Jim McGreevey’s HBO documentary the product of “friendship” with filmmaker

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:24:00 +0000

How much access did Alexandra Pelosi get to the former New Jersey governor in filming her new documentary, "Fall to Grace," which airs on HBO tonight?

"When you say 'access,'" she says, "it implies there was a relationship between the subject and the camera, and there never really was. He never gave me permission to make a movie about him." Pelosi went out to lunch with McGreevey and his partner to ask them for permission; the pair demurred, but Pelosi ended up ingratiating herself to the degree that she became friends with the couple.

"I started hanging out with them. He'd invite me to dinner parties, he had social functions at his house. I wasn't filming at first." She filmed with a small camera at his daughter's birthday party and ended up taking a small camera along to the prison where McGreevey works on rehabilitating prisoners. "The prison never would have said yes to my request." She ended up stitching the string she gathered into a short documentary; McGreevey, she claims, didn't know there was a movie until she told him it had gotten into Sundance.

Alexandra Pelosi: “If it’s guilt or shame — Jim McGreevey’s actually doing some good in the world”

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:08:00 +0000

Alexandra Pelosi doesn't come to a film festival struggling to woo backers or hoping to attract distributors. For the past 13 years, the youngest child of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has been employed by HBO, which has enabled her to make the documentaries that have compelled her most and cover the kinds of political topics that keep America up late at night: homelessness, immigration and naturalization, the evangelical community and, with her latest film, women’s jails, recidivism, homosexuality in the Catholic and Episcopal churches and, in no small measure, redemption. Best known for getting on the campaign bus with then-presidential candidate George W. Bush for her Emmy-winning “Journeys with George” to her doc about the closeted evangelical, "The Trials of Ted Haggard," she has just arrived at Sundance to present her latest documentary, “Fall to Grace,” an 18-month study of former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey.

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Jim McGreevey’s HBO documentary the product of “friendship” with filmmaker

Alexandra Pelosi: “If it’s guilt or shame — Jim McGreevey’s actually doing some good in the world”