All the Empty Rooms (2025) Movie Script
1
- [man 1] Ready?
- [man 2] Yes.
[knocking]
[wind chime chiming]
- Hello.
- Hello. How you doing?
- Hi.
- Nice to meet you.
Frank.
[woman] It's bright. [chuckles]
Wow.
[woman] It's basically the same.
- Well, I have a real good feeling for him.
- [laughs lightly]
I mean, the room reflects the personality
that you told me he had.
[man 1] This is?
[Frank] Dirty clothes.
We haven't even gone through that.
No. We washed his chonies and his socks
because I thought that was gross. [laughs]
His underwear and socks,
I pulled out and washed,
but everything else is
how it was almost five years ago,
his dirty clothes.
I don't think we wanted to lose his smell
in his room because it's distinctly him.
Yeah.
[gentle poignant music playing]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[child] Let's go, Dodgers!
Let's go, Dodgers!
Let's go, Dodgers!
[music fades]
[unsettling music playing]
[Steve] For years, I'd been doing essays
at the end of every school shooting week.
Maybe it was a hero
or the country coming together.
Whatever it was, they were looking
for some kind of positive message.
She was in a meeting,
heard gunfire and ran toward it.
That makes her a hero to most of us.
The very first day
[Steve] I'd done so many of these essays
that I felt like I was repeating myself.
In fact, I was using the same lines
in the stories.
[sirens wail faintly]
[Steve] And I saw that America was kind of
moving on from each school shooting
quicker and quicker every time.
I felt like, "I've got to do
something different. What could I do?"
[sirens wail]
I feel like the media is to blame
a little bit for some of this.
Or at least, it's worth exploring.
In the beginning, especially,
it was just so overdone,
and the shooters
were mentioned way too much.
What we need to talk about is
the child that's not here anymore.
[somber music playing]
[music continues]
Can you hear and see us?
There you go.
- Hi.
- [woman] Hi there.
Hello, Gloria!
How are you?
- It's hard to answer that question.
- [Steve] I imagine it is.
Thanks for taking my call.
What I'd like to do
is come with Lou Bopp, photographer,
and just let Lou
take pictures of the room,
as it was, and try to capture Hallie
through those pictures.
I feel like we would like to share her.
- Yeah.
- [Charles] I think we're also nervous.
[Steve] Yeah, I'm nervous too.
She was the light of our family
and, um
our lives revolved around her.
[woman] I feel very, very like, blessed
that you've reached out to us, so
I feel like it's just like another
sign, you know. I get all these signs
from my baby girl, so
I feel like it's a sign that
- That this was meant to be, so
- Okay.
All right.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
- We'll see you soon.
- Okay, thanks.
- All right.
- Bye-bye.
[somber music swells]
[music fades]
[Lou] I photograph people,
I shoot action, I shoot
lifestyle.
I don't think I've ever done a project
like this, where somebody's not there.
We've known each other for a long time.
Many people I wouldn't do this with,
but I trust Steve.
[camera clicks]
[gentle poignant music playing]
[Lou] Come on, Rose. Let's get ready
to go to school and take the photo.
- [Rose] Yeah.
- All right.
[Lou] We call it the morning photo.
Come over this way a little. Little more.
Just to
Okay.
capture the progression of life, because
anything can happen at any time
[camera clicking]
[Lou] All right.
Let's go to school.
- Ready?
- [girl] Bye.
[Steve] Goodbye. [kisses] Love you.
- Love you.
- [boy] Love you.
- See you soon.
- [boy] Come on, Birdie.
- Bye, George.
- [George] Bye.
[music intensifies]
[Steve] Some of my bosses don't even know
I'm doing this project,
but I had to do this on my own
if I wanted to do it.
[insects chirping]
[knocking]
[door opens]
- [Steve] Hello.
- [woman] Hey.
- This is Lou.
- [Lou] Hi.
[Chad] Hey, Lou. Chad.
Nice to meet you.
[Chad] I can pull up a chair over here.
[Steve] So there's gotta be something,
some benefit you see
for you or your family.
Do you see something in this?
In these pictures?
- 'Cause that's kind of important to me.
- [mom] Yeah.
It's probably
the most important thing to me.
I don't know
what the benefit is for our family.
I think about it more as, "How could
her life benefit other people now."
That's what
That's kind of
We want her legacy to be that.
