Documentarian Dawn Porter had a legal career before picking up a film camera. Now she uses her legal knowledge to look at social issues such as abortion rights in her new film, "Trapped"; "Hamiltunes LA" was created by a group of superfans whose love of the Broadway musical "Hamilton" led to the sing-along event that's now being replicated nationwide;
Dawn Porter's journey from corporate litigator to documentary filmmaker
The new documentary, "Trapped," reminds us that a woman’s right to an abortion is still a hot-button topic in our country.
Directed and produced by Dawn Porter, a former ABC news executive and corporate attorney-turned-filmmaker, "Trapped" follows abortion providers struggling to comply with laws in some Southern states that are essentially trying to force them out of business.
Those statutes are known as TRAP laws — an acronym for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.
Porter’s earlier documentaries, “Gideon’s Army” and “Spies of Mississippi,” looked at the legal rights of criminal defendants and civil rights activists. When Porter came to The Frame's studio, host John Horn began by asking about her career change.
Interview Highlights:
On why she gave up being a lawyer:
At the time, there was a clear path from those law schools: your aim was to get a firm job, and so that's what I did. I wasn't a miserable lawyer. I wasn't one of those slaving away, unhappy, but I didn't feel like I was fully contributing and I thought, The next exciting thing that happens, I'm going to say yes to.
On why she chose to highlight public defenders in "Trapped":
I'd done a lot of media work and at my firm I had done some First Amendment [cases] — defending newspapers, radio stations. And I met these public defenders at a training program and they were all talking about the Constitution and about helping people. And I kind of burst into tears and I thought, This is what lawyers should do. So it was a great melding of my legal training because I felt like I could interpret for people. Lawyering can be a mystery. People don't know what we do and so that's how I got into documentary. I spent three years following these public defenders through the South as they were doing their jobs.
On the similarity between litigating and documentary filmmaking:
It's really similar. I think, as a litigator, you're much more of an advocate, at least that's how I see it. But some of the skills I learned, like listening ... being persuasive in that you're constructing something simple and comprehensive out of all these complicated facts — that's what I think a good documentary can do. It can bring you into a world that you may not have been in and can give you a window into somebody else's experience. I'm not as interested in convincing people about what I think as in allowing them to explore what they think.
On how her subjects believe in what they are doing:
What I love about all these characters is they're doing what they love, but they're also making sacrifices for the rest of us. Ninety-five percent of people who get called into the criminal justice system are below the poverty level. That means they're all eligible for free legal help, and yet indigent defense is one of the most underfunded public goods that we have. It's the only job that is required by the Constitution. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution says that you have a right to a fair trial. I'm not against prison, I'm not against justice. But what I do think is that the process matters. I can tie that to our election that's happening right now. Our process matters and I think there's a lot of reasons why people are worried that the Republican nominee might not accept the results of the election. It's really important for people to have faith in our democratic processes. Our criminal justice system is one of the most important.
How issues in the South relate to the rest of the country:
I do think there's something to pay particular attention to, which is when you have a cluster of states behaving in the same way, you have an exponentially greater impact. So if Alabama passes anti-choice laws that leave it — which is the case today — with three clinics, Mississippi passes the same laws essentially that leave it with one abortion clinic in the entire state. Louisiana has about four. But all of these states are passing laws that impact all of the people in that region. Then you have a huge state like Texas — Texas is 900 miles tip to tip. So you have women from those states who, if they find themselves with an unplanned pregnancy, it's not only they can't find a clinic in their state, they can't find anything for hundreds of miles. That ripple effect is something that I thought was really interesting.
On why this issue matters on a national level:
This is not a film about anyone's personal morality. But what I'm really concerned about is our democratic process. The states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas passed laws that, if you look at Constitutional law, it's pretty likely that those laws were not going to survive constitutional muster. So if you have states that are saying, [as former Texas] Governor Rick Perry said, I want to outlaw abortion, that is flatly unconstitutional. You cannot just decide on Tuesday that you don't like Roe v. Wade anymore and wave your magic wand and outlaw it. We have a democratic process.
