Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Steven Barber. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Steven, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

My most meaningful project was the building of the Apollo 11 monument the greatest story in the history of mankind sending man to the moon.

I want award winning film maker, and have been making documentaries for over 15 years and during my journey I was able to spend time and meet Buzz Aldrin the second man on the moon and he and I would become friends for the last 20 years

My documentaries have taken me all over the world from the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan to the South Pacific in the battle of Tarawa, and I always had the back of my mind to do the documentary and Buzz Aldrin the second man on the moon, a film that has never been made or a story that has never been told

I finally convinced buzz to let me shoot his documentary for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing in 2019 and I raise a great deal of money in 2018 to get ROLLING and then he was involved in a lawsuit. We’re all of the projects he had had to be shelved, so I lost his documentary and was quite distraught.

Sometimes success next through the back door, disguised as failure. I thought that was one of the worst days of my life, and it would end up being the greatest day of my life because I had an Epiphany on a bike ride to build the monuments of Apollo 11 as nobody had ever done it and I was able to take it to Nasa and get them to sign off on it and put it in front of the rock and Garden at the Kennedy space Center And raised $750,000 to build this magnificent monument to the greatest story in the history of mankind, the Apollo 11 moon landing

What’s important about the story is I’m just a regular American live in a good decent regular life and I’m certainly not amount of means financially, but I was able to vision this incredible monument and get it made and put it in NASA which leads me to believe that anything and everything is possible if you have a vision and you never ever quit and you swing the bat every single day you will certainly get a hit. In America you really cannot fail. Failure is not an option.!!!

Steven, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I moved to Los Angeles in 1984 to get into radio as I receive my degree from Western Kentucky University on radio and TV and in those days it was impossible to get on the air if you were not number one in the top 10 market, but I thought I’d try it anyway. I was never successful trying year after year and I’ve got quite fed up with Los Angeles and got a job on a cruise ship going up to Alaska in 1986 and that was the beginning of a 12 year odyssey that put me on 19 cruise ships, and 5 million nautical miles around the Earth. I was able to go to 83 countries and see the world in a very grand in spectacular way and ended up back in Los Angeles in 1994.

I pursued acting, but I never really had a passion for it, and then took several jobs as a sales person and had a divine moment in the early 2000s that led me to be an award winning documentary filmmaker, and my first film unbeaten made the Oscar shortlist a fantastic story about 32 paraplegics pushing their wheelchairs, 267 miles in six days between Fairbanks in Anchorage Dan Aykroyd narrated the film, and we received worldwide praise and many accolades, and that would be the beginning of a 12 year documentary journey that would lead me back around the Earth once again

The noble journey that vanilla, fire productions, and my team went on, led us to the South Pacific where we were able to locate repatriate and bring home MIAs from World War II from my two films, narrated by Ed Harris and Kelsey grammar, which also led to many accolades in many awards but the best part was we were able to pass congressional legislation to bring home US Marines from World War II and the last 14 years we’ve had 226 remains come home and over 93 funerals and I could not be prouder this is the power of film.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I think I may be the most persistent human being on the Earth. I never ever ever quit. I Overcomer improvise adapt and I’ve been calling on one executive in town for over 38 years and he will either die or he will write me a check.

I’m 62 years old and I should be retired with millions of dollars but I’ve made 1 million I’ve lost 1 million I’ve made 1 million I’ve lost another million and now I’m climbing back up the ladder between streaming changing the entire landscape of filmmaking and Covid destroying any and all deals that were on the table It’s 1984 and déjà vu all over again for me however, that’s OK because I’m very grateful to be alive and have the opportunity to swing the bat every single day and I will be successful bigger than I’ve ever been because there is no other way for a guy like me

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal now is to build as many Apollo and shuttle astronauts as possible and I was able to raise another $750,000 to build the Apollo 13 monument at the Kennedy space center and then I built the Sally Ride monument the first American woman in space at the cradle of aviation museum in Long Island and I raised another $300,000 to build Sally Ride at the Ronald Reagan library and just unveiled her on July 4 to great fanfare 5000 fans and patriots at the Reagan Library and Sally Ride‘s 99 year old mother and worldwide news on CBS. Evening news NBC nightly news and I’m now working on building the first African-American NASA monument in history and the first Hispanic female, NASA astronaut monument in history as diversity is beyond under represented at Nasa and in the sciences, and only one percent of the monuments in America represent women 00 0.00% are women in science, except for the two Sally Ride monuments that I’ve been able to vision and commission.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.vanillafire.com

Image Credits
Steven C Barber Vanilla Fire Productions