By Carl Hansen for IMAGINE News
I had the pleasure of being in Massachusetts when the Oscar-winning film, CODA, was screening at The Cabot event space in Beverly. (In fact, the ticket to the event was a gift from my mom, so I have to thank Terri Hansen for the opportunity to go.) I have been a fan of the movie since it came out last year and followed its progression as it made its way through awards season, gathering multiple wins until ultimately winning Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor at this year’s Academy Awards. The movie is about a deaf fishing family in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and their hearing daughter (CODA stands for “Child Of Deaf Adult”) who is their sole interpreter to the hearing world and who loves singing. The event was a fundraiser for Manship Artist Residency which consisted of a pre-screening cocktail reception with locally catered food, a screening of the film, and an in-person Q & A with the film’s director and Oscar-winning screenwriter, Siân Heder, Best Supporting Actor winner, Troy Kotsur (Frank Rossi in the film), and actor Daniel Durant (Leo Rossi), moderated by local Oscar-nominated producer (for Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE) Sarah Green.
[This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity – Troy Kotsur and Daniel Durant spoke through ASL interpreters]
Siân Heder
I grew up in Cambridge and I came up to Gloucester every summer of my life, basically. So, Gloucester was just a really special place for me. I loved the feel of the town. I loved that it felt gritty, and it also was this sort of incredibly visual, cinematic place, but that the vibe of the people here was very working class and real and funny. I wanted this to be a fishing family in Gloucester, Massachusetts. I wanted to cast deaf actors in these roles. I wanted these long silent ASL scenes. I didn’t want Ruby talking through every scene. I didn’t want to use music to fill out these spaces. We made the movie on a budget and the ride has been absolutely amazing because it was a very scrappy movie, but we really became a family making it. So, it’s sort of extra special to have watched it kind of sneak its way through Hollywood and the ascent that it had because we fought so hard for it.
Sarah Green
Have you ever worked in another language [American Sign Language (ASL)]? Is this a first for you?
Siân Heder
I’ve never directed so much in a language that was not mine. I will say something else about making it personal. Not only did the place feel very personal to me, but I felt like I needed this family to feel like my family. So, they were out-of-line and dirty and having inappropriate humor and all the things that my family had. I felt like there were a lot of things that I pulled from my own life, and it made the movie very personal. So even though this family was different from me, and I was an outsider to deaf culture, I had sort of imbued Frank and Leo and Jackie, and Ruby with these very kind of personal memories. I started learning sign when I started writing the movie. I felt like the more I learned about deaf culture, the more important it became for me for certain aspects of the film. I really wanted ASL to be seen on screen because it’s the most beautiful language. I think a lot of the time, when you see even deaf characters on screen, their hands are cut off. It’s like a close up and you don’t even get to see the full language. So, it was really important to me to not only cast incredible actors but find a way to work with my cinematographer to shoot it in a way that we could really put ASL on screen.
Sarah Green
Troy, talk a little bit about your character of Frank and what drew you to him, what you brought to him.
Troy Kotsur
When I first read the script, it was so fun for me because I had never played that type of character because I’m from Arizona. We don’t have an ocean. I’m from the desert. I’m not a fisherman myself and I don’t actually eat seafood. I’ve never eaten seafood, it’s just not my thing. But as an actor, it was so fun for me to play and transform and dive into this character of Frank Rossi and to convince the audience to believe in my work as a fisherman. When I read the script, it really touched me because I felt very strongly that hearing people all over the world really need to see this movie. I was born deaf, and I’ve seen so many hearing people out there who don’t completely understand what deafness is. They look at us like lesser than, or someone to have sympathy for, a victim, and I don’t feel like that. I’m fine and I can prove them wrong.
And CODAs, the children of deaf adults, really represent both cultures, hearing culture and deaf culture because they can communicate verbally. So, a hearing audience can connect with a CODA character and this CODA character can communicate in sign language, so the deaf community can relate. The CODA was able to pull in that hearing audience into our culture, and that makes all of you change your perspective and think, “Hey, we’re just the same. Deaf people and hearing people have the same way of thinking. It doesn’t matter what race you are or what language you use. We’re all human beings.” So really the only difference between us and you is language.
Daniel Durant (Leo Rossi), Siân Heder, Troy Kotsur (Frank Rossi)
Sarah Green
Daniel, I was reading that you are also very into music and music is a big part of your world. I was thinking about the scene in this movie where Frank touches Ruby’s throat to feel the vibrations of her singing. I just feel like everyone’s experience of music is so singular and I’d love to hear about yours.
Daniel Durant
Okay. Well, really, I want to make it clear for everyone. There are so many different types of deaf people. Some people can hear well, some people can’t hear things clearly, some people can hear certain frequencies, but I was born completely deaf. I’m fully deaf, capital D Deaf. I think that’s why you asked me that question. So how I learned about music, is growing up I was driving with my mom in the car. One day she bought a system and she put a good sound system in the car. So, she went into the store without me, and I turned up the sound system and I was enjoying the music in the car, but I realized that I was listening to NPR. So, once I found that out, I understood the differences between the vibrations of talking and music and all those things, the beat with a song. So that’s one of my favorite scenes and one of my stories in CODA, when Frank shows up to the school to pick up Ruby and he’s banging music, he’s just feeling the bass, having a good time, feeling his music in his truck. He shows up to his hearing daughter’s school and she’s embarrassed. It’s like, “That’s how I feel.” I pulled up, doing that stuff to my mom all the time. And I love music and I love bass, but really, I just love feeling the music.
