Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 01/13/23

5000 Blankets (currently streaming on Pure Flix) wraps a compelling story around the plight of the mentally ill and homeless. The film is inspired by the remarkable true story of Cyndi Bunch (played effectively by Anna Camp) and her young son Phillip (Carson Minniear who also turns in a very impressive performance) whose lives are turned upside down when her husband/his father disappears during a mental health crisis. The resulting search changes their lives forever and touches the hearts of Fort Worth, Texas-area residents.

Expertly produced by Douglas Shaffer, directed by Amin Matalqa and written by Matthew Antonelli and Larry Postel, the movie delivers a surprisingly strong faith message without ever coming across as heavy-handed or preachy – which, of course, makes its positive message of discovering good in adversity all the more powerful. As star Anna Camp says “This is a story about a woman of faith who believes in God but who’s really struggling with why this painful thing happened to her. She has doubts and fears but, ultimately, it’s a movie about overcoming them in the face of personal struggle. It’s also about loving others and making a difference on a daily basis.”

 The Bottom Line: All in all, 5000 Blankets is very believable, very humane and quite moving. Highly Recommended.

My conversation with Cyndi Bunch follows the film’s trailer.

JWK: How did this film come about?

Cyndi Bunch: (A reporter) called me up and asked me if Phillip and I would like to join his show. It was a local TV show…So, Phillip and I went on his show and then the next day I got a call from a local screenwriter by the name of Larry Postel. He said “I’d love to write a screenplay about this (story). Can we meet?” I thought that was weird but, okay, why not? I met him at a Starbucks. He wrote the screenplay and here we are today.

JWK: Are you happy with how it came out?

CB: It’s beautiful.

JWK: How involved were you in the production?

CB: Pretty involved. I was on set – not the whole time. I wasn’t on set the whole time but I did meet all the actors and, you know, the director’s great. The producer was amazing. The whole cast and crew, everybody was just amazing. I didn’t think it was going to be like that. I was thinking Hollywood, oh my gosh, I’m not gonna fit in at all because, just like I said, I’m shy and quiet. I’d say I don’t say a whole lot. I’m more of a listener. These people were just so incredibly nice and made me feel so comfortable! So, yeah, it was beautiful. It was obviously a God thing the way things came together. There wasn’t a bump in the road, not one.

JWK: What do you hope people take from the film?

CB: I hope they take away that just because people are living on the street doesn’t necessarily mean they want to be there. A lot of the people that are homeless are mentally ill. They suffer from PTSD, drug addiction – which I believe is a disease. There’s not enough help with that in our communities at all unless you have money. These people don’t have money to go to rehab to get rehabilitated. In Fort Worth there’s only one free drug rehab. I won’t mention the name but it’s in a homeless district so you go into this building for thirty days for rehab and you walk out into the streets and the first thing you walk up to is someone pushing drugs. Does that make sense? I don’t think the mentally ill and people with addictions are properly taken care of. I think it’s our job as human beings. We can’t look for government for everything but I think it’s our job as human beings to get out there with them, love on these people, help these people and do whatever we can to get them on the right track. It takes people. It takes a community.

JWK: What percentage of the homeless do you think are mentally ill?

CB: Oh, eighty percent easy.

JWK: In the film, it’s shown that you went out there in the middle of the night to meet some of these people.

CB: I still do.

JWK: Are you ever afraid for your safety? We know that most mentally-ill and homeless people aren’t dangerous – but there is a percentage that are.

CB: A very, very, very small percentage. These people are stereotyped. I would say there are more people living in the community that live in big houses that are more dangerous than people on the streets.

JWK: Well, you speak from experience.

CB: I go into those campsites at night. I sit with those people at night. Nobody has ever ever tried to harm me in any way whatsoever and I’m a little tiny girl.

JWK: How is your family doing now?

CB: My son and I are doing great. We’re running our own nonprofit still twenty years later. We’ve added a food bank. We run everything out of our house. Our food bank is in our garage. That’s just for low-income families in the community. Phillip’s dad still struggles. He’s still struggling. He’ll never be the way he was before but that’s mental illness. That’s what it does to you. I mean it’s something that can’t just easily be fixed.

JWK: What is his diagnosis?

CB: Paranoid schizophrenia.

JWK: Is he still living with you?

CB: No. We still take care of him. We still support him as much as we possibly can. It’s like I said. There’s not enough help for the families. That’s one thing I want to get across – that families don’t talk about this. This is like something hush-hush. I think that families need to be able to share their stories. I think people are just afraid to share their stories because people often look at them as like “Oh, wow! There’s a psycho living next door!” Does that make sense?