So
Yeah.
[Chad] "My first tooth.
My first soccer game."
"First Tennessee game."
She made that?
She made this. Yeah.
- Was that a project?
- I'm sure it was.
- [Jada] It was a school project.
- Yeah.
[Chad] It's interesting how memory works
because I can remember to the minute
almost everything
in a three-hour period on Monday.
And then I'll lose the thread.
But do I know
that I went into her room that night.
I just laid down and
Yeah, I wept.
[gentle poignant music playing]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[Chad] You know, what you want
is something that you can't have.
[camera clicks]
I wanted her smell back.
And I wanted to touch her, and I wanted
like, to feel her sweaty hair.
[Chad and Jada laugh]
[Chad] Her bed was the closest thing
I could get to that.
So
- [children's music playing]
- [Hallie] Oopsies.
Okay.
[Jada] Sometimes I'll just
go and look around, and look at
all her little trinkets, stuffed animals,
and shells that she collected, and, um
go and just, like, smell her blankie
that she slept with every night.
[camera clicks]
And
I feel like a lot of crying happens
in that room.
[Chad] Yup.
I think the room helps
because there's a lot of moments
where you want to be sad.
[coach] Good job, Hallie!
[girls cheering]
[Chad] Because the sadness
is a part of connecting with her.
[boy] I mean, she was really
outgoing.
So, like, she was also like
a little sister.
So she, you know, would always, like,
get a little annoying, you know
- Yeah, funny, a little annoying.
- It was good, though.
[Charlie] She was pretty competitive
with us in sports too.
That's, like, kind of how
we hung out around her.
She was kind of always with us.
- [Jada] Let's see.
- [Chad] It's a pink one.
You finally have your own.
You can take it everywhere!
And you boys cannot use it.
- [Chad] Yeah!
- [Jada laughing]
[Chad] One of the funniest things
is she begged
- [Jada] This is the best.
- for this.
She wanted a kitty cat hoodie on Amazon.
Jada was like, "I don't wanna get this."
- [Steve] You had to talk her out of it?
- [Jada] We couldn't.
- [Jada] She wore it everywhere.
- She wore it a lot.
[poignant music continues]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[children playing]
[camera clicks]
[Steve] What do you want the world to know
about Hallie
when they look at those pictures?
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[music fades out]
I would want
the world to know that she was a
[softly] Oh, I can't do this.
[sobbing]
I would want the world
to know that she was
a great person, just a good little sister.
[somber music playing faintly]
Our next guest is a CBS News
correspondent. Here's Steve Hartman.
[audience cheering]
My name's Steve Hartman,
and I'm from CBS News.
Steve Hartman has found
a prescription for happiness.
[Oprah Winfrey] As a CBS correspondent,
Steve doesn't cover politics
or natural disasters or wars.
We're now just 129 to go.
- See my two legs?
- Yes.
They still move.
They sure do.
- Every time your stories come up
- We all cry. [laughs]
- [Steve] Hello.
- Hey!
[kids] Hey!
[Steve] I've been typecast as, you know,
the feel-good, happy news kind of guy.
I'm the guy that they bring in at the end
to, like
restore people's faith in humanity.
[male newscaster] We had planned
to end the week
with one of those wonderful stories
from Steve Hartman.
Steve has some thoughts tonight
about this tragedy.
[Steve] And what I'd been doing is just
whitewashing the whole thing.
Imagine that. Trying to find good news
in a school shooting.
And a lot of mass shootings,
that's been my job.
At the end of the week,
remind us that life is still worth living.
I'm not gonna look at a school shooting
and try to find a positive angle to that.
Not anymore.
[Steve] This is it.
[knocking]
- [Steve] Hello.
- Hi.
- [Steve] How are you?
- [woman] Good. Come in.
[Steve] Thank you.
[woman] Yep.
You guys ready?
Here they were going
on a father-daughter dance.
[Jackie] here for our
father-daughter dance.
[Gloria] Are you so excited?
[Jackie] Uh-huh!
[Gloria] You can't wait?
[Jackie] Uh-huh!
[Gloria] Awesome.
- Who's doing your hair for you?
- [Jackie] Christy.
[Gloria] Is she gonna do your hair
on your wedding day too?
- [Jackie] Uh-huh!
- [Gloria] Yes?
[Christy] I am.
Who are you gonna marry?
