didn t know you were making this film with this message in it. how has it changed your view? the legal guardianship was not on my radar going into this. we thought this was just one circumstantial in a small town in virginia that we witnessed with this couple. come to find out that it is happening to elders all across the country and it is really a nationwide crisis. and so it has been a steep learning curve for me and just hearing horror stories from families who have reached out as well as many of the screenings of the film. audience members come up and almost everyone has some sort of personal story with their family not knowing how to grapple with end of life issues. so the biggest impact so far has been people who have sustain film saying that it inspired they will to go home and talk to their own families.
amazing job. of course, there could be, if we could spend a little more time on subjects instead of glossing over it, quick talking points, that s always helpful, because there is a lot of nuance behind all of this stuff. as far as telling the story on the more dangerous part is the part we hear most about pie wanted to go in the other direction. i had the pleasure working in jerusalem a few months crossing another wall between the west bank and jerusalem and that was a unique experience. living along when were you there? 2012. yeah. that s like their security fence is pretty scary looking. it s one of those, you re like and just sitting there going it s ugly. really ugly. and i thought about that. like, do i want to see this? do we want to see this on on our border? it s designed for that, i guess. designed to look intimidating. designed to make you feel
their wishes and all captured on camera. because these folks were simply documentering the love story between edith and eddie when this came up. i recently spoke to the producer and began asking laura how she first found the newlyweds and her surprise when the story she was telling turned out to be a lot more complicated than she ever imagined. a friend texted me a photo circulating online. the couple had gotten married at age 95 and 96 and was being called america s oldest interracial newlyweds and i kept staring into their eyes in this photo and wanted to know more about them. so i contacted a, the journalist who posted it, who connected me with the family, and they invited me down to meet them. and i took a bus from new york city to virginia the next day, and started shooting the very next night. considering they re both almost 100 years old, thinking about all of the history that both of them have lived through, and
and but our hearts were breaking behind the scenes. did you want to jump in? get involved and had to stop yourself? we weren t there to support them and also, just capture whay were going through. we know by showing the story, it speaks to a lot of elders across the country are going through. so we feel like it s urgent. so tell us how laura found you. i just turned 65 years old and about 10,000 people turn 65 every day. and i was caring for my father. when i saw the footage, i was profoundly touched in a very personal way. having to make decisions on behalf of your elderly parents and preparing for your own old age and telling your kids how you would like to be treated when you get older.
ultimately we had eight producers, eight cinematographers and three still photographers shooting from 7:30 to 10:30 at night on election day. simply you figured, let s see how many did you have a feeling just a flood of people it turned into? not 10,000 people. we definitely i knew the city had been making some stickers to replace the i voted stickers. but no one knew. no invitations. wasn t publicized. spontaneous and people came and waited in hours two hours happily. i assumed when you were framing the idea to do this you were thinking, no matter what, it will be an interesting story? yeah. so you knew that going in it didn t matter win or lose. you can make an argument, losing makes the documentary more poignant. that s why we went back and filmed the day after. yeah. it was definitely a day of celebration there.