Family Squared

Probably a few minutes after I wrote the previous post everything went haywire.  I won't get in to details, but some of my family members are starting to question the tone of the film. They're wrong in what they've heard, but their anger is sincere.  Lawyers were mentioned, someone hung up on me and I hung up on someone else.  People are really, really mad because they think this film will contain content that it simply will not.

It's midnight.  I want to write.  I need to write.  But I am exhausted.

I often try to remind myself why I started this in the first place.  Nothing was promised to me, just the opportunity to go on a journey in search of Booker Wright.  The filmmakers would use their resources and their time and influence to help me recreate a man who's been dead for 38 years.  That was the promise.  I, and my family, climbed on board.  Sometimes it's as if the feelings of excitement that we all had at the beginning of this journey are at the end of a rope that just never seems to end.  I pull and pull but all that I get is more rope.  The rope is coarse and thick, it cuts my hands.  I keep thinking back through the countless conversations, the interviews, the research, the people I've met.  How did we get from there to here?

Having people root around in your life, in your private memories, stirring up things and making remarks and comments about your life and your past is something else.  I am looking for the right word.  Is it painful?  Yes.  Does it produce a feeling of being out of control?  Yes.  Does it make me want to spend all day explaining and excusing every flaw, every misstep that my family members have made?  Yes.  Does it make me want to listen to slow, sad Pearl Jam songs in the dark?  Yes.

It's so easy to get focused on the discomfort of the journey.  I am holding to a hope with a death grip.  It's the hope of a completed film that makes my family members smile.  The ones who aren't speaking to me right now.  The ones who won't return my calls.  The ones who call me a liar.  The ones who clearly no longer trust me.  I have stated  my case as best I can.  I have gone to bat for David and Raymond.  Now, I think I need some room to breathe.

Every time I talk to certain family members they treat me like I'm trying to pull one over on them.  The truth is that I don't completely understand all of the choices the filmmakers are making.  Not because they haven't tried to explain them to me, but because I'm too close to the situation to see anything objectively.

There's this great movie that my oldest son loves about a little boy who's orphaned as a child and then grows up to be a wonderful scientist and inventor.  He changes the world.  The movie ends with one of Walt Disney's mottoes, "Keep moving forward."

That's my goal.  The second Greenwood trip is coming up soon.  As much as I'd like to bury my head in a hole and feel sorry for myself because everyone's mad at me, I can't.  I need to make this time extra meaningful and special for my kids because they're really going to miss me when I'm away.  And I need to gear up for the inevitable emotional drain that the upcoming trip will certainly be.

I hope that moving forward will prove to be the right move, because right now, it's the only one I've got.

Family

Family has been the recurring theme for my week.  On Monday I had a conversation with Raymond DeFelitta about why I was so desperate to find Booker Wright in the first place.  He asked me to write a piece that would pull together how and why this journey began for me and where I am with the journey today.  The idea is to be able to use some of these pieces in voice over in the film to accurately and effectively portray my journey from beginning to end.  All week I've been mulling over what I need to write.  Yesterday I spent a couple of hours writing out my past.  I wrote about how and why I felt so lost in my family.  Much of it probably won't be relevant to the film.  It may or may not be useful for Ray to completely understand the genesis of my deep, lifelong loneliness, but it's there anyway.

Writing it all out was actually a little frightening.  In the life I have today I am somewhat together.  I rarely overreact, I can diffuse angry situations, I try to let my emotions settle before making important decisions, and I am somewhat steady. I'm very different from the little girl who grew up in the house on Tambor Road.  I love her, I would like to reach back and embrace her, but I would never, ever again want to be her.  She was so lost.  I'm not exactly sure how I was able to peel her away and grow into someone else.  It's the not knowing that frightens me.

What if I am somehow thrust back into that murky darkness?  I didn't leave a trail of breadcrumbs for myself.  There was no visible path to safety.  The only logical answer is that I made it out by the grace of God.  He lead me with chords of human kindness and he bound me with ties of love.  There were people along the trail of my past who literally saved my life without even knowing it.  They helped deliver to me the vital emotional nutrients that carried me out of the pain.  For brief moments in time, each of them were a member of the family of my heart.

On my first night in Greenwood with the film crew we did a Q&A with whites and blacks about race relations in their town.  There was a woman there who kept telling me that she knew my grandfather and that she really wanted to speak with me.  She left early so I didn't get to talk to her, but the production team got her phone number.  On my last night in Greenwood she spoke on the phone with David, the producer.  She mentioned, with inaccurate details, an extremely painful and ugly family secret that still brings great pain and humiliation to someone I dearly love.   She also went on to make some very strong accusations about Booker Wright.

The filmmakers plan to interview her on this next trip.

The producer keeps telling me that we're going on a fishing expedition.  We need to record (film) as much as we can so that when they get into the editing room they can make the movie they want to make.  They don't want to find themselves in the middle of editing a scene when they realize that they need one more soundbite to tell the story that evolved in front of them.  I have to say that I get it, but I just don't like it.  I hate that they want to interview people who, 38 years after he was murdered, are happy to tear down my grandfather.

There's another piece to this week's drama.  Someone else in my family did something terrible and criminal.  It's one of the worst things that any human being can do to another one. These acts have nothing to do with Booker Wright.  However, these acts did lead to the family member interacting in a strange and provocative way with Booker towards the end of his life.  I know this makes very little sense.  My mouth is covered with a family-made gag and my hands are tied neatly and lovingly behind my back.  Sorry, reader, I'm not allowed to let you in.