So when you look at history, what's happening in Texas is really unprecedented. I think it reflects a political mood in this country, which is, If we don't like something, we're going to legislate against it. And the people caught in the crosshairs are the people affected by this. For example, in Texas, the maternal mortality rate doubled in the time that TRAP laws were in effect [because] abortion clinics often also provide other health care. And there is a clear and awfully funny coincidence that across the world, maternal mortality is decreasing, and in the United States it is stable and in some places it is increasing.
On the accusations against her journalistic integrity:
Some people have called ["Trapped"] an advocacy film. I do take issue with that and I do think that we have seen how you can get in trouble with false equivalencies and with bending over backwards to say your job is to present both sides as if they are equal. I presented the actual words of the people passing these laws because they all refused interviews. My job for eight years at ABC News was director of news standards and practices. While I wasn't interested in making the case for abortion, I think I'm making the case that our democracy is being practiced in a way that I find concerning.
On storytelling and news reporting today:
We are at a time when complexity is not necessarily tolerated in an age where we want to consume our news in 30 seconds and we want to read Twitter as our news and information sources. Well, issues aren't always that straightforward and sometimes you have to understand context. But I think it is the journalist's job to challenge and, to the best of their ability, put forward what they believe to be true. So I would say I went into this film as a profile. The operating question I was asking was, What does it feel like to try to comply with these laws? Along the way, I've realized that it was impossible to ignore the people making these laws, but none of them would grant interviews. If you think about that, what's your option? Take your toys and go home? Of course not. You do your best. If you want to say I'm an advocate, I guess I'm an advocate for truth, absolutely.
On how abortion clinics resemble a war zone:
I feel almost naive in how I approached going into the clinics. Having lived in the Northeast and now living in California, the difference in the Southern clinics is that the clinics are constantly vigilant and constantly aware. It's really intimidating to walk through protestors who will yell things at you and they become progressively meaner, more nastier and more frightening. Sometimes they will touch you. June Ayers, who owns a clinic, trained her young daughter to look under her car for bombs. I said to her at one point — and we had a really rough day, there were a bunch of threatening phone calls — You've done this for 30 years now. Why don't you just find somebody else? And she said, I'm Southern too. And I'm not leaving my ladies. And I think that, as much as anything, is also something I wanted to highlight. I did not want to find Northern saviors going down to tell the South what to do. The people in my films are all people who live there, work there and love the place where they live. So they are willing to fight for it. That, I think, is quite American, it's quite patriotic, it's something I'm proud of and it's something that inspires me.
Hamiltunes LA is the ultimate singalong party for 'Hamilton' fans
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past year, you’re probably well aware of the global phenomenon that is the Broadway musical, "Hamilton."
Created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show brought hip-hop to the Broadway musical and features a cast made up almost entirely of non-white performers.
The show also has a wildly popular soundtrack that is at the top of the Billboard chart for Cast Album, and is currently number two on the Rap Album chart, right below Drake.
Only those lucky enough to score a ticket have been able to see the show. But now a group of fans have formed Hamiltunes LA, a people united under a common passion for singing along to the show's music.
Frame producer Michelle Lanz has the story.
The Clubhouse theater in Los Feliz may be thousands of miles from the glitz of Broadway, but the crowd that gathers for the monthly "Hamilton" singalong is no less enthusiastic. They call it Hamiltunes.
The Clubhouse isn’t even a theater in the traditional sense. It’s a converted retail shop next to a Radio Shack in a rundown mini-mall. On the other hand, the audiences on Broadway definitely aren’t allowed to belt out lyrics from their seats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xfT5i54Umc
Like the location itself, Hamiltunes LA is a mash up of sorts. Co-founder Liz Kerin describes it like this:
A quasi-karaoke party, also a singalong in the vein of "Rocky Horror" where there’s a lot of fun, drunken audience participation. Everybody has their specific lines they like to shout out, and when “My Shot” begins, we walk out with trays of shot glasses.
