Since 2018, directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West have documented the lives of supreme court justice Ruth Badger Ginsburg (RBG), civil rights activist and author Pauli Murray (My Name Is Pauli Murray) and cookbook author and pioneering television personality Julia Child (Julia). Now, the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning duo are out with a new feature about former congresswoman and gun control activist Gabby Giffords.
Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down, which is set to premiere at the SXSW film festival on March 12 and comes from CNN Films and Time Studios, tracks Giffords’ rise in Arizona politics, her 2011 assassination attempt and subsequent recovery, and her later fight for gun control legislation. The backbone of the feature is Giffords’ marriage to former NASA astronaut and current sitting senator Mark Kelly.
Ahead of its premiere, West and Cohen talked to THR about Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down, not having to manufacture emotion, and finally landing President Barack Obama for an interview.
How did you first meet Gabby Giffords?
BETSY WEST Obviously, we knew the outlines of Gabby’s story, but we really didn’t know the full story. [We had] a get to know each other Zoom. When Mark told us that he had been trained as a NASA astronaut as a videographer and had set up a camera early on in Gabby’s recovery, our eyes popped open. He says, “I have all of these tapes going back to really the early days.” That certainly piqued our interest. And when we learned more about what Gabby has been doing to pivot following this horrible event— becoming such a powerful activist both for gun safety and for aphasia [aloss of ability to express speech due to brain damage]— it’s just so clear. Finally, when we saw the obvious rapport and the love that Gabby and Mark had, we thought, okay, great, another good love story.
JULIE COHEN This is now the fourth doc we’ve done together. And actually all four of them, in very different ways, have intense feminist love stories at their core. Thinking of all the mutual support that was involved in Gabby’s recovery and then in Gabby’s participation and playing a very pivotal role in Mark’s 2020 Senate race, we were like, this is a great feminist love story.
What was the filmmaking process like?
COHEN CNN and Time have archives that we have access to when we’re working on projects with them. And in the case of following Gabby, from the time of the shooting, including then when Mark was speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast. That’s actually CNN footage. And Time, in particular, has a real interest in space. They had done at some point a documentary following Mark’s twin brother Scott Kelly’s year at the International Space Station. So they had a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage. I want to say however, we never faked. We never made you think it’s Mark.
WEST Nearly half of this film is vérité footage. The past couple of films that we’ve made, the subjects have passed away long ago, so that wasn’t an opportunity. With Justice Ginsburg, she gave us a few brief opportunities to get footage of her. This was a really different situation. Giffords and Kelly agreed to — I feel a little awkward saying “Mark” of a sitting US Senator — but they gave us just really great access to be in their home and in so many of Gabby’s work activities.
The biggest filmmaking challenge had to do with telling a story about someone whose language is impaired, and figuring out how we were going to make Gabby’s voice the absolute center of this film. Even when doing a conventional interview is a challenge for Gabby. We didn’t want this to be a lot of people talking about Gabby when this is someone who actually has a lot to say, even though it’s a challenge to say it.
In the documentary, you have a sequence where we see a split screen of Gabby in brain surgery at the same time as Mark’s flight to and docking at the International Space Station. How did that come together?
WEST When we heard that these two events had happened, more or less, simultaneously, which was not, of course, planned. We saw that incredible shot of the two of them on her bed, and he talked about that time when he was going to train all day and then would come back and see her at night. We started to think about how could we juxtapose their two activities, starting with first his training. When Mark talks about how he just compartmentalized the whole thing, and how he had to focus on his extremely difficult job for that moment. People [say], “Well, it’s not brain surgery.” It actually was brain surgery, and it was also an incredibly difficult engineering feat, both going on at the same time. It just seemed like the logical way to do it.
COHEN Sometimes you’re trying to try to make sure your story has these emotional marks and that there’s drama in it. Their story and what Mark and Gabby went through when he’s getting ready to command the space shuttle when this happens, as well as, they’re also trying to have a baby from in vitro — there are just so many dramatic things happening in their lives. We didn’t really have to amp up anything.
How did former President Obama get involved in the doc?
COHEN This is our third try. We did not try to interview President Obama about Julia Child, but we actually have asked Obama for interviews previously, and this was the one he said “yes” to. I think really largely as a function of his admiration and affection for Gabby Giffords.
WEST We got a very quick “yes” once the request was put in.
This is now your fourth documentary together. Is there anything that connects all of your subjects together?
WEST All of these people are incredibly determined have faced, in some cases, unthinkable challenges in life, and have found a way to persevere and to make a difference.
cochen I mean, relentless fucking — pardon my French — optimism.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Source: Hollywood
