In The Blink Of An Eye: A Story That Inspires Us To Be Good Ancestors
Why do so many films end up in that familiar limbo, the ones we genuinely mean to watch, but somehow never do?
I have a name for it. It’s “the Netflix queue of good intentions” — all those documentaries and films we’re going to watch, “and then you never do it because they’re just too heavy, earnest, worthy.”
The intention is real. The follow-through isn’t. And that gap matters, because attention is where empathy starts. It’s where agency starts.
That’s why I wanted to talk with Jared Ian Goldman, an award-winning film and television producer and principal of the independent production company Mighty Engine, ahead of his new film In the Blink of an Eye, which begins streaming on Hulu today. Directed by Andrew Standon (‘Wall-E’, ‘Finding Nemo’) and starring Kate McKinnon, Rashida Jones, and Daveed Diggs, it’s a poignant, emotional drama that follows three stories spanning thousands of years, that intersect and reflect on hope, connection and the circle of life.
I talked to him about the art of telling stories at the highest level that inspire people to think, and act with agency, unearthing some insights and principles along the way.
Don’t start with the message. Start with the question.
Goldman has a deceptively simple philosophy about storytelling that I wish more filmmakers — and frankly, more brand leaders — would internalize.
“Don’t start with the message. Start with the question.”
A message can trigger defenses. A question creates space. It lets the audience step in before they armor up.
Goldman described longform storytelling as a different kind of attention than the one we’re trained for right now. “The viewer has to lower their guard and suspend cynicism and actually just let themselves feel.” That surrender isn’t passive. It’s what makes stories “a safer space for empathy and perspective shifts.”
He also pointed out something many of us recognize. We’re “craving authenticity because so much of our daily life now either feels like it’s performative or manipulated,” whether that’s “curated identities” or “algorithmic outrage.” A film can interrupt that pattern. It can offer an experience that isn’t trying to win an argument — just hold your attention honestly.
A film built around legacy
Jared Ian Goldman, film producer | Searchlight Pictures
When I asked what first pulled him into In the Blink of an Eye — a movie that moves between the distant past, the present, and the far future to explore how connection and choices echo over time — Goldman opened with humor.
“The cheeky answer is, I did my ancestry DNA test and learned that I’m 2% Neanderthal.”
But the real hook was the questions at the center of the script. He talked about “humanity’s need to exist, connect, and grow.” He liked that the film asks, “What does it mean to grow old?” and “How do we pass down what we know to other generations?”
Then he landed on the question underneath all of it.
“What is it that survives us?”
He also liked that the film treats progress as “miraculous and morally complicated,” without rushing to neat answers. “We’re not trying to persuade anybody to think differently about anything,” he said. Instead, “the hope is that people feel moved by what the individuals in each of those stories is going through.”
At one point, he described the ambition this way. The film tries to “literalize generational impact,” so the audience “gets to feel what legacy actually means.”
How can you be a good ancestor?
As we talked, I heard something beneath the conversation about the craft of storytelling. It felt like a reminder that people still have agency, even when they don’t feel like they do.
Goldman agreed, but made it more specific. He kept returning to a practical question: how can you be a good ancestor.
It’s a practical question, not a slogan. And it’s personal for him. He mentioned inheriting a piano and finding photos of his ancestors “going back 80, 90 years playing this piano.” That kind of detail shifts the idea from abstract to real. We inherit more than objects. We inherit stories — and we shape the next ones.
He connected that thread to Russian Doll, his Netflix series that begins as a darkly funny time-loop story and expands into a meditation on family history. In its second season, he said the writing gave the main character a chance to see she’s “a collection of her ancestors and their legacies,” and viewers told him it helped them “completely rethink how they saw their ancestors.” In In the Blink of an Eye, he said, it’s “not dissimilar things, just going back even bigger.”
Why some films carry impact without feeling like homework
Goldman’s references say a lot about how he thinks.
He pointed to WALL-E, Pixar’s mostly wordless animated film about a lonely robot on a trash-covered Earth, as “a great case study about how a film can carry a strong social messaging without feeling like a lecture,” because “nobody in that movie… give a lecture about consumerism or climate collapse or tech dependence.” Those ideas are simply “the architecture of the world.” You feel them before you analyze them.
He described Get Out, Jordan Peele’s thriller about racism hidden behind polite liberalism, in a similar way. “It started with the question the audience can’t shake,” which is “what does nice or liberal racism look like when it’s smiling at you.” Then, “you sort of trap the audience in the dilemma, and then the meaning sort of follows.”
He mentioned Loving, the quiet drama about the interracial couple whose case reached the Supreme Court, for another reason. “The film never argues the case, right, in speeches.” Instead, it places you inside ordinary moments until the injustice becomes undeniable. His takeaway was direct. “If the system is the antagonist, then you don’t need the big rhetoric.”
Across all of these examples, the pattern is consistent. Impact doesn’t require volume. It requires craft.
The moment that made it real
Late in our conversation, Goldman shared a story that grounded everything.
After a screening of another of his films, The Skeleton Twins — a film about estranged siblings reconnecting — an older woman approached him “with tears in her eyes,” grabbed him by the bicep, and said, “As soon as I finished thanking you, I’m going to call my brother who I haven’t spoken to in 30 years.”
Goldman didn’t claim a neat ending. “I don’t know whether that woman actually ever called her brother.” But the shift had already happened. A story made a different action feel possible.
“It’s a privilege,” he said.
That story is also why he keeps coming back to craft, not messaging. The goal isn’t to win an argument or hand people a conclusion. It’s to create the conditions where they can stay with something long enough to feel it, and then carry it with them when the credits roll.
For storytellers and brand leaders, that’s a useful lens. Whether you’re making a film, building a brand, or trying to move a culture, the question isn’t just what you want people to know. It’s what you want them to feel, and what makes them willing to keep watching.
Goldman put it in the simplest terms.
“Viewers are never accused of anything. They’re just being invited.”
And maybe that’s how we finally shrink the Netflix queue of good intentions. Not by making impact stories louder. But by making them human enough that people actually press play.
At Conspiracy of Love, we help changemakers tell their most powerful stories — stories that inspire action, build movements, and create lasting impact.
Find out more about our Values-Driven Storytelling and GPS to Purpose workshops, and how we can help you scale your impact.
