HBO documentary details local deaths
Film, highlights eight gun fatalities from last spring Eric Lagatta Staff writer Frazeysburg – it’s been almost a year since 11-year-old Lucas Templin’s untimely death rocked this small village of 1,300. Now, his story will be shared in an upcoming HBO documentary, “Requiem for the Dead: American spring, 2014.“ Premiering Monday, the film tells the story of eight individuals who were shot and killed last spring, including Templin. It comes from Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Shari Cookson, and Nick Doob. Templin, of Frazeysburg, died on June 17, 2014, after his friend accidentally shot him with his fathers revolver, according to detective files, highlighted in the film. “It’s just really hard to understand that, that child is not going to grow up,” Cookson said in an interview with the Times Recorder Efforts by the Times Recorder to reach the family were unsuccessful. Cookson and Doob said they set out to make a film that highlighted people affected by gun violence across the country; violence they see as preventable. Templin is just one victim of several featured in the film. Each poignant in its own way, the stories document a variety of tragedies: A bride in Kansas, taken from her husband on their wedding night, a victim of gang violence. A Cincinnati man killed by his wife’s ex-husband in front of his kids. An NFL football player’s grandmother accidentally shot by her husband who was cleaning his gun in another room. Running at 108 minutes, the film features no original footage or interviews. Rather, the narrative is constructed using social media posts, news accounts, and police files. There’s not even any voice narration, an intentional way for Cookson and Doob to distance themselves from the material. They didn’t want a political film featuring expert opinion and testimonials. “It’s sort of the way involved,“ Doob said of the style. They splice in Facebook statuses, Instagram posts, and Tweets from victims, shooters and loved ones. Sometimes it’s months before the shooting, sometimes minutes before, sometimes in the aftermath. Police reports, inmate logs, 911 calls and recorded police interviews also underscore each section. To tell Templin’s story, Cookson and Doob relied heavily on a detectives report filed with the Muskingum County Sheriffs Office, which features notes from an interview with Templin’s friend. We were taken by the story early on,” Doob said on Templin. “The kids were these little fledgling kids.” Interspersed between the main stories, acting as a transition, there are flashes of headlines and photos from hundreds of other shootings. Among those is another local, shooting victim. Brandy Daniels, of Nashport. Daniels, 25, was found fatally shot in her car on a rural road last April. Her death remains unsolved. The filmmakers also included a ticking, death toll that climbs upward until, by the film’s end, it reaches 8,000, the estimated number of gun-related deaths each spring. The gun debate is a polarizing one, the filmmakers recognize, especially in a nation that has politicize the issue. But the film, Cookson and Doob said, is a way to pay tribute to, and remember those who lost their lives because of gun violence. “The significance of human lives lost is something that should be talked about, and “Cookson said. “We believe very much that their story should be told.“ The hope, they said, is that, when viewers put a face and a life to a statistic, it will spark a conversation about how to prevent such a tragedy in the future. “We are trying to get the conversation going,“ Doob said. “It’s a problem, and it’s got to be confronted.“ -- The Tribune 20 Jun 2015 Page A1 and A5 Dictated Transcription: S Cookson
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Paycheck to Paycheck
Examines Women in the Workforce One of the free screenings that will be part of the big sky documentary film Festival that will occur on opening night, when HBO will sponsor is showing of “Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert.“ The film follows a certified nursing assistant, and single mother of three, earning just over minimum wage and trying to make ends meet. Filmmakers, Nick Doob and Shari Cookson made the film as part of a report put together by Maria Shriver that studies the conditions of working women and how they are disproportionately falling into poverty. For their film, Doob and Cookson didn’t want to try to face poverty head-on, but instead, give poverty of face. “We made a film that would be a more personal story. We followed Katrina for about a year, to try and take people inside what it’s like to live her life,” Cookson said. Gilbert uses a 24-hour subsidized childcare facility that allows her to work full-time. Many of the other people who use the center are women living below the poverty line. Without it, she would not be able to cover the cost of hiring care for her kids, Cookson said. “This is a film about how small things can take over your life. How if you don’t prepare, especially as a woman, you can get yourself into problems,“ Doob said. “If anything happens, if her tire goes, if she has a medical issue, if her house, floods, she has no pad,’ Cookson said. “And yet, she is very likable. She’s young. She’s vibrant. We didn’t want to make a film that was just ‘look at this person, isn’t this sad.’ She doesn’t just sit around and complain, she just lives.“ The screening of “Paycheck to Paycheck“ will be held the evening of February 15 in the Wilma theater. Doob and Cookson will also be present to answer questions about their film. -- The Missoulian 1/31/2014 Page 65 Dictated Transcription: S Cookson ‘Paycheck’ peeks at life on the brink