JWK: What is you message to people who may have someone struggling with mental illness in their family?

CB: Reach out. Reach out to your other family members. Reach out to your community. Reach out to your church. Just reach out. A family shouldn’t have to suffer like this – not like Phillip and I did. It was little Phillip that started his whole – I call it a mission in our city. We’ve been on this mission for twenty years now. I think that families should be able to talk about it.

JWK: How old is Phillip now?

CB: Phillip turned 26 on Christmas Eve.

JWK: How’s he doing? What’s his life like now?

CB: He’s very involved in the nonprofit. He’s a dental hygienist. His fiancée is a nurse. So, they’re in the medical field. 

JWK: How did your faith help you get through all this?

CB: If it wasn’t for my faith I would never have made it. Never! I would have wallowed in that depression. Oh, my goodness! Because I was depressed for a while, extremely depressed. I mean when you lose someone you love – but they’re still around – and then you lose everything you own you’re automatically going to go into a depression but you gotta pick yourself up – and that was me. I wasn’t gonna wallow in that. I was gonna make it better. I think it was my son that actually was the one that helped me realize that “Mom, look at all these people out here. You could have it a lot worse.”

JWK: He sounds like an incredible kid.

CB: Yeah…(The nonprofit is called) Phillip’s Wish. We actually have a beautiful website that people can go to. It’s phillipswish.com. I don’t know if you’ve been to it.

JWK: I just visited it a short time ago. How can people help? I guess go to the website.

CB: Go to the website. You can donate online – because I can’t do this by myself. I’m not a rich person by any means. I’m a single woman and just lost my job December 9th. So, that didn’t help.

JWK: What kind of job, may I ask?

CB: It was doing nonprofit work but it was doing it for someone else. I was helping someone else. I had that job for five years.

JWK: Hopefully someone will read this and hire you.

CB: Yeah, I need a job! Anybody out there wanna help me? And I’m not wallowing in this either. It’s like so what? You know, you picked yourself up many times, you’ll pick yourself up again. I know that God will take care of me. No doubt at all. I know that for a fact because He always has.

JWK: I guess the economy is also adding to the ranks of the homeless.

CB: Oh, the economy right now is like… Our food bank is wiped out, completely wiped out. Every two weeks we have to start over again. It’s like – Oh my gosh! – where am I going to get the money? I used to tithe into that. That’s what I would do. I would tithe into my food bank. Well, right now I’m tithing into paying my bills. You know, I know God’s gonna open bigger doors for me – but I’m just saying everybody keep the faith. Always keep the faith because faith is what’s going to carry you through every storm in your life. God is a good God. I call it hanging onto hope because hope is huge. Without hope we don’t have a whole lot of anything. Faith, hope, love. Love your neighbor. I truly believe the more you give the more you get back – without a doubt.

JWK: Was your faith as strong before this all began?

CB: No. It’s something I had to find. It was like a whisper and a nudge. It was crazy. It was kinda like I would hear not voices, so to speak, but things would pop into my mind. Then I started reading a book called The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that book or read it – a beautiful book. It says you find your purpose through your greatest pain – which is true. That’s how I found my purpose in life. My purpose in life is to make people aware (of) people that suffer from mental illness, drug addiction, homelessness. There are families out there living in tents with their children in Fort Worth. I mean this year was the hardest year we had.

JWK: We’re almost out of time. Is there anything you’d like to say as we wrap this up?

CB: Yes. I’d just encourage everybody to go and subscribe to Pure Flix and watch 5000 Blankets. It will not only inspire them but it will get them to move to action – and if there’s anybody out there that doesn’t know what to do they can always go to our website. Check out our website. You can actually message me. I always reply to all my messages. And, if you’d like to, donate to the food bank or to our homeless friends – because we go through 600 bottles of water every Sunday. It gets quite pricey so we need all the help we can get. So, I would encourage people to go to Pure Flix (and) watch 5000 Blankets. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story. It hits all areas. It’s not just for the faith-based community. It’s (for) all communities.

JWK: It definitely works as a movie.

CB: Yeah. That’s what I hope for. My biggest hope is that this movie brings people together as a whole – not just the Church but everyone because it hits every family. I mean families suffer from this all the time. So, I hope that it gets people to move and get out there and help the community around them in other cities and states. I want it to be a movement.

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.