Posted on October 23, 2019 at 8:00 am
Former bullies and those who have been bullied are candid about their experiences in “No Joke,” a documentary featuring Jeff Goldblum, Slash, Patrick Stewart, Lemmy, Chad Smith, Jane Lynch, and more.
Posted on March 29, 2015 at 4:55 pm
Writer/director Amy S. Weber first became interested in the problem of bullying when she was producing educational films for young people in 1996, over about a 10 year period. “I was working with mostly teenagers on real life stories documenting what those experiences were for them. We covered social issues, everything from violence in school to eating disorders, teen suicide, child abuse, family life, and unhealthy relationships, the list goes on and on. And it was through the hundreds of kids that I worked with through today actually, any of the young people that I work with and mentor, there is always this common theme to every one of the issues that plague them. And it came down to low self-esteem. It came down to identifying a lot of the issues that they were having, feeling like they couldn’t be themselves, they didn’t fit, they were afraid to be a target. And as we dove in a little bit deeper it was a common theme that being picked on and bullied, being really a target of someone or possibly just that fear overall, kind of stopped them from being who they were and living as their true selves. So this is definitely been a project in the making for many, many years to bring this, what’s going on in today’s world into the spotlight through this perspective. I really wanted “A Girl Like Her” to stem from their beliefs. They were the inspiration and hopefully it will offer some help.”
In the time she has been working with teenagers, Weber has seen enormous changes in the way that technology and social media add to the pressure. “The days of the schoolyard bully and escaping their wrath once you walk in your front door at home and now you are safe, those days are over. The Internet offers quite the tool for an abuser to also collect an army of people who can anonymously pursue a person’s spirit and that’s kind of how I see it.” She quoted the father of real-life bullying victim Phoebe Prince. “He said that bullying is a word that used to exist when you would run away through the fields or down the street from the guy that was going to beat you up. Now it’s a completely different story. And he described what happened to his daughter. It was basically a relentless pursuit of her spirit, the destruction of a human spirit. Social media and the social applications that young people can use have changed this game in epidemic proportions.”
She sees another problem in the increasingly hostile exchanges teenagers see in the media, celebrities, even politicians making harsh accusations. “If were to really just put denial aside and put our busy lives aside to see all the stress that goes on in our lives as adults in this world in which we have created, we would take a very honest look at what’s happening to our youth today. They are simply holding up a mirror reflecting back to us what we have created in terms of a world. What we show them each and every day, everything they see in the media from so-called leaders, from politicians to church leaders, the people who are in the spotlight, the messages that they share, the violent types of programs that teenagers are exposed to, video games, an overall sense of negativity.”
She said, “If you’re lucky enough that you live among people who are very positive and joyful people, you get to feel that and take that in every day. I have a group of people like that and it is wonderful being around them. But how many people can you can say are truly happy? People who find joy every day and see the silver lining in every situation. But how many people are what you would consider lost, miserable, unhappy? Perhaps we believe that children are supposed to rise above what they are learning on a daily basis, and expect them to be better than us; we expect them to know more than us. That is the thing I think has shocked me the most in all of the work that I’ve done with kids.
Weber worked very closely with the teenagers in the movie to develop the story. And it was very important to her that the bully, a “mean girl” named Avery, would not be demonized. “I wouldn’t call her monster. I would say her behavior is very much like a monster who is so unconscious of what she’s doing to Jessica’s spirit, she doesn’t seem to care. She is so unconscious of it that a daily pursuit of Jessica has become quite entertaining to her and her friends. And there’s this desensitizing that has happened, almost this numbing effect that takes place in Avery where she is, even when confronted, unable to see what she was doing, denial at its finest. She’s a good student, she believes she’s a good daughter, and a good friend. Jessica just bugs her and she’s unapologetic about it. This is just the way she feels and she would like to express herself. Then you start to peel back the layers. We get to know Avery and we created a safe space for Avery to explore herself, take a look at life through a different lens and literally gave her a camera that allows her to look at life through a different lens, and it’s not as it appears. The outer shell of perfection, the popularity, the beautiful girl, the friendships, the status in her school, it’s meaningless because of what she is away from that, the true Avery comes out, the unhappy Avery, the insecure Avery, the scared Avery, the one who isn’t proud of what’s going on in her family life, the broken Avery that we begin to see. So we humanize a monster and when you do that we can’t as an audience be in denial of the fact that she’s in pain. Something is going on inside of her that is creating this projection, a coping mechanism, a mental health component, all of these play a role in this character. It is shocking to the audience that when the transformation begins the audience transforms along with it. That’s what’s so powerful about Avery Keller and the dynamic of her character.”