HBO documentary, tracking single mom, puts spotlight on low-income women in workplace By Carla Meyer Katrina Gilbert did not set out to get her name in the title of an HBO documentary. The certified nursing assistant and single mother happened to take her three children to a Chattanooga, Tenn., daycare center being scoped out by Emmy Award winning filmmakers Nick Doob, and Shari Cookson. “She just jumped out at us as somebody who was very articulate, and in an unpushy way,“ Doob said. “She has no vanity.“ When Doob and Shari Cookson asked to chronicle her life, Gilbert roll with it, just as she had when her marriage failed, and she became her family’s sole breadwinner while making $9.49 an hour working at a nursing home. “I agreed to do (the movie) to hopefully inspire somebody else, ““ Gilbert, 30, said by phone from Tennessee “with struggles, you can get through it. You’ve just got to be strong and be a hard worker.“ “Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert“ premieres at 9 p.m. Monday on the primetime cable channel and can be streamed for free Monday through March 24 at www.hbo.com and www.shriver report.org. “Paycheck” is part of the Shriver Report, a nonprofit media initiative, focused on issues affecting women and led by Maria Shriver. In January, the Shriver Report and the Center for American Progress released the book- length report “A woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink”. It was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty,” the architect of which was Shriver‘s father, Sergeant Shriver. “Brink“ follows women who “churn in and out of poverty, and in and out of the middle class,“ said Shriver Report, editor-in-chief and CEO, Karen Skelton, who lives in Sacramento and edits the report out of an office on 16th St. Skelton is the coordinating producer on “Paycheck,“ executive produced by Shriver and HBO‘s Sheila Nevins. The women in the report “are in the space between about $23,000 and $47,000 a year for a family of four,” Skelton said. (The federal poverty line for a family of four is $23,550). About 42 million women and 28 million children live on the spring, according to the report and US Census data. Women living paycheck to paycheck can be toppled financially by such small things as taking a sick day. “Two-thirds of all minimum wage workers are women, and 70percent of them don’t get a single day of sick leave,“ Skelton said. Gilbert loses a day’s pay each time she stays home with a sick child. When the film was being shot last year, Gilbert could not afford insurance that would cover regular check ups necessitated by an ongoing thyroid issue. Skelton said Gilbert embodies the Shriver Report’s struggling class of women. “These aren’t women who are incredibly poor,“ said Skelton, a lawyer, and longtime political strategist, who worked for the Clinton White House. “They are people we know. There is someone in our lives who lives paycheck to paycheck. That’s what Katrina’s all about. She brings to life the reports academic research.“ Shot over nine months, “Paycheck“ takes a fly on the wall approach to Gilbert‘s life as she works full-time at a nursing facility, cooks for her children (daughters Brooklyn and Lydia are now 8 and 6respectively; son Trent is 4) and tries to have a relationship with a single dad with four kids of his own. Gilbert at first questioned the directors about why they chose her. Cookson said “I don’t think she thought she was remarkable — that this is a life that would play on screen,” Cookson said . But as the filmmakers followed Gilbert, the hits kept coming. At the films start, her estranged husband would like to help out, but he cannot find a job or pay child support and lives two hours away. On one occasion, Gilbert has to provide gas money for him to be able to pick up the kids. The rare piece of great news in her life – she passed a College entry exam – is double- edged. It turns out there’s a hangup with her financial aid because she had enrolled in college before, but had to leave because of her thyroid problem. When making a film about women on the edge of poverty, “you think you are going to turn the camera on, and there is poverty – (that) you are going to see something dramatic,“ Cookson said. But for Gilbert, the stress is not acute it’s constant and insidious. “The small things control her life,“ Cookson said. “She carries a tremendous emotional weight at the end of the day.