4000 Days director Daniel E. Catullo III spoke with ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Catullo discussed the issue of fraternity hazing, why it took so long for action to be taken, and using AI in a respectful manner. The film will premiere on June 10 at 5:30 p.m. ET at the Village East by Angelika. Tickets are available now.
“4000 Days is a powerful documentary chronicling the relentless fight of three families who turned their personal tragedies into a nationwide movement for change. After losing their sons to fraternity hazing, the families found themselves up against a deeply entrenched system that thrived on secrecy, denial, and silence. Refusing to accept that their children died in vain, they joined forces and waged a years-long battle to expose the dangers of hazing, challenge university and fraternity accountability, and push for sweeping legislative reform,” says the official description.
Tyler Treese: Daniel, as you say in the documentary, you were a Sigma Phi Epsilon member at WVU. What got you interested in this topic of hazing and really wanting to amplify these voices that were so instrumental in getting this bill passed?
Daniel E. Catullo III: As you said, I went to WVU, and I actually had a great experience in college there. I was on the football team, and I was a SigEp at the time. SigEp was the largest fraternity on campus. We did stupid stuff. I was in college, and I admit I was hazed and I hazed others, but nothing like what’s happening now. We didn’t light people on fire. We didn’t hook a car battery up to their nuts. We didn’t hit people with cars or force people to chug bottles of whiskey.
I was kind of shocked. I partnered with the university. We had a death at West Virginia in 2014, a boy named Nolan Burch. I first learned about it a couple years after when there was a Dateline done on it.
I remember watching the Dateline, and it didn’t sit well with me. So I called Gordon Gee, who’s the president of the university and a friend of mine. I wanted to meet with him. I went and met with Gordon, and we came up with this idea to make an educational film, really to help the university, but also to educate kids, so we can maybe help stop this.
Help people know there’s bystander awareness, laws, and all sorts of ways to try to say no. So we set out to make a film more for the kids to hopefully help put an end to this. I did that film, it went viral, we won an Emmy, and then the next thing you know, other families started calling me saying, “My son was killed too.”
So I started doing more educational films. They all did well. But then one day I woke up, and it was really right around the time of the pandemic. I was working on a six-part series where it was going to be more shock and awe, and it was going to be about the evolution of hazing because at that point, I was more angry, and I wanted to put an end to this.
But the pandemic hit. All of my concerts got shut down. I couldn’t do music films. And I went down the rabbit hole of this. I started realizing all the cover-ups, all the money and power behind this, why the system’s not changing, and the stubbornness of the system.
I felt like someone like me had to stand up and be the voice because there’s a saying: you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. I was once one of them. They can’t sit here and look me in the eye and say they don’t know. I know they know. I know the nationals are more aware of what’s going on. I know they can do more. They know they can do more.
So I felt like I needed to come out and give these families a voice, and I needed to put a spotlight on this. I’m also from New Jersey, so I’m a no-BS guy. As I started getting more involved in this and knowing more families who lost their sons, I got angry. I want the world to know what’s really happening here.
More importantly, I want the world to know what heroes these families are. Because if my son died, I don’t know if I could go out and talk about it every day. They took their grief and went out there in the midst of it, especially the Oakeses. They were in the early stages of losing Adam, and they’re out there every day reliving the worst day of their life, all to try to save other people’s lives. That’s really admirable, and I felt like I needed to show the world what they’re doing.
It’s a crazy launching pad because you look into this, and I didn’t know hazing had been going on since the 1800s.
We actually have a scene of the very first hazing death, Mortimer Leggett, at Cornell.
You mentioned this briefly in the film, but do you feel like social media is kind of amplifying and making, maybe not just hazing, but dangerous behavior within these frats?
One hundred percent. Social media and the peer pressures of social media are very real.
The other thing we’re seeing that’s crazy is that fraternities are trying to one-up each other. It’s not even against the law in seven states to haze, and it’s not a felony in most states. Kids are posting themselves being hazed or hazing others, and they’re all trying to one-up each other on Instagram, TikTok, Yik Yak, and all these places.
People joke about it, and then they all try to one-up each other. So social media is 100% driving this. Of course, the Metas of the world won’t do anything to try to curb it. A lot of people see hazing as harmless because, over the years, it’s been glorified in movies like Animal House and Old School. It’s all fun and games, right?
Most people think that’s what it is, and they don’t realize it’s gone from streaking through the quad to “Let me hit you with a car.” When I learned that’s what’s going on today, I was so shocked that I thought, “Oh my God, we have to let the world know.”
