In this month’s installment (12/14) of SHOOT‘s “The Road To Oscar” series, among the directors covered was the documentary filmmaking duo of Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing who made this year’s Oscar shortlist for both long and short-form documentaries. The former inclusion was for Detropia while the short subject documentary in the running for the Academy Award is The Education of Mohammed Hussein. Grady and Ewing earned an Oscar nomination back in 2007 for the feature documentary Jesus Camp.
Their dual new shortlist accomplishments came shortly after Grady and Ewing–looking to more meaningfully diversify into commercials and branded content–signed with spot production house aWHITELABELproduct.
As chronicled in last week’s Road To Oscar feature, four other directors with commercialmaking affiliations made the shortlist for short subject documentaries: the team of Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill for Redemption; Kief Davidson for Open Heart; and Nadav Kurtz for Paraiso. Alpert and O’Neill are repped by Rascal Films for spots and branded content. Believe Media handles Davidson in the ad arena. And Kurtz continues to edit commercials at Cutters.
Meanwhile on the feature documentary front, two other directors with spotmaking ties also earned inclusion in this year’s Academy Award shortlist: Alex Gibney for Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, an investigation of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church; and Lee Hirsch for Bully. Gibney–who won the Best Feature Documentary Academy Award in 2008 for Taxi to the Dark Side–is represented by production house Chelsea for commercials and branded fare while Hirsch earlier this year signed with Moxie Pictures for ad projects.
The feature documentary shortlist has a total of 15 finalist films.
Bully
Hirsch joined the Moxie roster shortly before appearing for an In The Directors Chair session which capped the 2012 SHOOT Director/Producers Forum at the DGA Theatre in New York. During that conversation in May, he provided insights into Bully, which follows five youngsters and their families over the course of a school year, confronting bullying’s most tragic outcomes, including the stories of two families who have lost children to suicide and a mother who waits to learn the fate of her 14-year-old daughter, incarcerated after bringing a gun on her school bus to defend herself and possibly retaliate against bullying.
At the SHOOT event, Hirsch related that among the most gratifying results springing from Bully is the personal growth of Alex Libby, one of the bullied youngsters in the film. When the MPAA first declined to grant a PG-13 rating to Bully, Harvey Weinstein of The Weinstein Company, which was handling the release of the film, came up with the idea of having Alex appear before the MPAA board. Upon hearing the plan to have Alex testify before the MPAA, Hirsch recalled, “You don’t fight with Harvey. You will lose. You work with Harvey and you learn—and I did.” That learning experience was, said Hirsch, seeing Alex argue “powerfully before the MPAA board in their offices.” Afterwards, Alex and Weinstein walked out together. “Harvey was crying he was so proud of Alex.”
Still, by a one-vote margin, the MPAA board denied the PG-13 rating. But that led to a grass-roots movement championed by Katy Butler, who had just turned 17. She launched a petition on change.org that became a movement to get Bully the rating it deserved so it could be seen more easily by youngsters. “No matter how good you are in [film] marketing, you could never have dreamed this up,” said Hirsch who remembers first clicking on the petition and seeing 25,000 signatures. Each day, the total rose significantly—at last count there were some 523,000 signatures.
Hirsch noted that the petition was far more than just a collection of signatures. People wrote stories about why they were signing. “Some of it,” said Hirsch, “was about feeling a disconnect between the MPAA and American families—actually you [the MPAA] are not representing us, At the same time it didn’t hurt us that The Hunger Games was being released with a PG-13 rating where 20 teenagers are brutally murdered while looking hot to great music…MPAA ultimately caved and we got our PG-13 rating.”
A scene from Bully also underscored, quite subtly, the sense that Alex had turned a corner when on the last day of his original high school—the site of his being bullied and minimized so often—he asked a popular girl if he could sign her shirt. She said yes but adding even more to that minor yet important triumph was her request to sign his shirt. While her shirt was covered with signatures, Alex’s appeared to just have that one girl’s signature. But it’s a signature that spoke volumes, offering a special little moment akin to what Hirsch hopes to bring to his spotmaking and branded content endeavors.
Hirsch added during the SHOOT session that he’s long had spotmaking aspirations. He noted that Moxie was the only house he considered joining, based in large part on the high caliber of filmmakers on its roster. He cited in particular Errol Morris, the Academy Award-winning documentarian (The Fog Of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara) who’s enjoyed a successful spotmaking career with @radical.media and then Moxie. Since he was a teenager, Hirsch has been an admirer of Morris’ work. Hirsch added that he has roots at Moxie, having served there as a PA some 20 years ago.
Asked why documentary filmmakers seem to be increasing in relevance and prominence in the advertising sector, Hirsch observed that people are tired of B.S. and that brands are looking for directors who can deliver messages that ring true and connect with viewers.
While Hirsch will have to wait until January 10 to find out if Bully made the final Oscar nominations cut, he can rest assured that the documentary will be honored that same month. Bully is set to receive the Producers Guild of America (PGA) 2013 Stanley Kramer Award. Hirsch will accept the award with producer Cynthia Lowen at the 24th Annual Producers Guild Awards ceremony in Los Angeles on January 26.
The Stanley Kramer Award, established in 2002, honors a production, producer or individual whose achievement or contribution illuminates and raises public awareness of important social issues.
“Receiving this award is a tremendous honor,” said Hirsch. “Stanley Kramer’s films have left an indelible impact on our society and illuminate the extraordinary power of film to catalyze and compel action. I am incredibly thankful on behalf of our entire team, to the PGA for recognizing our work. I am deeply humbled.”
“Bully is a powerful and inspiring film that brought much-needed attention to an issue that just about everyone can relate to at one point or another in their life,” said 2013 PGA Awards chair Michael De Luca. “The social action campaign for Bully raised significant funding that allowed for over 250,000 students nationwide to take field trips within an educational framework to see the film. Bully sparked a movement, sparked a shift in consciousness and rallied people of all ages to stand up against intolerance and hate. It’s a film that I believe Stanley Kramer himself would applaud and we’re thrilled to recognize it with this honor.”
Shortlist rundown
In addition to Bully, Detropia and Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, this year’s field of 15 Oscar shortlisted feature documentaries consists of:
o Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, director Alison Klayman’s look at the work of Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei.
o Chasing Ice, director Jeff Orlowski’s film about global warming and its impact on the Arctic’s ice caps.
o Ethel, director Rory Kennedy’s love letter of a documentary to her mother Ethel Kennedy and late father Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
o 5 Broken Cameras, featuring footage shot by Emad Burnat, a Palestinian farmer, who offers his perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict and life in a West Bank village.
o The Gatekeeper, Dror Moreh’s case for a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
o The House I Live In, director Eugene Jarecki’s sobering look at America’s war on drugs and its racial and social inequalities.
o How to Survive a Plague, director David France’s documentary on the struggle of those with AIDS.
o The Imposter, director Bart Layton’s exploration of a lost boy presumably found years later only to ultimately be exposed as an imposter.
o The Invisible War, director Kirby Dick’s film uncovering the prevalence of rape within the military.
o Searching for Sugar Man, director Malik Bendjelloul’s documentary on singer-songwriter Sixto Diaz Rodriguez whose work helped fuel the battle against apartheid in South Africa.
o This Is Not a Film, from director Jafar Panahi who was sentenced to prison in Iran and banned from filmmaking for criticizing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
o The Waiting Room, director Peter Nick’s look at healthcare for the poor and uninsured as captured in a 24-hour period in the emergency room of Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif.
