In the Life: Interview with Arthur Dong [outtakes]

so arthur um tell me briefly what is family fundamentals about well family fundamentals basically is my exploration and my examination of a passionate subject that i've been exploring and that is the separation of church and state specifically i use families to explore that i use these families as microcosms to look at the larger debates over homosexuality i i chose to make family fundamentals by um in terms of looking at specific families as a way to really explore larger issues and debates over homosexuality in this country and each one of them represents sort of a different look at the debate one family is a political family one family is involved in reparative therapy and a third family has as one of the parents a leader of a church and i felt that these are the different arenas that this debate plays out in amongst other arenas but these specific arenas i was most interested in you know with the case of brian bennett his case was his story is pretty well known back in 97 when he first came out being the uh aid of bob dornan and i was always fascinated about well i want to what was that what that was like you know how did they get along but i was always very careful in the research for this story to make sure that i just didn't approach people you know i i made sure because with with as you know some in some cases once they say no is no and i didn't want that to happen so i asked rich taffel from the log cabin republicans group to introduce me to brian and through that introduction brian was receptive to me just in approaching him but with ryan you know he was very smart you know i think because of his training he had good training from bob dornan he knows what the media can or cannot do and he wanted to see every one of my films before he agreed to do this so that's how i found brian the guy who grew up mormon brett yeah how did you find brett well brett i met actually in a social setting he was um you know he he was ousted from the military because of being gay um and he was at the screening actually of coming out of fire um and so we knew each other from from there and he just casually asked me what i was working on and i said well i explained to him and he says well you know my father's a mormon which you know and and that conflict fit exactly into one of the story profiles that i wanted to focus on which is the family a family that had a church leader and a gay son now imagine when you go to your subjects you know when it's brett or brian susan um they might they might also be hesitant to actually be the subject of the document yeah since you did have them on and you've gone through the process and i imagine some of them have seen the final work why do you think they ultimately decided they wanted to participate or what do you think their what did they finally come to understand that you know what was the reason for them to actually be part of your film well their participation you know it's complicated i think um on one level i think it was a way for them to communicate it was a way for them to reach out to their parents because before then they weren't able to it was a way for them to talk about this very heated topic called homosexuality that you know for them in the past once it was brought up it would end up in shouting matches or unspoken words and total denial so this was a way for them to say this is what i feel listen i think on another hand all the people that that i eventually had in the film they're very politically aware and and passionate about the issues that i'm passionate about and i think they wanted to to further what they felt was their point of view and to have people understand that this is the conflict and this is a problem and we need to do something about it tell me particularly what was challenging in brett's situation and brett's well you know brett um you know the mormon culture is very insular they families are very tight-knit and you know they've the community itself has loosened up in the past decades but before they were even more pers close-knit because of the persecution that they experienced and um uh when when we approached him to participate in this film they actually said yes we were both surprised and uh we asked him three times in fact to make sure you know what it means to say yes you need to sign a release and let us follow you with a camera and they say oh yeah we understand and we arrived in salt lake city to start shooting and i started shooting and when it got down to sitting down with them to sign a release well they actually said well we're not sure and it was like a shock to me because um they had said yes they promised and i've never had that happen to me before and the challenge would was then well what do i do with the story what was funny was they allowed me to keep on shooting they never said no they always said we we have to pray on this we have to pray about it and consult you know and talk about it with ourselves so they never said no so they still allowed me to shoot and i came back with some really great stuff some really intimate and loving moments between this family that i was having this conflict and that's what i was trying to show that you know it's not black and white it's very complicated just a lot of gray areas in this situation so i came back and started cutting it together and [Music] anticipating that they wouldn't sign but was always hopeful and it was a challenge to me as a filmmaker to include their point of view in in a three-dimensional manner but not actually have them and and i actually enjoyed that challenge creatively and i felt i i think i met it up to a certain point uh would have been a different film with their 100 participation but i feel that um i honored them as well uh in terms of their point of view and acknowledged their point of view in the final cut yeah i did with that i like what you did with you know as much as you could show yeah um tell me briefly about how you think the fact that some of these parents believe that their children choose to be homosexual like do you think that it still allows them to have some kind of connection with their kids well i think um you know i'll never really know that their their their true feelings inside their hearts because that's very personal and um if even they know themselves but i i believe that there is love there and i believe that um the parent-child relationship is there on a certain level and you can't disconnect that no matter how much you disagree um i think it it's oftentimes a way for parents to deal with their child's homosexuality by saying it's a learned behavior because they can say well then if it's learned it can be fixed you know and i know that