Basic Able Transcript Episode 04: Documentaries Introduction REID DAVENPORT: On this episode, we’ll be talking, listening, captioning, reading, however way you communicate-ing about disability in documentaries. Yes, this podcast just got real. This is Reid Davenport. This is Basic Able. [Spaghetti Western-Tarantino-esque music] All right. A little joke for you. A podcast host with cerebral palsy and a sound designer with spina bifida rolled into the studio. Well, actually, the joke is on you because you have to listen to find out what happens. JIM LEBRECHT: [chuckles] Jim LeBrecht Introduction REID: My first guest has mixed and designed sound for almost 250 films, including The Kill Team, In Football We Trust, and Bad Santa. He is currently co-directing Crip Camp, which is the story of Camp Jened and its summer camp awakenings that would transform lives and shape the future of the disability rights movement of the ‘70s. For those of you who are listening, allow me the privilege of describing Jim to you. He has luscious curly hair, dons a chain with a ring on it, and looks like he’s a still a little stoned from a Grateful Dead concert that took place back when Jerry was still around. JIM: [chuckles] REID: In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever seen him without a tie-dyed shirt. Welcome, Jim. JIM: [laughs] REID: Thank you for being here. JIM: [continues laughing] Thank you, Reid. First off, I didn’t mix Bad Santa. REID: Sorry. JIM: I did some work on it, but this is just me being a Boy Scout, OK? REID: Yeah. JIM: I uh— REID: Were you a Boy Scout? [laughs] JIM: No, they wouldn’t let me in. REID: Wait, are you serious? JIM: Yeah! My father wanted me to be in the Boy Scouts, but I’m 60, almost 62 years old. So, yeah, they wouldn’t let me in. 1 REID: Wow. JIM: Yeah. But I overcame that. REID: Yeah. JIM: Yes. [laughs] Disability documentary films REID: Now, you’ve been working in documentary as a sound designer for decades, and you’ve seen documentaries of all sorts. But I wanna hear some patterns when it comes to disabilities. JIM: You know, I think you can talk about the tropes around disability in narrative film separately from documentary. And by nature, documentaries really are more about the truth and revealing the truth and showing it in a way that is compelling. Whereas, narrative films for the most part, you know, if the cripple doesn’t wanna die, I mean, why bother making the film, right? I mean, we’ve certainly seen some variations on that but not a lot. But in the documentary world, I probably have worked on let’s say you know, about maybe 10 to a dozen films dealing with disability. But they’ve all been rather wonderful, and I gotta tell you, even if I was close to bankruptcy, if it was a film that really didn’t show disability in an honest light, there’s no way I could, I would work on it. Regan Brashear’s film, Fixed, really was kind of a modern, a more recent kind of discussion about technology and disability. Jen Brea on Unrest, which really focused on her acquiring ME or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and I will not try to attempt to pronounce— REID: [laughing] JIM: —Myalgic— REID: Yeah, yeah JIM: —Myalgic uh Encephal— Sorry, folks. I need more coffee for that. REID: Nice try, though. JIM: Yeah, thank you! REID: Yeah. JIM: You know, I’m— REID: Yeah. JIM: There’s Jen. She’s a graduate student at Princeton, and she’s had a really bad fever. And then afterwards, like basically has you know, developed these symptoms where there’s no energy. And she’d been thinking about maybe doing documentary work, but she decided that she needed to document how she was doing ‘cause the doctors wouldn’t believe her. And she started filming on her iPhone. And over the course of I don’t know exactly how long, but at least a couple of, few years, she wound up making this film that was extraordinary look at people with ME and what the science or non-science is about it, the absolutely pitiful amount of money that goes into researching this, people thinking that it was just something that was psychiatric and not you know, actual physical problem. 2 REID: Here’s a clip. [Unrest trailer plays, a heart beats beneath the spoken words] JEN BREA: I don’t know what I did to myself. I don’t think I can get up off the couch. I feel like my brain is misfiring. [pensive music] Sometimes, I wouldn’t be able to speak. Wwwwwwwwow. MAN: If you say too little, they can’t help you. And if you say too much, they think you’re a mental patient. JIM: Unrest premiered at Sundance, it’s been on PBS, and it is played throughout the world. REID: It got shortlisted, right? JIM: Yeah. So, the documentary world for the Oscars— REID: Yep. JIM: —there were like about 180 films that qualified, and then that gets whittled down to 15 films, which is the shortlist. REID: Yep. JIM: So, she made the shortlist, didn’t make it to the final five. But the film has done amazing amount of good in regards to raising awareness about ME, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. And also, on top of all that, it shows her filmmaking. And there were times where she wasn’t gonna be able to travel to England but figured out the technology to allow her to direct remotely. She was directing some of the shoots from her bed. I think this is actually really an amazing time right now because people like Jason DaSilva’s film, When I Walk, and Jen Brea’s film, Unrest, that they have made it to the motherland of Sundance. REID: Can you go through your mental facilities and kind of try to also talk about the bad portrayals of disability? JIM: It’s a tough one because…there are some extraordinary people who’ve done things, right, that are pretty mind-blowingly good. It all matters how you frame things. And if you’re giving somebody praise and putting them up on a pedestal for doing something that isn’t very extraordinary to the general disabled population, then that’s kinda saying, “Boy, it’s great he actually got his pants on today.” Working as a disabled person in the film industry and disability identity REID: Now, you and I have both done work in film. And my work mostly deals with disability. So, I’ve opened myself up to being pigeonholed. But you came in a different way, as someone who just relied on their talents to break into a career. Was that difficult? And as you’ve become one of the most prominent sound designers in the Bay, has your relationship with your disability identity changed? JIM: That’s a wonderful question. You know, [chuckles] so, when I was 15 or 14, actually, at Camp Jened, I met Judy Heumann. And Judy had been a camper at Camp Jened and then 3 became a counselor. And Judy had, I guess in the summer of ’71, she had just previously prevailed in a lawsuit against the New York City school district. ‘Cause they wouldn’t give her a teaching position because she had post-polio and used a wheelchair. And her involvement in doing that was really kind of a real kinda beacon for me, and she was one of the early people with Disabled In Action in New York. And so, I became active in high school. When I went off to college, I helped found the Disabled Students Union at UC San Diego and stayed politically active. But out of college, I got a job at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre as their resident sound designer. And I really had no time for anything but my job and you know, laundry. But I kinda drifted away from my activism because I really needed to do whatever I could to focus on my career. And I felt bad about that. I felt like I wasn’t really contributing the way that I wanted to. And interestingly enough, in one of our interviews we’ve done with Judy Heumann for Crip Camp, she said, “Oh, Jim, we all had our eyes on you.” It was kinda like saying, “You had a real job.” Not that the jobs at CIL or at WID or other places weren’t real jobs, but they saw me out there really as excelling in a business in which I was really just yeah, I was the only person in a wheelchair doing what I was doing, that I was aware of. REID: Right. I’m here with Jim LeBrecht. We’ll be right back. JIM: I’m here with Reid, and we’re gonna take a short break. [rock music break] Top 10 signs you’re watching a BASIC disability documentary REID: We have the top 10 signs you’re watching a BASIC disability documentary. If you see three of these in a flick, then that shit is BASIC: 10. The main character with a disability is interviewed less than his or her family or friends. 9. There is an Image of a cat scan that is used with voiceover explaining a specific condition. 8. There’s a scene where a person with a disability gets out of bed and brushes his or her teeth.