Nobody Thought It Would Open Big. Then It Broke Every Record.

Nobody Thought It Would Open Big. Then It Broke Every Record.

What the Oscars and Ryan Coogler taught me about doing the work before the world notices.

I am not much of a Hollywood person. I live in a small mountain town in Montana where the biggest drama this week was whether the turkeys in the Safeway parking lot were ever going to move and whether we would get another foot of snow before the weekend. I do not follow awards season. I do not have strong opinions about who deserved what trophy.

But I pay attention when something cuts through all the noise. And the movie “Sinners” cut through.

Mark and I watched it last weekend. I will be honest, we understood approximately none of it. And we are not too proud to admit that. We sat there in silence for two hours, occasionally turning to each other with the same blank face, waiting for the other one to explain what was happening. Neither of us ever did. At one point I Googled “what is Sinners about” while it was still playing! That should tell you everything.

But here is the thing. Ryan Coogler clearly made something extraordinary. Sixteen Oscar nominations do not happen because a movie sent two reasonably functional adults in Montana to bed confused and slightly embarrassed! They happen because a filmmaker spent thirteen years refusing to quit. And that part I understand completely.

Let’s Talk About What Just Happened.

Ryan Coogler made a horror film set in the 1930s American South. Vampires, blues music, twin brothers, and racism all wrapped together. At least that is what the internet told me after I Googled it while it was still playing. It just became the most nominated film in Oscar history. More than Titanic. More than anything, ever.

It happened because Coogler refused to quit. He wrote it, directed it, and produced it himself. He started directing in 2013 with a $900,000 film that he got into Sundance. And when the studios came calling for Sinners, he negotiated to own the film outright after 25 years. Thirteen years later the record broke and the room finally took notice.

Here Is Why I Am Actually Writing This.

I have been thinking about Coogler a lot this week. Not because I am a film critic as we have thoroughly established. But because I know what it feels like to build something the room is not ready for yet.

I spent eight years in nutrition consulting. I was good at it. And then I burned out because the approach I was trained in leaned heavily on things I just did not believe in anymore. And on top of that, nobody was talking about the other stuff. The cleaning products. The personal care products. The things sitting under our sinks and on our bathroom counters that we never questioned because they had just always been there. Spoiler: a lot of it is not great.

When I discovered non toxic cleaning products and started actually reading labels, I felt like an idiot for not looking sooner. Melaleuca was a natural fit; plant based, clean ingredients, products that work without making you wonder what you just inhaled. And when I found ASEA, and started learning about redox signaling molecules and what they actually do at the cellular level, something clicked in a big way. This was clean living in the deepest sense of the word. Not just what you spray on your countertop. What you put inside your body too.

Here is the part that really gets me fired up; we spend so much energy chasing the fountain of youth. Creams, supplements and whatever is trending. Meanwhile, we are cleaning our bathrooms with products that are quietly working against us. Aging well is not just about what you add. It is about what you stop exposing yourself to. It was not a popular message when I started and honestly it’s still not. But here I am.

The thing is, people are talking about non toxic products. It’s not a secret anymore. But talking about it and actually doing something about it are two very different things. Most people will nod along and then grab the Tide off the shelf at Walmart on the way home because it’s there, it’s familiar, and it’s what their mom used.

Change is uncomfortable. Especially when nothing has gone wrong yet. In my experience it usually takes getting older, getting sicker, or getting hit with something personal before people are actually ready to hear it. The room is not always closed to the message. Sometimes people are just not ready to walk through the door until life makes them.

And before you think I am just talking about strangers on the internet, my own family still does not fully get it. They have a vague idea of what I do. They just never ask. My friends are the same way. I never mention it unless someone asks. Nobody asks.

I genuinely just do not want anyone cleaning their houses with stuff that is working against them. Friends, family or even total strangers in the Safeway aisle. But you cannot help people who are not asking. So I just wait.

Doing the Work Before Anyone Is Watching.

That is the part nobody covers during awards season. The years before. The quiet, unglamorous work of building something you believe in before the results are obvious.

When Coogler made his first film he did not wait for permission. He did not wait for the industry to hand him a budget. He told the story he needed to tell with what he had.

I think about that as I am sitting in a coffee shop in Kalispell with Pete on the sofa next to me, writing blog posts and building a wellness business that most people still do not fully understand yet. The cellular health stuff. The non toxic cleaning products. The actual science behind ASEA and redox signaling and what happens inside your body when you stop loading it with chemicals it was never designed to handle. None of it is complicated once someone breaks it down. It just takes patience to explain, and it takes a certain kind of person to be willing to hear it.

Those people exist. I find more of them every week.

You just have to keep doing the work before the room fills up.

On Being Passed Over. And What It Actually Means.

Sometimes the thing that gets passed over is not being dismissed. Sometimes something else was just more undeniable that year. The work speaks or it doesn’t. The room decides or it doesn’t. And sometimes the room is wrong. And sometimes it takes thirteen years.

But the work always outlasts being passed over.

Delroy Lindo has been brilliant for decades. You know him from Malcolm X, Get Shorty, and a few others. The man has been quietly commanding every room he walks into since the early 90s. Seventy three years old and Sinners is the first time anyone handed him an Oscar nomination. In my opinion It’s long overdue.

The quiet years count. Even when nobody is handing out trophies for them.

To Anyone Out There Building Something the Room Is Not Ready For Yet.

Keep going.

Do the work anyway. Tell the story anyway. Make the film, build the business, swap out your toxic cleaning products for something that actually respects your body, say the thing nobody in your circle is saying yet.

At 63 I have a short bucket list. I want to see a woman president before I go. I want to see big corporations fined for putting toxic chemicals in their products, and I want to keep doing this work for as long as anyone will listen.

March 15th Mark and I will probably be watching the Oscars. This year I will be watching to see if Sinners takes home what it has been building toward for 13 years. Go Ryan! And if someone wants to call us afterward and explain what actually happened in that movie, we are wide open.

And please remember: You are not behind. You are just early. And honestly, so am I.