- 9 hours ago
Independent Lens - Season 27 - Episode 04: Vivien's Wild Ride
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00:28Transcription by CastingWords
00:00:30I'm really happy I dropped acid in the 60s.
00:00:35It sort of prepared me for this unusual visual world I currently inhabit.
00:01:08When I was a young kid, I loved playing with mechanical things.
00:01:13Like I built my first skateboard when I was 16 and skated down from the cliff house to the ocean.
00:01:25And I loved how the equipment worked at the fun house.
00:01:29These stairs that blew up air and that these rounding things and centrifugal force and all the incredible things of
00:01:35Playland at the beach.
00:01:43How does this whole thing go together?
00:01:45How do the parts go together?
00:01:46And I think that's a lifelong thing.
00:01:50It's like maybe I ended up as a netter.
00:01:52It's like hot as all this go together.
00:02:06As a film editor, every little detail on the screen is important to me.
00:02:21I love editing and being part of telling the character's story.
00:02:31In the 80s, I edited dialogue.
00:02:39I got to work with some of the most groundbreaking directors of the time.
00:02:55The 90s, it was picture editing.
00:03:11And then I fell in love with documentaries.
00:03:20You just take this raw material, 400 or 500 hours of film, and what part of that has got the
00:03:27juice?
00:03:29The thing that is the most exciting about it is the story that's behind the obvious story.
00:03:34The story that you're weaving in the background of putting the pieces together in this wonderful jigsaw puzzle of personalities
00:03:44and beliefs and mythologies.
00:03:54I fall in love with all the characters I work with.
00:04:05And then after decades of being in this fantastic career, peculiar things started to happen.
00:04:24I was having a really tough time reading.
00:04:29I'm missing, like, three letters out of a seven-letter word.
00:04:34The words were floating around.
00:04:40I just thought, am I, like, losing my mind?
00:04:42Do I have, like, Alzheimer's or something?
00:04:48The ophthalmologist said, you have dry macular degeneration.
00:04:54You're losing your central vision.
00:05:00I'm losing my sight.
00:05:03I'm losing my sight.
00:05:05There's no cure.
00:05:31There's no cure.
00:05:33There's no cure coming from.
00:05:51This is the living with vision loss class.
00:05:54will go into how the vision loss has changed your life.
00:05:59Getting it out is the first step
00:06:02towards getting back in control of our lives.
00:06:06I think the hardest part is the friends and family
00:06:10who call and say, how's your vision?
00:06:11How are you doing?
00:06:12Are you getting better?
00:06:13What are you doing to get it better?
00:06:15It's not going to get better.
00:06:17It doesn't go that way.
00:06:19My biggest problem is dealing
00:06:21with the overwhelming degree of loss.
00:06:25I don't like knowing that I'll never see my kids again.
00:06:31I was the one I used to take care of the whole family.
00:06:35Now I was the other end of it.
00:06:37People had to take care of me.
00:06:39I like to give.
00:06:40I don't like to receive.
00:06:42My identity is so wrapped up in being a film editor,
00:06:45and it's all visual.
00:06:47And then I started to lose my sight,
00:06:51and it was this overwhelming feeling.
00:06:56It just, all of a sudden, I just felt like I was drowning.
00:07:09The center of my vision is beginning to disappear.
00:07:14And it feels like I take my peripheral vision
00:07:17and move it over the middle to cover the whole.
00:07:32Objects in front of me appear and disappear
00:07:35as I fill in the blanks.
00:07:41People's faces are starting to look like a Picasso.
00:07:46And the Picasso face is so unnerving that I look away.
00:07:53And as soon as I look away, they look away.
00:07:58And I've lost them.
00:08:04And this loss feels so familiar to me.
00:08:08And this loss is so sexual.
00:08:30And this loss feels so
00:08:37to be one of the things I've learned.
00:08:38And that's quite unusual.
