Any longtime attendee of DOC NYC that walks into the premiere of “No One Asked You” might have a feeling of deja vu when Ruth Leitman previously brought the first two episodes of “Lady Parts Justice in the New World Order,” a series following “Daily Show” co-creator Lizz Winstead on the road with a comedy tour aimed to bring attention to abortion clinics in the Midwest and south that could use support as the target of frequent attacks from pro-life extremists and have long suffered from a misunderstanding of what they do.
“That was like the day after Election Day 2018, and a lot of things happened,” said Leitman, a professor at Columbia College Chicago besides being a filmmaker who had to rethink the entire project almost immediately after its first public screening. “I actually tell my students this, that when bad things happen in the circumstances of your film, good things happen to your film.”
At a time when even the conservative judges were obliged to say Roe V. Wade was settled law if they were being considered for a seat on the evenly-divided Supreme Court, Leitman, Winstead and Abortion Access Front, her network of activists, knew better as the lower courts were filled with far-right judges prepared to rule on test cases and they could see protests to the clinics by a small but vocal minority intensify when being on the ground. While deciding to turn what footage they had into a feature with more of a central focus, what wouldn’t be lost by Leitman and crew along the way would be the sense of humor that not only made the narrative itself buoyant, but kept those working on behalf of women’s rights from falling into despair during dispiriting times and in “No One Asked You,” there may be a few less stand up sets, but it’s no insult to say it has a funny way of showing what these activists are standing for.
Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Mississippi, the clinic at the heart of the Dobbs decision that ultimately overturned Roe V. Wade and colloquially known as the Pink House for its eye-popping exterior, is among the first to be visited by Winstead on her 2018 Vagical Mystery tour and separated from a split-second shot on the nightly news to illustrate a story about the court case, it can be seen in its totality as the safe haven with a caring staff that it actually is, and although “No One Asked You,” much like Winstead’s “Daily Show” doesn’t present itself as serious reportage, the travel that Winstead does to parts of the country that rarely get national and mainstream attention ends up being far more revealing than what most coverage of the debate over abortion would have you believe, not only of the people that work in clinics, but also in the advent of crisis pregnancy centers, set up by evangelical activists to pretend to offer the same services as abortion clinics do yet offer no services at all.
On the eve of the director’s triumphant return to DOC NYC, Leitman graciously took the time to talk about going back to the drawing board with “No One Asked You,” forging a personal connection with Winstead that informed the film and how the issue of a woman’s right to choose is just one among many that could benefit from greater awareness.
You actually first premiered a series at DOC NYC about Lizz that I believe now is the foundation for this film. How did it evolve?
It had a few lives. I met Lizz in 2012 when she was out on her book tour for “Lizz Free or Die,” and I was at NetRoots Nation with my film “Tony and Janina’s American Wedding,” and NetRoots is this conference that happens every year that gets caucuses and people together around issues. And I’d always been a fan of Lizz’s work, and cut to election night 2016 and as usual, when something catastrophic happens in our country that is just so far-fetched, [I knew] Lizz will be on MSNBC to talk about it. That’s what happened. And I knew that things were going get a lot worse around many issues, but I thought, “Wow, things are going to be really bad around abortion” [since they were] trending in that direction since the 2010 election. When I saw Lizz on television talking about how bad things could get, I thought, “This is how I’m going to tell that story” and I needed to get in touch with her because I knew that I needed to connect the issue to somebody like her who has so much humor and levity around the issue, but also drives home the hard facts. Lizz and Nicole, her communications director at that time, thought it was a good idea, and fortunately for us, they were planning this Vagical Mystery Tour, which was going through all the battleground states, and was perfect because I loved the idea of a road movie.
But the day before the election, I was actually developing a fiction feature on women’s wrestling, so I didn’t have money raised for a documentary, but I thought I need to do something, so pretty early on we thought, “Well, this could really be a series.” But try peddling a series to streamers about abortion and comedy — that whole process of trying to talk to people around this issue, which I will say today, seven years later, after all that has happened, the overturn of Roe and the abortion laws all of these different states, you can still talk to buyers and they still say that it’s a political issue [that’s untouchable]. When you’re a documentary filmmaker, a door closes, you go go through the window and when the window doesn’t work, you bust through the wall. And every step of the way, this film has been that. People are really responding to it and Lizz and the organization and what they do, and I think the film is an amazing rallying cry for people who care about bodily health, and we hope it’s a conduit to get people together and screen it in a group and get involved because it’s an area where everyone has to get involved if we want to see change.
The film really has a natural rhythm to it both going on stage for the comedy shows and then to visit the clinics that they’re supporting by performing, but as it’s made clear, that second part is rarely seen on screen generally. Was it obvious to take that route?
Yeah, what happens is that Lizz and Abortion Access Front are the ambassadors to take us on the road to meet all of these different people and they’re very close to the clinic staff and the doctors and the escorts [for patients needing rides to the facility], and a lot of the volunteers. It’s like Lizz says early in the film, “How is there not an organization that takes care of these people and checks in on them?” These are people who are really under great risk to do the work that they do, so we made a film about people who are badass nurturers and all of the things that [the AAF] did to make them feel valued. That is the genius of what Lizz does is that is using comedy in a cathartic way to really help people keep going, and it was really just beautiful to see the joy that was brought that was so needed.
