In last month’s SHOOT Chat Room interview (3/23) with Peter Nicholson, the recently named partner/chief creative officer at Deutsch New York, he alluded to some in-house filmmaking talent that the agency could tap into for certain projects, particularly in the branded entertainment space. At the time Nicholson was reluctant to identify any staffers; however he noted that one has a film slated to debut at the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs from April 25-May 6.
Now that artisan is no longer anonymous. The Tribeca film is Lillie & Leander: A Legacy of Violence, which was directed, edited and co-produced by Jeffrey Morgan, whose day job is serving as a producer at Deutsch. During his vacation and spare time, he would sojourn to northwest Florida where over the course of the past two-plus years he shot some 170 hours of footage, which was culled down to the nearly hour-and-a-half documentary which uncovers a family secret of racially motivated mass murders in the early 1900s.
Morgan has been at Deutsch for eight years, moving up the ranks from an assistant at the shop’s in-house edit facility, Mr. Editorial, then becoming an editor there and later transitioning to producer after he exhibited his filmmaking prowess at the agency’s annual talent competition. He won that competition three years in a row for short films he directed and co-wrote–Eclipsed followed by Windex and Paper Jam.
No stranger to filmmaking, Morgan directed assorted shorts over the years prior to joining Deutsch, dating back to his high school days. He graduated from the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television Production at NYU in ’99, which was the year he came aboard Deutsch.
NYU not only provided him with a formal filmmaking education but his ties there helped land him Lillie & Leander. An NYU professor who taught Morgan suggested him to Alice Brewton Hurwitz, who worked as coordinator of academic support services at NYU Film School and was looking for an editor back in ’02.
“I never knew Alice when I went to NYU–I only knew of her,” recalled Morgan. “I remember her office but I never walked in there. She only dealt with the problem kids. I was too good.”
But hooking up with Hurwitz proved to be quite good for Morgan as she had some footage requiring an editor. For $10 an hour, he took on the gig, cutting together a narrative from home video she had shot while researching a homicide that took place in her family generations ago.
Hurwitz began to delve deeper into her ancestors upon hearing some disturbing news. For many years she had known of the murder of her great aunt Lillie by an African-American man named Leander in 1908. The accused assailant was lynched and Hurwitz thought that was the end of the story. However, some 30 years after she first found out about her great aunt’s death, Hurwitz learned that the lynching was just the beginning of a gruesome crime wave. According to one of Hurwitz’s elderly relatives, the men in the victim’s family in the early 1900s killed all African American men who walked along the road outside the family’s house. It’s believed this went on for more than 20 years.
Compelled to direct
“It’s a compelling story,” said Morgan. “I never saw myself directing a documentary in a million years. Narrative has been my whole life. But this story is more dramatic, has more twists and turns than any scripted narrative.”
Hurwitz, producer of Lillie & Leander, expressed her hope that the film “will start the healing process for not only the families who lost loved ones to senseless violence during this time, but for those of us who inherited racial prejudices from our ancestors.”
So after their preliminary collaboration, Hurwitz brought Morgan on as director of the planned film in ’04. “I haven’t had a vacation since then,” he related. Working on a shoestring budget, Morgan said that he and Hurwitz “whipped out their credit cards to give it a go,” calling in favors and tapping into some equipment and other filmmaking resources to which they had access. Hurwitz was able to get a formal investigation going as well through a contact who knew assistant state attorney Russ Edgar.
The documentary follows Hurwitz as she uncovers more of the truth, with the assistant state attorney’s office in Pensacola searching to find human remains buried at the turn of the 20th century. In 2005 and ’06, nearly 100 volunteers participated in the search for these remains. It turned out that the search was conducted in the wrong geographic area.
Helping to keep the documentary’s production going from a funding standpoint was Morgan being selected among a group of filmmakers for the Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access Connects Program, which supports minority artists. (Morgan is one-quarter Native American and one-quarter Mexican.) Per the program, Morgan had numerous pitch sessions at the ’05 Tribeca Film Festival with different people in the film industry, including representatives of Court TV, which provided Lillie & Leander with some development funds. While that financing didn’t continue once Court TV was acquired by another company, the initial infusion of capital was of significant help. The film also won The Roy W. Dean New York City Film Grant in ’06 and was awarded goods and services that helped in production and post.
However, as new information began to surface regarding the location of the victims’ corpses, support for the investigation dwindled. In May ’06 the Florida Department of Law Enforcement decided that no more man hours would be devoted to this case in that there were more recent crimes to pursue. As Hurwitz struggled with strained family relationships, she continued to pursue the truth, moving the story closer to a resolution.
“Why is this story relevant? Some say it is over and done with and there’s no need to dig up the past,” said Morgan. “I found it remarkable that these old stores of violence were, even today, commonly known and repeated in both the black and white communities and affected how both groups related to one another….There were a lot of memories of fear and some of guilt.
“It is my hope that this film will honor and acknowledge the countless African Americans who were murdered all over the South during the Jim Crow era, and will start an honest and open dialogue about a period of history in our country that has been largely ignored and keep hidden for much too long. These scars of the past are still visible.”
While Lillie & Leander marks his feature debut, Morgan has an extensive filmography, beyond the alluded to shorts he directed. He also ranked among the top 10 percent of screenwriters in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences prestigious Nicholl Fellowships in ’04 and earned a spot in the top 250 directors in the Project Greenlight competition for two consecutive years. Morgan additionally has some spec commercials under his directorial belt, and is writing a feature, Apache Way.
At Deutsch he has produced commercials for such clients as Ikea and Westin Hotels. For Westin, Morgan agency produced “Breathe,” a live-action/animation spot directed by the team Impactist of New York animation studio Hornet.
“Breathe” debuted in January ’06 and marked Morgan’s first project as an agency producer.
He’s looking forward to continuing to produce spots for Deutsch and hopes to have the chance to get involved in longer form branded content fare as Nicholson’s secret filmmaking weapon.
The experience on Lillie & Leander, observed Morgan, now enables him to bring more to the party at Deutsch. “Narrative projects that have a script seem much easier and more doable to me now after working on this documentary,” he said. “I’ve become a stronger storyteller.”
Lillie & Leander: A Legacy of Violence will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 27. Additional screenings are scheduled for May 2, 3 and 6.