[Christy laughs]
[Gloria] You don't know?
Is he gonna be cute, though?
[Jackie] Wait, is it Dada?
[all laughing on video]
[Javier sniffles]
[Gloria] This is her room.
[Steve] Love the lights.
- [Gloria] She loved the lights.
- [Lou] Yeah.
[Gloria] They've been on
since she left them on.
We haven't turned them off.
And then the stuffed animals.
Just these two
have her voice in it, right?
[Javier] Yeah.
[Jackie laughing]
[Javier] That's the video
where she's outside with the dog.
[laughing continues]
[Gloria] There's this one video that, um
That's probably
one of our last videos that we have
of her with her dogs before May 24th.
- [Steve] And she wanted to be a vet?
- [Gloria] Yes.
Because of the love of animals
that she had,
there's no way she would have done
anything besides helping animals.
That was her dream,
to become a veterinarian.
[Jackie laughing]
[camera clicks]
[Gloria] Her room,
it played a very big role in her life.
- [camera clicks]
- You know, that was her safe place.
[Jackie singing]
Maybe it's the way you play your game
But it's all good
I've never known anybody like you
[Javier] I go in there every day.
That's why I have the chair,
right next to the bed.
So it brings me
some comfort to go in there
just to chat sometimes.
[sniffles]
[camera clicks]
[water splashing]
[cell phone ringing]
- [Steve] Hi.
- [Steve's daughter] Hi.
[Steve] How are you doing?
- What did you do today?
- Went swimming.
And
we drove Birdie to the groomer,
and then I ran two miles.
- You ran two miles?
- And then...
Yeah.
-And...
-And then
And then we drove to Leanna's.
Birdie, it's Daddy.
[Steve] I love you guys very much.
- I love you too.
- I miss you.
I miss you more than you know.
Bye.
- Bye.
- Bye.
- Bye, guys.
- Bye.
[somber music playing]
[keyboard tapping]
Classes were canceled, and grief
counselors brought in to Perry, Iowa
the day after a sixth grader was killed,
and seven other people were injured
in a school shooting
[Steve] Before I started this project,
I was growing more and more numb
after every school shooting.
And I think all of America
has been going through,
you know, that same process.
And now, when I hear
about a school shooting,
I know that room is out there.
I feel like
I can place myself in the room,
and it hurts a lot more
than it did before.
[Lou] Hair on a brush,
cap of a toothpaste
and hair ties on a doorknob.
[mouse clicking lightly]
It is fucking surreal.
- [sighs]
- [Steve] What's surreal?
Just, you know,
that we're here talking about this.
Like, it just
That this is even a real thing.
[man] Hello. Nice to meet you.
- [Steve] You too.
- [man] I'm Bryan.
- [Steve] Hi.
- [woman] Nice to meet you.
- [Lou] You too.
- [Steve] Thanks for having us.
[woman] Of course.
[woman] She was just so much fun.
Hey, girlfriend. It's a lovely day.
[Bryan] I walk by her room
and I still see her.
She liked to just
do somersaults off the bed.
I can still hear her laughing loud.
[Gracie] Trick or treat, smell my feet!
[woman] Her room was kind of a stage.
That's where everybody
would go and watch her perform.
She'd pass out little invitations, and
what time we were supposed to be there.
Set up chairs
so we'd sit and watch the show.
Mm-hm.
[Bryan] She went through
elementary, middle school, and
15 weeks of high school in that room.
And it was
her private sanctuary of space where she
was her pure self.
Uh, it was a sunny Thursday morning.
She was planning to buy her ticket
for her first high school dance.
And then she had plans
to get her dress on Friday.
Unfortunately, she didn't get to do
either one of those two things.
[somber music playing]
[Bryan] That's the outfit she had out and
[Steve] This is what
she was gonna wear on Friday?
[Cindy] She was either gonna wear
this outfit or this outfit.
- [Bryan] She had two set out.
- [Cindy] And this dress.
So
[Steve] Did she do this often?
Prepare the next day's clothes?
Yeah. Monday through Friday.
- Yep.
- Yeah.
[Bryan] And we had given her
this little trinket box,
and when we had opened it,
she had these letters in here.
And these letters were notes
to her future self that she had written.
[Steve] Wow.
[Bryan] "First day of high school."
"Dear future self,"
"OMG, it's high school."
"I've been waiting for this day forever."
