Executive Director, Barbara Lau, recently interviewed Talleah Bridges-McMahon, the producer of the new documentary My Name is Pauli Murray. This interview was edited for length.
Barbara Lau: I thought I would just open by asking you to share more about your role as the producer of the film 'My name is Pauli Murray.' What does that mean?
Talleah Bridges McMahon:
I feel like even if you work in the industry, people are always confused about what a producer does. It's one of those roles that, depending upon the project, has different meanings. I will say that Betsy West and Julie Cohen, who were the directors of the film, they're very collaborative. They had a vision and my role was to help them achieve that. And so from the very beginning, the three of us were really working together to come up with, you know, answering the big questions: how will we tell the story of Pauli Murray? Who will we talk to? Who will our editor be? You know, our editor Cinque Northern was definitely the fourth key collaborator in this process, so that was actually a very important decision to make. Then just going through and actually coming up with how to approach telling the story in terms of which parts of Pauli's life to include, writing the various segments for the film, conducting the interviews and basically taking it through the edit.
BL: So you did a little bit of everything: research, writing, interviewing.
TBM: Exactly.
BL: Excellent. So just from your own perspective, why did you feel like it was important to make this movie?
TBM: I had heard Pauli Murray's name before - just in passing while working on other projects - but I didn't know anything about Pauli Murray when Betsy and Julie approached me about working on the film. They had learned about Pauli Murray through their film 'RBG' because Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was so influenced by Pauli Murray's work.
As they started to tell me all of the things that Pauli had actually done, I went from being blown away to being kind of angry. To me, it was an actual injustice that we didn't know Pauli Murray's name. Pauli Murray should be just as well-known as John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to be involved in getting Pauli's name out into the world. It just felt like such a wrong that had to be corrected.
BL: So you mentioned that the directors were very collaborative. What was that like? I mean, people come with different experiences, different identities, different attachments to a story.
TBM: Pauli's story is so rich and it has so many segments and so many components, there are all these different phases, different parts of Pauli's life. We started off by making a list of all of the stories that we could tell. Then we had a meeting to talk through why we would be telling those stories and what we each found compelling about those stories or why they were significant for understanding Pauli. We went through discussing each one and were able to whittle it down.
As we started actually crafting the film, we would go through that process again and again, with each of us talking about what we were interested in, what resonated with us, what wasn't really working, what maybe felt redundant. It was just an ongoing conversation that we had as we were crafting the film all the way to the very end.
BL: So do you remember what was on the top of your list?
TBM: A million things, and that was the problem. We all wanted to tell everything. So the question was, what could we actually let go of? That was probably one of the more challenging components of telling Pauli's story. I would say there were little things that I said, “Oh, I really want to make sure we get this in there.” So when Pauli is at Brandeis pushing for tenure, and they're saying “you haven't really done anything impressive enough to warrant granting you tenure.” For me, that was the epitome of Pauli being ignored and unrecognized.
It was important for us to take the audience to that point. So by the time that is happening, the audience is feeling that outrage, like I felt, knowing that happened. And so things like that, knowing that we wanted to craft a story so that by the time you get to that part of Pauli's life, you too were feeling the injustice that Pauli would have felt in that moment.
BL: Is there some way that you personally really identify with Pauli or some part of Pauli's story?
TBM: In starting the film Pauli seemed very intimidating to me. I felt like, having read the books, Pauli clearly had a brilliant mind. I felt like Pauli was sort of a larger-than-life figure. It was really in going to the archive and reading so much of Pauli’s personal struggles - I'm the one who spent a lot of time at the Schlesinger Library - that Pauli became more of a regular person. I was surprised to see that Pauli left so many personal documents. You know, I would expect someone to leave drafts of speeches and legal documents, but Pauli left so many diary entries and letters to and from friends and family.