“ Though the audience’s spirit flags on her behalf, Gilbert rarely visibly despairs. She jokes with her kids, shows them endless patience and offers a kind face to the nursing home patients with whom she works. Doob and Cookson looked in different parts of the country for documentary subjects to illustrate the Shriver report. They visited Chattanooga‘s Chambliss Center for Children, where Gilbert takes her kids, because it is such an unusual operation, Doob said. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it accommodates parents on every work shift and charges on a sliding scale. As Gilbert says in the film, without Chambliss’ reduced fees, she would spend most of her paycheck on child care. Gilbert and working women like her offer “the exit ramp for our economic, slow down,” Skelton said. “Eight percent of consumer decisions get made by women. When women aren’t struggling economically –when you put money in women’s purses – they are going to spend it on their families.” If Gilbert earned more, received paid sick leave or could receive the financial aid that would allow her to attend college and improve her earning potential, she could contribute more to the economy. “If you just close the wage gap between men and women, you would cut the poverty rate in half for working women, and you would raise the GDP by 2-3 percent Skelton said. (Widely cited Census Bureau statistics from 2012 showed women earned 76.5 cents for every dollar a man earned.). Yet “when people talk about the loss of the middle class, and when they talk about economic, inequality, they usually talk about it without mentioning women,” Skelton said. “What we did was put a lens of women on it.“ Skelton said “Brink,“ the most recent of three Shriver reports published since 2009 (others focused on women in the workforce and Alzheimer’s) already has had an impact. In January, Shriver, Skelton, and report co-editor Olivia Morgan met with President Barack Obama at the White House along with Tina Tchen and Valerie Jarrett of the White House Counsel on Women and Girls. In his State of the Union address later that month, Obama called for an end to the wage gap and for paid family medical leave for workers. “This is his story,” Skelton said. “When we met with him in the Oval Office, that’s what he said. “He was raised by a single mom, who struggled. … In the State of the Union, when he talked about ‘when women, succeed, America succeeds’ that was echoing our theme exactly.” Assemblywoman, Lorena Gonzalez D-San Diego, recently introduced a B 1522, which calls for California employers to offer at least three paid sick days per year. Gonzalez cited as Shriver Report poll in which 96% of single mothers said paid leave was the workplace policy that would help the most. Gilbert would stand to benefit from a similar policy in Tennessee. She already benefits from the Affordable Care Act. She signed up last month for insurance through the government program. She does not have to pay for the insurance, or for the check up she needs for her thyroid issue. Gilbert, who still works at the nursing facility seen in the film and still waits for her financial aid to come through for college, visited the White House last month with Julie Kaas, a Tacoma, Wash., preschool teacher also featured in the Shriver Report. Gilbert and Kaas met Obama and watched as he signed an order raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10. Though that wage increase does not affect Gilbert, Obama backs Democrats’ efforts to raise the federal minimum wage for all to $10.10. “This is just a step in the right direction,“ Gilbert said. “I’m hoping before too long it will be for everybody.“ Gilbert was “in shock“ to be meeting the president, she said. But this unexpected development in the past year full of them was “wonderful,“ she said. “It was great being there.” It was also great, she said, to see the finished documentary, which helped lend perspective on her own life. “I step back, and I was just like, ‘wow,’” Gilbert said. “Sometimes you think, when you’re struggling so much.(that), ‘Well, I could do more for my kids,’ and this, and that. And you know, just watching the film, I do so much. … After watching the film, it’s like ‘I am a good mother, I can see that now.’“ The Sacramento Bee 3/16/2014 Page X6 Dictated Transcription: S Cookson HBO documentary hits close to home
Accidental shooting in Huber Height focus of film By Meredith Moss Staff Writer The tragic death of Huber Heights resident Mae Worthy last spring is one of the featured stories in a documentary premiering Monday evening on HBO. “Requiem For the Dead: American Spring 2014” draws attention to the estimated 8,000 individuals who died from gunfire last spring. The special focuses on the death of the victims who didn’t make national headlines. More than 32,000 people die from gun violence every in America – an average of 88 people per day. The film is especially timely locally with Dayton Children’s Hospital announcing this week that gunshot admissions at the hospital are outpacing last year. The hospital is urging parents to take extra steps to secure any guns they have and