FiReFilms Marquee Film
Original mailing October 2020; edited January 2025
REBUILDING PARADISE
A Message from the CEO
We are very grateful to National Geographic for permitting us to show to our members this extremely timely and relevant documentary, directed by Ron Howard, about not only the wildfires that burned down the beautiful, small town of Paradise, California, in 2018, but also about the passion and love for this town by its residents, many of whom had the courage and motivation to rebuild the town and their homes in 2019. Fast-forward to today, just 2 years later, and several wildfires are again headed directly toward Paradise and its neighbors. What will the residents do now? If Paradise burns to the ground again, will they have the same tenacity, passion, and interest to rebuild in 2021? How long can this cycle last?
– Sharon Anderson Morris, CEO
Update: Don’t miss the interview of Rebuilding Paradise director Ron Howard by host (and lifelong Howard fan) Christiane Amanpour, which aired on Sept. 25. You can catch it here on Amanpour & Co.
Filmmaker’s Synopsis
On the morning of November 8, 2018, a devastating firestorm engulfed the picturesque city of Paradise, California. By the time the “Camp Fire” was extinguished, it had killed 85 people, displaced 50,000 residents, and destroyed 95% of local structures. It was the deadliest US fire in 100 years – and the worst ever in California’s history. Rebuilding Paradise, from Academy Award–winning director Ron Howard, is a moving story of resilience in the face of tragedy, as a community ravaged by disaster comes together to recover what was lost and begin the important task of rebuilding.
Runtime: 91 minutes
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcyPBHPk_VM
Website: https://films.nationalgeographic.com/rebuilding-paradise
Director’s Statement
In Rebuilding Paradise, the audience follows Michelle John, Paradise’s intrepid superintendent of schools; Woody Culleton, a former mayor of the town; Kayla and Justin Cox, young parents whose entire extended family lost their homes in the blaze; Carly Ingersoll, a school psychologist helping students cope with the trauma; Zach Boston and Brandon Burke, high-school seniors whose final year in school was disrupted and whose lives were altered forever; police officer Matt Gates, who watched his home burn as he struggled to save townspeople; and Krystle Young’s growing family, who must move from a hotel room to a rented trailer to a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer park.
After the fire, Paradise resembled something like an apocalyptic nightmare – buildings being razed, miles and miles of charred cars, hollowed-out homes, solid ash and burnt landscape everywhere – but the film takes care to examine the damage to the community’s inner life as well. Residents deal with anxiety and loss; the discovery that the water supply has been poisoned with toxic chemicals, including benzene, an organic compound created from all of the melting materials, which can be absorbed through the skin; and PTSD, which continues to take its toll well beyond the fire’s [nearly two-year, at the time of this writing] anniversary.
Ron Howard describes his personal connection to Paradise:
I was traveling that day from New York to Los Angeles, and the news of Paradise was of extra interest to me because I have a lot of relatives in Redding, California, and they’d had the Carr Fire up there just several months before.
So, I was very familiar with the city of Paradise – I had visited there a couple of times, my late mother-in-law had lived in Paradise for years, and I thought it was a great place. During the Carr Fire, my sister-in-law needed to evacuate, and she’d also had a business that was threatened. So, in November 2018, we were already on pins and needles about the fire situation in that area. And then when the Camp Fire went up, and to such a devastating degree, it was horrifying.
Everyone in our Imagine production offices was aware of it and was concerned, and when my longtime assistant Louisa Velis wondered, “What is rebuilding that town going to look like?” I immediately suggested a documentary about it to Justin Wilkes and Sara Bernstein at Imagine Documentaries. We all agreed it was a powerful subject and worthy of exploration. We sent cameras there right away and began covering the aftermath of the fire. After NatGeo came on board, we then brought in Xan and her team, who became an almost constant presence there.