And in terms of visiting these clinics in the South and the Midwest, there’s so much misinformation out there, so this is very much a film about how the media didn’t do its job in reporting on abortion access until it was an emergency. So many people don’t know about crisis pregnancy centers, and even though there have been reports on it, it’s not connecting. I have two brothers who are doctors, and I basically said to them, “Do you know that there’s a big business in the United States that’s funded by the government and religious organizations that basically impersonates doctors?” That’s basically what they’re doing, and it’s infuriating. So we wanted that to be an important part of the film, because not only Lizz went there as a young woman, but many of us who have tried to get abortions in our past have run into issues with crisis pregnancy centers.
In fact, on the second stop on the tour, I stopped at a place that I thought was the clinic in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and it was a crisis pregnancy center. It was in the same office park. And I went in there, and they asked me if I wanted an ultrasound. And I said, “No, I’m pretty sure I’m not pregnant, but I’m looking for this other place.” And I think it was about 700 feet away, but they wouldn’t even tell me where it was. The majority of abortions that happen in America happen in these small, independent clinics, and abortion somehow has become branded with, “Oh, I’m to go to Planned Parenthood,” and you’ll notice we don’t go to Planned Parenthood, although Planned Parenthood does good work.” We wanted to go to the people who were really struggling in all of these states to take care of the lion’s share of women who needed abortions.
When this changed from a series idea to a feature, was it obvious that Lizz’s personal story was central to it?
Yeah, I think it was really important for Lizz to be the central character in the film because it’s her baby, it’s her brainchild, it’s her life work. Episodically, I think it would’ve been the same. She walked away from an amazing career to commit her life to her life’s work to abortion access in a very unique way, so that became really clear to me that that was the way to tell it and the parts of the film that I love the most are watching Lizz bring so much love and joy to the people around her, and to be a person who really knows how to gather people in a way that I’ve never quite seen. Often we see celebrities and other well-known people who are involved with an issue, but they’re vanity projects and Lizz lives and breathes this. In fact, we’re all really tired because we’ve been following her for the last seven years, and she never stops. She’s really driven by a personal awareness that she would not be here had she not had that abortion when she was 17 years old.
What really drew me to Lizz personally is that when we got to know each other early, I figured out that we were both basically having our teenage abortions at the very same time under very similar circumstances. She was in an abusive relationship, and I was in an abusive relationship, and that [abortion] gave me a lease on life [like her]. And if one in four women have an abortion in your life, and women who have had abortions really do understand that they were given a chance to lead the kind of life that they wanted to lead and that’s life-changing. And if you’re looking into a sea of people in any big crowd, that is a shared experience.
Given how crazy the last few years have been regarding this issue, what was it like deciding when to finally complete it as a film?
This film was like building a plane while flying it and landing it the entire time. Because we were following the Pink House defenders in Mississippi since the very beginning, and we knew that one of the places that we were filming that was probably going to be at the center of some big Supreme Court case at some point, with the overturn of Roe because of the Dobbs [decision], we knew that this was probably a good place to land it. Then also the fact that Lizz and her team had galvanized people in such a major way, we felt it was a good call-to-action time because we have another election coming up in 2024. We have an amazing one-year plan where we’re going to partner with AAF and go out and do the work that needs to be done to really bring people together. As we see, this trend is not ending. There’s a complete disconnect in the minority rule that we have in this country and the overreaching that is happening politically while the people in these states are saying what they want, so the people who disagree with what’s going on, which is the majority of Americans, have to get louder. We know that we’re not going to change minds about abortion, but we don’t need to. We just need to activate the people who really believe in this in the first place. And it’s not because you’re ignorant or ill-informed, but because it is grossly under-reported.
There are other issues that are grossly underreported as well, but it really did aid in the erosion of abortion access in the country by not making it a big deal. There was local reporting that was happening in various states, but it was never in depth, and Rachel Maddow did reports, but that was an anomaly, and I think that that greatly contributed to this [situation]. So as much as this film is about abortion access and bodily autonomy, it is also about examining our media and it’s a really a story about when the media doesn’t report cohesively and responsibly, and when there are great issues that affect large percentages of the population where people are not informed through the media, that chips away at our democracy.
Often people when making films about issues like this want to use a news clip, and every time there was a milestone in abortion laws or things that were pending in various states, I said, “We have to tell the story without that” because [the news] didn’t really do it. I don’t want to misrepresent how [the public was] informed. In fact, I want to show that they didn’t inform the public.” So that was an interesting challenge. It was like “The Five Obstructions,” and I’m really looking at this film as part of a bigger idea about the dismantling of our democracy that we are witnessing. I think people feel helpless, so we wanted to make a film that could engage with humor and with catharsis in a way that could inspire people to act instead of feeling frustrated. We have a country full of people who are frustrated and when Roe was overturned, so it was important to tell that story in such a way that it wasn’t an “I told you so” story, even though we were making a film about the people who said, “This is going to happen.” We had to make this film for people who were progressive and cared about abortion, who knew everything, and also people who were checked out and knew nothing. Striking that balance was really important for us.
“No One Asked You” opens in New York on October 18th at the DCTV Firehouse and will hold screenings in cities across the country through November. A full list of cities and dates is here. It will also start streaming on JOLT beginning October 24th.