Available to stream now on National Geographic, Disney+ and Hulu.
Describe the film for us in your own words.
SALLY explores the story of how Sally Ride became the first American woman astronaut in space using never before seen NASA 16mm and 35mm film archive. But there’s also another hidden part to Sally’s story and legacy that only came to light after Sally’s death. She had a female life partner of 27 years, Tam O’ Shaughnessy. The film tells a parallel story of Sally’s journey at NASA to become an astronaut and the personal and intimate love story that Tam and Sally shared that had to be kept secret during a time when this was not accepted in society.
What drew you to this story?
The director, Cristina Costantini approached me to produce this film with her working with Story Syndicate and National Geographic. I was excited to help shape the central queer romance between Sally and Tam and tell the love story in a way that it could not have been broadcast at that time. I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Sally’s partner Tam as the lead narrator of the film to convey so many of the special, intimate details inside their relationship and inside Sally’s complicated interior world.
What do you want people to think about?
When we started this film two years ago, we definitely didn’t think that it would speak so strongly to the climate we are currently living in and feel like we are repeating history. Sally had to hide a part of herself in order to achieve her ambitious professional goals and though we have come a long way, this feeling is creeping up again right now.
My hope, for viewers watching this film today in this climate, is that they can learn from the hurt and the difficulty that Sally and Tam endured personally when faced with a culture of not being accepted and feeling under attack. The pain it can cause to not live your full life and yet still find a way to persevere.
What was the biggest challenge in making this?
All documentaries have their own fun challenges, one of the bigger challenges in this film was unearthing the 5000 reels of film archive we brought into our edit system. We learned quickly that the NASA audio and the film reels were not in sync so we had to dig to find as much as we could and manually sync them. Still, much of the footage did not have audio in-scene and we really relied on the amazing astronaut’s interviews we got to help guide the narrative.
Another, large challenge was that Sally and Tam had almost no archive that depicted their romance, since it was hidden, photos and videos could have felt risky at the time. This is what led director Cristina Costantini to decide to create the visual “recreations” in the film as a way to immerse the viewer in the small details and feelings of their love affair in the way fiction films do. We shot these on 16mm film to evoke the era, over the course of a multi-day shoot and the scenes were guided by Tams’ narration.
What was the development process? How did you get green lit?
This documentary was originated by our production company Story Syndicate, who began the project with National Geographic and then reached out to Tam O’Shaugnessy to be involved from the the very beginning of the process. The director Cristina, who had been a lifelong fan of Sally Ride was also pursuing a documentary on Sally and connected with National Geographic about it and through this, she became the director of the film. National Geographic funded the project in the beginning and we entered an intensive development period that led into production of the full film.
What inspired you to become a storyteller?
I grew up going to independent movie theatres and I felt that immersing myself in stories of other people’s lives, micro dramas and struggles really helped me to understand and care about people outside of myself. The more I saw, the more I realized I wanted to share the stories I wanted to see out there.
In my life, I always loved observing and letting situations unfold, this made me gravitate towards documentary storytelling with real people, rather than writing fiction from the blank page. I learned I was better at shaping and illuminating the hidden, unseen and sometimes absurd elements I saw around me in culture. I hope that telling these kinds of stories can help audiences relate, learn and spark conversation.
What’s the best and worst advice you've received?
The best advice I’ve received is that endurance in our industry is key, keep working and you will continue to navigate a path for yourself, even if it’s hard!
The worst advice is to take every job that comes your way. It’s important to choose the filmmakers and projects that seem right for you.
What advice do you have for other female creatives?
My advice would be to find a close creative collaborator for your work, whether it’s a producer, writer or editor, so that you can help push each other forward and crack open new ideas together.
Name your favorite woman directed film and why.
A favorite is hard, but in recent years I would say the documentary TIME by Garrett Bradley, it’s a film that is artful, textured and powerful at the same time. It feels like a singular vision, all the pieces pulled together that really work.