When filmmaker Dan Lohaus learned that there were over 150,000 homeless Vietnam War veterans, he decided he wanted to take action. He started reading up on the subject, visiting assistance programs, and talking to vets who were living on the streets, filming their experiences along the way with the intention of turning his footage into a documentary on the subject of homeless vets from the Vietnam war. At the start of the Iraq War, though, Lohaus’ documentary project took a slightly different focus as the veterans started telling Lohaus that, soon enough, soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq would find themselves without options. Enter Iraq War veteran Herold Noel. It was his story, his fight to get assistance from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), that became the focus of Lohaus’ When I Came Home. The film is a sharp, candid look at the struggles our war heroes face when they find themselves unable to work due to injury or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and unable to get benefits from the VA.

Lohaus is currently working on another documentary that will follow the experience of Vietnam veterans and the 10-year battle it took to have PTSD recognized as a mental disorder. He took a break to talk to Hulu about When I Came Home, which he screened at a benefit for Services for the UnderServed (susinc.org) on Veteran’s Day. — Rebecca Harper (), Editor

Hulu: How did you decide to do a documentary about homeless vets?
Filmmaker Dan Lohaus: Back in 2002, I was interested in making a documentary about homeless Vietnam vets; that was really the focus of this film. I had found there are over 150,000 homeless Vietnam vets. I wanted to look at their experience when they come home. Staggering numbers of Vietnam vets ended up in prison when they came home, or ended up ending their lives prematurely. That statistic, that there were over 150,000 homeless Vietnam vets, just really made me angry. I just felt like so many of these guys were in their late 50s or early 60s, and had been out in the streets for years. This is kind of the final chapter for them in terms of being ignored and forgotten when they came home in the early ’70s.

So that’s where it all started, and as I started filming homeless Vietnam vets out on the street, the war in Iraq started. Once that war started, all the Vietnam vets started telling me to keep my eyes open for kids coming out of Iraq, because they were like “This VA is so backlogged, we can’t even get help from the VA. We’re still fighting for our benefits, and we just don’t understand how a whole new generation is going to come and get taken care of.” Then I started seeing little articles on the Internet about homeless Iraq veterans. The first one was in the Boston Globe, about a woman named Vanessa Turner. She’d gotten back from Iraq and ended up homeless in the Boston area. Basically, at that point I decided this is ridiculous; I couldn’t believe this was happening again. I wanted to find homeless Iraq veterans to include in the film and kind of show how history’s repeating itself. And then [in late 2004, early 2005], I found Herold [Noel] in New York. It just took off from there.

Who is Herold?
Herold Noel, he was in the Army, in the 37 Cavalry out of Fort Stewart, Georgia.

How did you find him, and why do you think his story is representative of others?
He was the subject of a cover article for this newspaper here in New York called The Indypendent. They did a cover story about Herold called “The Invisible Soldier.” I just couldn’t believe it — here was this guy in my neighborhood, going through this. At the same time, I had been going to this one organization in [Bedford-Stuyvestant] called Black Veterans for Social Justice, where I had found a couple other Iraq vets, but they weren’t quite ready to be in the film. It just so happens that Herold was also going to Black Veterans for Social Justice to try to get some help. My contact there told him “Hey, if you want to be in a movie, there’s this guy looking for homeless Iraq vets.” Herold was just really determined. The first day I met him, he said “I want you to document this, I want you to show people what a soldier has to go through when they come home. I want you to follow me to the end of the earth with your camera. I want the country to see what we have to go through.” He was a perfect subject. Right after the first day of filming, he was obviously the main subject for the film.

Where is he today?
He’s still in New York. He’s actually working with a non-profit, Urban Neighborhood Services in Coney Island, and he started a veterans’ project there. He’s really trying to reach out to low-income vets that are coming back to the neighborhood where he kind of grew up, just trying to make sure they know where to go for help. He’s just trying to make sure that what happened to him doesn’t happen to anyone else.