00:08:38And the loss of my hand is still
00:08:40I grew up in this very suburban house I was the eldest of five and everyone
00:08:48called me bunny and I felt like kids I felt like they were like my kids on some
00:08:55level when my dad came home from work he would walk over to the piano sit down
00:09:03and begin to play
00:09:13there was this freedom in him and we all would go bananas and run around the
00:09:21house and scream and yell and my mother loved it she would laugh and embrace the
00:09:28craziness music was bringing in so much joy
00:09:41when we went outside it really was different I was painfully shy but not when
00:09:49I skated I would like come into my body and feel the music that was in our house
00:09:56I would feel so free and alive
00:10:11Johnny and Janie are not yet quite grown into manhood and womanhood they are in
00:10:17between and the in-between period is known as puberty this name is used to describe
00:10:23the physical growth and change that bring sexual maturity as I was growing up mom
00:10:31never talked to me about puberty or sex or anything like that
00:10:42it's 1964
00:10:46no birth control
00:10:48for unmarried women
00:10:50and abortion
00:10:52is illegal
00:11:14high school
00:11:16a boy
00:11:22high school
00:11:23one night
00:11:33I just thought everything was natural I didn't feel bad until oh my god you're pregnant
00:11:42it's like it just seemed like the whole sky fell down then
00:11:53and then my father drove me to grandma's and said you're going to be staying with her for a while
00:12:14I'd always wanted mom and dad to be proud of me and here they had to hide me away
00:12:20I felt such shame for bringing this upon my family
00:12:31I felt so alone waiting for grandma to come home from work
00:12:40and then all of a sudden my parents picked me up
00:13:09I have a little bit of amnesia about that place
00:13:14but when I went in there
00:13:17I was actually so relieved to be at a place with other girls who were like myself
00:13:29I made friends with this girl who could play piano
00:13:33so we would sneak out and go to the rec room
00:13:37and she would play these amazing things that were classical pieces
00:13:41and jazz
00:13:42and I would rock back and forth in my chair and I would just be back home
00:14:08who is the unwed mother
00:14:11is she a tramp, a erotic, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks
00:14:15perhaps you may feel she is not the kind of girl you would want to invite into your house
00:14:29the doctor told me if I felt any contractions to get up to the third floor right away
00:14:39I remember holding the hand of a woman
00:14:44I felt safe if I could just hold on to that hand and not let it go
00:14:56and there were these beautiful lights
00:15:02I felt this overwhelming feeling
00:15:08of connection to this life inside of me
00:15:15and then it felt like everything dropped out of me
00:15:21everything went black
00:15:29mom had said don't look at the baby
00:15:37there was a screaming in my head
00:15:45I looked through this window
00:15:47and I saw this young girl picking up my daughter
00:15:54and everything in my cell said go in there and grab her
00:16:07I called my mom
00:16:13and I just said I can't do this
00:16:17I can't go through this mom
00:16:21I could feel my mom on the other end
00:16:29and she just said oh bunny
00:16:33there was a really long silence
00:16:46and I knew that the sadness we were both feeling was just too much for her
00:17:08when I read the adoption papers
00:17:10I couldn't stop crying
00:17:18the social worker said you will shame your whole family
00:17:22if you don't go through with it
00:17:26and don't try to find her until she's at least 21
00:17:38my parents never mentioned it again
00:17:42and nobody ever told my brothers and sister
00:17:47she knew this
00:17:50and she was a young girl
00:17:52yeah
00:18:03I don't have to laugh
00:18:03I and her
00:18:07I've had to say
00:18:07and I've had to say
00:18:07that she's very heart-reviewed
00:18:07and so, and I don't care
00:18:12because she's very heart-reviewed
00:18:13and so, it's very rare
00:18:14and so, she can only see
00:18:19I felt such shame for not standing up and fighting to keep my daughter.
00:18:56Everything inside of me longs to make sense of this world without a center.
00:19:05In a clockwise direction, where is your least dangerous vehicle?
00:19:10The least dangerous vehicle, nobody's making a left anywhere. Right-hand turns can be happening and it's very noisy.
00:19:21Right, so you're thinking about a little too much, okay?
00:19:23Okay. The least dangerous for a clockwise crossing is your near parallel.
00:19:51The human being is your father's voice.
00:19:54The human being is your father's voice.
00:19:58You can't say anything, you know?
00:19:59I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
00:19:59You're not alone.
00:20:00I'm sorry, but I'm sorry.
00:20:46It is 1967.
00:20:50I'm 21 years old, two years before Stonewall, and homosexuality is illegal in San Francisco.
00:21:01And I walk into Maud's.
00:21:04This dark, cavernous lesbian bar that was filled with hidden women.
00:21:14It both frightened and thrilled me.
00:21:19I'd always been attracted to women, but for the first time in my life, I felt rebellious enough to act
00:21:26on it.
00:21:30It was sort of a criminal euphoria, a freedom.
00:21:43It was like I had been liberated from an archetype of woman that was so strict.
00:22:10I lowered my voice.
00:22:12I started wearing comfortable shoes.
00:22:16I walked a little heavier.
00:22:25And it's like I was willing to take up space.
00:22:45I met a woman who was a filmmaker.
00:22:47And she said, would you do sound for me?
00:22:49And I said, sure, I'll do sound.
00:22:51How do I do sound?
00:22:57She said, here's a nogger, and I went, boing, boing, boing, boing.
00:23:00That is a fabulously designed machine.
00:23:10Everything was built as if it was a beautiful watch.
00:23:18She recommends me for a job at Studio 16.
00:23:24Denver Sutton, the owner, says, what do you know about film?
00:23:27I said, I know nothing about film, but I will work harder than anybody you've ever met.
00:23:32And I get the job.
00:23:35So I ended up doing the books, cleaning the bathrooms, shooting, mixing, and editing was the thing that stole my
00:23:42heart.
00:24:07I said, I know nothing about film.
00:24:27Denver's specialty was industrial films and educational films.
