers, distributors, audience members, and the experts shaping this category from the inside. As the episode count grows, we will collectively discover what conscious media is. All of its facets and nuances. Not because anyone handed you a definition. Because we built it together.
About the company
Many of you signed up for the Conscious Media Visionaries email list years ago — back in the late 2010s, when CMV was running events and panels and gathering the early version of this community. Then, around 2020, I went quiet. The world cracked open, and so did I. I took time to listen for what this company actually wanted to become, instead of forcing the version I'd been pushing.
Six years later — different vision, clearer purpose, much bigger plans. CMV is back, and it's evolving into something I think you're going to want to see. The full unveiling will come over the next few months. Convos is the first public step.
One last thing. Share this episode with one person. Somebody who loves “Green Book”, somebody who cares about disability inclusion, somebody who needs to hear a guy from Hollywood talk about prayer and near-death experiences with zero pretense. You probably already have someone in mind.
I'm so glad you're here for this!
— Kia Kiso-Brennan
P.S. You may have known me as Kia Kiso — same person, updated name (now Kia Kiso-Brennan). Thirty years of credits live under both.