Despite all that, do you see the program as a good model?
Yeah, I think this particular program is great, but it's so rare. There are Girl Scouts programs like this all over the country, but they don't have the comprehensive services that the one in Austin does, because the one in Austin was started by social workers that understood that this wasn't just a single-level issue. It's not just that you take girls to see their moms and everything is wonderful. They realized that there should be counseling, so that there can actually be some change. And they understand that maybe even if the change doesn't occur within the mothers, because it's just too much to ask of them, then change can still occur within the daughters. And that's the good part. That's where we do see it happening. We watch these girls growing up and facing the kind of challenges that most of us don't even face as adults. And they have got this wonderful kind of support system where they are learning that other than their mothers there are these wonderful people in the world that can be reliable and that they can look to as role models -- while still loving their moms.
Was part of your hope in making the film to let not only the girls but also the audience see these women in a new light? Because I think the problem that faces a lot of programs that try to make incarceration easier on families is that many people have a knee-jerk reaction when talking about people in prison. They think, well, tough, they landed themselves there, why should they get this ...
Well, I'll tell you why. Because they're all grown-up little girls. That's what I saw when I went there. I just saw grown-up little girls, many of whom were victimized, many of whom never had the opportunity to see that they had the power to make choices like privileged girls do. But they also piss me off. I get really mad at them when they don't treat their girls nicely or when they do things that mothers shouldn't do in front of the girls, say things that mothers shouldn't say. You know, they start telling them about something they shouldn't be telling their kid about what happened in the jail, something maybe you tell your friend about over a beer [Laughs] ... Sometimes I was the only observer of these things and I was like, wait a minute -- should I film it? Should I say something?
I'd love to talk about that -- your role as the witness. Did you feel it was important that you just stand back and watch?
Well, with all my films I spend a lot of time just watching and just hanging out with people. That's what I like doing, really, more than actually making the films, is being in somebody else's orbit, somebody else's little world. It just gives me better perspective on my own ...
But most of my time is spent just being in their world, especially now that the film is over. I don't hang out with the whole troop anymore, but I have two girls in the troop whom I mentor, and they actually call my parents grandma and grandpa. They're kind of like my spiritually adopted children, but they're not up for adoption. They have mothers.
What was the timeline from when you first started thinking about the project to when you actually started the filming to it being over?
We premiered it this time last year in the film festivals, so it would have been 2004-2005 that we shot the documentary. The year before that we were hanging out with the troop. They were doing little films; I was teaching them. Julie would bring the whole troop over to the U.T. campus where I work, and I'd get all these cool women to come in who were filmmakers. Our first meeting was really funny when I was trying to figure out what to do because I thought, I'll get them to make documentaries. And they were all sitting there and I was trying to get everybody excited, but they were sort of acting like they were in school, which was really disturbing to me. They were obviously just horribly bored, so I just stopped and I said, "Look this isn't school, I don't want you to sit here and be bored. We're going to make films! What do you want to do? Why aren't you excited about this?" And one of the girls raised her hand in the back and I said, "Sierra?" and she said, "We want to make a real movie." "A real movie?" "Yeah we want to act in it and stuff." And I was like, OK, it's the documentary shit that's boring. Of course they don't want to make a documentary. So I was like, "All right, who has an idea for a movie?"
And that same girl came up with an idea for a story and I grabbed one of the graduate students whom I had recruited to help with this and they wrote a script based on her story idea and we did the script and that was the first film. It was called "Back to Beginning" and it was about a Girl Scout who gets pregnant and gets rescued by her Girl Scout troop. Isn't that sweet? [Laughs]
The parts in your film where the girls are filming their mothers and asking them questions -- were those questions the girls came up with?
Yeah ... I never felt that I wanted to stick the camera in their face and interview the girls. That's not what it was about. We wanted their stories, but I wanted it another way. We were just driving in the van to the jail and the thought just popped into my head, "What if they interview their own moms?" So I turned around and said, "Hey! Anyone in this van want to interview your mom?" And they all went crazy. Well, I think it was because the coolest kid, Caitlin, whom everybody looks up to in the troop, was like, "I do!" and so then everybody else said, "I do!" And I had all these clipboards with me so I just started handing them out and they were kind of copying each other's questions and stuff; that's why some of the questions are the same.
I didn't help them at all. I was more interested in the dynamic of the mom and the daughter when the daughter was in the position of total power and control with the camera, and because of the questions, the mom is on the spot. I was more interested in that dynamic than the specifics of the questions they were asking. Which is why those scenes are edited for gestures and non-verbal communication -- things that are universal to mother-daughter relationships.
What's next? You mentioned that you still see some of the girls, but do you want to do a follow-up film?
We do want to make a follow-up documentary to this that would take place over the next five years because in some ways that's the real story. Where are the moms and, more importantly, where are the girls in the next five years? We know statistically that a lot of the moms, in spite of the help that they get, are probably going to go back to jail. What the Girl Scouts are doing is heroic, but they can't do enough. And the mothers are not getting any support from society. So the real story is what happens to the girls. So far none of the [Troop 1500] girls have gone to jail since the Girl Scouts has been doing the program [in Austin], since 1998.
What do you want people who see the movie now to take away from it?
Well, what I hope will resonate with them is that when you throw a woman in jail, you're throwing in her children and her whole family. And do these children deserve to be punished in this way or is there some better way we can deal with this as a society?
And do you think there is a better way?
There's only better ways.
About the writer
Sarah Karnasiewicz is an associate editor at Salon.
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