the religious right uses that notion politically as a way to counter the call for gay civil rights because they're saying well if it's a learned behavior well why should we give you special rights for learned behavior so it's a strategy that the religious right uses and pushes to its membership which includes the parents that i have in this film so how much of it is brainwashing on their end in terms of what they've learned from their religious leaders i'm not sure how much of it is because they truly believe that their kids have chosen or have learned this homosexuality as a type of lifestyle or behavior i think it could be a mix of all that and it's very complicated and it's not it's not easy to persecute one side or the you know what i other really interesting in your film is you really get to you get to see your subjects really grappling with this this tension within them because you know especially with the parents they love their kids yeah their their religion really tells them to think a certain way um can you tell me specifically in the case of susan kathleen a little bit about that tension you know and and what you saw uh you know susan says that she'll always love kathleen and um you know tell me a little bit about their uh relationship with each other and susan's still wanting to be accepted yeah i think susan and kathleen you know you have this gosh decades relationship you know pulling back and forth and um and with their story i try to touch a little bit upon the their past in terms of detentions actually before the homosexuality issue came up you know that there is a mother and daughter tension here going on there is a mother who uh sees her daughter in a certain kind of way you know there's the whole molestation aspect of their story in terms of susan's stepfather abusing her sexually there's the violence in the home where susan explains that it was a violent home and the stepfather beat her mother constantly and these are issues to be considered as well in their their relationship and it's not just the homosexuality aspect however that homosexuality issue is one that's easy to point at you know it's it's an it's a tangible issue that someone like kathleen can hold on to and say this is the problem this is what we need to fix as opposed to looking underneath the layers of their lives and and i think that reflects on how we how homosexuality is used politically in this country is that here it is this issue that we can say is immoral that we can use as a fundraiser tool in the fundamentalist community we know that that's done it's used to incite and to get people riled up so that they will join and and pay the dollars to support a jury far well for example we know this this is not um this is fact um so you know what i'm trying to explore in this film is also what is the real problem here you know is it homosexuality or are we looking at social conditioning are we looking at politics are we looking at religious education or the media and it's all kind of mixed in for me about um we talk about religion and particularly um two of your subjects brett and brian do you think um if not for those two do you think some of them still yearn to be accepted by the faith that they grew up in oh yeah i i just don't think you know what's interesting about the stories in family fundamentals is in terms of the gay and lesbian characters in the film is that yes they um they've maintained their religious values they've just learned to adjust it accordingly they've learned to grow out of the oppressive part of it they've learned to come out of it as whole human beings which i find very inspiring despite what they've been taught and brainwashed to think for gender for decades when they were learning as a child it's a huge battle i don't come from from a religious background but i did have to struggle with the whole question of sexuality and the oppressive um parts of that explore exploration but to add on a religious aspect another layer to the oppression is that that's double trouble it's like how difficult can that be very difficult and they came out of it as whole human beings which is really terrific i'm not sure lisa will end up using a clip of when brian talks about his um finding out that the church the catholic church or the christian church yeah catholic church once did attitudes about gay people can you tell me a little bit about set up about that yeah we're shooting that what you were asking him you know what's wonderful about this project which was very liberating for me was i was a one-man band i i got hold of one of these small digital cameras i did sound myself i shot it myself and what that gave me was the freedom to just be with my subjects in any setting that i felt was right or shootable or maybe not and i just shot anyway that particular scene was pretty much an accident we had spent the whole evening watching old home movies that brian gave to me and we invited him over to my office to look at the movies to help me identify some of the characters and i use some of the clips the home movies in the film itself i'm having pizza and beer and and that day i also received some footage from the cnn archives and um i said oh do you want to see it so we just walked over to my editing room and i put it on for him i saw do you mind me video you know videoing you watching the footage i didn't really think about it you know i said well this might be interesting to use later i don't know of course the footage that i showed him was heart-wrenching because it reminded him of a very important part of his life when he realized that yes i can be catholic and homosexual yes there is a level of oppression that i didn't know about and that i could come out of this somehow and it was a very important moment and it's his coming out process and there was flashing before him at that moment you know replaying and and i was shooting it on video you know because i had this little camera and he he the clip finished and he just turned around and started talking about it and it was a very emotional time for him back then and still is and for me as a filmmaker um with this liberating process of being a one-man band kind of production i think i just really got some of the most emotional moments in any of my films just by using this process in a lot of documentaries filmmakers make use of letters to people tell me a bit about how you use letters and family fundamentals to help your subjects communicate with each other well the um with brett's story his parents had although they had agreed to participate in the film they rescinded their cooperation and i was stuck with well what do i do with this story because i really did indeed want to explore both sides of the story and