00:24:32And so I got to work on some marvelous things like the product picker-packer,
00:24:37which was this incredible industrial about this machine that Crown Zellebeck had of how to wrap toilet paper.
00:24:44And so it was not a terribly artistic beginning, but I loved every part of it.
00:24:52Hello, police?
00:24:53This is Gene Collier.
00:24:55Even though a caller is expected, or a delivery man is well-known, never answer the door unless you are
00:25:01fully clothed.
00:25:12I would walk down Broadway every night on my way home from Studio 16.
00:25:20Something was really comfortable about North Beach.
00:25:32I had no reservations when I was asked if I would edit on several adult films.
00:25:50I went by the name of Lorraine Sprocket and worked on such distinguished films as
00:25:56Dingle Dangle, Brisco Fiasco, and Easy Come, Easy Go.
00:26:04I was beginning to learn about the art of metaphor.
00:26:17Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
00:26:24Everywhere I looked, artists and activists were breaking the rules.
00:26:31There were all these experimental filmmakers coming through Studio 16.
00:26:40It was like an awakening for me of what was possible in film.
00:26:53There was this time in San Francisco where everybody started taking their clothes off and shooting film.
00:27:00And it was just like, over time you'd turn around, there was somebody nude on camera.
00:27:04And it was such a feeling of freedom, of acceptance and openness about our bodies that had been previously shamed.
00:27:34Just under the surface, I still held the secret of relinquishing my daughter.
00:27:42And the sadness of not being there with her as she was growing up.
00:27:52I had told no one.
00:27:54And I continued to wait for her to turn 21.
00:28:19I'm having a really hard time revealing to my friends in the film community that I'm losing my sight.
00:28:35I just don't want people to think I'm less capable.
00:28:45This really lovely filmmaker that I know asked me to come to the screening of her film.
00:28:54What I should have said was, I can't see.
00:28:58I can't see your film.
00:29:01I couldn't say that.
00:29:05And so I went.
00:29:08I left my cane at home.
00:29:16It was a foreign language film.
00:29:18And I couldn't read any of the subtitles.
00:29:22And the characters were like big blocks and shapes.
00:29:26And I couldn't see any of their faces.
00:29:35What am I doing?
00:29:38I'm pretending that I can see.
00:29:47Losing my daughter and losing my sight feels so connected.
00:30:16You used to be able to get in the car and turn the key and go anytime you wanted to
00:30:20go.
00:30:20And you can't do that anymore.
00:30:22It's just this sense of you don't have the freedom that you had before.
00:30:27And I think that's one of the biggest things is this loss of being independent.
00:30:32Yes.
00:30:33Siri, open Uber.
00:30:37Closing error.
00:30:38Uber.
00:30:39I'll just go.
00:30:40Dictate.
00:30:41Correct.
00:30:41I want you to listen to what it tells you because you're going to forget what to do next.
00:30:46You're so quick to single finger double tap to start the dictation.
00:30:49You're not taking the time to listen to what you need to do when you're done.
00:30:53Okay.
00:30:54So you're going to touch the dictation button and then you're going to listen to what it tells you to
00:30:57do.
00:30:59Dictate.
00:30:59Button.
00:31:01Double tap to start dictation.
00:31:04Double tap with two fingers when finished.
00:31:07When finished.
00:31:11Ronert Park Smart Train Station.
00:31:25Part of the process is learning how to slow down a little bit.
00:31:28Because when you have usable sight, you just know where to go.
00:31:32And as you start losing your sight and you're still in that mode, like, well, let's just get right to
00:31:37it real quick.
00:31:38Right.
00:31:39You need to stop and take the time because you're no longer reading with your eyes.
00:31:42You're reading with your hearing.
00:32:12So I don't know what direction you're going to go,
00:32:14but I'll get you past the yellow stuff, okay?
00:32:15Okay, great.
00:32:16Thanks, son.
00:32:17Thank you so much.
00:32:19Step.
00:32:20You're...
00:32:21Right there.
00:32:21Okay.
00:32:21Thank you so much.
00:32:42Am I on 3rd Street right now?
00:32:44Getting directions to 3rd Street, St. Raffel.
00:32:51Benjamin Moore.
00:33:00Can you tell me if this is 2nd Street or if it's 4th?
00:33:04This is 4th.
00:33:05This is 4th.
00:33:06Okay.
00:33:07Is it okay to go now?
00:33:09It must be because these guys are going.
00:33:12I just got to get back.
00:33:14I'm going to turn right and then I'm going to turn left and that'll get me back to the train
00:33:19station.
00:33:33Oh, good.
00:33:34At least I know you're going, so I'm fine.
00:33:37To go.
00:33:42Okay.
00:33:43Next time I'll have it wired.
00:34:00Each day there's something new that comes along and says, uh-uh-uh, you don't know this one.
00:34:08And it's almost like I have to start all over again.
00:34:11I get frustrated with myself about not being able to learn new stuff.
00:34:16You have to be intentional about doing everything.
00:34:20That's what blindness does to you.
