When Is Silence Wisdom and When Is It Complicity?

When Is Silence Wisdom and When Is It Complicity?

Documentary First: The Deep Dive · built from Episode 279 with Brian Pocrass · 8 minutes · June 11, 2026

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What should a filmmaker do with a rumor everyone already believes?

Brian Pocrass is a Los Angeles attorney and a filmmaker. His documentary She Was Here is about Heather O'Rourke, the little girl from Poltergeist. Every place he pitched it wanted the Poltergeist curse, the story the internet had been running with for 30 years. Brian could have built his film around the curse, set it up and knocked it down. He refused, and the reason he gave is the question at the center of this episode: when is silence wisdom, and when is it complicity?

In this Deep Dive on Documentary First Episode 279 with Brian Pocrass, Christian Taylor starts with what Brian asked about the false rumors around Heather: "The question is how much oxygen do you give it?" She tests his answer against C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, then against the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spent his adult life writing against the church's silence under the Nazis.

To tell the two apart, she turns to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's essay Live Not by Lies and to a pair of verses in Proverbs that seem to contradict each other. Then she tells how she made the same kind of call on her own film, The Girl Who Wore Freedom, and leaves filmmakers with two questions to ask before they give a sensational story screen time.

In this Deep Dive, Christian explores

  • Why Brian Pocrass refused to make his Heather O'Rourke documentary about the Poltergeist curse, when every production company he pitched wanted it
  • Why debunking a rumor on screen can make it stronger, and what Christian takes from The Screwtape Letters about attention
  • Where that principle breaks down: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the pastors who stayed quiet in 1930s Germany
  • How Solzhenitsyn's Live Not by Lies treats refusing to repeat a lie as an action
  • Why Proverbs 26:4 and 26:5 seem to contradict each other, and how the rabbis of the Talmud resolved it
  • The D-Day rumor Christian chose to leave out of The Girl Who Wore Freedom, and her rule to stick to the facts
  • Two questions to ask before giving a sensational version of your story screen time

Questions and answers

Should a documentary debunk a false rumor or ignore it?

Producer Brian Pocrass faced this with the rumors around Heather O'Rourke. "The question is how much oxygen do you give it?" he asks. Once he learned the rumors were completely false, he chose to let the truth speak for itself. In this Deep Dive, Christian Taylor explains the risk he avoided: debunking the Poltergeist curse would have given it screen time, and the speculation would have walked away with a brand new piece of footage to point at.

What does The Screwtape Letters say about attention?

In C.S. Lewis's book, Screwtape, a senior devil, writes letters to Wormwood, a junior devil, with advice on how to corrupt a human soul. Christian Taylor reads one of Screwtape's lessons as this: attention is currency. As she puts it, "The devil doesn't care whether you believe the lie, he cares whether you're talking about it." She says that is what Brian Pocrass was tracking when he refused to build his film around the curse.

When does staying silent become complicity?

Christian Taylor points to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor in the 1930s who watched pastor after pastor stay quiet from the pulpit as the church surrendered to the Nazi regime. He wrote against that silence his entire adult life, and the Nazis hanged him in 1945. The line she cites as his most famous on the subject: "silence in the face of evil is evil itself." Refusing to speak, she warns, can turn into a cover story for cowardice.

How do Proverbs 26:4 and 26:5 fit together?

Verse 4 says not to answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him; verse 5 says to answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes. Christian Taylor explains that the Talmud debates this, and the rabbis settled on the idea that the verses apply to different stakes. When the fool is talking about something sacred, you answer. When it is something mundane, you don't.

What rumor did Christian Taylor leave out of The Girl Who Wore Freedom?

On D-Day, Michel de Vallavieille, the young owner of Brécourt Manor near Utah Beach, was shot in the back by an American paratrooper from Easy Company. He survived, became mayor of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and built the Utah Beach Museum to honor the GIs who liberated his farm. For decades, gossip has named which well-known paratrooper fired. Christian Taylor chose not to put it in. Her rule was to stick to the facts. "The facts were enough," she says.