explore their points of view and so my challenge was how do i do this without them luckily brett gave me permission to read and then use the letters that he received from his parents hundreds of letters which were you know ranged from being very loving to very concerned and suggestive of what he can do to fix himself in terms of his sexual orientation um and i looked through them and i said these this is their voice you know and uh so i used them as their character and i was very careful in choosing that for me what was a balance of emotions from really a heart-wrenching um sense of missing the child you know losing that connection with one's child to uh to preaching to him saying you must change and and you must go through these processes and you must go to confession and you must come out of this and you will you know and and seek the eternal life that we as mormons uh wish for and work for here on earth i feel a sense of difference in this documentary as opposed to the other documentaries you produced because of you're a one-man person oh yeah yeah it's um i mean i i think i think going at it without a crew making a film without a crew and just with you and the camera only works for certain kind of films at least that's what i think i'm not sure i haven't done it beyond this one project but i felt unencumbered i didn't have to worry about my camera guy or a sound person or my pa it was just uh it was almost like a conversation really or just hanging out with somebody and [Music] without anybody else around us it was it's really wonderful i mean it was i want to do it again so yeah it changed my approach to the film the footage that i got back really informed how i was going to put the film together inform what kind of elements i was going to use like music you know in archival footage it really helped shape the entire piece uh the actual shooting of it and yeah i'll do it again do you find yourself sometimes separating yourself from your subjects since you were spending so much time with them and you were starting to get more you know being intimate with them um how how were you able to be sort of an objective a filmmaker how what was your strategies to do that as a filmmaker do you want to answer now oh okay yeah okay well i think with especially with my my last film licensed to kill which was about killers a gay man and this current film you know i had to maintain a certain amount of separation you know i had to say i'm a journalist i'm here to get the story but i had to also be there to provide a safe space for the people to be open and to be comfortable in speaking about some very personal matters that i wanted to explore with them but i always remember i never forgot that i am the filmmaker and i'm here to do a job you know my my job here is ultimately to get stuff for the editing room so i can put a film together you know i never forget that but i think i've been around for a long time and i've been doing this for a while that that whole part of me doing a job here as a journalist as a director as a writer it's kind of it's already it's ingrained in me it's a part of me anyways i i don't find myself actually having to consciously think of it anymore because it's just a part of what i do so really what i'm more concerned with is is providing that safe space so that the subject and i can communicate and really go deeply into matters that they may not necessarily do if i wasn't around and hopefully you know that that safe space is is laid out for them in a way that they feel they can walk down that path with me and that's what i'm more concerned with um and in keeping the distance that's already a given i think that's just a natural part of me anyway now that i don't i don't think about it and i have to trust my gut feelings i mean and i've that's the thing i've had to learn is to trust my instincts and go with the gut feelings and say this is right and just do it because it's right great thanks getting back to you are starting to talk about reparative thinking pretty widespread yeah i think um for me when i when i delve into a film uh it has to resonate in larger social issues and political issues although i always i often deal with these issues by looking at personal stories and see how it plays out in personal private lives for this film a large part of what i wanted to explore was the whole notion of reparative therapy especially how the religious right uses as a political tool um we hear about their we hear often from the religious right their point of view that homosexuality is something you can fix therefore you aren't allowed special rights you know why should we give you special rights when there's something you can uh figure out in in psychology or with drugs or with shock treatment and in in in this regard the whole notion of change of being able to change from homosexual to heterosexual is very widespread in many different communities and as it shows in all three of the stories in family fundamentals we have a woman kathleen bremner who proposes reparative therapy as a way to fix the family situation that she deals with in the film with her spatula ministries group her parents support group we have bob dornan a congressman who on the senate floor proposes that this is not a a natural phenomenon this is um is a behavior pattern that must be eliminated and with brett's family his mormon family his father being a bishop of the ward that he lives in you know proposes solutions that are are mandated by church that are organized by organized by his church with therapy i mean it's it's it's for them it's a natural solution reparative therapy of course when i first set out on this project i knew that my goal of including people who i don't agree with the more conservative people with certain values and beliefs about homosexuality i figured they wouldn't want to talk to me why would they if they look up my name in the internet they'll find out what kind of films i make and basically pretty liberal in terms of point of view so to circumvent that from happening from the outset i put together a panel of advisors that included conservative advisors included people that they would recognize names that they would recognize or organizations that they would recognize to let them see that i'm doing my homework that i'm putting myself on guard that i'm not out there there to secure them that i wasn't out to demonize them that i was really sincerely hopeful to explore this issue from their point of view as well but reminding them that i was going to talk to the kids too and that this was a film that i believe was very unique um and hopefully they will recognize that fact and i think the people i approached who eventually agreed to be in the film are