[Cindy] Hm.
"Don't be nervous.
You will meet some of your lifelong"
"friends and also some enemies."
"Don't focus on the negativity."
"You'll get through this.
Keep the people that make you happy,
and lose, well, others. Haha."
"Wear something cute, obviously."
"I love you. Good luck.
Gracie from the past."
[sniffles]
[poignant music playing]
[camera clicks]
[Steve] Do you go in there a lot?
- [Cindy] Oh yeah. A lot.
- [camera clicks]
All the time, every day. [laughs lightly]
[Steve] Yeah?
[Cindy] Every day I tell her good morning.
Every night I tell her good night.
[camera clicks]
- [Cindy] So
- [Steve] Still.
- [Cindy] Still.
- [Steve] To this day.
[Cindy] Yeah.
Hi.
[poignant music rises]
[Bryan] When that time comes
that that room is not there,
does she go away?
So as long as that room exists,
she exists, in a way.
Okay, guys, so here's the outfit.
Looking real cute.
[music continues]
[Steve] My boss now knows
about this story,
and he's agreed that he'll run it.
But they'll see it when it's ready to air,
and we'll go from there.
[music fades out]
[door creaks]
[Steve] Wow.
This is where you go
- Right?
- [girl blowing]
[laughing]
[girl] There. All better.
[poignant music playing]
[Steve] I want the project
to remind people that
these were our children.
That these were your children.
These could be your children.
[Lou] Rose, you ready?
[Rose] Yeah.
[Lou] All right.
Camera's so slow. Okay.
[camera clicking]
[camera clicks]
[Steve] Giving photo books to the families
is a crucial step in this project.
Because at this point, I feel like
I've done nothing but take, you know?
We took pictures, you know.
We took their time.
This is something tangible
that we can give.
[music intensifies]
[Steve] The whole point of this is
to not have to say much.
I just want people to see the pictures,
and just let the pictures
speak for themselves.
I wish that we could
transport all Americans
to stand in one of those bedrooms
for just a few minutes.
We'd be a different America.
[music fades out]
[female news host] Steve Hartman
starts us off this morning
with something very different
and deeply troubling.
[poignant music playing]
[music fades out]
- [man 1] Ready?
- [man 2] Yes.
[knocking]
[wind chime chiming]
- Hello.
- Hello. How you doing?
- Hi.
- Nice to meet you.
Frank.
[woman] It's bright. [chuckles]
Wow.
[woman] It's basically the same.
- Well, I have a real good feeling for him.
- [laughs lightly]
I mean, the room reflects the personality
that you told me he had.
[man 1] This is?
[Frank] Dirty clothes.
We haven't even gone through that.
No. We washed his chonies and his socks
because I thought that was gross. [laughs]
His underwear and socks,
I pulled out and washed,
but everything else is
how it was almost five years ago,
his dirty clothes.
I don't think we wanted to lose his smell
in his room because it's distinctly him.
Yeah.
[gentle poignant music playing]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[child] Let's go, Dodgers!
Let's go, Dodgers!
Let's go, Dodgers!
[music fades]
[unsettling music playing]
[Steve] For years, I'd been doing essays
at the end of every school shooting week.
Maybe it was a hero
or the country coming together.
Whatever it was, they were looking
for some kind of positive message.
She was in a meeting,
heard gunfire and ran toward it.
That makes her a hero to most of us.
The very first day
[Steve] I'd done so many of these essays
that I felt like I was repeating myself.
In fact, I was using the same lines
in the stories.
[sirens wail faintly]
[Steve] And I saw that America was kind of
moving on from each school shooting
quicker and quicker every time.
I felt like, "I've got to do
something different. What could I do?"
[sirens wail]
I feel like the media is to blame
a little bit for some of this.
Or at least, it's worth exploring.
In the beginning, especially,
it was just so overdone,
and the shooters
were mentioned way too much.
What we need to talk about is
the child that's not here anymore.
[somber music playing]
[music continues]
Can you hear and see us?
There you go.
- Hi.
- [woman] Hi there.
Hello, Gloria!
How are you?
- It's hard to answer that question.
- [Steve] I imagine it is.
Thanks for taking my call.
What I'd like to do
is come with Lou Bopp, photographer,
and just let Lou
take pictures of the room,
as it was, and try to capture Hallie
through those pictures.