Chapters

  • 0:00 C.S. Lewis, the Devil, and Brian Pocrass's Question
  • 0:33 How Much Oxygen Do You Give a Lie?
  • 1:38 The Screwtape Letters and the Devil's Currency
  • 2:35 Bonhoeffer: Silence in the Face of Evil Is Evil Itself
  • 3:38 Solzhenitsyn's Live Not By Lies and Proverbs 26
  • 5:10 The Girl Who Wore Freedom: Bill Guarnere and My Own Test
  • 6:24 The Question I Leave You With

About the topic

C.S. Lewis published The Screwtape Letters in 1942. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 to 1945) was executed by the Nazis in April 1945. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn released Live Not by Lies in 1974, on the day he was arrested by the KGB and deported. In Christian's summary, his argument is that you may not be able to stop a lie from being told, but you can refuse to repeat it, and refusal is the action. The rabbis' reading of Proverbs 26:4 and 26:5 is found in the Talmud, Shabbat 30b. The same question about amplifying falsehoods is the subject of Whitney Phillips' 2018 report The Oxygen of Amplification, published by Data & Society.

Christian leaves filmmakers with two questions to ask themselves: "If I engage in this story, will I make it more solid or less solid in the world?" And: "Who's my audience? The people who already believe the lie? Or the people who deserve the truth."

About Brian Pocrass and She Was Here

Brian Pocrass is a USC film school graduate who worked in entertainment for years before becoming an attorney in Los Angeles. He produced She Was Here, directed by Nick Bailey, about the life of Heather O'Rourke, who died on February 1, 1988, at twelve. The film is told with her mother, Kathleen, and her sister, Tammy, and is distributed in the US by Virgil Films Entertainment.

The source episode

Heather O'Rourke Documentary: The Film Her Family Trusted, Documentary First Episode 279 with Brian Pocrass, producer of She Was Here. Read the episode page: Heather O'Rourke Documentary: The Film Her Family Trusted.

About Documentary First

Documentary First is a weekly podcast about the people behind documentaries and how the work changed them. Host Christian Taylor, director of the award-winning The Girl Who Wore Freedom, talks with filmmakers, distributors, entertainment lawyers, actors and more, from Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy to first-timers, across more than 290 episodes. Each week brings one of two formats: a long-form conversation with the people behind films for HBO, Netflix, PBS and independent film, or The Deep Dive, where Christian takes one insight from a recent conversation and follows it wherever it leads. Listen Notes ranks the show in the top 5% of all podcasts worldwide. New episodes every week. Follow the show · About the podcast · Support the show on Patreon

Resources mentioned

Full transcript

Read the full transcript of When Is Silence Wisdom and When Is It Complicity?

0:02
The devil doesn't care whether you believe the lie. He cares whether you're talking about it.

0:10
Recently, I sat down with Brian Pocrass, an attorney out of LA. He's also a filmmaker, and his new documentary is called She Was Here. It's about Heather O'Rourke, the little girl from Poltergeist. And about 30 minutes into our conversation, Brian asked a very thoughtful question. I'm Christian Taylor, and today I want to talk about that question. But first, take a listen to Brian.

Brian Pocrass clip 0:33
And just once we realized how false they are, this is again a documentary producer decision.

0:37
The question is how much oxygen do you give it? When you've learned it's completely false, do you sit there and present it or do you just kind of let the truth speak for itself and not really wave the flames for this false narrative, this disgusting false narrative? Now, here's what Brian was up against. Every single production company he pitched Heather's story to wanted him to tell a different story. They wanted the Poltergeist curse. They wanted the conspiracy version. Now the internet had been running with that story for 30 years. It draws clicks, it draws audiences, it draws money. And Brian could have made that movie. He could have built the whole film around the curse, set it up, knocked it down, made the refutation the spine. Plenty of documentaries work that way. The audience is already warmed up. You ride the rumor in, and you ride the correction out. Brian refused. And I have been giving his choice a bit of thought. So I'm gonna share my thoughts with you. There is a book by C.S. Lewis called The Screwtape Letters that I think gets at this same idea. Now, if you don't know this book, C.S. Lewis writes about Screwtape, who is a senior devil, talking to Wormwood, a junior devil, writing all letters, advice on how to corrupt a human soul.