On this night, 80 or so rabid "Hamilton" fans are crammed into the tiny space. One participant marches across the stage waving a giant American flag. Then a woman decked out in Colonial-era garb grabs the mic. More than one person is sporting an ironic "Hamilton" t-shirt.
When it comes to the show's die-hard fans, Paul Krueger is in a class of his own. Sometimes he plays several characters at once in Hamiltunes.
I wore different colored ties depending on which character I was playing. I played [Thomas] Jefferson, I played [Aaron] Burr and I played Alexander Hamilton...I just know a lot of the show by heart, so they know they can plug me in anywhere if somebody doesn’t show up on their cue, so I’m kind of their Swiss army player.
The idea was originally conceived as a house party for Kerin and her musical theater-loving friends to scratch the "Hamilton" itch. But as word spread, the organizers quickly realized it couldn’t be contained.
“So many people wanted to come we had to rent a little theater space," Kerin says. "Now, a couple months later, we’re saying we have to rent a little bigger theater space.”
The organizers have had three of these events since starting in late 2015. Thanks to the Hamiltunes LA Facebook page, fans from all over the country have reached out to these pioneers for advice on how to do their own events in their cities.
"We’ve got people in D.C., New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Orange County who’ve all contacted us," says Hamiltunes organizer Jack Kelly. "It keeps growing and it’s really really cool."
Attending a Hamiltunes singalong almost feels like watching the real thing, except the production design is sparse and it’s a whole lot more affordable.
“We are very unsure about the legality of it," Kelly says. "This is not a show we're not making money from, this is just a fan run event with a suggested $5 donation to cover our costs. We sold out this event completely in 48 hours. So it goes fast."
What makes a Hamiltunes event work so well is how the musical is written itself. Most other musicals are essentially plays punctuated by musical numbers, but Hamilton is almost entirely made up of rapping and music.
“One thing that helps is you can feel like you’ve seen it by listening to the soundtrack because almost everything is sung," says co-founder Mia Resella. "And if you listen to the whole thing, you feel like you saw the play. The music is really great, and because of the hip-hop inspiration it’s accessible to more people.”
To participate in Hamiltunes, you also don’t have to worry about hitting that perfect high note. Kelly knows this first hand:
I’ve had a different struggle than a lot of people, I’ve recently started transitioning and taking testosterone, so my voice has been changing. So I’m going through second puberty and relearning how to sing, because I was still trying to find out how to use my voice."
It’s clear that the music is attracting people who might otherwise not be into Broadway shows. But is there something beyond the music that has people so in love with "Hamilton"?
Mia Resella has a theory:
I think for me and a lot of people in my family, we really like that it’s an immigrant story. I think that taps into something where you feel like, yes, this is the story that I associate with The American Dream, someone working really, really hard and having the hardest time and building their way to the top.
And, of course, Paul Krueger has his theory:
I’m a person of color, and I think for Broadway, which is an incredible storytelling medium — but nonetheless one that tends to be very white — for it to be so much more inclusive than its contemporaries and everything that came before it [is great]. I think that brings a lot of people into the fold that would not have previously been interested or invested in something like Broadway theater.
So what does Tommy Kail, the director of Hamilton think of all this?
The thing that’s so meaningful to all of us, to Lin and to ["Hamilton" musical director] Alex Lacamoire and the folks that worked on this show, the fact that it’s out in the world and it’s making people want to be heard or express themselves, that’s all you’re trying to do. Every night we’re not trying to make 1,340 people want to work in the theater, we’re trying to make people say, Theater is for me, or I’m inspired to go and find my voice.
The "Hamilton" touring production is getting ready to hit the road. So in August, 2017, Angelenos will get to see the real show. But Hamiltunes regular Paul Krueger isn’t waiting that long.
I’m from Chicago and I’m hoping my parents will be able to get me tickets to the Chicago show. I’m going to be in New York this summer and I’m hoping to get tickets there too. I want to follow "Hamilton" the way an aimless baby boomer followed the Grateful Dead.