When we went to Paradise, the range of emotions was so palpable on people’s faces and in the words of the people I was meeting – some of whom we were rolling cameras on, and some of whom we were just speaking to in order to grasp it all. I’ve never been around anything like that kind of devastation. It was jaw-dropping and heartbreaking.
There was a tremendous amount of real bravery there, too. Not just in terms of the first responders, who were extraordinary and most of whom had had their homes destroyed yet were so committed to their service, but also in the spirit of the survivors. Some people were clearly better positioned to endure something like this than others, but there were a lot of people for whom this was a permanently life-changing assault on their existence. It’s a population with a sort of can-do pioneer spirit, and over time we saw who they were and how they wanted to live slamming up against the reality of what this catastrophe was and where it left them. That tension was observable, and very emotional.
The first responders were so heroic and gave everything, as one would expect – they were remarkable. But we also saw a lot of young people step forward in those first weeks after the fire. They were really maturing before our eyes and trying to support their parents, who were often shell shocked and doing the best they could. I was particularly moved by the strength demonstrated by the kids.
– Ron Howard
About the Director
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ron Howard is one of this generation’s most popular directors. From the critically acclaimed Oscar-winning dramas A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13 to the hit comedies Parenthood and Splash, he has created some of Hollywood’s most memorable films. Whether it be from in front of or behind the camera, or for film, television, or documentaries, Howard has been a part of many of the most significant projects in every decade since the ’60s.
A Beautiful Mind earned Howard an Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture, and also won for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress. That same year, he was also recognized as the Best Director of the Year from the Directors Guild of America.
Howard has been honored by numerous organizations including the Museum of Moving Images, American Cinema Editors, the Producers Guild of America, NYU’s Tisch School of Cinematic Arts, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Chicago Film Festival, to name a few. In March 2013, Howard was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and in 2015, Howard was honored with a second star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, this time in the Motion Pictures, making him one of the select few to have been recognized with two stars.
Howard is currently in post-production on the film adaptation of the New York Times best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams and [has recently released] the documentary Rebuilding Paradise…. Howard also produced several documentaries [in the past year], including Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band, D. Wade: Life Unexpected, and Dads.
Howard’s past films include the 2017 Grammy award-winning Best Music Film The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Rush, The Da Vinci Code, Frost/Nixon, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Ransom, Backdraft, The Paper, Far and Away, and Cocoon, just to name a few.
Howard has also served as an executive producer on a number of award-winning television shows, such as the Emmy Award–winning HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, Fox’s Emmy-winning Best Comedy Arrested Development – a series for which he also narrates, NBC’s Parenthood, NatGeo’s award-winning anthology series Genius, and 68 Whiskey for Paramount Network.
Howard made his directorial debut in 1977 with the comedy Grand Theft Auto. He began his career in film as an actor, first appearing in The Journey and The Music Man. He later starred as Opie on the long-running television series The Andy Griffith Show and as Richie Cunningham on the popular series Happy Days, both Nielsen-rated #1 series.
Howard met his longtime friend and business partner Brian Grazer in the early 1980s and embarked on what is now one of the longest-running partnerships in Hollywood. Their collaboration began with the hit comedies Night Shift and Splash, and in 1986 the two founded Imagine Entertainment, which they continue to run together as chairmen.
How to Support
2025 Note: The links & references below are from our original October 2020 mailing, retained for historical value.
See the “Take Action” tab on the rebuildingparadise.film website to support organizations providing direct assistance to victims of the Camp Fire in Paradise.
There’s no lack of informative sources for updates on the fires still raging up and down the US West Coast, with a variety of focuses. The Pacific Northwest has seen some good news this week in the form of heavy rains, but hotspots and new fires persist. Thankfully, the town of Paradise itself has to-date not been touched.
A selection:
California: https://www.fire.ca.gov/daily-wildfire-report/
Oregon: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/6329d5e4e13748b9b9f7f33f06a3c376/
Washington: https://tinyurl.com/yypbumwf
A compilation, with less frequent updates:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/fires-map-tracker.html