It seems like the subject of homeless Iraq war veterans is quiet, not something you hear about in the press very often.
Back in 2003, when I was first starting to see little articles on the Internet, I had a list of organizations that help homeless veterans. I would call them and say, “Hey, are you guys dealing with any homeless Iraq or Afghanistan veterans?” They’d say, “No, we’ve had maybe one come through our program, but they’re doing OK now. We’re ready for them; we’re expecting to see them.” Now, if I call those same organizations, every one of them has 10 or 15 homeless Iraq or Afghanistan veterans in their program. According to the VA, there’s somewhere around 2,000 at this point, but it’s so frustrating, because it’s the same thing that happened with Vietnam vets. I just feel like it’s a generation getting swept under the rug. There have been some stories about them here and there, but I really feel like people don’t know. When they hear what my movie’s about, the first thing they say is, “What? There are homeless Iraq veterans? That’s ridiculous.”

Before this, were you all that aware of homeless veterans? Was this something you’d already been involved with?
Yeah, I had been working in the non-profit world and helped start a couple of organizations that help employ homeless people and, ever since college, volunteering at soup kitchens and stuff. I think along the way, I met a lot of Vietnam vets. I think I was aware in the back of my head that there were a lot of Vietnam vets on the streets, but it was only when I started doing research on it that I really found out the numbers. It’s pretty staggering. One in four homeless people is a veteran, which is kind of staggering. Twenty-five percent of our whole homeless population are vets. I was aware of homelessness among veterans, but it was only when I said “OK, I’m going to do some research; I think I want to do a film on this,” when I really discovered the numbers.

What moment most stands out for you from shooting this film?
The first thing I filmed was the San Diego Stand Down for homeless veterans in 2002. The Stand Down is meant to be a three-day event where homeless veterans can come off the street and live as a community. They actually get like a coat check for all of their stuff. There’s no drinking, there’s no drugs. They just come in off the street, they live in these military-style tents, and they live in a little community together where they can get not only hot food and new clothes but dental care, too, and they can get hooked up with benefits counselors. They’re constantly hearing speeches from formerly homeless veterans. The event is all about motivating these guys to see that there is an option to get off the street, and that there are people out there that care about them. So I went to this event, and there were 1,000 homeless veterans that came in off the street. Of that 1,000, over the course of the weekend, about 400 or so kind of saw the light and were ready to jump into a program. They had kind of had enough and were inspired by everybody there. This was the very first thing I was filming, I was like “Oh my God, we’re about to see 400 homeless veterans get taken off the street. They’re ready to go, they haven’t drank in a few days, they’re signing up for these programs.” In the course of filming, I was trying to see if I could follow someone who was going to get into a program. That’s when I learned that, in fact, even though 400 vets had made the choice to try to get into a program, there were literally only seven spots available in San Diego County. It just became so frustrating.

So here’s this great event called Stand Down that really connects with these vets, it gets them off the street, it gets them to come in and start thinking about what they need to do to get out and get off the street. I was so frustrated when I learned that only seven guys would get a shot at getting into a supported housing program. It just became really obvious to me. If the money was there to create these supportive housing communities — and there are some great models out there like US Vets, which has supportive housing communities across the country, and there’s one in San Diego called the Veterans Village of San Diego, which has like an 85 percent success rate. It was just really frustrating. It became really clear to me. A guy in the movie, the founder of Stand Down, really says it best: “Why is it that we keep asking why there are so many homeless veterans when we don’t ask where are the resources?” It just became really clear. If the government would put the money into supportive housing programs in combination with the Stand Down event, we could literally get these guys off the street. It was really tough for me. That was the first thing I filmed, I got to know a bunch of these guys who decided that was the weekend they were going to get off the street, and I watched them have to pack up and go back out on the street. It just really, really pissed me off, but I think it was a good thing because it pissed me off enough …That was a real point where I decided I was going to have to make this film.

Are you seeing that the same factors that contributed to Vietnam veterans becoming homeless are the same for the new Iraq war veterans?
I think overall, it’s definitely different. It’s 40 years later, but some of the same things are happening to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. I think, in general, the nation is familiar with the term post-traumatic stress disorder, which is good. I think it’s basically, if you’re affected by war and you’re coming home with PTSD, oftentimes, it’s tough to hold a job. If you can’t find a job, it’s hard to pay rent. It’s a downward spiral that I think veterans of any war can fall into. Just like Vietnam vets … We have 1 million Iraq or Afghanistan veterans who are waiting on decisions from the VA on their disability claims. That’s a staggering number. It was at 600,000 earlier this year, and now it’s at a million. There are literally a million veterans who are not able to work right now who are waiting for a decision from the VA on whether they’re eligible to receive benefits and how much they’ll receive. If they’re unable to work because they’re injured, and if they’re waiting on these benefits, I don’t know how we expect them not to end up homeless. I think vets are a very proud people. For some vets, they maybe didn’t leave a good home situation. Once again, they’re coming back to an economy that’s hurting. I think there are similar factors for any generation of vets that come home. When vets don’t get the proper care they need for PTSD, a lot of them will to start to self-medicate. That’s a factor in that whole downward spiral, as well.