00:34:22It chips away at the things that you can do.
00:34:27And you hold on to the things that you can do.
00:34:30I went from being just a really gregarious person and lots of people around me to being really isolated
00:34:37and feeling alone and not figuring out how I could climb my way back out of this thing.
00:35:06I remember when I took acid the first time.
00:35:11I began to see my sadness in a totally different way.
00:35:37I began to see past this small box of my suffering.
00:35:44Seeing myself as being part of something much bigger.
00:35:52This web of connectedness.
00:36:16Everyone who has macular degeneration sees differently.
00:36:23I have these blind spots and missing puzzle pieces that I fill in with what I think should be there.
00:36:37Maybe these current visual distortions can be more than just a limiting disease.
00:37:05I thought it would appear to be one of theefies.
00:37:17Discovering the world through sound is now this crazy experience.
00:37:27I'm beginning to see through hearing.
00:38:08I'm beginning to see through hearing.
00:38:14Educational films, I started working on low-budget feature films for family entertainment.
00:38:21So I was looking around for editing rooms, and I saw that Coppola had opened American Zoetrope on Folsom Street.
00:38:30And I rented a room.
00:38:33Like, I would walk down the hallway, and it was Coppola's The Conversation.
00:38:39Kill us if you've got the chance.
00:38:41Phil Kaufman's White Dawn.
00:38:45And all these mavericks that were about to change film history.
00:38:55Eventually, I got a huge break working with some of these trailblazers.
00:39:03These guys were experimenting with everything.
00:39:15It wasn't just groundbreaking films that they brought into San Francisco, but a revolutionary shift in who got hired.
00:39:28A lot of women were brought into sound post-production.
00:39:33That was historic.
00:39:38An unprecedented movement in film history because sound editing, sound mixing, sound recording had been a male province entirely up
00:39:48until the 60s and 70s.
00:40:04It was something that came to!
00:40:07Can you hear me?
00:40:20see you again. So you have something that will sort of blow things up so that you can see it
00:40:26better? That and these, all I have to do is like, like put my head back and forth because I'm
00:40:33not
00:40:34seeing anything out of the middle, but I can see a little bit out of the, you know, my peripheral
00:40:38vision. I try to hold on to every little bit of eyesight that I have. You know, I fly around
00:40:43here
00:40:44like, you know, I, I can see, you know, but I can't. We are sort of an invisible group of
00:41:03women.
00:41:03Film in many ways brought us together. I am very grateful to all of you for being so freaking fun
00:41:11and nice and crazy. All the women that I met were just generous and fun loving, worked hard,
00:41:20hard, hard. It wasn't an easy job, but it was rewarding in the sense that you felt like you
00:41:26were part of a new family, you know? Friday night, you know, close up shop and there'd be a party
00:41:37and there was, everybody shared. That was so much fun and we would dance around like, remember?
00:41:43Well, it always seems like people should dance in the editing room. Oh yeah. Right? You guys were the best.
00:41:53It's not just a job. It's so much more than that.
00:42:04This feeling of deep kinship.
00:42:09There was this kind of generosity of spirit among the sound people. It was really just this opportunity
00:42:16to see how everything went down.
00:42:23What do you do?
00:42:24I'm cutting sound from Mosquito Coast.
00:42:31There's Harrison Ford going back and forth.
00:42:35This huge group of people were working towards this one goal of bringing this story to life.
00:42:48Eventually, I met Vivian, and that is a story unto itself.
00:43:06One day, from across the room, this woman walked in.
00:43:14After work, a bunch of us from the studio decided to go to Coppola's eccentric hamburger joint
00:43:19in North Beach.
00:43:23Karen played a tune on the jukebox.
00:43:32She climbed up on the countertop
00:43:35and started miming out the song.
00:43:44This was the craziest and most dynamic woman I had ever met.
00:43:50And the surprise
00:43:52I stand here beholding
00:43:56My future unfolding
00:43:59Right before my eyes
00:44:16We proceeded to have a film life together.
00:44:23That started off a whole series of editing dialogue on more and more feature films.
00:44:33In preparing the tracks for the mix, I would work with the actors' words.
00:44:45It was the most exacting work, but I felt really close to the performance.
00:44:53And then when I got to do ADR and re-record their voice,
00:44:57I would try to help the actor get back into the feeling of the scene.
00:45:02How could I tell him what music meant to me?
00:45:09In 84, we worked on Amadeus.
00:45:13Even though I was working in the dialogue department,
00:45:16Mozart's music would be emanating from the mix room
00:45:20and through the halls of the Solzant Center.
00:45:26I felt the same joy as I did as a child, listening to the music in my family home.
00:45:55In 1984, Karen and I bought a little farm on the wrong side of the tracks, and we called it
00:46:00Mom's Head.
00:46:05We began two different lives.
00:46:08The fast-paced world of feature films on one hand,
00:46:12and living on a two-and-a-half-acre farm on the other.