Some of the stories and videos that have been sent to us are going into my other project, my six-part series, where I have some of the most startling videos you’ve ever seen. If people really knew what’s happening, they’d be out there with pitchforks trying to shut down the fraternity system.
It’s just shocking. All of these nationals know what’s going on, and they don’t really do a thing about it.
Tyler Treese: There were two scenes in your film, and the contrast between them really stood out to me, where the parents visit the locations where their sons died. One was still a frat, and you take a shot of all the alcohol being proudly displayed there.
Daniel E. Catullo III: It’s not a frat. That was actually an off-campus apartment. That was the annex house for Delta Chi when Adam Oakes was there. Students still live there, but it wasn’t a fraternity anymore.
And the other was turned into a musical center. I thought that was very interesting to see those locations where one was very much embracing change and was really turned into something positive.
We actually went to the scene where Nolan Burch died, too, but we weren’t allowed in, so it didn’t make it into this cut. It’s going to go in my other film. That’s still a frat house at WVU.
The DeVercellys going back to Rider was really interesting because Julie put that day off for years, and they were kind of scared to go. I think Gary wanted to know. He wanted to go to the place.
The parents, and I don’t know what I would do, but I think most of them want to go to the place where their kid died for closure. The DeVercellys struggled with that decision for years. I kind of talked them into doing it, and they were dreading it. I know they were nervous. To all of our shock, we walked in, and it was this place full of joy and music and love. It was very healing for them.
Now, for Eric Oakes, it may have been healing, but it was definitely traumatizing. That was the first time I ever experienced anything like that. I was standing right behind him, but going to a place where their son died with the father—oh my God. Just heartbreaking being there.
The crazy thing about that was that at the time we went there, we didn’t have access to the body-cam footage yet or crime-scene photos. So Eric wasn’t even sure where Adam died. We found out later when we were looking at the body-cam footage, but he walked in where Adam was found dead and said, “It must have been right around here.” He felt Adam. It was crazy. He said, “He’s in this room.”
He was standing on the very spot where Adam died, and at the time, we didn’t know it. That sent chills through us. When we were in the edit bay watching the body-cam footage, we were like, “Oh my God.”
Those were tough moments. I visited all the boys’ graves with all three parents. That was tough to do as well. You don’t know what to say. Then you get even more angry because you’re doing this and realize this isn’t a hard thing to fix, and all these nationals just turn a blind eye to this stuff.
It shows in the film. There’s a scene where Julie DeVercelly tells Lucy McBath that since they’ve been back, they’ve brought other parents. Had their bill been passed, Adam Oakes would probably still be alive because Eric did do research on fraternities, and there would have been transparency.
He would’ve seen what was going on with Delta Chi at VCU. Instead, he didn’t know. His son joined. They were suspended the year before, and if he had seen that, he would not have let Adam join. So Adam would still be alive today if that transparency law had been in effect.
I did want to ask you: at the very beginning of the film, there’s a disclosure of using AI to make some pictures move, and it mentioned that it was cleared by the family. It might be in more than I noticed, but it didn’t seem like it was used very much. Do you think that’s more effective?
It was only used twice. We had it in four times, but we removed it in the others. Even if you use it once, people are so touchy about it now that we wanted to put a disclosure out there.
There’s a picture of Adam Oakes where he has a WVU sweatshirt on, and he kind of moves and smiles. Then there’s another scene with Nolan Burch when he’s in his room, and you see his hands move. It’s animated. Those are the only two things that we animated.
I was just curious because Steven Soderbergh’s John Lennon doc just premiered at Cannes, and the discussion wasn’t the doc—it was all about AI usage in it. Do you fear that it might take something away from it when it’s such a minor part?
No, because we sent those to the families. Kim Burch, in particular, cried. She said, “That’s exactly the way my son moved.”
I felt it was necessary to have something on Nolan, especially because he died just as iPhones were really taking off, so they didn’t have a lot of video of him. I only had grainy still photos.
I’d seen his mannerisms. He was kind of goofy and always fooling around. When I saw the mother’s reaction to it, she wanted to use it because she felt like we could connect more with the character.
We would never do it in a way where it doesn’t feel authentic or in a way to try to change a storyline. That’s where I draw the line. I would never be involved in anything that uses AI to tell stories. That’s why we used animation.
We could have gone the AI route and done reenactments with AI, but I would never do that. I just feel like it isn’t authentic.
It seems very tastefully done. I’m glad you gave the extra context.
Thanks to Daniel E. Catullo III for taking the time to talk about 4000 Days.