To learn more about this film and how you can help homeless veterans in your area, please visit to WhenICameHome.com.

In Independent America, husband and wife journalists Hanson Hosein and his wife, Heather Hughes, packed up their car (and their dog) and traveled the U.S. But their cross-country road trip doesn’t take place in chain motels and interstate highways. Instead, the couple searches for independent businesses — mom and pop stores, local restaurants, and family-owned inns — off of the country’s more scenic secondary highways. Along the way, they discover fiercely independent communities who are against chains and big-box retailers, an issue, it seems, that unites conservatives and liberals alike. Below, Hulu spoke to filmmaker Hosein about their journey. — Rebecca Harper (), Editor

Hulu: Can you give us a summary of the film?
Filmmaker Hanson Hosein: The big picture is that it’s about what I call the rising insurgency against corporate chains in American small towns and cities across the Heartland. The smaller story is of a road trip my wife and I took across the United States to document that, by taking only secondary highways to see what we thought was a more authentic view of America, before the corporate chains took over, and by only doing business with independent businesses along the way.

What were some of the more surprising things you discovered while you took this trip?
I think the most surprising thing is that this issue transcends politics and the standard conservative-liberal divide we keep hearing about in the United States, which is obviously quite true with many other issues. But we were in Midwestern towns in Nebraska or Wyoming, and these are conservative areas, but they also had the same concerns; they just call it something different. In Seattle, they call it sustainability; in these places they call it conservation. They’re just as concerned about these sort of concentrations of power by large corporations, which they don’t trust as much as they trust their neighbors in terms of how they do business.

One of the reviews about this documentary points out that you aren’t actually anti-Wal-Mart, that you actually provide equal time to their company. What’s your perspective on Wal-Mart?
It’s changed over the years. Because we come from a traditional journalism background — we both used to work at NBC — we take this fair and balanced thing very seriously. It was very important for us to actually get Wal-Mart in the film. They get 800 requests a week — that’s what they told us — for interviews. They looked at our website while we were doing our trip, and they said “Well, they obviously have a point of view that’s critical of us, but they’re giving us fair opportunity to talk.” So they decided they would give us some time. They gave us free access to their stores and their advertising, and there were no conditions whatsoever. So my thought on Wal-Mart as a company is, you know, I’m concerned still about the amount of power they have in the community and some of the things they’ve done in the past, overturning what communities have decided in terms of how they want to run their neighborhoods. On the other hand, I think the fact that Wal-Mart has been very open about some of the mistakes they’ve made along the way doesn’t necessarily endear me to them, but I believe in giving them a fair opportunity to state their case. It’s been said that a book can be written about Wal-Mart and all the bad things they’ve done, and a book can be written about all the good things they’ve done. Especially in this downturn, there’s a sense that that Wal-Mart is not necessarily the bad guy as much as they had been in the past.

You mentioned that you traveled the country with your wife, Heather. What was that like for the two of you?
[Laughs] It was tough, because we had both worked in television news traditionally. We both had real jobs. This was this crazy flight of fancy we had … We tried to get PBS and Discovery Channel and these other broadcasters to support us, and nobody did. We had this incredible pressure to do this story anyway, even though we didn’t have a major supporter. We had a partner, Tom Powers from Open Door in Toronto; he’d give us some funds to do this. But this was like driving into oblivion, not knowing whether we’d have something to show and whether anybody would care about what we were doing. Doing it was a little scary, but going out with your wife and your dog, there’s some moral support there — but it’s also like you’re facing every day, like “Gee, I hope I’m not leading my family into ruin on this creative urge that may not lead to anything.” It was tough, and you have the usual squabbles that happen between husband and wife: the husband never wants to check directions, and the wife always wants to stop and ask for directions — there’s a moment of pride there. But amazingly, we got along pretty well given all the stress of what the trip was about.

