The Spectrum

Spent a good part of the day reading (or re-reading) some of the extraordinary letters of TB patients from the 1930s and 1940s that we have been lucky to find -- this for the scripts we will use for our vocal auditions taking place on Sunday, March 2, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Warwick, R.I. I was struck, again, by the sheer power of our material. Not to get carried away, but I really do believe we have found a tableau, a canvas, call it what you will, on which timeless themes are writ. Man, if we can't bring this across on screen, we need to hang it up.

Here's an example of the numbing sadness -- laced with a still-strong sense of youthful optimism and hope -- that a teenage girl experienced. Sadly, Barbara was doomed to die of the White Plague, at age 18. This is from a letter she wrote to a relative in 1949, almost exactly one year before she died at Wallum Lake. Everett is the man she loved, but as her disease intensified, he turned away:

``Gee, I haven’t had company all week. I’m so lonesome. If I ever know anyone in a place like this when I’m well, I’ll visit them as often as I can. Poor Alma goes two, sometimes three weeks without a visitor. At least I know you’ll be here Sundays. Dad promised he’d be up this week, but I haven’t seen nor heard from him. I wish he’d call me and tell me he’s not coming. Or write. Everett, too.
``I get ready for company every single Thursday and I have company, all right: Disappointment, that’s about all. Good thing we have movies…''

And here's the other extreme, a letter in the 1930s from a young TB patient to his beloved Nina, a young woman who had recovered from TB and was now a nurse, carng for TB patients like Ed. They had a happy ending, marrying and having a child and spending the rest of their long lives together. We like happy endings! Check out the last line -- could a love letter possibly be more sweet???

``Oh, Darling, I wish I could see you more often. I feel so much better when I see you and then, too, I can kiss you at least once in a while. I’m afraid that when we’re married you will grow so tired of my loving you all the time. I’ll be kissing you all the time and on the very slightest excuse. Will you mind? I love you, darling, and I hope that next year we can begin to live as we should live.
``Please get to bed early, darling, and remember I’m thinking about you all the time and want you so close to me. Gee, I love you.
``A million, million kisses to the dearest little girl in all the world.
``Yours ‘til the moon drops in the sea.
``Ed.''

Good Press, Good Publicity

We invited a writer for The Valley Breeze to join us on a recent shoot at Zambarano, and his story in this week's edition of the paper, which circulates in northern Rhode Island, is a welcome addition to the coverage we have been getting. In his piece, Ethan Shorey wrote about a former patient whose narrative is among those we are documenting. ``Emily's story was one of many Bettencourt and Miller are capturing, detailing unpredictable stories of hope, fun, humor and even discovered love, even though many resdients were living with, and dying from, the number-one killer disease of the early 20th century.'' Which is about a good a description of our aim as any. For the full text, visit The Valley Breeze.

-- Wayne

Patient Number One wasn't the first...

During lunch today, I stopped at the city archives and gleaned a few tidbits about Patient Number One, George S. Barrows, from Providence's death records. The S. is for Sprague, his mother and stepmother's maiden name. He was single at the time of his death. He died of "tuberculosis of lungs and brain."

I also looked up his older brother, Frank Perry Barrows, who died eight years earlier, at the age of 26. Frank died Jan. 3, 1899, in the Homeopathic Hospital of "acute miliary tuberculosis."

So, George was not the first in his family to die of tuberculosis. He must have had a particular sense of foreboding as he made his journey to the lake.

I still have to check out George and Frank's mother's death record.

The picture above shows the ledger book that records George's death. The city archives is a visually rich place with an archivist who looks straight out of central casting, complete with a bow tie.

-Paul Parker

Bad News, Good News

After Sunday's meeting, I did some archive work on the Web and found that Patient Number One, George S. Barrows, and his brother and sister all appear to have died without children. This makes it highly unlikely we'll connect with living relatives who know much about him. I still have to confirm this, though. And I haven't given up hope of finding archival tracings of George.

On the good news side, I had time on my lunch break to zip up to North Burial Ground to see whether George has a gravestone. I found it, and snapped the above picture with my cell phone. The cheap camera and the afternoon sun behind the east-facing stone account for the crummy quality, but there he is.