I feel like we would like to share her.
- Yeah.
- [Charles] I think we're also nervous.
[Steve] Yeah, I'm nervous too.
She was the light of our family
and, um
our lives revolved around her.
[woman] I feel very, very like, blessed
that you've reached out to us, so
I feel like it's just like another
sign, you know. I get all these signs
from my baby girl, so
I feel like it's a sign that
- That this was meant to be, so
- Okay.
All right.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
- We'll see you soon.
- Okay, thanks.
- All right.
- Bye-bye.
[somber music swells]
[music fades]
[Lou] I photograph people,
I shoot action, I shoot
lifestyle.
I don't think I've ever done a project
like this, where somebody's not there.
We've known each other for a long time.
Many people I wouldn't do this with,
but I trust Steve.
[camera clicks]
[gentle poignant music playing]
[Lou] Come on, Rose. Let's get ready
to go to school and take the photo.
- [Rose] Yeah.
- All right.
[Lou] We call it the morning photo.
Come over this way a little. Little more.
Just to
Okay.
capture the progression of life, because
anything can happen at any time
[camera clicking]
[Lou] All right.
Let's go to school.
- Ready?
- [girl] Bye.
[Steve] Goodbye. [kisses] Love you.
- Love you.
- [boy] Love you.
- See you soon.
- [boy] Come on, Birdie.
- Bye, George.
- [George] Bye.
[music intensifies]
[Steve] Some of my bosses don't even know
I'm doing this project,
but I had to do this on my own
if I wanted to do it.
[insects chirping]
[knocking]
[door opens]
- [Steve] Hello.
- [woman] Hey.
- This is Lou.
- [Lou] Hi.
[Chad] Hey, Lou. Chad.
Nice to meet you.
[Chad] I can pull up a chair over here.
[Steve] So there's gotta be something,
some benefit you see
for you or your family.
Do you see something in this?
In these pictures?
- 'Cause that's kind of important to me.
- [mom] Yeah.
It's probably
the most important thing to me.
I don't know
what the benefit is for our family.
I think about it more as, "How could
her life benefit other people now."
That's what
That's kind of
We want her legacy to be that.
So
Yeah.
[Chad] "My first tooth.
My first soccer game."
"First Tennessee game."
She made that?
She made this. Yeah.
- Was that a project?
- I'm sure it was.
- [Jada] It was a school project.
- Yeah.
[Chad] It's interesting how memory works
because I can remember to the minute
almost everything
in a three-hour period on Monday.
And then I'll lose the thread.
But do I know
that I went into her room that night.
I just laid down and
Yeah, I wept.
[gentle poignant music playing]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[Chad] You know, what you want
is something that you can't have.
[camera clicks]
I wanted her smell back.
And I wanted to touch her, and I wanted
like, to feel her sweaty hair.
[Chad and Jada laugh]
[Chad] Her bed was the closest thing
I could get to that.
So
- [children's music playing]
- [Hallie] Oopsies.
Okay.
[Jada] Sometimes I'll just
go and look around, and look at
all her little trinkets, stuffed animals,
and shells that she collected, and, um
go and just, like, smell her blankie
that she slept with every night.
[camera clicks]
And
I feel like a lot of crying happens
in that room.
[Chad] Yup.
I think the room helps
because there's a lot of moments
where you want to be sad.
[coach] Good job, Hallie!
[girls cheering]
[Chad] Because the sadness
is a part of connecting with her.
[boy] I mean, she was really
outgoing.
So, like, she was also like
a little sister.
So she, you know, would always, like,
get a little annoying, you know
- Yeah, funny, a little annoying.
- It was good, though.
[Charlie] She was pretty competitive
with us in sports too.
That's, like, kind of how
we hung out around her.
She was kind of always with us.
- [Jada] Let's see.
- [Chad] It's a pink one.
You finally have your own.
You can take it everywhere!
And you boys cannot use it.
- [Chad] Yeah!
- [Jada laughing]
[Chad] One of the funniest things
is she begged
- [Jada] This is the best.
- for this.
She wanted a kitty cat hoodie on Amazon.
Jada was like, "I don't wanna get this."
- [Steve] You had to talk her out of it?
- [Jada] We couldn't.
- [Jada] She wore it everywhere.
- She wore it a lot.
[poignant music continues]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[children playing]
[camera clicks]
[Steve] What do you want the world to know
about Hallie
when they look at those pictures?
