BULLY directed by Lee Hirsch. 108 minutes. An Alliance release. Opens Friday (April 6). For venues and times, see Movies.
Every time I read about the documentary Bully, a clear-eyed look at the impact of bullying on five families, the word “controversial” is used to describe it. Fact is, it’s powerful, pointed and important, but there’s nothing controversial about it.
“I’m actually sick of people saying it’s controversial,” says director Lee Hirsch, pouring himself coffee in a downtown Toronto hotel room. “But the fight over the rating did give us a lot of attention, and it’s hard for documentaries to get that.”
It’s amazing what four “clear and present fucks,” as Hirsch calls them, and two “background fucks” will do. When Bully received an R rating in the U.S. that will prevent middle school kids – the doc’s target audience – from seeing it, celebrities like Johnny Deep, Merle Streep and Justin Bieber decried the decision, and the film’s profile was radically increased. Fortunately, Canada’s panel gave it a PG rating.
It’s not that the American rating system is rigid.
“They bend the rules when they want to,” says the New York City-based filmmaker. “But this wasn’t a giant studio movie. It’s a double standard. You keep giving us violence, exploitation of women, homophobia and everything else and you glorify it and make it sexy – The Hunger Games, for example – and then you have to intervene on behalf of the parents of America when it comes to Bully? It really pissed people off.”
Hirsch spent a year following his subjects and accompanying them on the school bus, where a lot of the abuse takes place. Almost as disturbing as the bullies punching, kicking, poking and everything else – not at all inhibited by the presence of the camera – are the shots of the young witnesses who do nothing.
“Those are the kids this movie is for,” Hirsch insists. “It fires everybody up. The bullies watch it and go, ‘Oh, I thought I was just messing around’ and don’t realize they’re compounding something. The bullied kids say, ‘Thank you for giving me a voice.’
“But the best message I got was from a kid who wrote, “On the bus today I stopped someone from being bullied. I stopped it and I went with the kid to the counsellor and I never would have done it if I hadn’t seen the film.”
Not that counsellors are equipped to deal with the problem. Bully reveals an array of inept teachers and school systems not at all prepared to be accountable for what happens to their young charges.
But though his film may indicate otherwise, Hirsch doesn’t consider teachers his enemies.
“I see every educator as a partner. The two big teacher unions are partners in the project. I’m not at war with educators. This isn’t Waiting For Superman. If educators can acknowledge that they don’t have the tools to deal with the problem, then that really matters.”
At one point during the shoot, Hirsch could no longer stomach what he was seeing and showed the footage to the parents and teachers of Alex, whose abuse is most explicitly documented.
It’s unusual for documentary filmmakers or photojournalists to intervene in this way. Most allow horrible things to happen to get the hot story. Famously, Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a starving African child at a feeding centre was criticized for that reason.
“There’s a difference between a photojournalist shooting famine victims and being engaged with a family on a journey,” says Hirsch. “These guys were partners. This wasn’t a drop-in interview, and Alex [the victim at the heart of the film] knew that every time I showed up in his life I had his back.
“The whole film is an act of intervention.”
Interview Clips
On how Alex, his main subject, has changed since the film was made:
On what he learned about the bullies themselves:
susanc@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/nowfilm