teach children gun safety. And in national news, nine people were gunned down Wednesday night at a Charleston church in what officials are calling a hate crime. Documentary’s format What’s unusual about the format of the HBO documentary is the lack of narration or interviews with experts. Instead the directors bring the victims to life through their own words and images – a Facebook status update, a post on Instagram, a newspaper headline, on-the-scene video, frantic 9-1-1 calls and police investigations. The program detail victims’ lives in the moments leading up to the shootings and shows how each death reverberates in the lives of others. The death may have been the result of homicide, accident or suicide. The Huber Heights segment titled “In the Other Room” tells the story of Jerel Worthy and the grandmother, Mae. Jerel – drafted by the Green Bay Packers and now playing for the Kansas City Chiefs – lost his grandmother when a gun handled by his grandfather discharged in the bedroom of his grandparents’ Huber Heights, home. The bullet passed through the wall and into the living wall where Mae was sitting, striking her in the head and killing her. “It struck us as a very moving story and very relatable because it is not a criminal story and there was no ill intent,” said filmmaker Nick Doob, who directed the documentary along with Shari Cookson. The pair were also responsible and the Emmy winning “The Memory Loss Tapes” (part of HBO’s “The Alzheimer’s Project”) and HBO’s Emmy-nominated “Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life & Times of Katrina Gilbert.” “It was an accidental shooting and anyone can imagine what it would be like to be in that situation,” Doob said. “If I were Mr. Worthy, how would I feel? The story really moved us, and the bottom line is that we wanted to do something we couldn’t get out of our own heads.” Cookson said although there are images of more than 100 victims, they spent more time with those whose stories were more “indelible,” such as a bride who was shot on her wedding night. Other area victims mentioned in the film include Jeffrey Wellington of Springfield, Jasmine Leonard of Dayton and Lacey Rutherford of Hamilton. Meet the directors The program originated with senior producer Sheila Nevins, responsible for documentaries on HBO. “She had been wanting to make a film about guns and gun violence, and eventually we came to this idea of doing something about the deaths that occurred last spring,” explained Doob, adding that a number of shootings in the spring had received a lot of national media attention. He and his partner chose to avoid those that got a lot of coverage, and focus on the individuals that the public doesn’t hear much about. Cookson said their usual approach to make “present tense” kinds of movies. But, for this topic of gun violence that wasn’t possible. “We’d have the headlines, sometimes not even a picture. But it’s easier to be numb about that, so we took it a step further to see what those people were like, what their spirit was like,” she said. When she and Doob reviewed previous films about gun violence, they were typically filled with experts or people who knew those who had died and could reminisce about them. Employing social media Instead, the two decided to look at social media to see what the victims were doing and thinking in their lives, often right up to the moment of their deaths. “The one thing I discovered is that Twitter is a place where you can find a lot of reflection,” said Cookson, who admits it hadn’t previously occurred to her or Doob to use social medial us a research tool. “People will put their emotions out there, so it’s a way to understand what you go through when someone you love is suddenly gone.” Those on social media don’t know what’s about to happen to them or their loved ones. “It’s eerie and moving to see people post something the day of – or right before – this event. For example, it’s Father’s Day and they are posting something about Father’s Day, and they don’t know this is about to happen to them, “ Cookson said. In this case, she’s referring to a segment titled “My Most Beautiful Memory.” Eight days before Father’s Day, Renotta Jernigan of Chesterfield, Virginia, asked her husband, Chris, for a divorce. He was suffering from depression and had trouble holding a job. On Father’s Day, Chris shot and killed his wife and their two children ages 9 and 2 – before killing himself. “It’s a difficult and nasty subject, but we found a way to make it present and real and human and everyday,” Doob said, “It’s an issue film about guns and gun safety and gun violence, but we approached it by finding strong characters you can identify with and feel an emotional tie to.” Cookson said by including news reports, postings, police interviews and public records in the public domain, they were able to narrate their documentary in the present tense. “In the end, it feels like a sort of madness,” Doob adds. The music, 38 pieces of pre-existing music from the internet, ranging from jazz and classical to contemporary. Doob said the music is very