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[camera clicks]
[music fades out]
I would want
the world to know that she was a
[softly] Oh, I can't do this.
[sobbing]
I would want the world
to know that she was
a great person, just a good little sister.
[somber music playing faintly]
Our next guest is a CBS News
correspondent. Here's Steve Hartman.
[audience cheering]
My name's Steve Hartman,
and I'm from CBS News.
Steve Hartman has found
a prescription for happiness.
[Oprah Winfrey] As a CBS correspondent,
Steve doesn't cover politics
or natural disasters or wars.
We're now just 129 to go.
- See my two legs?
- Yes.
They still move.
They sure do.
- Every time your stories come up
- We all cry. [laughs]
- [Steve] Hello.
- Hey!
[kids] Hey!
[Steve] I've been typecast as, you know,
the feel-good, happy news kind of guy.
I'm the guy that they bring in at the end
to, like
restore people's faith in humanity.
[male newscaster] We had planned
to end the week
with one of those wonderful stories
from Steve Hartman.
Steve has some thoughts tonight
about this tragedy.
[Steve] And what I'd been doing is just
whitewashing the whole thing.
Imagine that. Trying to find good news
in a school shooting.
And a lot of mass shootings,
that's been my job.
At the end of the week,
remind us that life is still worth living.
I'm not gonna look at a school shooting
and try to find a positive angle to that.
Not anymore.
[Steve] This is it.
[knocking]
- [Steve] Hello.
- Hi.
- [Steve] How are you?
- [woman] Good. Come in.
[Steve] Thank you.
[woman] Yep.
You guys ready?
Here they were going
on a father-daughter dance.
[Jackie] here for our
father-daughter dance.
[Gloria] Are you so excited?
[Jackie] Uh-huh!
[Gloria] You can't wait?
[Jackie] Uh-huh!
[Gloria] Awesome.
- Who's doing your hair for you?
- [Jackie] Christy.
[Gloria] Is she gonna do your hair
on your wedding day too?
- [Jackie] Uh-huh!
- [Gloria] Yes?
[Christy] I am.
Who are you gonna marry?
[Christy laughs]
[Gloria] You don't know?
Is he gonna be cute, though?
[Jackie] Wait, is it Dada?
[all laughing on video]
[Javier sniffles]
[Gloria] This is her room.
[Steve] Love the lights.
- [Gloria] She loved the lights.
- [Lou] Yeah.
[Gloria] They've been on
since she left them on.
We haven't turned them off.
And then the stuffed animals.
Just these two
have her voice in it, right?
[Javier] Yeah.
[Jackie laughing]
[Javier] That's the video
where she's outside with the dog.
[laughing continues]
[Gloria] There's this one video that, um
That's probably
one of our last videos that we have
of her with her dogs before May 24th.
- [Steve] And she wanted to be a vet?
- [Gloria] Yes.
Because of the love of animals
that she had,
there's no way she would have done
anything besides helping animals.
That was her dream,
to become a veterinarian.
[Jackie laughing]
[camera clicks]
[Gloria] Her room,
it played a very big role in her life.
- [camera clicks]
- You know, that was her safe place.
[Jackie singing]
Maybe it's the way you play your game
But it's all good
I've never known anybody like you
[Javier] I go in there every day.
That's why I have the chair,
right next to the bed.
So it brings me
some comfort to go in there
just to chat sometimes.
[sniffles]
[camera clicks]
[water splashing]
[cell phone ringing]
- [Steve] Hi.
- [Steve's daughter] Hi.
[Steve] How are you doing?
- What did you do today?
- Went swimming.
And
we drove Birdie to the groomer,
and then I ran two miles.
- You ran two miles?
- And then...
Yeah.
-And...
-And then
And then we drove to Leanna's.
Birdie, it's Daddy.
[Steve] I love you guys very much.
- I love you too.
- I miss you.
I miss you more than you know.
Bye.
- Bye.
- Bye.
- Bye, guys.
- Bye.
[somber music playing]
[keyboard tapping]
Classes were canceled, and grief
counselors brought in to Perry, Iowa
the day after a sixth grader was killed,
and seven other people were injured
in a school shooting
[Steve] Before I started this project,
I was growing more and more numb
after every school shooting.
And I think all of America
has been going through,
you know, that same process.