All of the dialog was improvised by the young performers. She gave them the overview of the scene and then let them create their lines based on “the emotion of what was happening in this moment in their lives. And then we would draw from real life to bring that out into their characters. I wanted them to bring their own experiences and their own emotions and their own words because I wanted it as genuine and as authentic, as real and raw as possible and whatever happens in that scene we would just keep going. I think we captured some of the most powerful moments I’ve ever experienced as a film viewer all my life. But to be on the other side of that camera and to be involved in the scene with these actors as it unfolded was incredible. It was just incredible the raw emotion especially because of the topic and how it has affects so many people.”
Posted on October 24, 2014 at 3:56 pm
Producers Todd and Jedd Wider generously took time to answer my questions about their documentary, “Mentor,” the story of two teenagers who committed suicide following relentless bullying. The film, which received Honorable Mention for Best Documentary Feature at the 2014 Woodstock Film Festival this past weekend, will be shown this week at the Austin Film Festival:
Sunday, October 26 at 12:00pm @ Rollins Theatre
Thursday, October 30 at 7:00pm @ IMAX Theatre
How did you first hear of the problems in Mentor?
We read about the problems several years ago as we were researching an idea to examine the concept of bystander versus upstander behavior.
Was it difficult to get the cooperation of the families?
No, they were very willing to help and wanted to share their stories.
What is the status of the lawsuit?
The Mohat lawsuit was settled, the Vidovic lawsuit is on appeal.
If you could have interviewed the principal or school counselor, what would you have asked?
All school representatives refused to speak with us. We would have asked one simple question: why?
If you could have interviewed the bullies, what would you have asked?
This film really is about the victims and the devastation that bullying can bring to individual families and the community at large.
What makes kids into bullies?
We feel that at this moment in time, with the rise of internet and social media, bullying is increasingly easier because it is more anonymous and impulse control is reduced to simply deciding to click a button on your computer. The anonymity has made the bullying more vicious because one can seemingly bully with almost no ramification. Look at what happened after Robin Williams tragic death with the amount of hateful tweets that his daughter received. In the past, when we grew up, you had to look someone in the eye if you bullied them. Now, you do not. The internet has essentially created a generation of cowards. As to why kids do it? One root cause has always bothered us which is the choice to pick on the outsider. You rarely see the captain of the football team or the head of the cheerleading squad getting bullied. It happens, but it is more rare. Usually it is a child that is somehow branded an outsider–a person that dresses a bit differently, or perhaps is smarter, or speaks differently, or thinks about things differently. There is a real tragedy here because we are a nation built from diversity. It was the diversity of all of the people that came here and brought with them different ideas and skills that helped build this nation. We should be celebrating diversity, not denigrating it.
Did the school take any steps in suicide prevention education and support?
You should ask the school this. We would argue not nearly enough was done.
What can schools do to be more effective? Are there any communities that have responded more effectively?
We feel that schools and parents need to teach kindness and empathy to children. One excellent program that helps kids learn basic civics and decency is Facing History and Ourselves which is available in many school around the country and internationally. If your school doesn’t offer this program or a similar program, ask your school administrators to bring it to your district.
Posted on January 21, 2014 at 3:59 pm
I really enjoyed writer-director Anthony Joseph Giunta’s first film, “Contest,” a smart, funny, thoughtful story about high school bullying — and a televised cooking competition. It was a pleasure to talk to him about making the film.
How did this project come about?
Basically it was the end of 2010 and I had read a string of articles during a 1-week period about different kids throughout the country committing suicide as a result of teen bullying. By the third day when I had read about the third different kid this had happened to it really got to me. I was a bullied kid back in grade school and high school but that was before the Internet and that was before texting and I had the luxury of being able to come home at the end of the day and close the door and not have to deal with it until I got back to school the next day. What got me was how pervasive it had grown so there are many kids who just cannot get out from under it. They have to deal with it 24/7 between social network sites, texting and all of that. So that is where I felt like I had to do something and that is what I decided to do. I was in a totally different career. I was an HR executive with a cultural institution in Manhattan and I basically spent every hour that I was not working for a month doing the first draft of this script and it was like a passion lit a fire in me. I could not stop and about half way through I just said, “What am I going to do with this? This is not something I just want to sell to a producer or a studio. This is a movie I want to make,” and I just kept going. To make a long story short within a couple of months I gave 6 months’ notice to my job as leaving to go make a movie. I didn’t know how yet but I was going to get this movie made.
