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Wide Screen‘Bully’ director Lee Hirsch talks to Yahoo! Canada Movies
Despite anything you may have heard to the contrary, bullying -- both in the schoolyard and now online -- remains a very real problem among children and teens. Living life in constant fear of being physically and mentally abused is the uncomfortable reality for many kids.
With his latest film, the documentary "Bully," director Lee Hirsch ("Amandla!") sought to tell the stories of children and families forced to deal with bullying on a daily basis and to draw attention to the wider issue of how to prevent it.
A soft-spoken and thoughtful Hirsch joined a handful of press in a hotel room in downtown Toronto this week to talk about "Bully." The director discussed the film's "star," the emotional toll of making a movie on this subject, and the ratings controversy that has engulfed the documentary.
"This was a really hard film to make," Hirsch said with a grimace when asked about his experience making "Bully." "Absolutely, fundamentally a hard film to make, and you take on a lot. I think that was something my whole team felt."
Hirsch, who was bullied as a child, said he started to see the effect he was having on his subjects as he began making the film.
"It meant a lot to them that I showed up to tell their story," said Hirsch. "That someone cared enough to be in it for them." That sentiment ultimately became one of the overarching themes of the documentary: the idea that it takes only one person speaking up to stop bullying. "Bully" was Hirsch's way of speaking up about the issue.
The director was given unprecedented access by the Sioux City, Iowa, school board to film at a school for more than a year. Hirsch said many people he talked to admitted that schoolyard bullying was probably happening, but many either couldn't see it or chose not to.
"I'd say, 'If you're looking, you'll see it. If you're looking at who's left out and who is being trampled over, you'll see it,'" Hirsch said. When he found Alex, a teen who was being victimized to an extreme degree, he knew he had to tell the young man's story. "I found Alex at that school on the first day of shooting, and I just knew."
Besides the actual bullying, one thing viewers may notice while watching "Bully" is the decidedly small-town America setting. The film is set mostly in the U.S. Midwest and the South, but Hirsch says it wasn't a conscious choice. "We talked to kids in Los Angeles, kids in New York, we talked to a family in Halifax, we filmed a really wealthy urban family in Minneapolis," the director recalled. "The stories in the film are the stories that ultimately were the strongest."
With the film, Hirsch tried to show that bullying is universal. No matter who you are or where you live, you could be touched by it.
"Bullying knows no geography or class or race," he said. "The same problems happen in urban environments and in hyper-progressive liberal college towns." However, the filmmaker said it can be easier for kids to fit in or find a community if they live in a larger city or town.
"Bully" could have been a very different movie. Hirsch said the documentary began as something much wider in scope -- a broader examination of bullying and its causes. However, as Hirsch spent more time "on the ground" filming kids and their families, the movie became an intimate, character-driven story. Even if the film is not the "psychologist-driven exploration" of bullying that some people may have been expecting, the director believes "Bully" has accelerated the discussion about the issue and hopes the movie can effect real change.
When the subject of the ratings controversy south of the border came up, Hirsch smiled and fist-pumped the air, "But not here. Yes!"
Hirsch, who said he felt like he was going crazy at the time, said the Canadian rating for "Bully" was "very meaningful." In the midst of Hirsch's hard-fought battle with the Motion Picture Association of America (which led to the film being released unrated rather than with the MPAA's R rating), "Bully" was given a PG rating in every Canadian province -- a fortuitous turn of events that seemed to give the director a second wind in his protracted fight with the U.S. ratings organization.
"I was jumping with joy," Hirsch said about learning of the Canadian ratings for his film. "British Columbia, PG. Yes! Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario. It just kept coming, and it was so great. I think it gave courage to me and to our supporters."
Contrary to the U.S. rating system, which is governed by a single entity, the rating of films is left to provincial bodies in Canada.
Hirsch also refuted claims first reported by the Los Angeles Times that the Weinstein Company was planning to re-cut the film for a PG-13 release.
"I'm not willing to cut the film," said Hirsch. "I'm certainly not willing to cut the scene that's causing us trouble, I'll make that clarification."
At issue are six instances of the F-word in the documentary, which mean the difference between an R rating and a PG-13-rating. "The scene that they're really rating us for is the one I won't cut," Hirsch said.
"There's not a teenager in America who has not heard or used bad language," said Hirsch. "The bigger issue for the MPAA is how many people have drawn the analysis that they continually rubberstamp movies with hyper or extreme violence or the kind of sex that they think is appropriate."
Hirsch pointed to "The Hunger Games," the ultraviolent (and PG-13-rated) blockbuster featuring kids murdering one another, a film that came out just a week before "Bully" in the U.S.
It "gave us this wonderful contrast in the middle of this fight," said the director, pointing to a recent piece in the New Yorker that reviewed both "Bully" and "The Hunger Games." "People are more concerned about violence than they are language."
While "Bully" may have lost its ratings fight against the MPAA, Hirsch believes the controversy may have helped move the conversation in the right direction.
"The bigger question is who do the MPAA actually represent and are they doing a good job? Are they really speaking for parents?" Hirsch said. "A lot of studios are actually cheering us on because they are just so sick of the rating system or feel like it doesn't work."
Whether or not the "Bully" debacle leads to any real changes at the MPAA, according to Hirsch, the writing is on the wall: "What Americans are saying is, 'F--- off. You're not speaking for us.'"
"Bully" is in limited release in the United States and will be released widely in Canada on Friday.
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