1:56
And one of the things that Screwtape is doing is he's teaching Wormwood that attention is currency. The devil doesn't care whether you believe the lie. He cares whether you're talking about it. That was what Brian was tracking. He could have used Heather's film to debunk the curse, and in the doing of that, he would have made the curse stronger. He would have given it screen time. He would have repeated the speculation in order to argue with it, and the speculation would have walked away with a brand new piece of footage to point at. So he refused. Now we do have to be careful here because there is a problem with this principle if you take it too far. And the man I keep thinking about where this is concerned is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German pastor in the 1930s. He watched the German church surrender to the Nazi regime. He watched pastor after pastor stay quiet from the pulpit because they didn't want to ruffle any feathers. They didn't want to feed the fire. And Bonhoeffer wrote against that silence his entire adult life. That is, until the Nazis hanged him for it in 1945. His most famous line about this is silence in the face of evil is evil itself. Not to speak is to speak.

3:13
Not to act is to act. So we have to hold these two things at once. Brian's wisdom on the one side, don't repeat the lie, don't give the rumor airtime, and Bonhoeffer's wisdom on the other. Silence can also be a betrayal. The discipline of refusing to speak. can turn into a cover story for cowardice. So how do you tell them apart? I'm gunna give you another name on this, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer, survived the gulag, spent his life writing about what happens to a country when everyone agrees to repeat the lie. In 1974, on the day that he was arrested by the KGB and deported, he released an essay called Live Not By Lies. His argument was the cleanest version of what we're talking about. He said, you may not be able to stop a lie from being told. But you can refuse to repeat it. And refusal is the action. So which is it? When do you confront the lie, and when do you refuse to repeat it? There's a passage in Proverbs that has been bothering people for two thousand years because it appears to contradict itself. Chapter twenty six verses four and five.

4:30
Verse four says, Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself. Verse 5 says, answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes. For centuries, people have tried to figure out which one is it. The Talmud has whole debates about it. And the answer the rabbis settled on was that the two verses apply to different kinds of stakes. When the fool is talking about something sacred, you answer. When the fool is talking about something mundane, you don't. The wisdom is in knowing which kind of stakes you are facing. I had to make that kind of call myself once on my film The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Let me share it with you. On D-Day, a young Frenchman named Michel de Vallavieille, who happened to be the owner of Brecourt Manor off of Utah Beach, was shot in the back by an American paratrooper from Easy Company. He survived and he went on to become the mayor of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. He also built the Utah Beach Museum To honor the G.I.s that liberated his farm. He spent the rest of his life telling the story of D Day with grace toward the men who liberated his farm and his country.

5:47
Those are the facts. The gossip for decades has been that the paratrooper who shot him was Bill Guarnere, Wild Bill, the one Band of Brothers fans all know. The story goes that he learned his brother had been killed by the Germans the night before he jumped, and that he was trigger happy on D Day to kill the Germans, and that one of the men he shot was de Vallavieille. That story is the cursed version of D-Day. It would have given my film a hook. It would have lit up a certain kind of audience. I chose not to put it in. My rule when I made The Girl Who Wore Freedom was to stick to the facts. The facts were enough. They're always enough. So Brian made his call. I made mine. The question I want to leave you with is what is yours going to be? Because if you're making documentaries or if you're telling stories of any kind, you may have to face this one day. There may be a sensational version of your story available to you, and the choice of whether to give it screen time or not is going to be yours. Now I can't tell you which way to go. I think the discipline of the choice is in the work. But here are the questions for you to ponder. Ask yourself if I engage in this story, will I make it more solid or less solid in the world? And who's my audience? The people who already believe the lie?

7:04
Or the people who deserve the truth. You decide. If you found something helpful in this episode today, text it to one person, just one. And if you're new to the show, follow or subscribe wherever you listen or watch two seconds of your day. A real difference in ours. And if you want to support our work, the link to our Patreon is in the show notes below. I'm Christian Taylor. You've been listening to Documentary First: The Deep Dive. And I'll see you next time.

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