Post by Angela on Apr 19, 2009 11:00:45 GMT -5
POSTED IN OUR OLD MESSAGE FORUM
Q: How did you get to tell the Lawson story? It looks like you just walked up into everyone’s house and chatted.
A: Matt had been pitching the idea of a Lawson movie to me for years, but I was just never all that interested in it. It seemed like a dark story, sad and tragic, but I just wasn't that interested. It turned out that a week or 2 before we filmed The Tontine in Jan '06, Esther Johnson and Pat Boyles were holding one of their library programs in Danbury. We had to be up there anyway preparing, so we got permission to go to the Danbury library with our crew and film it.
What a day that was! I think that room was only supposed to hold 75 people, and about 200 came out for the presentation. Cars lined up and down the road as far as you could see, crowds spilling out of the room and into the hall, and lots of family who came out. But it wasn't the spectacle of a big crowd that made me interested in the story. I really saw that day how much this meant to the family, to the community, how much emotion was in it even still today.
That's what got my attention, and made me want to learn more, and to do this movie, was when I started putting the people to the tragedy, seeing what it meant to people like Oakley and Bobby Wayne. And boy people were nice to me, because when I see those early tapes, I sure did not know what I was talking about when I was interviewing people after the presentation.
We heard so many people tell us we'd never get the story, that so many have tried and been stopped by the family and community. I think one reason people opened up to us is that we were interested in their story, and we weren't out to prove that a certain order of events is the truth, is exactly what happened. The other reason is that in almost all cases, Maria either found the people we interviewed or came with us. She makes friends with everyone so fast, we were never in danger of being mistaken for a couple of city boys tryin' to come in and take their story.
We definitely were trying to let the people in the community tell their stories, and not try and make up our minds about what "the truth" is. It's amazing how many different stories there are, and how the details change! But we definitely wanted to make the point to not get lost in all the details and lose the tragedy at the heart of it all.
We tried diligently all the way through this to respect every opinion voiced by anyone demonstrably affected by this story and to treat everyone equally. We didn't come here to solve the mystery, but to report on it in such a way as to re frame the debates surrounding it into ones that can prevent future tragedies.
Q: How did you get to tell the Lawson story? It looks like you just walked up into everyone’s house and chatted.
A: Matt had been pitching the idea of a Lawson movie to me for years, but I was just never all that interested in it. It seemed like a dark story, sad and tragic, but I just wasn't that interested. It turned out that a week or 2 before we filmed The Tontine in Jan '06, Esther Johnson and Pat Boyles were holding one of their library programs in Danbury. We had to be up there anyway preparing, so we got permission to go to the Danbury library with our crew and film it.
What a day that was! I think that room was only supposed to hold 75 people, and about 200 came out for the presentation. Cars lined up and down the road as far as you could see, crowds spilling out of the room and into the hall, and lots of family who came out. But it wasn't the spectacle of a big crowd that made me interested in the story. I really saw that day how much this meant to the family, to the community, how much emotion was in it even still today.
That's what got my attention, and made me want to learn more, and to do this movie, was when I started putting the people to the tragedy, seeing what it meant to people like Oakley and Bobby Wayne. And boy people were nice to me, because when I see those early tapes, I sure did not know what I was talking about when I was interviewing people after the presentation.
We heard so many people tell us we'd never get the story, that so many have tried and been stopped by the family and community. I think one reason people opened up to us is that we were interested in their story, and we weren't out to prove that a certain order of events is the truth, is exactly what happened. The other reason is that in almost all cases, Maria either found the people we interviewed or came with us. She makes friends with everyone so fast, we were never in danger of being mistaken for a couple of city boys tryin' to come in and take their story.
We definitely were trying to let the people in the community tell their stories, and not try and make up our minds about what "the truth" is. It's amazing how many different stories there are, and how the details change! But we definitely wanted to make the point to not get lost in all the details and lose the tragedy at the heart of it all.
We tried diligently all the way through this to respect every opinion voiced by anyone demonstrably affected by this story and to treat everyone equally. We didn't come here to solve the mystery, but to report on it in such a way as to re frame the debates surrounding it into ones that can prevent future tragedies.
