“Dear…”, is a documentary where 10 stories are told in 10 episodes. Each episode is about someone well-known that has had an impact on the world, in the episodes they read a few letters from the people they’ve inspired. So far I have watched two episodes.
The first episode is about an African American director named Spike Lee. The first letter he read was from a man named M. Christopher Brown talking about Spike Lee’s film, “School Daze”, “I use your films as a way to connect”, wrote Brown. He talked about how “school daze” inspired him to become the president of Kentucky state university, a historically black college. “Your films made me truly understand the importance of community.” wrote Clifton “Booney” McFlower, as he told his story of being inspired by Spike Lee’s films to help fix the community he spent so long hurting. Another letter he got was from a woman, named Candice Wiggins, who talked about the death of her father who was a baseball player when she was four. “Your film helped me open my heart and heal those deep wounds.” Candice wrote about Spike’s “he got game” film. She also wrote how “one man can make a difference. For me, that man is you.”
The second episode is about Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton. In this episode the letters he reads talk about how he has inspired them to keep going, and to have hope. “You’re throwing rocks in a pond,” he says, “and you have no idea what ripples will come back to you.” He gets a letter from a girl and her father talking about how she got cancer, and when she felt like giving up he gave her hope to keep fighting for her life. Her father thanked him for bringing his daughter joy when nothing else was. Another named Melina Ortega talked about how her school was doing one of Lin’s plays and how one night when she and a group of her other friends stayed late to practice, they heard that there was a shoot out at a nightclub they were headed to and that four of their friends never made it out. She also talked about how not long after there was a big wildfire that caused them to evacuate, and that he had heard about this and invited them to Los Angeles to meet with him. “You were a light in all of our darkness” wrote Melina. Lin talked about the pulse shooting in Orlando on June 12, 2016 and how that night he had to go to the Tony’s awards and he just had to prepare something for remembrance, a guy wrote about that speech in his letter to Lin he talked about how he was afraid to come out, but Lin’s speech gave him the courage he needed to do it.
This show is impactful and shows how much things can affect us, and encourage us to do better things and to be better people. It shows how much their impact on us means to them. I recommend watching this on Apple TV.