00:46:31When we first came here, the owner said,
00:46:34Oh, there's a kicker bar out there, and we said,
00:46:37Right.
00:46:40When we got profiled by Bay Area Backroads,
00:46:43we had to change the name to the Buffalo Gals Saloon.
00:46:46I mean, for very serious professional people,
00:46:50what's going on here?
00:46:51Well, why not?
00:47:03Make that Walter move.
00:47:08But every time we'd have a party, we'd have about three or four hundred people come over,
00:47:12and there'd be like something people couldn't bear to part with,
00:47:16but they thought, this is perfect for the s*** paper bar.
00:47:19And then it just slowly started accumulating.
00:47:32Anyway, it still works.
00:47:34I have to get it clean so it doesn't play all the chords at once.
00:47:45I have many times talked to people who say, I'm not that blind, I'm fine.
00:47:52I can get around the house, I can see everything, and I'll ask them,
00:47:57what happens when you leave the place that you inhabit all the time,
00:48:04and go someplace that you're not very familiar with?
00:48:14I went to L.A. for a screening, and I thought I'd be okay because I had an assistant at
00:48:19the airport and then a car to pick me up.
00:48:23I went to the hotel, got in the elevator, and I couldn't figure out what floor I was on or
00:48:30how to get off,
00:48:31and I didn't realize I needed a key card or anything about what was going on.
00:48:36I said, I'm just stuck in this elevator, so I guess I'll just wait in this elevator until someone comes
00:48:41along.
00:48:41And I just thought, how could you not have anticipated that?
00:48:45And then so I came right back home and signed up for Braille.
00:48:49Good for you.
00:48:58I slowly, just for the first time the other day, just ran my fingers over it, and a word popped
00:49:04in.
00:49:05And I just went, I'm touching a word.
00:49:10I mean, and because I've been using so much of my hearing that the sense of touch was this sense
00:49:17that I hadn't totally pursued.
00:49:19And I just went, whoa, it's coming alive in my fingers and going up to my brain.
00:49:26It's a tough thing. I'm up to E in the alphabet, but you can make a lot of words with
00:49:32E.
00:49:34And A through E, A through E.
00:49:36Just extraordinary that the word is touch.
00:49:55One day, I look out the window, and there's a little man in a tree.
00:50:00He kind of looked like Mark Twain in a way.
00:50:03Right away when I saw it, it was only a day later that I had an appointment with my vision
00:50:08therapist.
00:50:09And I said, this little man showed up in a tree.
00:50:12She goes, that's the Charles Bonet syndrome.
00:50:15People with sight loss often see children and animals and people in period costume.
00:50:22And they look completely real.
00:50:28What I think caused it is the incredible eye strain that I had over about a week of trying really
00:50:37hard to write.
00:50:40I don't want to lose it due to eye strain, but I can't give up this trying to see.
00:50:53It's unstoppable. I just don't want to keep my sight as long as I can.
00:51:03I just felt like I saw a bit of magic.
00:51:53I had this great run of dialogue editing and working on these fantastic films in the Bay Area.
00:52:00But the work started to dry up, and I had to go to Los Angeles for a job.
00:52:09L.A. had a different vibe.
00:52:18And they said, a phone call for you, and it's Walter Murch.
00:52:21And Walter Murch said, we were wondering if you'd like to come back up to Berkeley
00:52:25and edit picture on and bearable lightness of being.
00:52:28And I went, can somebody make me a plane reservation this instant?
00:52:34L.A. had worked for decades as a dialogue and sound editor, and now to be a picture editor, it
00:52:55was an extraordinary opportunity.
00:53:05L.A. had worked with some of the most wonderful men, you know, I mean, they were so helpful.
00:53:17So all the directors were really helpful in my career. Phil Kaufman gave me one job after another.
00:53:23L.A. It does disappoint me that still to this day, there are the statistics for women in roles of
00:53:30leadership in the different creative departments are no better than 40 years ago. That sucks.
00:53:37L.A. It's very complex to sort of tease it out. Like, why didn't we get the opportunities we all
00:53:42deserved?
00:53:43I mean, a lot of real, you know, you look at the room and how much talent is sitting in
00:53:47the room.
00:53:48L.A. Oh, my gosh. L.A. And yes, we were successful in editing, but why was it so impossible
00:53:51to take that next step?
00:53:53L.A. And then there is this really strange space, which is us as women working our buns off, working
00:54:00on films reflected through the eyes of a man.
00:54:03L.A. As film editors, we're not always controlling, we're not controlling the content, and we're artists for hire in
00:54:09a way. So we're available for what's being made already.
00:54:13L.A. When I was first asked to work on Henry and June, I thought, holy cow, this is the
00:54:21beginning of cutting picture on big budget films. And I just felt like, this is really success.
00:54:31L.A. But my definition of success started to change.
00:54:38L.A. This isn't me. This is not me.
00:54:42L.A. Of course it's you. It's the you inside me.
00:54:45L.A. It's a distortion.
