Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore

Interview with director Shoshanna Stern

In theaters June 20 at IFC Center in NYC.

Describe the film for us in your own words.

The film is a reframing of Marlee Matlin’s life and career, told through an immersive way by redesigning sound and form to bring audiences into the Deaf perspective, told mainly through her primary language of American Sign Language.

What drew you to this story?

It was brought to me by American Masters. I didn’t learn until much later that Marlee had given them my name. I was actually a bit concerned about taking the job because I wanted to make sure she was okay with me doing it as a first-time director with no documentary experience. But once I learned it came from her, I knew immediately how I needed to tell her story--because I knew it was also the story of so many other Deaf people in the world.

What do you want people to think about?

I want them to think about how even the cinematic language they are used to is one that's created for those who experience the world through sound. By redefining that, I’m hoping to place them into a different sort of sensory experience altogether. That experience is important because I hope it can shift perception. Perception shapes policy, and that shapes our society, which has a clear impact on people’s lives in ways so many of us might never have considered.

For example, I’ve seen that the larger world views the Deaf experience as a silent one devoid of sound, where the biggest obstacle is the inability to experience music. But that isn’t it. Our biggest challenge is that the world assumes the best, and only, way to get language is through sound. When you don’t have words, you're excluded from those around you, and beyond that, you don’t know how to understand what happens to you—and that causes very real harm. But if we bring people together, that harm is mitigated because they learn from each other.

I wanted the audience to be immersed in the way that Marlee and I walk through the world, because by experiencing this film the way we experience the world, they're not separate from us anymore. That way, nobody feels excluded. Nobody feels alone.

What was the biggest challenge in making this?

I think my biggest challenge was to not present this as a challenge! I made sure to intentionally never use that word, and instead use opportunity. For example, I wanted to reinvent how we used sound, not just on the screen, but also in the making of this film. We had to develop a new way of communicating with the subjects when they were hearing, and a new way of communicating with the crew when the subjects were Deaf. I remember our production team asking what the system in place for that would be, and there wasn’t, because it’s never been done. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

So what was said was we had an opportunity to figure that out. And we did, the same way my editor Sara Newens figured out how to edit visually rather than through sound, without the use of Frankenbiting and using split screen instead of voice-over, as well as reinventing the soundscape and sound design of the film with my sound mixer Bonnie Wild. It was always an exciting thing rather than an inhibiting thing, and I’m just so proud of all my teammates for rising to the opportunity.

What was the development process? How did you get green lit?

We were a little bit of both, because while this project came from American Masters, we also had to sell it theatrically. We were in development for a year, while we were lucky enough to have money to do a few shoots. Then we found Actual Films who helped get more grant money and then we pitched it to Impact Partners. After they came on, we went into production for another year. Then we opened the Sundance Film Festival, which I never dreamed would happen, and Kino Lorber was in the audience for our premiere and came on as our American distributors.

What inspired you to become a storyteller?

I have always loved reading, so much that I started doing it at 18 months old. Maybe it’s because my brain is wired visually, but stories were always something I could lose myself in, but after I saw Marlee Matlin win her Oscar at 7 years old, I realized when I lost myself in stories, I had seen myself as a hearing person in my mind, though I knew I was Deaf in my body.

I think I wanted to act so I could literally see myself in these stories, but then I realized the stories I found myself in were never told from the same perspective I had. That’s when I realized I had to tell these stories myself, and so I did, first through writing, then producing and now directing.

What’s the best and worst advice you've received?

The worst advice was that I had to tell stories about hearing people to be successful as a writer and to look and sound like a hearing person to succeed as an actor.

The best advice is to focus on solutions rather than problems, and if you don’t have a solution, ask if anyone else does, because someone else usually has one.

What advice do you have for other female creatives?

Even though there are far too few of us, we are naturals at creation. We are intuitive because we have to be, and we are used to needing to fit ourselves in spaces that weren’t created by or for us, and as a result we understand people better. We understand how to lead through compassion rather than force, and how to listen to people. Basically, you don’t need to do what you’ve seen be done by other people who don’t look like you to succeed, because you’ve got this in your own singular way.

Name your favorite woman directed film and why.

Clueless, Love and Basketball, and Wendy and Lucy. All of them have so much heart, because innately all these films are about making sacrifices without losing yourself and instead bettering yourself—which is what I’d like to think is what life is all about.

Feel free to share anything else you would like people to know about this film.

I think this is a film you have to see more than once because there are so many layers to it—the most obvious one being Marlee’s story. But there’s also a layer of the cinematic language itself, of the soundscape, of the form itself.