In reading those, one of the biggest things it seemed to me that Pauli is grappling with is: how do you build a life that is satisfying in a world that is not necessarily there to support you doing so? Pauli is constantly trying to figure out how to create happiness and joy and satisfaction, from the beginning to the end. And that, to me, was very relatable. I would also say Pauli's family connection was another aspect of Pauli’s life that felt familiar to me. I actually come from a family that I think is very similar in that there's a lot of racial pride. I didn't really grow up feeling the prejudices of the country because I was pretty insulated from that perspective within my household. It's something that I became aware of the more I went out into the world, but it was something that I didn't really internalize I think because of the family that I had.
“Pauli is constantly trying to figure out how to create happiness and joy and satisfaction, from the beginning to the end.”
BL: Was there any one piece of paper, any one journal entry, any one thing you found there that you really have a strong memory of?
TBM: Pauli's relationship with Renee Barlow felt, for a while, sort of elusive to me. Pauli doesn't write much about Renee. From a filmmaking perspective, one thing that we struggled with for a while, an open question we had was: how do you tell this part of the story? You know, in the archives, there was a lot of documentation of a lot of things, but here are only two photos of Renee. So we weren't quite sure how we would approach telling their connection and telling that as a love story. On one of our trips to the Schlesinger Library, actually the last trip that I ended up taking because of the pandemic, I just decided to pull everything that looked like it had anything to do with Renee Barlow.
I remember opening a folder and it was the letters between the two of them. They hadn't been printed anywhere that I’d seen. They hadn't been reprinted in any of the books that I’d read. It was in those letters that I could feel the connection. And the idea that Pauli is connecting through the written word, which is so important to Pauli. It's one of those joyful moments where you see everything coming together, it's just so adorable and so intimate and so sweet and so playful. I hadn't really expected that either, that these two people - who seem sort of serious to me - would have all these playful nicknames. That was really touching.
Oh my gosh, there's a letter when Pauli is at Howard law school. It seems like Pauli was probably seeking help for physical health problems and sometimes for mental health problems. there's a letter that I came across that Pauli wrote to Aunt Pauline while all of this is happening, Pauli would be early thirties, in terms of age. Pauli is writing to Aunt Pauline to say “the thing” that happens is happening again and Pauli specifically says the thing that you call my “boy-girl personality” is getting me in trouble. To see that Pauli had someone to write to about it - I had been working under the belief that Pauli was really isolated when it came to that. To see that Aunt Pauline was still such a close confidant into adulthood was just so amazing and reassuring. I wish we all had an Aunt Pauline.
BL: Several of the things you've said really reflect your goal about telling a story from a different point of view, from a little bit more of the inside, not from the exterior gaze. How did that play into the whole dynamic around the decision-making in the film?
TBM: It's really hard to tell someone's story. There's a great responsibility that comes in even daring to take on that task. So what we all kept going back to was, what is Pauli's truth in this moment? Who was Pauli in this moment and how do we make sure we are keeping sight of that? As much as we could, we tried to anchor everything in Pauli's perspective. We were trying to avoid projecting what could be something like an external point of view onto Pauli's life journey.
Pauli’s experience at Brandeis as the black power movement was on the rise is a good example of this. I think if you don't know Pauli specifically, you could very easily assume because Pauli is a person who's ahead of the times. Pauli is fighting for social justice causes, so that Pauli is definitely going to be down with the Black Power movement because it's the movement of the day and it's considered the radical movement. Then to see that actually, at this moment in time, Pauli has a completely different perspective on all of this. It's important to us to say this is Pauli crafting a particular journey that is true to Pauli. It's not the “Black civil rights activists” experience. It is Pauli's experience.
BL: What is it that you hope people will take away from this film? What was the audience you had in mind?
TBM: It became really important to us to show the losses. This wasn't just the story of a person who set out to do amazing things and actually accomplished those things. It's actually very remarkable to say Pauli influenced the argument that Thurgood Marshall and NAACP made when arguing for Brown vs Board of Education. Pauli influenced Ruth Bader Ginsburg's arguments at the Supreme court for gender equality. Those are the things that when I heard them, I thought “Oh my gosh, why don't I know about Pauli?”