What would you say is the biggest misunderstanding about bullies?
I think what people don’t get is that a lot of times the kid who is doing the bullying has some kind of pressure on them themselves that also resembles bullying from somewhere whether it is a family member or some authority figure. There is something going on that is compelling them to target other people. And when they do target the people they are bullying, it is not only about that person. It is to send a message like a social status message to everyone else around like “look I have some power here and if you cross me. see what I’m doing to him, that could be you.” It is kind of the unspoken thing but it really stems from a place of feeling a lack of control somewhere and you know a lot of times when you look back kids who are the bullies are being bullied somewhere along the line.
As someone who is experienced with HR do you see that this kind of thing plays out in the workplace as well as in schools?
Absolutely. When I got out of school and went into the working world I thought “okay that part of my life is behind me.” Not so much. It definitely plays out into the working world and I actually I touch on it in one scene where the assistant principal is kind of stuck in the middle of a good old boys network between the principal and the head of the swim team and basically all the pressure is shifted to her but there is an already expected outcome. That was kind of my nod to the way it can continue into the adult working world.
What should parents and school administrators do to help and manage to prevent bullying? Do you feel the anti-bullying efforts that you are portraying in this school are effective in any way?
There are different schools that have different programs and I think there are probably some that are more effective than others. I am pleased that one school system is going to use the film in their anti-bullying curriculum starting in the fall of 2014 and we are actually going to be working with them. It will be used in schools throughout New Jersey and hopefully will continue into schools throughout the whole country. I’m going to get some of the kids who worked on our film and some of their peers from TV, Broadway, movies etc. to help us out on this initiative and I think when kids see other kids that they hold up as role models it can be very helpful and effective on the kid level but the biggest thing you need to get with any program if you need to get the buy in and participation from not only school administration but from parents too. It is really totally a collaborative thing.
It is interesting to me that the two main characters in the movie don’t have parents in their lives. What was your thought about that?
For these particular guys there is that actual physical absence and for audience members who see it there may be qualities that are absent in some of the parent/child relationships that they see in front of them. That helps me to draw on that without feeling like it is a specific one or two things about this particular parent with this particular child and that is really where that came from.
Why was it important to focus on changes in both the boys? A lot of bullying material only focuses on the source of the bullying and not the victim.
I was a bullied kid but my journey was pretty much emotionally like what Tommy’s was. My biggest goal was to live as self-sufficiently as I could without having to bring in other people. That stuff does not always serve you well and I just thought if the story is going to be or come forth in a way that it really resonates with everyone you are going to have to show the humanity of everybody as opposed to demonizing one side and sanctifying another so it felt like a more natural type of thing. When people read the script and gravitated towards that and loved that and said, “Oh my God it made it just so accessible and so relatable.” then I knew I had made the right choice.
What are some of the challenges working with the teenagers in the cast?
People said to me “It is going to be so difficult,” “It is going to be so hard,” and I was expecting exactly that and I had exactly the opposite. It was one of the most wonderful experiences ever. These are very, very professional kids, many of whom have been working for a very long time since they were little and every day was just more and more joyous. I think one of the reasons it worked so well is my style is very much that we will talk things through. We will talk through the motivation, the back story, all of those things and I love when one person’s idea sparks another person’s idea and that is what I got. These are all really, really smart kids, and we talked about their characters, we talked about where they came from, what motivated them to do certain things etc. It was just a completely joyous experience.
Posted on February 9, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Emily Bazelon’s first book, Sticks and Stones, comes out this month. Her Slate series about bullying included illuminating research that altered the conventional narrative of some highly publicized real-life cases. The book builds on this with new stories about kids and schools, and new discussion of the relevant research about bullying — its causes and the most effective ways to respond and prevent it. To express her gratitude for pre-orders, Emily has put together a package of giveaways for Slate readers who buy the book before the publication date.
Anybody who orders the book — hardcover or e-book, from any bookseller — before February 19, 2013, will receive the following:
1. A free one-hour webinar with Emily – with an exclusive look at the latest developments in research about bullying and kids’ behavior online, along with a chance to ask her questions.
2. Three free PDF resource guides Emily has written, highlighting books, movies, and programs that fight bullying, tailored to educators, parents, and students.
3. A free PDF of a Q&A with Emily, delving into some of the topics in the book in greater and more personal detail.
4. A free STICKS AND STONES book plate, signed by Emily and mailed to you, to paste inside your book.
Once you pre-order the book, or if you’ve done so already, just forward your receipt in any form to emilypreorder@gmail.com to get information about how to receive the extras.
