Justin Johnson delivers the next breast thing with his new documentary, Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory, a touching and inspiring story that shows the power of love, perseverance, and innovation and is a must-see for anyone whose life has been touched by breast cancer.
Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory captures the heart of Brian and Randi’s love story, nestled against the backdrop of a conservative community of Eau Claire, WI and further honed by the heartbreakingly common struggle of breast cancer. To help Randi feel complete after her battle with breast cancer and subsequent mastectomy, Brian comes up with an innovative and unorthodox solution. What started as a labor of love turned into an unintended calling with the power to change thousands of lives through the sale of custom and handmade prosthetic nipples for their clients.
The film delves into the day-to-day of the nipple factory business and the struggles the family faced in trying to keep it hidden from their community, including their long-time pastor. The film takes viewers on a journey through Brian’s many off beat solutions, from a bean-based estrogen-reducing diet to a fat-grafting reconstruction involving medical suction pumps.
Check out our interview with Justin:
So first off, what motivated you to take your parents story and turn it into a documentary?
Justin: The motivation really was, I think that like, especially growing up, it’s hard to like, appreciate the uniqueness of your childhood. And as I would tell people about the story and as I would tell people aspects of just how we grew up, I would get some pretty intense reactions. And I was like, all right, like this stuff, or I think it’s kind of neat, but isn’t that unique? And more and more as I was getting those reactions, I was like, okay, maybe there’s something here. So, really, it was just this little short doc about this business. And I wanted to figure out what’s the heart here? And once I figured out it was like a love story, that really helped us make it a broader thing. But it started as a five to eight minute short and then once I got my dad talking, because this guy never talks, it turned into something a lot bigger and that was pretty cool.
Your parents kept this a secret for so long. When you first approached them with this, did they take some convincing?
Justin: You know, convincing is a way to put it. I really, really tried to just say, ‘hey, you know, Dad, you don’t even have to talk. I’m just gonna get shots of you building your nipples in the laboratory, and Mom will do all the talking.’ And so it really was like starting from a place of, ‘where’s dad going to be the most comfortable?’ And it was really his generosity and his time that turned this into a broader thing because we originally started filming in 2015 and it was just me and my DSLR and I’m like, I’m just gonna make this little thing. It was right after I had finished my first feature and I wanted to get back to the festival circuit and I just couldn’t figure it out. So, we sat down in 2018 and that was the first time we really shot for real with our incredible DP, Scott Regan who’s unbelievable. And I’m like, ‘let’s just really do this right. And I was setting up for an interview with mom and really for them to be open, it didn’t take too much convincing because my dad, having filmed us as kids all the time for home videos and things like that, it kind of felt fitting that he would at some point– I’m kind of a monster he’s created for his own, not really creative endeavors, but just kind of documentarian endeavors. And so when my dad sat down, we did this incredible hour and a half, two hour interview, and we just got into the nuances of his life and mom and dad’s love story. It was like this incredible gift to me for his openness and his time and just like his thoroughness with the nipple business where he’s like, ‘I want to have colors for everybody and shapes and sizes and everything.’ Like when my dad’s in, he’s all in and it really felt the same way with this project.
I love that. You mentioned that you started filming in 2015. How long did it take for you to put this together?
Justin: As an editor, as soon as I film something, I’d start cobbling together early versions. So it has been a pretty solid seven or eight years. The thing about a film is that there’s so much that you have to do after you lock the cut. You say, ‘this is the movie,’ right? It really was that we locked the cut in March of last year, of 2022, and so that was kind of when my primary role as the editor ended and then it was handing it off to color correction and sound mix and there was animation that needed to get done and all that kind of stuff. But it was a pretty consistent process. I think 2015 – 2018 was the discovery mode, but from 2018 until 2022 was really all hands on deck, let’s figure out what we have here.
Gotcha. Yeah, in mentioning the animation, what inspired you to add that in?