And now, when I hear
about a school shooting,
I know that room is out there.
I feel like
I can place myself in the room,
and it hurts a lot more
than it did before.
[Lou] Hair on a brush,
cap of a toothpaste
and hair ties on a doorknob.
[mouse clicking lightly]
It is fucking surreal.
- [sighs]
- [Steve] What's surreal?
Just, you know,
that we're here talking about this.
Like, it just
That this is even a real thing.
[man] Hello. Nice to meet you.
- [Steve] You too.
- [man] I'm Bryan.
- [Steve] Hi.
- [woman] Nice to meet you.
- [Lou] You too.
- [Steve] Thanks for having us.
[woman] Of course.
[woman] She was just so much fun.
Hey, girlfriend. It's a lovely day.
[Bryan] I walk by her room
and I still see her.
She liked to just
do somersaults off the bed.
I can still hear her laughing loud.
[Gracie] Trick or treat, smell my feet!
[woman] Her room was kind of a stage.
That's where everybody
would go and watch her perform.
She'd pass out little invitations, and
what time we were supposed to be there.
Set up chairs
so we'd sit and watch the show.
Mm-hm.
[Bryan] She went through
elementary, middle school, and
15 weeks of high school in that room.
And it was
her private sanctuary of space where she
was her pure self.
Uh, it was a sunny Thursday morning.
She was planning to buy her ticket
for her first high school dance.
And then she had plans
to get her dress on Friday.
Unfortunately, she didn't get to do
either one of those two things.
[somber music playing]
[Bryan] That's the outfit she had out and
[Steve] This is what
she was gonna wear on Friday?
[Cindy] She was either gonna wear
this outfit or this outfit.
- [Bryan] She had two set out.
- [Cindy] And this dress.
So
[Steve] Did she do this often?
Prepare the next day's clothes?
Yeah. Monday through Friday.
- Yep.
- Yeah.
[Bryan] And we had given her
this little trinket box,
and when we had opened it,
she had these letters in here.
And these letters were notes
to her future self that she had written.
[Steve] Wow.
[Bryan] "First day of high school."
"Dear future self,"
"OMG, it's high school."
"I've been waiting for this day forever."
[Cindy] Hm.
"Don't be nervous.
You will meet some of your lifelong"
"friends and also some enemies."
"Don't focus on the negativity."
"You'll get through this.
Keep the people that make you happy,
and lose, well, others. Haha."
"Wear something cute, obviously."
"I love you. Good luck.
Gracie from the past."
[sniffles]
[poignant music playing]
[camera clicks]
[Steve] Do you go in there a lot?
- [Cindy] Oh yeah. A lot.
- [camera clicks]
All the time, every day. [laughs lightly]
[Steve] Yeah?
[Cindy] Every day I tell her good morning.
Every night I tell her good night.
[camera clicks]
- [Cindy] So
- [Steve] Still.
- [Cindy] Still.
- [Steve] To this day.
[Cindy] Yeah.
Hi.
[poignant music rises]
[Bryan] When that time comes
that that room is not there,
does she go away?
So as long as that room exists,
she exists, in a way.
Okay, guys, so here's the outfit.
Looking real cute.
[music continues]
[Steve] My boss now knows
about this story,
and he's agreed that he'll run it.
But they'll see it when it's ready to air,
and we'll go from there.
[music fades out]
[door creaks]
[Steve] Wow.
This is where you go
- Right?
- [girl blowing]
[laughing]
[girl] There. All better.
[poignant music playing]
[Steve] I want the project
to remind people that
these were our children.
That these were your children.
These could be your children.
[Lou] Rose, you ready?
[Rose] Yeah.
[Lou] All right.
Camera's so slow. Okay.
[camera clicking]
[camera clicks]
[Steve] Giving photo books to the families
is a crucial step in this project.
Because at this point, I feel like
I've done nothing but take, you know?
We took pictures, you know.
We took their time.
This is something tangible
that we can give.
[music intensifies]
[Steve] The whole point of this is
to not have to say much.
I just want people to see the pictures,
and just let the pictures
speak for themselves.
I wish that we could
transport all Americans
to stand in one of those bedrooms
for just a few minutes.
We'd be a different America.
[music fades out]
[female news host] Steve Hartman
starts us off this morning
with something very different
and deeply troubling.
[poignant music playing]
[music fades out]