important to the film, and informed the directors how to edit it. “We tend to use the music in a way that stands on its own,” he said. “Since we didn’t have narration, the music took on a leadership role.” The goal of the film Both filmmakers say their goal is to reach people emotionslly and get people talking. Both say their documentary is not an ant-gun film, but an anti-gun violence film. “I’m opposed to people dying from guns,” Cookson said. “We could be much safer about a lot of the things that happened in the film, about the way we’re storing guns.” One example: the segment called “Best Friends” focuses on 11-year-old best friends in Frazeyburg, Ohio, who liked to bike and play video games together. When Brady went into his dad’s bedroom one day to show Lucas a loaded pistol under the bed, it accidentally went off, shooting Lucas in the heart. When you hear something like that, you want to get the message out that if that gun had been properly secured, it would have saved a life,” Cookson said. “You realize how easily this can happen. When I see a little boy, I think about Lucas now, and the same with all of the people in the film.” The directors say their film is one way to pay tribute to these victims and have people understand who they are. “In a second, that person’s life is gone,” Cookson said. “These no warning. How do you say goodbye? That’s what our film is doing most of all. Provoking conversation.” Springfield News-Sun 6/21/2015 Page 35 Dictated Transcription: S Cookson Former Maconite earns his first Emmy for editing HBO documentary
By Joe Kovac, Jr. Telegraph Staff Writer Charlton McMillan has made a name for himself. But it’s one of those names that often goes unnoticed. His name flashes in the credits at the end of TV shows. In Hollywood cutting rooms, the Macon-raised McMillan has pieced together segments on television hits like “That’s Incredible” and “Rescue 911.” McMillan’s behind-the-scenes work on an HBO documentary about child beauty queens earned him an Emmy last fall. Even so, an HBO Web site devoted to the film still lists his name as “McMullan.” But McMillan never went to film school to become a household name. Inspired by his father’s home movie-making in the 1960’s, he just liked telling stories with pictures. And now, as a television editor in Los Angeles, that is essentially what he does. “It’s tricky,” McMillan says, “because when I say I do TV editing, people think, ‘Oh you’re the guy who cuts movies for TV and takes out all the bad words.’” No that’s not him. He sifts raw footage compiled by the documentary makers or the TV show makers and melds it into what is hopefully a logical form. “We look for the moments that will tell the story the best and develop the story arc. There’s not one particular order that’s right,” McMillan says. “There are many ways a story could be put together. You hope to find the one that tells the most compelling story.” McMillan’s family lived in the Ingleside Avenue area on Corbin Avenue and later on Rogers Avenue. He took an early liking to his dad’s hobby. E.C. McMillan was a doctor, and he loved making movies. “When he was in college back in the late 30s he was making little films, kind of silent movie films,” Charlton McMillan, 49, says. “Then after he had a family it became more just family films. But I took up an interest just watching him work. I was in a high school fraternity, and they had films for their rush parties, and I did that for three summers. At that point I figured it was just a hobby. But then I wanted to go to school and see where it would lead. He graduated from Stratford Academy in 1970 and went away to Vanderbilt University. “I think my parents hoped I would stay there and become a doctor, but as it turned out I followed my father’s hobby instead of his profession,” he says. McMillan later enrolled in film school at the University of Texas and went on to the ABC show “That’s Incredible,” a kind of weird-things-people-do program. He went on to work on the re-enactment heavy “Rescue 911” hosted by William Shatner. McMillan liked that it “showed normal people doing extraordinary things to help people. … There’s also the element of real-life drama, so that’s the hook.” And sifting through hours of drama is a lot of what McMillan does. “Basically,” he says, “it’s word processing with pictures. … To me, a film is well-edited when I don’t really notice it so much. If it seems like it flows naturally, or if it seems like it wasn’t very hard to do, it probably was.” Filmed scenes are fed into a computer, and he scrutinizes them. For his Emmy-winning work, “Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen,” he pared 130 hours of footage into an hour and 19 minutes of story. “You find moments,” McMillan says. His lucky break, he says, was marrying documentary filmmaker Shari Cookson, who soon started getting assignments from HBO for documentaries. “Living Dolls” was her baby. “She had been trying to get me on board as an editor with HBO, but they are very particular about who they will allow to work on their shows,” he says. “It just happened