Behind the Scenes: Filmmaker Tod Lending -
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Published on: 5/25/2001
Last Visited: 12/21/2001
Tod Lending first heard about Terrell Collins while at Chicago's notorious Harry Horner Homes housing projects, shooting footage for the PBS documentary No Time To Be A Child, a film on poverty in America.
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Residents said Terrell, then in junior high, was a straight-A student, clearly college-bound: a rarity practically unheard of there.Thrilled to have found something positive to spotlight in the otherwise grim development, Lending began planning an in-depth piece on Terrell.He began by interviewing Dorothy Collins, Terrell's grandmother.
Two hours after the director and the grandmother talked about Terrell, the 14-year-old was dead, shot down by another neighborhood kid.For five years after his murder, Lending followed the Collins family as they dealt with their pain and struggled to break out of the poverty that had consigned them to the Horner projects for three generations.The result is Legacy, an Academy Award-nominated documentary that aired nationwide on HBO on July 25, with two encore presentations the following month.Next year it will be rebroadcast on PBS.
Despite Legacy's tragic beginning, the film focuses the Collins family's success.In the five years Lending spends with the family, Nickcole, the film's sole narrator, graduates from high school, enters college and gets married, providing the family with a number of first time experiences.Her mother Alaissa gets a job and takes the first steps towards getting her GED.
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The funeral [of Terrell] was probably the most difficult scene I've ever had to film period, across the board.Jack kept trying to come down the aisle to go to the casket.He would start down the aisle, and he had men on both sides of him helping him - then he would collapse before he could get to the casket.Then they'd take him back out, and tell him "look, just forget it," but he would insist.He was barely even talking at this point.He was just in another world, but he would just start to go back.I mean he was just driven to get to that casket, and it took him like three times.
When he got there he held his hands over the casket like they were floating above Terrell.They were still, and then he started trembling.It was a trembling that started in his feet and moved up to the body, and then his whole body just started shaking uncontrollably.Then he let out this wail that just sent chills through the entire church.I mean, it was just unbelievable…all the pain….
One of the holes in the film - and I know you were limited in what you could get into the finished documentary - is the lack of information about O'Brien McGee, the kid who shot Terrell.What happened to him?
The kid who killed Terrell is a tragedy unto himself.At the time he had just turned 18, I believe, which is why he was tried as an adult.He had a learning disability; he was a skinny little kid; he had no prior record.Maybe he had done some petty thefts here or there, but he had no prior record.He had been picked on most of his life, and he was hanging out with some badass kids who were some serious gangbangers.He had had this argument with Terrell the week before on the basketball court, and I think Terrell maybe even punched him out.
McGee is now serving a 50-year sentence in Mennard State Penitentiary, where you visited him.What was it like to meet him?
When I went to meet him I thought, "Oh God" - I didn't know what he looked like so I thought, "I'm gonna meet a coldhearted killer."And I met this kid and I thought, "Jesus, what a waste of life, this kid could be rehabilitated, there's no doubt in my mind."As much as I love Terrell's family - I didn't get to know Terrell, but I feel like I have a relationship with Terrell - and as strong as my allegiance is to them, I felt like, "F---!This kid could be rehabilitated."He will be a mess when he gets out.
Tell me more about your allegiance to the Collins family.How did it develop, starting with getting their permission to do the project at all?
It was really an evolution.It was something that evolved out of my interest in Terrell.I truly believe that because I came into their situation, their family, into their community to look at something positive in their lives, as opposed to telling "the black ghetto story" and how horrible it is - I think that immediately established a sense of trust.I mean, trust is the bottom line in any one of these relationships, because you're asking people to open up to you their feelings.So I think the fact that I came in there to look at this shining light, not only in the family but in the entire community, they trusted that.And then there's just our personalities, we just meshed.We're friends today.I mean they just came over for a barbecue a couple of weeks ago.
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It wasn't like Terrell died and then she suddenly felt this urge.I mean, she had been sticking to the books from the get-go, and she was known as "the girl in the window" in the projects, because she did not go and hang out with the other kids.She took a lot of s--- for it as you can imagine, being called "white girl" and "Oreo" and stuff like that only because she wanted to speak proper, standard English and study.
Why don't we see the name-calling in the film?Do you think this is a common situation in this kind of setting?
That is a whole 'nother ball of wax….
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But when I first started filming back in '94 when Terrell was killed, it was just a war zone.But I saw it change.
The threat of the end of welfare, or even welfare reform, seems like the invisible antagonist in the film.Was it like that in the projects?Did you sense that people on welfare felt impending doom?
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