thoughtful people you know they are concerned and they do want things to be better and we do share common goals of happiness and families that are close and loving uh it's just they have different ways of seeing that but bottom line is we all want the same thing in regards to family and closeness it's just how do you accomplish that with homosexuality being thrown into the ring so they i think they agreed to be a part of this film because they wanted to explore that question too is it possible you know is it possible for us to find common ground is it possible for us to to get along despite vast differences in principles and they care a lot about the family i believe that and that's why part of that's partly why i think they agree to be a part of this project because they want to contribute to possibly finding some way to to alleviate the pain you know to soften some of the conflict you know so that their families can come together tell me a little bit about your intended audience for this film how that all plays into you know who you want to actually see the film and what what is it what are your hopes for your your audiences to walk away from well from the beginning i i i really wanted to focus on two audiences one is a conservative audience that may not necessarily watch a program about homosexuality unless it will it was like something like the gay agenda the 20-minute short that the religious sweat produced some decade or two ago that really showed only one part of the gay community and chose images that they knew that would incite their followers into disagreement over the issue and one would argue that they also perpetuated a lot of myths that weren't true about our community in that video the gay agenda and this is what this target audience that i want to reach watches and when they want to watch something about homosexuality these are the images that they they adhere to that they remember that they point to and say this is the gay community this is what we're against uh not that that's not a part of our community but it was done in a way that was insightful i wanted to reach this audience with a different point of view i wanted to in many ways make it palatable for them and um so i which is a large part of my whole production in going back and forth with my advisors my conservative advisors asking them what would your people say how would they react to this film what can i adjust here maintaining my integrity as a filmmaker but what can i adjust to make it just a little easier for them to watch this film and learn something about a community that they've been so fearful of that they've been holding such disdain you know and and i specifically chose families to focus on because how more universal can you be than with family and there's no question that we all have families and want families regardless of our backgrounds uh this is the common thread that i wanted to push forward with this film about a topic that they may not necessarily want to talk about or if they're going to talk about it in negative terms so a main part of my target audience is that conservative audience and i think it's working you know i think it's working they're certainly they're gonna i've made sure that their values are reflected in the film that their beliefs are reflected in the film and acknowledged and respectful manner but at the same time i'm also showing them the pain that their beliefs cause the conflict that their beliefs cause in their families you know and they can't deny that but what's also very important for me is for this film to go out to the gay community i think there's no argument that things are getting better uh things have gotten better and things will progress but there's sometimes a level of complacency in our community when things are good that we get kind of settled in and and and then oftentimes we forget that there's this very strong fundamentalist block in our country that operates very efficiently and has gotten stronger because we have gotten stronger it's almost like a parallel movement as we progress so do they every time we win a bill in congress or get domestic partnerships in this city they are inspired to work even harder to oppose that and we have to recognize this and um and i want the gay community not to forget that the fundamentalist block is very much alive and working whether it's in a small community like in urdu utah or in congress like with people congressmen like bob dornan or in between like kathleen bremner holding her conferences locally for her community to push forward and exercise their beliefs we need to remember that they're alive and well because otherwise they're going to win i'm well am i reaching my gate honest i'm not sure i am completely i want to reach the gay audience that would rather just see a film that's about how great gay life is about how many gay pride parades we can go to about how many circuit parties we can go to about only the good parts of our advancement those are all very necessary because i think we all need to be inspired to move on and fight but sometimes there's a sense of denial that there's still a lot of work to be done you know it's as simple as going to vote you know this fundamentalist block is so powerful because they go vote and we know our community sometimes just throws their hands up in the air and say oh why bother you know i can't do anything about this that's why certain bills get passed that deny us certain rights in this country because we don't exercise our power as citizens there's no reason why we shouldn't get certain bills passed to our advantage to help us with our civil cause but it's not happening all the time sometimes but not all the time we're losing more battles than we're winning then we should be winning and there's a reason for that because there's a level of complacency in our community that has set in because all we want are the happy stories you know we'll put those in the center pieces we'll put this on open tonight and closing night you know whereas films like mine get kind of like placed in the secondary slots you know i'm not i am complaining i'm not complaining that that happens but i'm complaining that to focus that kind of focus is not in line with the complacency you know if we choose to focus on boy toy films as the opening night feature and that's the one we celebrate well that's what the community thinks we should be celebrating whereas if we if we focus on a film that's serious and and insightful and and challenging challenging the status quo of not only the dominant culture but our own culture then people think well that's important too you know it's a matter of emphasis and and the festivals are playing along with this complacency because the