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SAN FRANCISCO — Golden State Warriors Steve Kerr was one of the executive producers for “All the Empty Rooms,” which won the Oscar for documentary short.
The 35-minute film chronicles how broadcast journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp told the stories of how families have memorialized the bedrooms of children killed in mass shootings. Kerr – whose father, then the president of American University in Beirut, was shot and killed in 1984 – has long spoken out about a need for common-sense gun regulation.
“I didn’t have anything to do with the making of the film,” Kerr said Monday. “But I am very proud to be associated with it.”
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Kerr – a nine-time NBA champion as a player and coach, who also coached USA Basketball to Olympic gold at the 2024 Paris Games – said he did not hesitate when asked to be part of this project.
“They called me about a year ago and asked if I would like to be an executive producer, which meant basically put my name on it and help promote it,” Kerr said. “It was a no-brainer, just given my passion for the issue. And then after watching the film, I was just blown away by how beautiful it was and poignant it was. It was an easy decision.”
Kerr did some screenings for Netflix in recent weeks and wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times earlier this month about the film, detailing how he was drawn to the way director Joshua Seftel and others involved in the project told the stories of the families who have lost children in school shootings.
“What mattered to me right away was how the film listens to families,” Kerr wrote in that piece. “It gives them room to speak about their children without exploiting their stories into politics or spectacle. There’s a dignity in that choice, which is difficult to find in the way our country usually talks about gun violence.”
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Seftel accepted the Oscar on Sunday night, then ceded the microphone to Gloria Cazares, the mother of a 9-year-old killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
“My daughter Jackie was 9 years old when she was killed in Uvalde,” Gloria Cazares said on stage. “Since that day, her bedroom has been frozen in in time. Jackie is more than just a headline. She is our light and our life. Gun violence is now the No. 1 cause of death in kids and teens. We believe that if the world could see their empty bedrooms, we’d be a different America.”
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Kerr is the second member of the Warriors to be involved in an Oscar win in recent years: Golden State guard Stephen Curry was an executive producer for “The Queen of Basketball,” which won for short subject documentary in 2022.
Kerr was not at the Oscars – the Warriors had a game Sunday night, and he learned of the win in his family’s group text – and said he does not get a statuette.
“I’m very passionate about the cause,” Kerr said, “but I don’t think this is going to turn me into a filmmaker.”
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