that they needed somebody …. and they liked what I did.” He was in Macon last week for the holidays, visiting his two sisters and an aunt — his parents are deceased. McMilllan says, “I guess L.A. is home but it doesn’t have the same connotation as home in Georgia. I reside in L.A. and I have my professional connections there, and my family and my house are there, but I guess my heart is still here.” His Emmy is in California, too. He keeps it in a glass case in his office. The statuette, which is the Oscar of television, weighs nearly 5 pounds and is crafted of copper, nickel, silver and gold. It depicts a woman with wings, arms raised, holding an atom. Her wings are symbolic of the muse of art, while the atom represents science. McMillan says the award — officially for “outstanding picture editing for nonfiction programming” — is just as much his wife’s. “It’s in a place where we both can see it a lot and be proud of it, but it’s certainly not the reason we’re making films. … It was kind of icing on the cake. I would have been perfectly happy just by the response from the film,” he says. “There are so many good films out there and so many good editors, it’s kind of a stroke of good fortune that it landed in my trophy case.” And it landed without his name on it. Turns out, Emmys don’t come with your name on them. At least, not when you get them at the awards ceremony. “It’s the real trophy but it doesn’t have anything engraved yet. So for a long it was just sitting there without anything written on it. Then they send you an engraved band with your name and the name of the film and you can put it on yourself,” McMillan says. The engraved band comes with directions for the Emmy-impaired. McMillan, though, is pretty good at putting things together. “They actually have instructions that say if you can’t do it you can send it back to the Emmy people and they’ll do it for you. But I was able to handle it.” _____ The Macon Telegraph January 6, 2002 Pages 53 and 55 Transcribed By: S Cookson Macon native wins Emmy for documentary
From staff reports A Macon native was among the Emmy Award Winners announced before Sunday night’s Emmy broadcast. Charlton McMillan received five nomination for his work (sic Correction: The film received 5 nominations and Charlton received one) on the documentary “Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen.” He won an Emmy for outstanding picture editing for nonfiction programming for “Living Dolls,” which was made in association with HBO Original Programming (sic Note: It was made for HBO Documentary Films). McMillan grew up on Rogers Avenue and attended Stratford Academy, said his mother (sic Note: his aunt), May F. McMillan. He attended Vanderbilt University and transferred to the University of Texas, where he earned a film degree. McMillan has been a film editor for 20 years. His projects have spanned a range of nonfiction topics and styles, from the popular reality program “Rescue 911” to long-form documentaries. McMillan’s first feature-length film, “Living Dolls,” represents his most ambitious project to date. He spent almost a year in the cutting room, shifting through 130 hours of material to create the 79-minute odyssey of 5-year-old Swan Brooner’s rise on the beauty-pageant circuit. McMillan lives in Los Angeles, where he recently launched his own production company, Sceneworks, with his wife, producer/director Shari Cookson, with whom he has collaborated on several films. The Macon Telegram October 6, 2001 Page 16 Transcribed By: S Cookson Documentary reveals ugly side of children’s beauty pageants
Miki Turner Television Since I don’t have children or live in the south, where kiddie beauty pageants are seemingly a way of life, my initial reaction to this rather disturbing subculture came with the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, whose body was discovered the day after Christmas 1996. I was shocked by the footage shown on numerous news programs of pageant princess JonBenet prancing around in sequins, makeup and enough hair to wrap around her little body twice. She was very freakish to me. She no longer looked like a little girl. She scared me. I had similar feeling while watching HBO’s Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen. This documentary (9 p.m. Sunday), which is part of HBO’s America Undercover Sundays, deftly chronicles the motivations of the overzealous parents who push their children – some as young as 18 months – onto pageant stages to strut their undeveloped stuff; and the unsettling effects that all this primping and pampering have on the little princesses and princes. This, too, is scary stuff. Much of the 90-minute program focuses on Swan Brooner, an adorable little blond-haired, blue-eyed 5-year-old from Cape Coral, Fla., who has an uncanny resemblance to JonBenet. Swan’s mother, Robin Browne, is a no-nonsense ex-military disciplinarian. Although Browne is relentless in her goal to get Swan to the top of the heap – she adamantly states that she’ll work three jobs to help Swan become a national queen -- she doesn’t appear to be a