audience wants it yeah you know as opposed to fighting that trend you know we often say in in for tv producers in discussions and especially in terms of audience and what they want you know producers say well that's what our audience wants you know but then often producers or critics of media and television programming say yeah but if that's all you feed them that's all they're gonna want if you don't challenge them how do they know to be challenged you know so now i think we're and look at the coverage of our magazines right i mean that's enough said how many times are we gonna be inspired by melissa etheridge and and ellen degeneres yes they're inspiring no no question about that but is that all you know there's a lot more um winding down here uh i'm going to ask you to think of some some things that um that stand out most in your mind one in terms of your audience you've been traveling to film festivals is there any has there been a person that struck you the most come up to you and said something about watching family fundamentals well i think back back a couple years ago actually before i finished this film it was at the university of wyoming in laramie i was invited there to show license to kill after the death of matthew shepard and it was a pact screening not only of uh students from the gay community but also fundamentalists came to see the screening and i remember one question was what i was i working on next and i explained to them that i'm thinking of this film which is now family fundamentals and a woman came up to me afterwards and she said i'm a fundamentalist i have a gay son and it was devastating but i've learned to accept him but my family doesn't we've been ostracized by my family and extended family and she started crying she goes this is horrible and i said well what's the answer to this she says the answer is love you know we just have to love one another as we're taught to and i kind of thought oh yeah you know is it that simple you know kathleen bremner loves her daughter and her family so it's not that simple i think you know we we um we often use the word homophobia you know and for me it doesn't say at all homophobia homophobia implies a certain involuntary psychological disorder of fear it doesn't acknowledge the very deliberate conditioning that our society places upon us as citizens of the world you know conditioning in educational settings in the media in churches you know that's very deliberate with the purpose and that is to propel this contempt for homosexuality so that that's i'm going away from your question but that her coming up to me was very important in inspiring this project what would you say it was the most difficult aspect of making fundamentals and then next to that what what do you think in your mind is the most powerful moment in the film that you've created i think if you talk to any independent social issue document filmmaker and ask them what's most the most difficult process of the making is the funding you know it's the money part but that's boring who wants to hear about that but that was difficult it was difficult as it was difficult to raise money for license to kill as it was difficult to raise money for coming out in the fire in that i didn't take a necessarily one-sided point of view that i was challenging points of view that i wasn't necessarily coming from a liberal point of view no or conservative one that i challenge both sides to look at each other and i think sometimes it's hard to realize that you know that's worthwhile because you want to push your cause forward and foundations and funding entities have an agenda they have a criteria they have issues they want to push forward and fix with their money and they have every right to control that so when i come around with this thing about well but i want to respect and acknowledge you know the more conservative point of view it's kind of what so with all my especially my last three projects where i tried to expand the discourse on gay issues to include the conservative point of view as well in a respectful manner that's been difficult to convince funders to accept uh as worthwhile it's like why would you give them airtime you know why would you give them a form to speak their point of view which we totally disagree with but my feeling is we really need to understand them in order for us to plan our attack you know if we really want to chip away at the hardcore anti-gay attitudes in this country and our society at large we really need to know minutely in detail why there are these feelings about us why are they there why are there beliefs about us in a certain way um and that's why i try to do my work is to chip away at that to look at the court i don't think i've reached the core yet because it's so complicated so that it's been difficult convincing people as i plan these projects to think along those lines especially funders but i'm happy to say that usually well i'm saying that with this new film i'm happy to say that um funders actually come around after i finish the film after they've denied me funding saying to me boy we wish we gave you money so partly it's probably my fault that i can do a good enough job in in the proposal writing to convince them that this is something that should be funded but i i think it's also a resistance to challenging oneself and one's beliefs in order to propel your own agenda forward did you feel comfortable telling me where um in your personal background the sense of wanting to chip away at this anti-gay feeling in this country is coming from well it comes from this whole notion of well why why does someone feel that they have the right and the prerogative to yell at me out in the street as i'm going to my car i'm just like it's like why where do they come from why are they motivated to do this and what what are they going to accomplish it's like it baffles me why someone want to do that or think they have the right to do that and carrying it to the extreme of course killing as i did trying to explore and license to kill you know it just mystifies me because i'm not doing that to anybody you know i'm not harming anybody i'm not harassing anybody you know what is it that's what pushes me forward in all my work is the questioning the questioning of the construction of this contempt we have homosexuality in our society you know where does it come from uh it's just and i think i'm finding answers here and there but uh is i don't know i don't think i'll have the answer in my lifetime or maybe i won't see the changes that i want to see in my lifetime because it's so deeply ingrained you know even in our own minds it's deeply ingrained we know that the internalized homophobia that we have is so deeply ingrained