“I felt like less and less people were taking the time to remember the night 22,000 of us will never forget - plus the people who love those 22,000 people.” “I found myself really disappointed,” she acknowledges. I felt so pulled to explore that.”įour years later comes the fruit of that exploration: “11 Minutes,” an unflinchingly immersive four-part docuseries that Hoff executive produced, which premieres on Paramount+ on Tuesday.Īt times, it’s as hard to watch as the senselessness of the night in question is hard to comprehend, hours and hours of cellphone and body cam footage distilled into a harrowing narrative that takes you to the scene of the carnage in disturbing detail.īut the series, and its title referring to how long the shooting lasted, is intended to be more than a horrific revisitation of a horrific tragedy: Its focus is on presenting an intensely personal chronicle of strangers helping strangers.Īnd that’s why Hoff says that she felt compelled to dig into the worst night of her life: With each passing anniversary of 1 October, it seemed to her that the tragedy was fading from public consciousness more and more. All of those items were simply a representation of an incredible human story from that night. “For the first time, I felt like there were other people out there who felt like I did, who knew what it was like to kick off their shoes to literally run for their life. “I looked at those items, and they weren’t just items,” she continues. “As I looked at all of those items, it hit me - I call it ‘the storyteller itch,’ ” she recalls, “when your stomach turns, and you feel this pressing on your heart, and you know something will bother you until you resolve it. “They were the last piece of me that were in the field,” she explains.Įven after the agent left, though, she still found herself poring through that catalog. history, those boots weighed on Hoff, a veteran producer.Īt first, she didn’t know why - why some abandoned footwear felt so heavy on her heart.Įight months later, when an FBI agent delivered them to her house after Hoff identified them in a catalog of items found on the concert grounds, she finally understood why. In the aftermath of the worst mass shooting event in U.S. She fled to the Strip shoeless, where she hitchhiked home to Southern California with a pair of complete strangers later that night. Hoff was standing stage right, four rows back, when a gunman opened fire at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival at the Las Vegas Village grounds on October 1, 2017. “It was like an ice skating rink out there,” Ashley Hoff recalls, “once everyone dropped their beverages and food and all of those things.” It’s hard to run for safety in heels, especially when the ground has grown perilously slick from all the spilled Bud Lights and Cokes. It was about people helping each other.” (Paramount+)Īfter falling down three times, she realized the cowboy boots had to go. SiriusXM radio host and festival emcee Storme Warren says, “The story, to me, wasn’t about a shooter.
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