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Author:
Erin Condron
Erin is a screenplay writer - the development of her DANNY: Stories I Know By Heart has been funded by the Irish Film Board, and she is an administrator - she has served as administrator for the WIF/GM Alliance for a year and a half.
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PROCESS: A conversation with CYNTHIA WADE about FREEHELD
0SCAR WINNER Best Short Documentary and finished with a grant from WIF FOUNDATION FILM FINISHING FUND!!!!.
A conversation with Cynthia Wade, filmmaker, about her documentary FREEHELD, produced with Vanessa Roth, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Documentary,
At the beginning of the film, Lieutenant Laurel Hester is dying of cancer. She’s sitting in a packed courthouse in Ocean County New Jersey, the county where she’s served as a police officer and detective for twenty-five years. Packed into the same courthouse are community members holding up signs that read: Ocean County Freeholders – Don’t let Laurel Hester die like this. Have compassion.
Lieutenant Hester is fighting to have her pension benefits transferred to her partner, Stacie. Because they’re a same sex couple, Ocean County has refused to extend pension benefits, even though counties in New Jersey have the power of authority in such matters. Among other things, Stacie would lose the home she built and shared with Laurel.
In New Jersey, state county legislators are called Freeholders. In Ocean County there are five Freeholders, elected at large; they are given the power to regulate County property, affairs and finances. Among other things, they act in concert to protect the health and welfare of its citizens. The reasons the Freeholders give for denying Laurel her deserved pension benefits are fast and loose. One of the arguments is that a change in Laurel’s favor would have to be negotiated in the union contract. The other is an expressed reason from one of the Freeholders, Jack Kelley (one of the more villainous board members), who believes that a ruling in Laurel’s favor would circumvent the marriage law and violate the sanctity of marriage. But there is never any clear reason that makes solid sense; it can only be seen as discriminatory, which would make Freeholder Kelley’s argument the most valid. As Laurel’s first police partner points out, it’s “no different than separate drinking fountains or a seat in the back of the bus.”
Now, in the 21st century, here was Laurel Hester, dying and having to fight for equal rights and attend the hearings that would decide her case. .
Detective Lieutenant Laurel Hester, 25 years on the Ocean County, NJ Police Force, and her partner Stacie Andre, invited Cynthia Wade, filmmaker, into their home during what was to be the final ten weeks of Laurel’s life.
| Traction:
| Did you have any trepidation sharing those very intimate emotional experiences, or even more complicated for a filmmaker, reservations of breaking down that third wall?
| Cynthia::
| My biggest worry was that she was dying imminently – so I didn’t want anyone to say “You walked into this woman’s life while she was dying and made a film about it. I gave them (Laurel and Stacie) a small video camera and their own footage – some of it – is in the film. When Stacie is in bed with Laurel, taking care of her, she set the camera up on the bureau and shot it. When Stacie is in the car calling to mitigate the insurance bill, she set it up on the dash herself. So I think there’s a collaboration and an ownership of the film and what it says that they had together. There’s more footage like that on the DVD. I interviewed Laurel about what the film was to her and she looked at it as a testimony for same sex couples. But it was filled with ethical landmines– you want to tell a compelling story but you don’t want to exploit the people who are giving you carte blanche – and I had unrestricted access from the start.
| Traction:
| Did the Freeholders ever try to impede your progress? Was there any dissent on their side or an attempt to bar you from any of the proceedings – any of the process?
| Cynthia:
| There’s a law in New Jersey that allows taping and recording at all community meetings – it’s called the New Jersey Public Open Meetings Act – so the law was on my side which was a really good thing. In the beginning they minimized me, which is something that always happens in this business when you’re a woman – but they minimized me as ‘the girl with the camera’ – they saw me as “the local access cable girl”. Only over time, did they realize how real I was. I requested multiple times to have interviews with the Freeholders but they declined. When Sundance happened, (Freeheld was invited into competition at Sundance 2007) I wanted to give them the opportunity to speak again so I sent them a certified letter with the offer to speak to me. They sent one back – a certified letter that said they ‘respectfully declined.’
| Traction:
| This is a story that’s fraught with conflict, on so many levels. Are you drawn to projects like these – ones with a distinct struggle at the core, to say nothing of the difficulty of getting it on film.?
| Cynthia:
| I’m definitely attracted to that kind of subject matter – in the moment, verite, strong woman at the center. I think that you have to take a risk and not worry in the moment how you’re going to do it. For me, this was an exercise in “less is more”. It was hard to commit to making it a short but we were limited with ten weeks of footage. It’s unfortunately but definitely still a perception in the film community that a short is less worthy than a feature but in this case I felt like people could have a feature experience in less than 40 minutes and a little bit of footage goes a long way. In the long run, at 38 minutes, it’s enabled us to bring Laurel’s story further. There’s a beginning, middle and end. it didn’t get into some of the festivals I was hoping for but it was worth it. Pulling back, back, back and trying to stick with the core of the story in a short amount of time it was discipline in “less is more” and keeping it simple.