Sarah Green
Daniel, you were part of a theater company in Norway for a while, right? You performed in various countries in Europe. Did you already know Norwegian and French sign language or, or how different is it?
Daniel Durant
Yeah, actually it was a great experience, going to Norway for seven months to work in a play. After seven months of learning a different language, I was fascinated with their culture because you know ASL is not universal. A lot of people think that, but no, every country has their own ASL.
Troy Kotsur
There’s over 300 different types of sign languages worldwide.
Daniel Durant
Yeah, our ASL was born from French sign language. Someone went to France and learned sign language and brought it back to America and made that American Sign Language.
Troy Kotsur
One example that most of you may know regarding sign language, in Japan, do you want to know the sign for brother? (he holds up his middle finger) This is the sign for brother in Japan. It’s true. That’s their sign. See what I mean. Sorry, I forgot, your kids are here, Siân.
Siân Heder
Even my eight-year-old daughter tells everyone, “You should see my mom’s movie CODA, but it’s very inappropriate.”
Troy Kotsur
But it’s still educational.
Sarah Green
I love it. Well, one of the things I really loved in this film was the chemistry between the family. It’s really beautiful and it comes through so strongly. For any one of you, I’d love to hear you talk about how that came about. How much time you spent together beforehand, how you developed so closely.
Daniel Durant
All right. Well, really, I already knew Troy and Marlee before we started filming. So, the three of us already had chemistry. We already had deaf culture inside of us, and we connected and understood through that. But when it was Troy’s first-time meeting Emilia (who plays Ruby in the film), we all had to get up at 2:00 AM and we had to go practice being fisherman on a boat. So that was the first time we met Emilia, and she was so open minded and friendly, and she learned from us. I think she practiced for one-year ASL, right, Troy?
Troy Kotsur
Yes. About a year.
Daniel Durant
Yeah. So, one year, so she knew what she was doing, and she talked with us a little bit and she could finger spell. I would teach her how to finger spell. She would finger spell something to me and I would teach her the sign and she remembered everything. We had so much fun, the three of us, learning how to fish and sign at the same time. Again, she was so open minded. She kept it all. And remember the weekends?
Troy Kotsur
t felt like we had that bond, and on weekends during that time, it was football season. We would all argue about sports, but Emilia Jones was watching us, and she joined in on all of us joking around and kidding with each other, but that really benefited her during the weekend. We weren’t working, but it was like family time, sharing your meal, watching sports. I told the interpreters to just back off. Interpreters, go on a break and forced Emilia to have that experience with the deaf family. That really helped her grow and we brought that onto set. So, after the second week, again, we socialized on the weekend and really that bond grew even stronger, and so did that chemistry and you see that on screen.
Daniel Durant
You remember the last day of filming? When we had such emotional scene and I felt like, “How am I going to disconnect from you guys? How am I going to disconnect from my family?” So, you guys see us on screen, and we look like a family, but really, we’re a family behind the scenes. It was very emotional to let go of these guys. I want to thank you, Sian, for believing in us.
Siân Heder
I think the boat was huge for creating this kind of bonding because as a director, your fear is you cast these people and I remember putting their pictures up on the wall of my office and being like, “Okay, they look like a family. How are they going to be a family?” So, we had a live rehearsal scheduled because I really wanted to spend time together, and we did it in the house. So, we had this crazy house out on Conomo Point and we had access to it. So, we spent a lot of time in the house, just kind of working the scenes and figuring them out.
But the boat was really the thing because none of these guys knew how to fish. Originally, I had fishing doubles that I had planned. We were going to come in with stunt doubles and fish, and Troy and Daniel and Emilia were so determined to learn it. They were like, “No, we want to know how to run this boat.” So, we never used the fishing doubles. And when we went out, we shot it almost like a documentary, we’d been out so much that these guys knew what they were doing. We could have operators on the camera, operators on the boat. These guys could run the boat. I mean, pull in the nets and pull up the doors and do all the stuff. It was really amazing to watch, and the chemistry that formed in this family was so special. When you start to see it happening on screen, it’s that thing that’s just this ephemeral thing that you can never make happen if there’s no chemistry. It started to happen with his family, and it was so exciting to watch because it felt real. It felt like we were a fly on the wall in this real family.
PUB: Truly this was the little film that could. My thanks to Carl Hansen who really gets it. He had been an advocate for treating disabilities in film in a way that encourages all people to view disabilities as normal, a great contribution to understanding our best selves. Often those with disabilities give us information by example that we may not otherwise take in. Carl’s films have won countless awards in this special category. Carl has been an IMAGINE reporter at large for over twenty years. And if my memory serves me correctly, Carl was a PA (production assistant) on the film of STATE AND MAIN (2000), which Sarah Greene (the moderator of this event) was the Producer! Isn’t that a fun fact?