00:54:49L.A. I remember thinking, you have to be really careful, Viv. You could lose yourself.
00:55:09L.A. My eyesight's getting a little worse.
00:55:20L.A. And my eyes are darting around, looking for a way to put together the pieces.
00:55:38L.A. The Picasso face is turning into a blank face.
00:55:44L.A. And the blank face, I can't really tell people's expression.
00:56:10L.A. Even though I'm kind of tracking where their eyes might be and practicing that a lot,
00:56:19L.A. I still can't see their eyes and I can't see the expressions on their face.
00:56:26L.A. I knew that they could see me, but I couldn't see them.
00:56:32L.A. And I felt so naked, so vulnerable.
00:56:37L.A. One of the things I really miss is when Karen and I are just sitting in the living
00:56:49room watching TV or something
00:56:50L.A. And I just glance over and I just catch her eye.
00:56:55L.A. But now I don't see her face.
00:57:00L.A. And I just miss seeing my darling's face.
00:57:15L.A. We're collecting stories about plants from history.
00:57:24Sweet Woodruff was used during the May festivals and was May wine.
00:57:27L.A. We have woad. They mixed it up and they painted their bodies blue in the old days in
00:57:32England.
00:57:33L.A. So we have very ancient plants from history.
00:57:37L.A. I took a break from editing feature films and immersed myself in growing medicinal herbs.
00:57:45L.A. We knew nothing about plants when we first arrived.
00:57:48L.A. Slowly planting taught us. The plants taught us.
00:57:53L.A. We work in the film business, which is very exhausting.
00:57:57L.A. And so we started doing this because for our own health, it felt good.
00:58:02L.A. The more we worked around these plants, the better we began to feel.
00:58:06L.A. And then children came.
00:58:14L.A. Busloads of kids from local schools.
00:58:19L.A. Ever since relinquishing my daughter, I felt sort of awkward around kids.
00:58:40L.A. And then one day, this young girl came up to me and took my hand.
00:58:45L.A. And in that small gesture, I felt all of that awkwardness fade away.
00:58:52L.A. Moms had evolved from pasture grass to a medicinal garden to a forest.
00:59:09L.A. But in the past, it wasn't quite unfortunate at night.
00:59:59Power on.
01:00:03Start recording.
01:00:06Calendula officinalis.
01:00:09Recording is done.
01:00:12Calendula officinalis.
01:00:20This is a new label.
01:00:23Start recording.
01:00:25Lithania Somnifera.
01:00:29Ashwagandha.
01:00:31Recording is done.
01:00:35Lithania Somnifera.
01:00:38Ashwagandha.
01:00:53Say Ashwagandha.
01:00:55Say Ashwagandha.
01:01:01I know you.
01:01:10This will be a little bit warmer for you.
01:01:23A switch to documentaries came as a crisis of conscience, and then a chance meeting with documentary filmmaker Lourdes Portillo.
01:01:38Lourdes, I'm here.
01:01:40I'm going to throw you the key, okay?
01:01:42Okay.
01:01:46Hi, honey, honey.
01:01:49How are you, my sweetheart?
01:01:51Old.
01:01:53Old.
01:01:55Old.
01:01:56I'm coming from feature films, and I had, you know, work for all men, you know, in all of my
01:02:03film career up to there.
01:02:04And then all of a sudden I meet Lourdes Portillo.
01:02:07The great cook.
01:02:08The great cook.
01:02:13You brought this kind of freedom, like it expanded my idea of what was possible.
01:02:25And we both have a very sick sense of humor.
01:02:28No, I don't.
01:02:30I see.
01:02:32I see.
01:02:38Lourdes, Lourdes, had this infectious and unique way of looking deeply into the world.
01:02:49She imbued her films with a love of culture and family.
01:02:58The stories that Lourdes told breathed life into me.
01:03:15I just, I thought, this is really what I want to do.
01:03:18This is, it's heartfelt, it has meaning, and it just filled me with happiness.
01:03:24Nothing in this earth has given me more pleasure, you know, than to be an artist who makes films.
01:03:35That was a major turning point for me in terms of leaving feature films and falling in love with documentaries.
01:03:49One of the most haunting films that Lourdes and I worked on was Senorita Extraviata.
01:03:57About the disappearance and murder of hundreds of young women in Juarez, Mexico.
01:04:05What we did to begin with was put their photographs up around near the ceiling of the editing room.
01:04:13And we surrounded the room with their photos.
01:04:16So that we were looking up as we worked.
01:04:22They were descending down to talk to us from the heavens.
01:04:45There was so much horror that there was no handle for it.
01:04:51There was no way to speak about it besides it being horror and you just want to cry or you
01:04:57don't want to see it.
01:04:59And remember how we tried to figure out how we were going to approach it?
01:05:11This film was going to be about the beauty of the girls that the mothers saw in their daughters.
01:05:27We make an effort, yeah, we make an effort because we know what would happen if we don't.
01:05:51After counting down the years, my daughter turned 21 and I could finally start searching for her.