How did you determine your route? Did you have certain towns you wanted to hit, or was it all a “flight of fancy?”
I used to work at NBC covering breaking news around the world, so I’m really into covering things organically and letting the story tell itself. On the other hand, I knew that we couldn’t just take a chance and just close our eyes and point at a map. So we did some research before leaving — where we thought some of the hot spots might be, and we decided that we would visit some of those along the way. But what happened –this was a few years ago, before even YouTube had launched — we decided that as we were making our trip, we would share our video and share our thoughts on our blog with the world. As we kept going, more and more people kept following us, and we’d get covered by NPR stations and local newspapers. All of a sudden, people started sending us requests and recommendations of where we should go and said [they'd] put us up for the night. Fifty percent of the trip was very serendipitous based on that interaction with the audience. I’d say that the best half of the film was actually done through improvisation from these suggestions.

You created a follow-up film where you go to New Orleans. Can you tell us about that, and why a film about New Orleans was important?
We were actually supposed to go to New Orleans on the first trip. This was in 2005, and we got a call from Wal-Mart saying “We will talk to you,” so we had to rush to get to Arkansas, where Wal-Mart has their headquarters. We were thinking, “Oh, we’ll get there sometime.” Six weeks later, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. We’d always been told that New Orleans was the classic independent American city, where they had a really strong local economy and local culture, and they didn’t like big-box stores in the city. We knew that was going to change after Katrina. The second film was kind of like a lost chapter of Independent America. It’s my attempt to capture what the city was like before, and how it was actually small businesses that came back immediately after Katrina. I mean, I heard stories of people opening up the day after the floods to help their neighborhoods, and how vital that is to a community after a disaster like that. So that’s the story of that second film. There are some concerns about how city officials have been favoring big-box stores like Home Depot with tax incentives while not giving the same incentives to small businesses. It’s very much the same themes as the first film, but it’s really focused on one community right after a major disaster.

And what are you working on these days?
Right now I’m a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. And funnily enough, all the stuff that I did for that first film — creating your own content, telling your own stories, using engaged community members to help spread the word about what you’re doing — is pretty much what I teach now. It’s like the future of digital media and communication and social media. I’m also working on a book on storytelling in the 21st century. Independent America is going to be the main theme to it, which is essentially that if you ever want to cut through all the noise — everybody can communicate these days — you have to tell a really good story and you have to find a way to connect with your community using these different platforms to have them engage with you, kind of like we did in having them tell us what the second half of the story should be. That’s basically a book on the future of storytelling.

Thanks so much for your time — good luck with these projects!

How do you make a story about marathon runners? You really get into the human stories, says Spirit of the Marathon director Jon Dunham. The documentary tells the stories of six runners who are preparing for one of the fastest marathons in the world: the Chicago Marathon. “I cast it just like it was a feature film,” Dunham says. “I knew I was looking for first-time marathon runners, Boston qualifiers, and a world-class athlete or two. We sent profiles out all over the country, in running magazines, on websites, and the responses came streaming in. Then it was just the process of narrowing it all down. We looked for amateurs, individuals in and around the Chicago area, and the stories evolved from there.”

Of all the famous marathons — New York, Boston — why did the Los Angeles filmmaker choose to focus on Chicago? “All roads were pointing to Chicago,” says Dunham. Because he was looking for someone training to qualify for the Boston Marathon, Chicago made sense. “Chicago sends the most runners to Boston,” he says, because it’s such a flat, fast course. But Chicago was also on the agenda for 2004 Olympic Bronze Medalist Deena Kastor, who suffers a foot injury early in her training for the Chicago race. But, for Dunham, it was also about the location. “It’s one of the bigger races, and it has a skyline rife with opportunities for filming. It’s a beautiful city,” he says.

As we learn more about Spirit ’s subjects, we learn more about marathons: the training involved, the deep inner strength required to keep your feet going one step after another for 26.2 miles, and the sheer spectacle of the event: tens of thousands of people streaming through the urban city streets.

