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A
Film from Center Ring of a Media Circus
by Carl Glassman
Until the
terrorists struck, no event had so overtaken Tribeca as the deaths in July
1999 of John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn, and Carolyn’s sister
Lauren Bessette. The disappearance of their small plane off Martha’s
Vineyard provided few images for the picture-hungry press, and the gray,
faceless building at 20 North Moore Street where the Kennedys lived quickly
became a visual focal point–turned– spectacle.
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With a huge media corps camped across the street, mourners and
curiosity seekers passed the building, day and night, for nearly
two weeks. They came bearing flowers, letters, candles, photos,
paintings and knickknacks, turning the front of the building into
a mountainous shrine, and those who lived there into unwitting captives.
As the crowds kept coming, the cameras kept rolling, their lenses
fixed on 20 North Moore Street.
The glare of the spotlight shone brightest, literally, on the ground-floor
apartment of Kennedy neighbors Ruth Hardinger and Michael Norton.
Hardinger, an artist and Tribeca real estate agent who has lived
in the building since 1977, felt the need to create a work of some
sort from her privileged position. Her medium is sculpture and drawing,
but she wanted to make a film.
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“It was such an intense
experience, the feeling that we were trapped, and the horrible sadness
of it all,” says Hardinger, who describes her relationship with
the Kennedys as neighborly. “I had this urge to do something
creative with it.”
A chance meeting on the street with her friend Bill Brand, a filmmaker
and Franklin Street resident, evolved into a collaborative 40-minute
documentary, shown last month at the Tribeca Film Festival, called
“I’m a Pilot Like You.” (The title comes from one of
many inscriptions to John F. Kennedy, Jr. left at the memorial.)
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The film is less a documentary of the event than a personal glimpse
of what it was like to be caught within it. Its pace matches the
plodding movement of visitors strolling endlessly by, and extended
shots of the spectacle on those hot summer nights induce a sense
of claustrophobia that Hardinger herself must have felt. Even in
front of the building, she seems almost lost on her own street.
The film turns the media/gawkers’ gaze back onto itself and
gives viewers a kind of house-of-mirrors look at the bizarre scene.
Brand’s camera peeks back at the news cameras recording the
scene that we see Norton watching on TV upstairs and Hardinger viewing
from the window. Brand calls it a “cycle of looking.”
“What became interesting to us was the way that our own experience,
particularly Ruth’s experience, was
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both part of and influenced
by the spectacle. And that spectacle, in turn, was both created
by and reflected in the media
The filmmakers said their intent was not to belittle those who
came to pay their respects. “Emotions were very real, and
people’s sentiments were very deep,” says Brand. Nevertheless,
he has his most fun with some double-daters from Philadelphia
who arrive by stretch limo to photograph themselves showing
off at the shrine. From behind the camera, Brand asks one of
the men why they came.
“For a guy to have $50 million and ride the subway, he’s
a pretty down-to-earth guy, you know what I mean?” he replies.
“That’s what I respect about him. You know what I
mean?”
Hardinger was so put off by the experience that she could not
pick up a camera for two years. And reminders never end. Camera-toting
visitors still appear on their doorstep almost daily, she and
Norton say.
“It’s really amazing to me,” says Norton, “that
people get a kind of sustenance out of photographing a gray
door and a doorbell of someone who has been dead for four years.”
Brand and Hardinger hope to give a public screening of the film
next month. Further information will be posted at bboptics.com/pilot.html.
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