01:06:03But all the records were sealed or confidential and everywhere I looked, I hit a brick wall.
01:06:13And then my partner Karen helped me search for her.
01:06:20I took a little break from being an assistant sound editor and I became a private detective.
01:06:26One of the first things she told me when we started seeing each other seriously was that she had given
01:06:32up a child for adoption and that it was really hard for her.
01:06:38I realized that the trauma alone made it impossible to search alone.
01:06:44When she talked about resuming her search for her daughter, it was a no-brainer that I would, that I
01:06:51would help.
01:06:53I went off to Sacramento where all the records for the state of California were kept.
01:06:59On about the fourth day, I found a record for a baby girl born on the right day in the
01:07:05right location.
01:07:06She lived in Redwood City.
01:07:08I realized that she would have gone to high school there.
01:07:12So I headed to Redwood City to Sequoia High.
01:07:17So as I'm looking through the yearbook, I turn the page and there's a picture of a young woman who
01:07:24looked so much like Vivian when she was a teenager.
01:07:27I cleared my voice, I went and ripped the picture out of the yearbook and drove right to the Sol
01:07:36Zantz Company.
01:07:39She's in her little editing room and I take out the picture and I show it to her and she
01:07:45instantly starts crying.
01:08:18My daughter and I first met in 1988 at a restaurant.
01:08:26I was looking, you know, doing that, you know, that when you're on like a blind date and you're like
01:08:32you're trying to find this person, you don't really know what they look like.
01:08:38I think I saw you and I'm like, oh my God, I think that's her.
01:08:41So afraid.
01:08:42And then you're sort of like, well, now I have to do this.
01:08:45You were stunning.
01:08:47You walked in and I just went, oh my God.
01:08:52It was sweet and awkward at the same time, you know.
01:08:55Yeah.
01:08:55Lived in two different levels at the same time.
01:08:58I just remember feeling like I was holding my breath.
01:09:00Everything was here.
01:09:01Everything was here.
01:09:02Just anxious.
01:09:06You were so gracious sharing photographs, you know, of yourself growing up.
01:09:12And I looked at that book and I thought, I get to see her grow up.
01:09:15No.
01:09:20I always knew I was adopted.
01:09:23My parents always knew I was English and Irish because that's what the documents said.
01:09:27I was half Irish, half English, but mostly German.
01:09:36My German name is Kati.
01:09:40My parents were immigrants from Germany.
01:09:44I came around at four months and then my brother came two and a half years later.
01:09:49He's also adopted from a different family.
01:09:52We lived in a huge house, acre of property in the middle of San Carlos.
01:09:57It was a really beautiful place to grow up.
01:10:01I was one of four of this family.
01:10:04The adoption wasn't something that we discussed.
01:10:09I was their child.
01:10:16When I started coming up to mom's head, I felt safe here.
01:10:20So when things would go wrong, I found myself coming up here.
01:10:27And I felt there was, I just could breathe.
01:10:34You just like walked in this place as if it had always known you, you know, and you had always
01:10:40somehow known this place.
01:10:43I was excited, you know, because it was a door.
01:10:46It was a little bit of light that was starting to come in and there was some connection.
01:10:55When I introduced Kathleen to my family, my brothers and sister were shocked.
01:11:01They never knew that I had had a child.
01:11:08So I always had this feeling like, I think I'm supposed to be a part of a big family.
01:11:13I just remember, we were at some long table and everybody was talking at the same time.
01:11:19We all understood each other and knew what you were saying.
01:11:22It felt more family-like.
01:11:35Each time I gave her a hug or held her hand, I just felt this was the feeling I longed
01:11:42for, for so many years.
01:11:50We saw each other for birthdays and holidays, and we would talk on the phone for hours.
01:12:09Ten years after finding Kathleen, I worked with Diane Borchelin, who was adopted from Korea by an American family.
01:12:21Our stories are vastly different, but I got a chance to just glimpse a little bit into the life of
01:12:28an adoptee.
01:12:29I think the fact that you had this experience with adoption just, it provided a deeper understanding of the story
01:12:35and that brought out nuances that I think might not have been there if you hadn't been a birth mother
01:12:40interacting with this story, you know, as an adoptee.
01:12:45I tried to tell my mother that I wasn't who she thought I was.
01:12:51I told her, my Korean mother is alive.
01:12:55I remember her taking me to the orphanage.
01:13:00We used to live in a house on top of a hill.
01:13:04She said, no honey, that part's just a dream.
01:13:09You're a war orphan, and both your parents are dead.
01:13:25I would like watch you like a hawk because I thought, you know, I need to know what Diane feels
01:13:32inside of her heart
01:13:33and how you held this process of adoption.
01:13:38You know, I think with adoption there's always the question of, what if?
01:13:42What if I hadn't left? What if I hadn't been adopted?
01:13:45What if my mother had kept me?
01:13:47What would I have turned out like?
01:13:55As I pieced together my own life, I asked myself the same question.
