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Directors Kathleen Jayme And Asia Youngman From ESPN's I'm Just Here For The Riot

ESPN introduces its newest 30 for 30 documentary film, I’m Just Here for the Riot, premiering Tuesday, June 4, at 7:30pm ET on ESPN and streaming on ESPN+.

On June 15, 2011, the Canucks’ Game 7 Stanley Cup Finals loss to the Boston Bruins sparks a massive riot in downtown Vancouver. Police cars are overturned and burned, windows are shattered, stores are looted, and waves of young people are caught up in the mayhem. I’m Just Here For The Riot chronicles the aftermath of an event captured on hundreds of cell phone cameras; the rioters are outed, shamed, and see their lives altered forever. From the mob mentality in the streets to similar vengeance in the online hunting of those responsible, it is a dark moment in the city’s history – one that raises deeper questions about fandom, violence, and the shocking power of an angry crowd.

I’m Just Here for the Riot was directed by Vancouver-based filmmakers Kathleen Jayme and Asia Youngman, who were in the city during the infamous riot. Kathleen and Asia began working on this documentary to gain an understanding of how this shocking event came to be.

Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 21 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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Hello and good morning. How are you guys doing today? Good, thank you. How are you talking? I've got to tell you, I'm so proud of you for putting this project together because I'm one of those sports fans, just like anybody else, that we never got the full story of what was played out. We got headlines, we got five o'clock news, but it's not as deep as you guys go. Oh, thank you, I appreciate that. What brought you to this project? Was it? We're talking about June 15th, 2011. That was a long time ago, 13 years ago. Yeah, it was a long time ago, but it's a story that has stuck with both Asia and myself. We were in Vancouver watching, Asia was actually downtown that night. I was watching from my home and it was just such an upsetting event to watch. I was so mad when I was watching, when you see the scenes of your city burning itself for no good, there was no righteous cause that the director fighting for, we literally lost a game and seeing all the property being vandalized and stores being looted. It was just such a terrible night in Vancouver's history, but again, we both wanted to understand deeply why this happened, just to, yeah, I think I just, I needed to know why this happened because it was such a dark, a dark side of humanity that we saw that. Yeah, see, and that's why I think that's the connection because, I mean, we also had riots here in Charlotte in the past couple of years, and I think one of the reasons why I'm drawn to this is because I want to know how you healed because I can still go down to downtown Charlotte and still feel that moment of that rage. So I mean, do you feel it as well? I certainly do. And I think when I'm even just walking around downtown and passing, you know, the main street where the ride happened in 2011, I can't help but think about how differently the city looked that night and most just how quickly that things can take a turn like that and almost just like this anger that seems to be bubbling underneath society for us to behave that way when we have the opportunity to. So it's something that it's hard to just kind of brush on the wrong and forget just because we are Vancouverites and we do walk, you know, the downtown area frequently that you can help with things looked compared to how they are now. It's almost like here in 2024, we expect something to happen at the end of a big tournament. I mean, because we're about ready to do the NBA here and, you know, Major League Baseball has its, you know, people that are always running off their benches. I mean, we've got to get away from being that group of people that expect a riot. Yeah. And again, hopefully people watch this film, they'll think twice about riding after a sports game. But, you know, one of the things like an interesting fact that Asia and I found was that a study that was done, you know, looking at hundreds of sports riots in North America, Vancouver is the only city that riots after a loss of a game. And it's happened twice now in the city. Our smartphones are part of this because it seems like instead of people helping each other, oh, got to get that video, man, got to get that video. Yeah, smartphones are a huge part of the 2011 riot and, you know, it's considered the first smartphone riot in history, and so, of course, really leaning into the social media angle of it because I think for a lot of folks who decided to participate in the riot that night didn't really understand the repercussions of posting photos online, posting videos online, making posts about what they did that night, hashtagging Vancouver riot and essentially incriminating themselves. So we were very interested about how, you know, social media played a factor in that. And of course, in addition to the police doing their own due diligence to track down those involved, a lot of people online also were doing the same thing in the form of a social media witch hunt. I've got to tell you where I reacted in 2011 is that because I've been to Vancouver and I've been to Victoria, and