-Paul Parker

A Toast to the R.I. Council for the Humanities!

We are pleased to announce that the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities has just awarded a grant to help underwrite ON THE LAKE. Thanks, Council, for this vote of confidence in our project! We are incurring substantial expenses and seeking further funding but this is a great start. Like Rhode Island PBS, which has written a letter of commitment to broadcast OTL, the Council’s vote is an endorsement of our idea, our crew, and our dedication to bringing to life an extraordinary and important but mostly forgotten story.

-- Wayne

The Crew at Midway's New Studio

Had our second full-crew production meeting today, our first at Midway Picture's new home in an old industrial building turned cool new arts and what-not complex on the Providence waterfront. This is our crew, in our usual business attire; please pardon Dave, bottom row center, the guy holding the green ball, he always forgets to take off his hat for formal pictures. The collective energy today was outstanding, and as we wrap principal photography we feel as if we are in a very, very good place with ON THE LAKE. Dave's choice of furniture matches the industrial-wasteland view out of the many spacious windows (the dinosaurs on the shelves are a neat touch, as I am sure his sons will agree), but gentle snarkasm aside, this is a great space, in a great location, with great afternoon sun, and, we strongly suspicion, many great films to come, starting with OTL.

-- Wayne

Powerful, Raw, Extraordinary Emotion

Just when we think we’ve maxed out on emotion, along comes an interview that blows us away. Such was the case on Monday, when, during an all-day shoot, we filmed a woman who went to Wallum Lake in the early 1950s as a young teenager. Here was this happy, normal young girl who developed a bad cough, which intensified as she began coughing up blood. Sent to a general hospital, where leprosy was a possible diagnosis, Barbara was terrified. If it was leprosy, would her skin begin to flake off? Would she lose limbs? I remember my own childhood, in the 1960s, when I, too (without symptoms, just healthy paranoia), was horrified at the thought of a disease that would basically rot you into the grave.

In Barbara’s case, TB was diagnosed. So highly contagious, and she was not allowed to go home to say goodbye to her sisters or see her house or have one last look at her bedroom -- but was sent directly to Zambarano. Her dad, wanting to be nice, told her that she would probably be there for only about two weeks. That was scary, but at least there would be light at the end of the tunnel. And then, waiting alone in an examining room behind a curtain, she overheard a doctor tell her parents that she would likely be there for two years or more. Barbara freaked out, and tried to run away. They caught her, of course. Things only got worse from there, with her roommate dying and taken away under a sheet in the middle of the night, and more, much more, that we will use in OTL.

But as we have found time and again, from the midst of this horrible disease and these often-horrible circumstances, come stories of triumph and love. In Barbara’s case, it was Ralphie, a fellow TB patient about her age, handsome… and she soon had a crush. And Ralphie for her. They met only every few weeks in the auditorium, while watching movies -- but a kindly nurse let them sit together (defying the rules of girls on one side, boys on the other) and there they sat, holding hands and whispering sweet things to each other. Ah, love.

This is only a glimpse into the interview, which, as noted, blew Dave and me away. So far away that we took no notes, as we usually do, and have assigned a member of the crew to get us a transcript ASAP. I will savor every word.

We had two other good interviews on Monday and with so many great stories now we are nearing the end of principal photography.

A last note, regarding the aforementioned ghosts: The central steam tunnel was flooded after a heavy rain, meaning we had to find another way to get into the Danford building. We did get in. And then, after our last interview, as Dave and I were alone (or so we assumed), the sun setting, we heard whispers… probably just the steam pipes, right? What were they saying? Have we outworn our welcome? Do we know them too well? Methinks not, it was probably just a bad ghost day. Our commitment to them is that we will tell their stories, and the stories of the many others, the former patients of Wallum Lake. And we’ll do it with dignity and class, and powerful emotion.

-- Wayne

Read It Here First: Auditions Set...

This is the press release we sent this week to local and regional media outlets. We expect stories to begin surfacing soon.

And if you or anyone you know is interested in being in the movie (vocally), please come!