As you've probably guessed, the filmmakers want to explore and touch upon this piece of my family's history as well.  From coast to coast, my family is freaking out.

One of my family members is the sister of the man who committed the terrible criminal acts.  I get the impression that no one in her life, no one she interacts with on a daily basis, knows that she has a close blood relative who is capable of what her brother did all those years ago.  It's understandable why she wouldn't want to go on camera and talk about it today.

One of my aunts read me the riot act last night.  She no longer wants to be involved in the project.  If the film is meant to honor Booker why are we mentioning anything bad.  She believes that if the film acknowledges any of his shortcomings that those will be the only things people remember.  I could go on and on about how I tried to help her see this differently, but even remembering it exhausts me.

I honestly don't know what to do.  I'm in the middle and I feel conflicted.  Raymond and David are on one page while my family is on another.  My family actually wants creative control over what makes it into the film, but they don't understand filmmaking or how to craft a compelling story.  They can't wrap their minds around the possibility that Booker can still shine even if his shortcomings are acknowledged.  They feel out of control.  So do I.

All that I have to hold on to is my trust in Raymond and David.  Luckily, I am convinced that Booker will shine once all is said and done.  I'm quite confident that when my family sees the finished film that they'll understand the filmmakers methods and will feel proud of the product.  I just have to get them to the finish line.  

Going Back

The filmmakers want photographs of me and images of our family from my childhood years.  For the last several weeks I've been collecting photos from aunts, uncles, and my parents.  Looking at them brings back a great flood of memories that I really don't want in my head.

In real life I'm a terrible swimmer.  If I'm in a lap pool swimming next to the wall and wearing a nose guard and flippers there's a 10% chance that I'll make it all the way across.  But in my soul I'm an expert swimmer.  I swim away from all the reasons I ever needed to find Booker Wright.  I swim hard against the current, away from the raging waterfall. I'm so good at this.  I always, always make it safely back to land.

I have a sense of foreboding about this second Greenwood trip.  I thought the emotions from the first trip were behind me.  I thought I'd come to a new perspective about this work and that I was ready for the next chapter.  But I don't feel any of those things.  Instead of swimming away from waterfall, it feels as though I'm swimming right into it.

I'm Blocked

I've promised family and friends that I'll send them a link to this blog.  Every time someone asks me where the link is I tell them that there are historical posts missing that need to be there in order for the blog to make sense.  What are those posts?  I haven't posted about what actually happened when I was making the film.  I haven't said..."this morning we went here, we interviewed so and so, etc."

Here's the deal, I don't know if I can write those posts.  Some of them are partially written and I have some sparse notes from those days.  But honestly, they're a weird fog to me.  Usually if I can't face something I write my way through it.  This is me hoping that I can deliver the "historical posts" that this blog needs by being honest with myself about why I can't write them in the first place.

I loved and I hated making this movie.  It made me think a lot about my life and the choices I've made with it.  Just a little background.  We stayed at this place called Tallahatchie Flats.  The Flats are basically (don't quote me on this) reclaimed slave shacks that have been outfitted with toilets and minimal air conditioning.  The filmmakers rented out all except for one Flat, which was empty for most of our stay.  The Flats are in the middle of nowhere.  When you look out from the porch you see miles and miles of green.  Behind the Flats there's a lake, on the other side of which are a gathering of Mississippi's amazingly tall, sheltering trees.

So, we were in a bubble.

Making this film was like going to grown up summer camp.  I went there with a plan to remember who I am, to hold on to my convictions, and to steal moments alone so that I could get centered and recharge.  None of that happened.  Every time I think back about my time there I want to cringe.

I love being in control.  At home I handle all the finances, plan the vacations, our retirement, home school my kids, coordinate co-ops, manage a duplex, cook almost every meal from scratch, and lead a ministry at my church.  I can get things done and I can take care of myself.  Or so I thought.

When I was in Mississippi I felt very out of control.  I was on camera a lot, probably more than I'd anticipated.  I had real, emotion filled moments on camera.  I'd try to forget the camera was there, but sometimes I just couldn't. I felt uncomfortable having those raw moments recorded.  I was afraid that I would say something that was true in the heat of the moment, but that I would've articulated differently after some contemplation.

Another thing that I felt out of control about was the people.  I spent way too much time with strangers.  I shared way too many thoughts with strangers.  I should've been journaling more, calling home more.  Whenever I think about the people involved with the film I feel overexposed, misunderstood and like I want to run and hide.  If I never see them again and never see this film, I think I'd be just fine.  Actually, I know I'd be fine.  I keep hoping that they run out of money and aren't able to finish....maybe I can pretend this whole thing never happened.

I know it sounds odd.  Doesn't everybody want to make a movie?  No, everyone doesn't want to make a movie.  And if anyone asks you if you want to make one then you run and hide under a rock.  Pretend to have Terrets Syndrome, but for the love of all that's good and pure, do not sign a deal memo, do not pass go, and do not get on that plane.

I wish I'd kept my butt at home.  I feel like I was so naive.

Have I expunged it all?  Can I write those posts?  I don't know...I'll find out later, first I need to make spaghetti and meatballs from scratch.  Because that's something that I can do.