But it was learning about all of the things that Pauli did that didn't work out that I found most compelling. I think so often people who are fighting for change are not having victories. It's very easy to be dissuaded by that. If you are fighting for change in this country, you can be discouraged. That would be justifiable and giving up would be justifiable. That would all actually make sense to me.
To see a person who kept persisting, even without those victories coming so easily, I found that so inspiring. The bigger thing is that Pauli didn’t even know all of the time when Pauli was doing something that would make an impact or that any impact was being made. I hope what people who are fighting for change take away from this is that even if you don't see the impact of your efforts, you have faith that they actually are not being made in vain. You know, change does happen.
BL: How are you different now that you know this story so intimately?
TBM: I mean, it's an interesting time, right? To work on a film like this when we were in the middle of what I will call a highly problematic presidential administration. There is a rise of white nationalism. I became sort of disillusioned. I think for me it was a good reminder that it's actually fantastic that we have all of these movements that are pushing back. We had Black Lives Matter growing more. The Me Too movement. It's actually those movements that give me hope. It is the resistance to what I was describing. I think what I took away from it is that there are so many Pauli Murrays. Pauli Murray is brilliant, but also not that different than so many other people. It's like each generation has a lot of Pauli Murrays who are pushing for change and accomplishing things. You always have the people who are working to be divisive. So it is great to also have the people who are working to be more inclusive.
BL: You all came from different backgrounds and experiences. Did you ever clash as you were making the film?
TBM: I should say I've worked with Betsy and Julie on another project. From that experience, I knew that collaborating with them on this, there wouldn't really be clashes. I don't think we have the personalities that prompt a clash necessarily. It was much more like, “I think this thing because of this reason” and someone else saying, “huh, interesting. Let me think about that.” So we were constantly just having discussions. We didn't always agree. There were definitely moments where I might say, “I see what we're trying to do here, but I don't think it's playing correctly,” or, “it seems a little off for this reason.” Sometimes me and our editor Cinque - I'm Black, he's Black - there were some moments where we said, “as Black people, we think that this isn't quite playing correctly” and they would have to say, “huh, what do you mean?”
Then we'd explain it and we'd go through it. We'd just have to start reworking things. I remember them very explicitly saying, “well, we don't really know what you're saying. We don't see this thing that you're flagging, but we trust that the thing that you're saying we should do is the thing we should do. So let's do that thing since you both seem to think we should do that thing.” I think that's important for a person to get to the place where they can say, “I don't really know what you're saying. That's not my experience. That's not how I see things, but I trust that it matters. So go ahead and do what you think we should do
BL: Is there anything that learning about Pauli's story and being involved in the project pushed you to ask yourself or to really think more deeply about yourself?
TBM: I feel like there's a thing that I struggle with - to what extent does the work that I do matter? I have different answers to that at different times. When I was younger, I thought documentaries about very important issues would enlighten people and then the world changed. I didn't really realize that the world wouldn't change. It's been a process.
I would say that in doing this work, if I'm lucky, there are moments where I do actually hear feedback from audiences about why these projects have mattered to them, why my work has mattered to them. That is what keeps me going.
I think that there are moments where I can lose sight of that. And I think Pauli probably had the same experience. You are working on something and you don't necessarily see the impact of that thing. You just have to have faith that you are having some sort of impact, that the work that you were doing and your investment of time does have value.
BL: What's next? What are your hopes now that the film has premiered and gotten a lot of attention?
TBM: It's great to premiere at Sundance. It’s a fantastic platform to launch the film, but we are now working on a wider release. So we're really excited about the possibility of just more people seeing and getting to know Pauli's story.
BL: Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.
TBM: You are very welcome.