Justin: We have some stuff from Leah Shore, an incredible animator, and that’s the more traditional type of animation and then we have stop motion elements where there’s maps and there’s photo montages and things and it’s done by a wonderful animator, Jen Ruiz. And I think for the traditional animation, really, we are talking about, you know, let’s be frank, my mom’s boobs, right? And my dad is an incredible documentarian, but there were certainly parts of my mom’s breast cancer journey where it just didn’t really feel like appropriate to make that a part of this and my mom didn’t feel comfortable sharing that and in terms of the visuals of that journey. So, that’s really where the animation worked well, because we’re able to go to a more cartoony place where it can be more comfortable for mom, and it can be more about the concept of her physical journey, but I think it is really important to be able to show it through some kind of lens. And I thought that this was something that was kind of here or there, should we have it, should we not have it, how much we have, do we even need it? And when we really started using it for the post surgical time, that’s when we’re like, oh, this really has a place here and it’s effective in getting across the visuals.
That makes sense. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was nice to see.
Justin: Yeah, it’s like it’s a thing, right? Like, it’s a trope. It’s in lots of documentaries. It’s like, ‘here’s the animated part,’ you know? It is something that feels kind of perfunctory or whatever, but I really wanted to in the same way, where I was very reluctant to include myself in the film because I know it can be kind of cringy if the filmmaker forces their way in but in this case, it was really hard to pull myself out of the story because I just didn’t feel like it made a lot of sense. It’s the same thing with animation, lots of documentaries have animation, I get it and it’s great, but we wanted it to really have a very specific usage that would work specifically for animation and not so well in any other medium.
How did you settle on Mom and Dad’s Nipple Factory as the title?
Justin: That’s a great question. It started as “My Dad’s Nipple Factory,” and it really was a profile on Dad, but that was before we really zeroed in on the love story aspect of it. And it went from “My Dad’s Nipple Factory” to just “The Nipple Factory,” which is a little more mysterious. But then as the love story really started to flourish and grow within the story, having mom and dad– it’s a little more disarming, certainly, if it’s just a man and nipples like, you know, you can go to different places with that. But it made it feel like a little more true to what the film is, made it feel like a little more homespun, a little folkier, I think just a little more approachable. And so in terms of titles, it was a journey to figure out the right one and, you know, it’s a little bit long, but I really think it matches the tone of the film.
Oh, for sure. And your dad even mentioned something similar with your mom being the voice of the company, like when people call in and stuff, he made a comment about no one wants to talk to a man about this.
Justin: Yeah, exactly. I mean, my dad’s already uncomfortable enough to have any sort of spotlight on him whether it’s a spotlight on stage or an iPhone flashlight, like he doesn’t want any spotlight on him. And we had the Q & A [at the Milwaukee Film Festival]. My mom kind of provided a message from dad and someone asked, what does Brian think of the film?’ and mom said, ‘Oh, yeah, he likes it. He just wishes he wasn’t in it.’ And I just love that after people see the film, I just love the shorthand of other people calling them mom and dad. I just think that’s sweet because I feel like that’s how my friends felt as well when they came to our house.
That is sweet. Yeah, what was your family’s reaction to the final product?
Justin: Honestly, a lot of them hadn’t seen the final product until [the Milwaukee Film Festival]. There was a screening– I did a screening in October of ‘21. And that was just a little family screening. And that was saying, ‘Hey, here’s the broad strokes of the story. Are you guys okay with this?’ It was something where, in terms of where I went with the family story, I just needed them to sign off before we really locked in. And we were sitting in this Airbnb here in Milwaukee, and even after the screening, it was the discussion that my family hadn’t seen the animation. They hadn’t heard the final soundtrack. They hadn’t seen the stop motion, the color correction, the surround sound mix, and there’s a lot of little bits and pieces here on the edges of the core story that have changed and solidified and whatnot. So, it was the experience that I wanted them to have. I wanted it to be too late for me to make any changes. And I wanted them to also feel the love of the audience and see it through the audience’s perspective versus a screening when it’s just family, just the people who are in it. It’s just a different kind of atmosphere and I think it’s harder to pull yourself away in terms of perspective of what you’re watching.
While I was watching this, first of all your parents are adorable, and I loved the story, but there was this really just heartwarming theme of becoming whole again and feeling complete. What do you hope people take away from watching this documentary?