| Traction:
| You’ve said that you believe only a woman filmmaker could have captured this story. Further that it is only a film that you could have made. Can you expound on that.
| Cynthia:
| First of all, men just simply by virtue of being men, would have had a problem getting this access. I slept in their guest room, before Laurel got very sick, Some nights I didn’t want to drive home because we had shot into the night and I was exhausted. I knew I’d crash the car if I tried. Laurel would say – no, no spend the night. She gave me some of her sweats and Stacie was sweet – she’d say let me put them in the dryer and get them toasty. So there was almost a ‘dorm’ quality to it, innocent and warm. I gave Laurel space when she wanted to take a nap, watch TV or whatever. But she wanted to talk about her accomplishments. She’d take out her scrap book and talk. Being a detective, she made a file on me and labeled it “Filmmaker”. She did her research on me and had created this really neat and meticulous file. In the beginning Stacie was shyer, more dubious, but then as she saw how it made Laurel happy she accepted it and as Laurel got sicker, Stacie sort of relied on me. Laurel would be sleeping a lot and Stacie and I would hang out. In the end, because of the 24/7 nature of it - I was even closer to Stacie than to Laurel.
As for myself as a filmmaker, I think it’s the case where you have to go in not knowing where it’s going to end up and you can’t flinch. That’s something I feel comfortable doing as a filmmaker. It’s not without pain but I think there’s an element of playing ‘chicken’ with a project. I had to give up a lot of corporate work to make the documentary the way I knew it had to be made but I needed to see where it’s going to go before I knew if it would go.
| Traction:
| And you had a built-in timeline – a human timeline with Laurel and her deteriorating state. How did you handle the moment of panic that every documentary maker out on a limb has about the financial resources to keep up with the story?
| Cynthia:
| There was pressure – the good thing was that my experience as a DP has enabled me to shoot my own films -- I teach cinematography (Wade is a professor at the New School in New York) – it would have been harder to rely on a crew all the time. In the moment, my big panic was “What am I not asking her that I’m going to regret?” There was no opportunity for pickups and she was physically changing rapidly so I couldn’t assume I could shuffle scenes out of order in editing, which was a challenge. When the rough cut was accepted into Sundance, which hadn’t happened before for me, I had no money to finish it or get on a plane. David Teague, my editor, told me that when people saw it, good things would happen. So we managed to get on a plane. The good thing that happened was at the 8:30am screening in Park City, there was a funder in the audience and 48 hours later I got a text with a significant commitment. Later on I got some other funders from the trip.
| Traction:
| You were awarded a grant from the Women In Film Film Finishing Fund. How important was that in getting this done?
| Cynthia:
| Women In Film came in at a critical point. It had a potentially great start at Sundance and just after I was able to get a lot done. But really finishing the film and having the elements I needed to get the film out was another challenge and the Film Finishing grant was a vote of confidence - it’s lonely as an independent filmmaker. Unless you have the resources, the film is only as effective as the audience you can reach. So it felt really good, from a financial standpoint and an emotional one to get the grant.
To emphasize that - I’m grateful to have the understanding that women filmmakers need to be supported. There is still an assumption that you are just “a girl with a camera” without anything like 20 years of making documentaries under your belt (as I have.) And it took a long time for the understanding to come about of why it’s critical – especially for finishing funds.
| Traction:
| The film now has been nominated for the Academy Award for the best short documentary. How do you think Laurel would feel about that?
| Cynthia:
| If the film can serve as a platform, especially in an election year, if we can use it as a tool , use it as a strategy in a pre-election outreach, that was Laurel’s goal. How do you measure the impact of a good documentary? It’s been screened now in 26 states and 7 countries. We’ve been organizing with local equality groups where partnership benefits are an issue and in places where rights are still being denied. (across the nation, nearly one million same-sex couples are still denied equal rights.)
Here’s a funny thing – I actually felt like the outsider when I started making this – that there was going to be judgment on me as a straight woman .I was afraid to come out as straight. The nicest surprise has been being embraced especially by the GLBT community and in fact being able to be a messenger to the heterosexual community.
In the end, as one burly NJ officer said of Laurel – “ she was doing the right thing; as officers, we’re taught, from the day we raise our right hand, to do the right thing.”
Editor's Note: Stacie, who has never been west of Pittsburgh is going to attend the Academy Awards at Cynthia’s invitation.
Directed, Produced and Photographed by Cynthia Wade
Produced by Vanessa Roth
Editor David Teague
Producer Matthew Syrett
Associate Producer Davina Pardo
a Lieutenant Films Presentation
produced in association with Chicken & Egg Pictures
and The Fledgling Fund
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