stereotypical stage monster. Browne seems more interested in experiencing the rush that one gets when overcoming obstacles than she is any financial awards. To help elevate Swan to the next level, Browne enlists the services of Shane King and Michael Butler, two thirtysomething guys who make a living by transforming little girls into miniature versions of Dolly Parton circa 1970. Based in Alabama, these highly sought-after coaches have trained more than 500 kids in the art of head-tilting, flirting, freeze-smiling, walking, dancing and singing. Their claim to fame? They can take an ugly girl and make her beautiful. “We’ve had girls who were just literally butt ugly,” says King. “I’m being serious. It’s the truth. And I take them and take their eyebrows off and put eyelashes on them, put hair, contour here [points to the cheeks,] contour her [points to the nose,] and they’re beautiful.” Are you getting that uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach yet?] Other stories include a profile of Leslie Butler, daughter of a pageant coach who has won 27 titles. Leslie’s back on the scene after a mandatory yearlong retirement after her national title win. But thanks to a common childhood rite of passage – she has lost one of her front teeth – the chances of her winning again seem nil. That is, until King and Butler come to the rescue with a dental devise to ensure that Leslie’s smile will be picture-perfect for the merciless judges. Reaching for the Maalox yet? Then there’s Reed, a boy whose mother refuses to allow her son’s growth hormone treatments to eat into her pageant budget, and 18-month-old-title-winning Sidney, whose mom apparently made a wise investment when she bought those hair extensions. The program concludes at the Gingerbread Pageant in Dallas, a two-day event that packs more drama into 48 hours than The Young and the Restless does in 52 weeks. It is here that we’ll find out whether Browne and Swan beat the odds and whether Leslie’s mouthpiece does the trick. You’ll also see if the far-too-giddy King and Butler reap the rewards of their efforts. And what exactly would those rewards be? Yet despite these disturbing realities, Living Dolls, which written, produced and directed by Shari Cookson, is extremely well-done and definitely worth tuning in to. This documentary accomplishes two things. It gives viewers a glimpse at how far some people will go to achieve a chunk of the American dream, even at its most nightmarish. And it serves as a viable resource of anyone considering entering a child into one of these baby-doll stag parties. If after watching Living Dolls any parent wants to rob his or her child of priceless childish pleasures in exchange for worthless treasures, then we all should be very afraid. -- The Fort Worth Star-Telegram 5/12/2001 Pages 79 and 84 Transcribed By: S Cookson ‘Living Dolls’ lets viewer decide
Marc D. Allan The name JonBenet comes up only once in tonight’s installment of HBO’s America Undercover Sundays, Living Dolls: The Beauty Pageant (sic, should be Queen), but her specter is ever-present. For one thing, the central figure in this documentary (9 p.m., ★★★1/2) an adorable little Florida girl named Swan Brooner, looks amazingly like the slain JonBenet Ramsey. For another thing, this show follows Swan through a year on the 8-and-younger pageant circuit – on which JonBenet competed. In the four years since JonBenet’s murder, there have been a number of expaminations of beauty pageants for children. And given all the negative attention, filmmaker Shari Cookson easily could have shredded the entire circuit. But Cookson takes a road less traveled and lets viewers decide for themselves. That turns out to be a wise course, because it allows her audience to walk away with two distinctly different reactions, The more obvious one is revulsion over these events which small children – some not even toddlers – are dressed like adults and put through rigorous paces as they learn how to perform. In one absolutely creepy scene, the host of a pageant sings “You are the love of my life” to a line of smiling little girls. The parents take the competitions unbelievably seriously, to the point that they pay consultants to give their little beauty queens (and kings) makeovers and teach them how to carry themselves in front of judges. The kids don’t seem to mind, but the travel and preening certainly look like a grind. Still, while we’re watching this and probably thinking how appalling it is, there’s another element to consider: Would we be as disgusted if the children were going through drills to become a great musician or a great athlete? Like it or not, the parents of Swan and the other children shown here are instilling their offside with poise, pride and confidence. That’s why, even if you stare, horrified at the pageants, it’s difficult not to root for Swan. Her mother many be demanding and sometimes mean-spirited (“If ever I saw a kid who looked lost, it’s you,” she says), but Swan is such an innocent. She has a room full of trophies but doesn’t know what any of them are for, and she cheerfully