Justin: Yeah, you nailed it. I mean, that’s exactly it. It really is that kind of becoming whole again aspect and it’s a short film, it’s 81 minutes, it’s not a Martin Scorsese epic, right? But there’s a lot of different themes in there and certainly there’s the love story, it touches on religion, it touches on things that are considered inappropriate in terms of people’s physical attributes. So, I think becoming whole again really did become that central spoke of the film and I think in a time where it is very divisive and there’s a lot of this versus that whether it’s political, ideological, whatever it is, I just really wanted to make something that shows like, hey, people can believe different things and that we’re a family unit and we should still all be able to come together and remain a family. And that’s something that I know I’ve really been proud of my family for, not letting our differences define us. And just from the family perspective, I think that was something that anyone, whether they’ve gone through a cancer journey or not, like that’s something that is pretty universal and I think is really important right now.
The one thing that surprised me the most was that your parents had named the nipples. Did they ever explain why they named the nipples the way they did and who got to do the naming?
Justin: They’re not named after specific people. So early on, the way the process works is that every single– and my dad doesn’t usually like saying nipples, he likes saying “the product.” Every single product was bespoke to a specific customer who’s ordering it, so they would get an impression kit, they do the impression, send it back, dad would do the molding and send it back. And this was like a very time consuming process. And I think after a couple years, they found that there’s maybe 8-10 basic varieties of nipples that you see, right? And so really, the goal became to find what they called the sister nipple to your natural one, if you’ve had a unilateral mastectomy. So, the naming really is just a part of my dad’s organizational structure. They have Eve and Rae and they have these names which are really kind of just like three letter codes for his cataloging and whatnot. So, there’s the names and then there’s a number which reflects the areola diameter and then you can even get different projections, like how extruded the nipple was. So the boring answer is that it’s a way for my dad to code these things in his spreadsheets. But I do think it gives them some kind of cute personality. There’s a short scene in my film, where mom is on the phone with someone and is like, ‘oh, maybe we’re looking at this model or that model.’ It does kind of add a little more personality to it.
Actually I had my nipple molded and it’s not really mentioned in the film, but when I went into the nipple factory for the first time, which we have on camera, my dad had actually just finished building me a third nipple. I did the kit because I wanted to really understand that process. And that was the original idea for the short film like, my dad’s gonna make me a third nipple, isn’t this kind of weird? So that was kind of the original thing and my nipple was on the website as a product, because, of course, men can get breast cancer as well. But unfortunately, it was very small and very thin and I think very disappointing to my father (laughs). And it did not sell well, so it is no longer on the catalog, but it was called Bro which I think is a cute name. And yeah, I became part of the catalog for a brief glorious moment.
So, this officially premiered [at the Milwaukee Film Festival] and it’s going to be doing the festival circuit, but do you know when and where the general public might be able to watch this?
Justin: Not yet. This film is a lot of things and I love the fact that it’s kind of like a Christmas movie and so we are still figuring out what our distribution plan is. We have a sales agent and all that but the goal really is to have it out for either Breast Cancer Awareness Month or the holiday season this year, but we don’t have a specific venue or date yet. But yeah, it’s gonna be really exciting to share it in person. We have our next couple festival dates figured out but we’re still figuring out summer and fall but I think it’s gonna be pretty special.
What festivals do you have lined up?
Justin: …On Mother’s Day, which is really appropriate, we’re playing at a festival called Doclands in San Francisco. That’s on May 14. And then beyond that, we have some stuff that just hasn’t been announced yet, but we’re gonna keep updating people on our newsletter and our socials and on our website as those get added.
And what are your social media handles?
Justin: Yeah, the website is nipplefactoryfilm.com and the socials are all @nipfactoryfilm.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Justin: I think right now is like a really important time for this film and for anyone listening, it is an underdog film, right? In a world of documentaries being saturated with a lot of celebrities and current events, here’s a doc about this thing you read about a year ago that was big news. And so for anyone listening, if you can become a champion for this film, if you know people who can become a champion for this film, that’s what’s gonna really make this get to a broader audience. I think it’s powerful. It’s universal. Yes, it’s about a little family in a little town in Wisconsin, but there’s a lot here that I think can be really meaningful in the same way that my dad making little nipples in my sister’s old bedroom in a house we grew up in, has had a really outsized impact and an important impact on a lot of incredible women and people who’ve gone through the breast cancer journey. I think that’s a great metaphor for what this film could be if people are really championing it and taking action and making sure that people come out and see it and people support this film. It’s just an honor to be a vessel for this story and an honor to be my parents’ kid. I’m really proud of my family and my parents. So yeah, this has been a really fun part of the journey: hearing people’s stories, meeting them, and being able to travel and share this.