With this year’s Chicago Marathon taking place on Sunday, Hulu caught up with some of the runners we met in Spirit of the Marathon to see where they are now. (Professional runners Daniel Njenga and Deena Kastor were not available for interview.) — Rebecca Harper (), Editor

Ryan Bradley — Boston Hopeful
Though Ryan Bradley’s race didn’t turn out quite like he planned, he was back to his routine about six months later. “I’ve been doing about one marathon a year since then,” he said. Like the other amateurs we meet in Spirit, he’s not running the Chicago Marathon again this year — but that’s because he’s planning to run 26.2 miles in Des Moines next weekend, instead. His wife will be doing Chicago this year, though, so while she’s running the race Ryan’s on kid duty. “I’ve got to somehow manage to get three kids under the age of five down there to watch their mom run,” he said. “It will be fun — it will be a challenge, but it will be fun.” He and his wife had the opportunity to run the Boston marathon together, and now Ryan’s hoping to requalify within the next couple of years so he can return when he’s 40. So what’s it like living in a household with two marathon runners and three young kids? “We’ve broken our treadmill quite a few times,” he laughs. They take the kids with them on some of the shorter runs — the kids love it, he says — and the whole family recently ran their first 5K together (with strollers, of course).

Leah Caille — First-Timer
A knee injury slowed Leah Caille down in her first marathon, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to do it again. “I got to the first finish line, and the only thing I wanted to do other than sleep for three days was go out there and do it again,” she says. This year, though, she’s unable to participate in the Chicago Marathon due to spinal issues. “When you’re a runner, if you’re sidelined for even a few weeks, that kind of sets you back for a bit,” she says. “Well, I’ve been sidelined for a good long time more than that,” thanks to back surgery last year and then two herniated discs in her neck in March. “When God was passing out healthy spines, I might have been at the bar or something — actually, I was probably out for a run,” she laughs. She’s back to shorter, three- or four-mile runs now and hopes to get back to doing both the triathlon and a marathon this year. In the meantime, she’s started a run team at her daughter’s school — they’ve done several 5Ks together — and she’s coaching her volleyball team, as well. “Things are going really well,” she tells us. “My career has moved forward. I’m in the ‘business’ — I sell sponsorships for major races throughout the country, and I love it. Being a runner helps me to speak with not only knowledge, but also a deep passion for the sport.”

Gerald “Jerry” Meyers — Veteran Marathoner
In Spirit, we meet Jerry Meyers as he’s training his daughter for the Chicago Marathon. And though he’d love to be running this weekend, he won’t be able to make it. “I’m on the injured-reserved list,” he says. “I threw a blood clot in my leg in January and it’s still there.” Though he hasn’t been able to run since the beginning of the year — the longest he’s been off in 30 years — he’s still walking every day. After the film, Jerry ran the 2006 Chicago Marathon but had to pull out at mile 16, when an exposed nerve on the ball of his foot kept him from going any farther. “My family told me that if I didn’t quit, they were going to come after me with a baseball bat,” he says. “I was going to hobble in, but they said, ‘No way, you can’t hobble in on two broken legs, ‘cuz that’s what we’re gonna give ya.’ That’s the first time I was not able to complete a run.” Despite the blood clot, Jerry says he feels great today. “If I didn’t know better, I’d go out and run,” he confesses.

Lori O’Connor — First-Timer
Lori got the marathon bug during her first Chicago Marathon and had every intention of doing it again the following year. “During the first one, my training went really, really well,” she said. “I stuck to the schedule. I missed maybe one run that entire training session. I finished, I had a smile on my face, and I felt great at the end. I thought, like some runners do when they finish a race, ‘I can do it a little bit faster!’ There’s always this push to be better.” She prepared for her second marathon the next year, only to find out that she was pregnant after running the 20-mile training run. “My doctor gave me the option [to do the marathon] and I said ‘Hmm, I think I’m going to stay on the sidelines for this one.’ I know it would have been perfectly safe, but I just didn’t want to do it. I wanted to go for speed, and I knew I wouldn’t be going fast.” This year, Lori’s out of the race because she and her husband are both wrapping up their dissertations. (Lori is getting her PhD in Sociology.) “It’s very time-consuming to train for a marathon, and so this year I said I’m basically just sticking to half marathons,” she said. “I did a few halves in the spring and I’m doing another at the end of October. I’m holding off until the degree is in hand — that’s my reward, so I’ll probably train for one again next summer.”