accepts the rigors of competition. You want her to win, even while you’re wishing that she could just stay home and be a kid. Living Dolls covers Swan’s story brilliantly – with one exception. There’s a lack of an explanation for why her mother, Robin Browne, pushes herself and her daughter to these extremes. Browne works two jobs to pay for all the costs associated with these pageants and more or less ignores her three other children – a teen-age girl who seems just fine, a teen-age son who’s repeatedly in trouble with the law and a young son who, it appears, is being raised by Browne’s boyfriend. At one point, Browne reveals that Swan said, “Mom, if you quit your jobs, I’ll quit pageants so you can stay home with me.” Brown’s reaction: “That’s when I started looking for the third job. It made me even more determined. If she wants to do it, I’m going to keep going.” Obviously, Browne wasn’t listening. And maybe she should have been. A great potential follow-up documentary would be to see what has happened to this family five years from now. The Indianapolis Star 5/13/2001 Page 167 Transcribed By: S Cookson Filming outside the frame
Peggy Curran Excerpt Shane King and Michael Butler pride themselves on being able to transform even the most “butt-ugly” child into a beauty queen. All it takes is big hair, false eyelashes, makeup contours, dye and extensions, a bridge to hide wobbly baby teeth, $1,200 for second hand dress and a winning personality. Enter Swan Brooner, a 5-year-old kiddie-pageant start whose beauty career has been in freefall since she won the Little Miss Florida state title. Brooner’s mother, Robin, will do anything to put Swan back on the catwalk, even if it means working three jobs and borrowing heavily from her meek boyfriend and neglecting her other children. Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen is a fascinating, often creepy, glimpse inside a subculture that gained unwanted notoriety with the 1996 death of JonBenet Ramsey. Written and directed by Shari Cookson for HBO, Living Dolls is nominated for five Emmys. It’s Waiting for Guffman meets Happy, Texas – without the laughs, as newborns, toddlers and vulnerable little girls with wispy hair flirt and strut for trophies and cash prizes. __ The Gazette 9/30/2001 (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) Page 9 Transcribed By: S Cookson Steven Cole Smith
Television A frightening look at skinheads It would be so easy to dismiss the people featured in Skinheads USA: Soldiers of the Race War as pathetic reject crackers. Certainly, there is ample evidence here to support that. But to those among us who grew up in the South, simple definitions don’t apply. Skinheads, an hourlong HBO America Undercover documentary that premieres at 9 tomorrow night, is a clear-headed look into the Alabama-based Aryan National Front, headed by three-time felon, Bill Riccio, an auto parts store manager. The headquarters are Riccio’s rustic “compound,” located in the woods about 20 miles from Birmingham. The Aryan National Front unabashedly worships Adolf Hitler, and its immediate goal is declare Alabama a minority- and gay-free zone. Riccio appears to be about 35, paunchy and inbred. He is not a white Louis Farrakhan, but it would be convenient if he were. He has surrounded himself with young white males, most all teen-agers, most all from troubled homes. Riccio gives them support and affection and a sense of family. “Send us your broken toys, and we’ll fix them for you,” Riccio says. In return, they give him their pledge to do whatever it takes to further the cause of the white race. They tattoo themselves; they cut off their hair, which is a symbol Riccio says, of removing the “defecation that our Zionist society” has placed upon their heads. They listen to white supremacist punk music, they drink beer. Lots of beer. Producer/director Shari Cookson was obviously given remarkable access to Aryan National Front rallies – few people show up, and those who do are already converted – and even to a joint ANF and Ku Klux Klan rally. Besides being a skinhead, Riccio is also a Klansman, and gets the honor of lighting the cross. Filmed over a two-month period last summer, Skinheads ends with Riccio arrested again on federal weapons charges. His compound has been raided by government agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, possibly tuning up for its assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco earlier this year. This leaves the Aryan National Front a rudderless ship, manned by kids, “We need to act more militant!” shouts one of Riccio’s followers after the arrest. “I’m not talking about walking down the street waving flags, I’m talking about going down the streets with guns, and kicking some ass.” If you wondered how three typical teen-agers could become skinheads and murder a black man for no reason – as three local skinheads did on June 7, 1991, to Donald Thomas – Skinheads goes a long way toward explaining it. A warning though: You won’t like the answer. __ Fort Worth Star-Telegram 5/3/1993 Page 17 Transcribed By: S Cookson |