the thing is, is that my heart was what's happening at Stanley Park. Please don't go to Stanley Park. Yeah, yeah, I mean, thankfully the riot was somewhat contained and that's actually, you know, one of the reasons why the riot kind of continued for as long as it did. People were sort of pushed and corralled into like one area of downtown and they couldn't get get out. And so that was one of the things that we heard from a lot of people who were downtown who either rioted or got stuck was that there was just like, you know, at least for time to go one way and then another time to go another way and everyone was just like pushed on this like one block downtown Vancouver. Yeah. With you guys doing so much work behind the scenes to bring this together on ESPN, do you feel like that other cities will study what you've uncovered? Because I mean, you guys went in there with a real, real sense of we've got to get the story and we've got to get it right. Yeah, I think we hope that other people watch this and see, you know, what could happen if someone decides to participate in a riot, especially for young people who might be curious about that. You know, we really hope this is seen as a bit of a learning lesson and cautionary tale to not partake in those types of events. So hopefully people see what happened in Vancouver and, you know, decide that if they were caught up in a riot, that they wouldn't participate, that they would not stay downtown and film on their smart phones and encourage others to behave in other riotous behavior and just hope that it'll happen to Vancouver for their time as well. To do this, Mint, you had to live in your past. How do you recover from where you once stood and be present now? You know, I think it's important when you approach, I think as documentary filmmakers is that you kind of have to get rid of your bias, like there's emotions that bring you to a story, but then you kind of have to leave that aside and listen to and be fully present as you're saying when you speak to those who you're interviewing to hear their stories and to understand kind of their perspective. And you know, there are times when we were making this, you know, Asian, I would be going if you footage and be sending each other messages like, oh my gosh, like look at this clip. Like it's so hard not to, like my blood still boils when I watch the film at certain points. But obviously when you, when you sit down and you talk to these people and you hear their story, I think that's why stories are so important and that's why we need to, you know, hear more of each other's stories because you can kind of get another sense of like, oh, it's not as black and white as it may appear to some. 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For this to happen in Vancouver, first of all, I think the world goes to Vancouver, especially when it comes to Hollywood. And when you have something like this on your history now and on your resume, it's like, well, why do we want to go to Vancouver? So I can't imagine, did you do any research on tourism and how it changed after this? I don't, that's a great question, but I don't think it necessarily, I don't think it was, I don't think people necessarily saw this and said, oh my god, Vancouver is, you know, this is a true representation of what Vancouver is like. I'm not 100% sure, that's something that we didn't look into. But I don't think that, I don't know, I'd say, as you can jump in here, that I'm not sure if tourism was affected that much by this event. I would have to know what ended up on the cutting room floor, because I mean, you still have time limits on ESPN, but I bet to me in my heart, there's still something deeper into this. Yeah, we were kind of joking that this could have been definitely, you know, a series. There's so much more that we could have explored. I think looking at, you know, stories of those who were attacked and decided not to press charge was very interesting to cat and I was just the forgiveness behind, you know, those people who were seriously harmed and their decision to kind of move forward and forgive was really, really interesting for the two of us. And then also, of course, hockey being a violent sport and how maybe that could lead to people deciding to participate in violent behavior on the streets and the aftermath of the game. You know, there's a lot more kind of stories, I think looking at this, being a sociology perspective, a bit more academic kind of conversations about mob mentality, more riot trends across even like Europe and other ports in North America would have been interesting to explore, but we really just wanted to focus on 2011, a little bit of 1994, and specifically Vancouver, because I think it is unique because we bribed it over the loss of a game twice. Wow. There's a website where people can go to find out more about the two of you because there's got to be more to this and I think you guys are so willing to share it. I mean, we have our personal like filmmakers website that you can check out, but no, we're really excited that this is premiering on ESPN and that, you know, the whole world can kind of, yeah, watch and learn from Vancouver's mistakes. Well, please come back to this show anytime in the future, the door is always going to be open for you. I mean, thank you so much for that. 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