01:14:02What if I had run back to that room and grabbed my daughter?
01:14:07What if I hadn't signed the adoption papers?
01:14:11What if I hadn't signed the adoption papers?
01:14:15What if I had been able to bring her home?
01:14:17What if I had been able to take a home?
01:14:35What if I haven't been able to do that for a million years now?
01:14:38When we were at this station and hopefully a father.
01:14:39What if I had been able to bring her home?
01:14:39We went through and I'm able to create a house on top of a hill.
01:14:59The, you know, word mother, over the years we've searched for kind of ways of what to call each
01:15:06other. And so I would email you as different names. You know, let's try out this name this
01:15:12week. Does this feel right for us? You know, love bunny, love nana bunny, love Vivian.
01:15:19You were tiptoeing through the tulips on this word knowing how much of a trigger word that
01:15:24was for me because I didn't understand why I couldn't call you mom. And I just, I still
01:15:31have a hard time with that. Right. It's that intimacy of mother. Well, I didn't bring you
01:15:38up, you know. Right. So I didn't, I wasn't your first mother experience. Now it's just
01:15:45like Vivian, I love you for Vivian. Okay. Or, or I call you bio mom. I love it. I'm like,
01:15:55yeah, my bio mom. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So mother's a trigger for my relationship with
01:16:03you as a mother. That puts my mom right next to you. And those two can't sit in the same
01:16:14space. So my mom was Mutti. So there was authority in mother. And there's fear in that. And there's
01:16:30discomfort in that. And there's a lot of stuff in that.
01:16:51A little over a year ago, Kathleen started revealing more and more about her childhood.
01:17:06After my parents died, we were cleaning out the house. And we found all of my mom's diaries,
01:17:14opened it up. And first thing I see is this comment about, we adopted her. She's four and a half
01:17:24months old. She's got digestive problems. She's not eating well. And oh my God, this kid is so
01:17:31stubborn and petulant. And I've got to beat this out of her.
01:17:40I just have a full on breakdown, full on. And it just, it came out. And I was grabbing,
01:17:51I just sitting there like this, just grabbing and tears are coming down. And it just, everything came
01:17:58out. And all of a sudden, this fit with this. And all of a sudden, oh, that's why I did
01:18:05this. And oh, no wonder.
01:18:13I was beat into submission. I had no rights. I had no voice. I mean, we got beat with, with
01:18:21the belt. And my dad
01:18:22broke a door jam because he went for my head. I ducked, you know, being tied up to the, to
01:18:30the fireplace
01:18:31because, you know, I would wander. I didn't understand how my life connected through being born,
01:18:42being given up for adoption, being adopted, and then being abused.
01:18:51I was angry at you. I was so angry. It's the first time. And I'm like, I can't talk to
01:18:55you.
01:18:56I need to walk away from you. And I can't talk to you because this hurts too much. And
01:19:00I need to figure out who I am on my own.
01:19:16I felt responsible
01:19:20for what Kathleen went through.
01:19:25I prayed I wouldn't lose her again.
01:19:53I didn't know if which way our relationship was going to go, right?
01:19:57It had very little to do with you. But it started with you. There was neglect and, and abandonment
01:20:10that wasn't addressed. And then abuse and everything else was packed on top of that.
01:20:17That wasn't you doing something wrong. My parents did something wrong.
01:20:22So, I needed to separate those two things out.
01:20:26Right.
01:20:27And it took a while. It took almost a year.
01:20:29I couldn't run after you. I just, I knew that what, what you needed was space.
01:20:37It was a, um, an act of faith that you wouldn't leave. And that you'd give me the time.
01:20:45Mm-hmm.
01:20:46And you did.
01:20:48I'm making a conscious effort to be me. To allow you to see me. And I have family. I have
01:20:57real family now. I know it's been 30 years, but I finally feel it because I can't. I couldn't
01:21:04do it before. Oh, my dear.
01:21:07Oh, my dear.
01:21:07Oh, my dear.
01:21:39as much as I want to I can't change the past when I was younger I saw myself as
01:21:47someone who didn't really have a choice now I want to take responsibility for
01:21:56the decisions I made
01:22:04and that in a way frees me to be more present for Kathleen
01:22:24losing my sight has allowed me to
01:22:27use my other senses to drop in with people to feel close to them to feel
01:22:38people's presence a little more
01:23:00it's entirely possible to hold the joy and the sadness in a moment
01:23:11to allow both to exist at the same time
01:23:23and cut
01:23:31so
01:23:38so
01:23:49so
01:23:54so
01:23:58so
01:23:59so
01:24:04so
01:24:11so
01:24:17so
01:24:23so
01:24:29so
01:24:33so
01:24:35so
01:24:37so
01:24:40so
01:24:42so
01:24:43so
01:24:43so
01:24:44so
01:24:44so
01:24:44so
01:24:45so
01:24:45so
01:24:45so
01:24:45so
01:24:45so
01:24:45so
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