OPEN AUDITIONS SET FOR NEW MOVIE
Great voices wanted for award-winning director’s second feature

PROVIDENCE, R.I. _ The director who brought Rocky Point Park to life in the critically acclaimed film YOU MUST BE THIS TALL is hosting open auditions for voices that will be an integral part of his next feature-length documentary movie, now deep into production and set for broadcast and release in early 2009.

David Bettencourt and his crew seek nine men and women of varying ages to be voices in ON THE LAKE: Life and Love in a Distant Place, which will document the international tuberculosis epidemic of the late 1800s into the 1950s using the focus of the old Rhode Island State Sanatorium, now known as Zambarano Hospital, in Burrillville.

The auditions will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 2, at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Warwick, R.I. Auditions will be held in the order in which candidates sign in at the hotel on March 2. Candidates will be expected to read short scripts, which will be available at the hotel on March 2 for rehearsal.

These vocal roles will be cast:

-- A central narrator, could be male or female. Wow us!
-- A middle-age male doctor/hospital superintendent, circa 1905.
-- A 26-year-old female nurse, originally from Nova Scotia, 1934-35.
-- Her boyfriend (and future husband), a 25-year-old patient originally from Pennsylvania, 1934-35.
-- A middle-age hospital superintendent who lectures on the overall considerations of TB, 1941.
-- A middle-age male doctor who lectures on the history of TB, 1941.
-- A young female nurse who lectures on the mental-health aspects of TB, 1941.
-- A middle-age male doctor who lectures on the use of surgery on TB patients, 1941.
-- A 19-year-old female patient who falls in love but dies tragically, circa 1950.

The winners will be posted April 1 on the official movie web site. Recordings will take place in a Rhode Island sound studio during the summer. Winners will be notified of their precise dates in late spring.

“In bringing this important and moving story to the screen,” Bettencourt said, “great, original voices will enhance our original score and the wealth of photographs, film footage, letters, and other materials we are using.

“The real power of this story is the triumph of the human spirit from the tragic circumstances of TB, which was the number-one killer in the 1900s, as feared as bird flu is today or AIDS was two decades ago. As grim as life in this distant place sounds, it was the setting for many extraordinary stories of love, marriage and family. This is anything but a `disease-of-the-week movie.”

ON THE LAKE is being produced and written by G. Wayne Miller. Most of the crew from YOU MUST BE THIS TALL is back for Bettencourt’s second feature film.

YOU MUST BE THIS TALL earned a coveted five stars from The Providence Journal, which also named it one of the Top Ten movies of 2007, Hollywood releases included. It won Best Documentary Film in the 2007 Northampton Independent Film festival and enjoyed an extended run on several regional wide-screen theaters. The DVD continues to enjoy brisk sales.

Production of ON THE LAKE began last fall, with filming continuing throughout Rhode Island. Bettencourt and crew filmed last month in Saranac Lake, N.Y., site of a well-known sanatorium, and will soon film in Colorado and New York City, where renown sanatoria were also located.

The Crowne Plaza is at 801 Greenwich Ave., Warwick, R.I., 02886, tel. 401-732-6000. Directions at this site.

The Ghosts of Wallum Lake

We’ve had so many great shoots that it’s difficult to rank them, but today’s surely ranks at or near the top. Two sisters who grew up at Zam some half century ago – two women with incredible memories and a great eye for detail, and both were wonderful on camera. We interviewed them individually (we find that group ints can be counter-productive) in the medical library, a quiet and well-lit spot with a view of the lake, then walked with them narrating through the infamous steam tunnels to the building where their father, a long-time superintendent and doctor who assisted with surgery. Into the long-abandoned OR we went to hear their reminiscences. And along the way, we happened on a treasure trove: some 40- or 50-year-old super-8 film that we will have to review, but we think it could be rare slice-of-life footage from the periods covered in OTL’s second and third acts. We would like to thank the ghosts of the now-closed Danford Building for coming through for us again, so many patients from so long ago, passing the lonely weeks and months in their beds, surely something would come of it, especially for those who didn't survive but went to their graves doomed by a microbe spread by a cough or a kiss (you think we’re kidding? We know what ghosts want, which is to be immortalized.) Supplemented by the sisters’ photo archive – hundreds and hundreds of shots of a large, growing family – and their brother, who we will soon put on camera, we could not ask for more.

-- Wayne