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“Freeheld” Is Nominated for an Oscar

Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 80th Annual Academy Awards, and among them was Freeheld, a short film about New Jersey police lieutenant Laurel Hester’s successful fight to win pension survivorship benefits for her partner, Stacie Andree, after being diagnosed with cancer. The other nominees for Best Documentary Short Subject are La Corona (The Crown), Salim Baba and Sari’s Mother.

Before Lt. Hester passed away in February 2006, she discussed her hopes for Freeheld with filmmaker Cynthia Wade (pictured above), who lived with Hester and Wade off and on during the last eight weeks of Hester’s life.

In an interview with AfterEllen.com, Wade recalled: “She said to me that she wanted to participate in Q&A’s about the film, and other times we talked about the possibility of her not being able to see the final film. Laurel told me, ‘I don’t know where I’m going, but I hope wherever I go, there’s more work for me to do … and I hope wherever I am, I will know about [what happens with Freeheld].’ I told her that whatever happens, the Oscar nomination would be hers, not mine.”

The story of Laurel Hester’s fight with the Board of Chosen Freeholders of Ocean County, N.J., made worldwide headlines in 2005 – not just within the LGBT community but in the mainstream press as well.

After serving her county for more than 20 years, Hester was diagnosed with lung cancer. In the state of New Jersey, each county’s legislative body – the Board of Chosen Freeholders – was empowered to decide whether or not the pensions of public servants such as Hester could be granted to their same-sex partners. Ocean County had not done so by the time Hester learned she had cancer.

The fact that Laurel Hester was a lesbian was known by many in her department but not openly discussed while she was on the force. She explains in Freeheld that her first captain told her not to talk about it, and she was fine with that. “I was there to work,” she says.

Then the injustice of her partner of five years not having access to her pension prompted Hester to speak out. “I spent 25 years fighting for justice for others,” she explains in the film, “and now I’m at a point in my life where the only thing that matters is obtaining justice for the woman I love.”

Her first police partner, Dane Wells, became a staunch though seemingly unlikely ally in Hester’s fight. They had lost touch over the years, but Wells always regarded her as the best partner he’d had during his time on the force in the ’80s. “She was a dedicated, loyal public servant,” he said in an interview with AfterEllen.com. “I never encountered anyone harder-working than Laurel Hester.”

Hester called him when she began thinking of retirement. “She wanted to be a teacher,” Wells said, “teaching high-school-aged kids about discrimination.” Wells had connections around the state for job opportunities, but when he called her back with answers to some of her questions, she had just heard about her diagnosis.

“At that point,” Wells recalled, “Laurel was asking quietly about her pension benefits through her union rep.” When she was turned down, Wells, who had always voted Republican and was considered conservative by those who knew him, was appalled and basically dropped everything to help her.

“I went berserk,” he admitted. “To think that they were going to cast her in the gutter at the point where she needed them for the first time in her life.”

Wells began contacting media representatives he found via the internet, including AfterElton.com’s editor, Michael Jensen, who was then writing about LGBT issues on The Big Gay Picture blog. “Michael Jensen was one of three absolutely indispensable players in this story, without whom the film would have had a very different ending,” Wells said. He also contacted Juan Melli of BlueJersey.com and UKGayNews.org.uk.

Hester’s story found its way to the New York Times, where Cynthia Wade, a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker, read about it.

In the late fall of 2005, “I had just given birth to my second child,” recalled Wade, who was living in Brooklyn with her husband and children. During her pregnancy, she had done some thinking about what her next documentary would be about. Wade specializes in films with strong female characters that address tough, polarizing social issues, such as 2003’s Shelter Dogs, but with her second daughter’s birth, she wasn’t in a hurry to begin work. “Then,” she said, “I read about Laurel.”

The article announced the Dec. 7, 2005, Freeholders meeting, and after doing some quick research about the case on the internet, Wade decided to take a crew of two and drive to Ocean County to attend. “I half expected to be told I couldn’t shoot [at the meeting],” she said, but she was never turned away.

After the meeting, she said to her crew, “I have to do this; this is outrageous.” She introduced herself to Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree and told them that she wanted to make a film about them.

Hester and Andree had led very private lives up until then, and it was a big decision to agree to Wade’s request. “We discussed it initially when Cynthia first came to us,” Andree told AfterEllen.com. “We wanted to know a little more about her, of course, if we were going to let her into our lives. However, I had no idea what an impact or even how big [this story] was going to get. Laurel may have had some idea, but whatever she wanted, I allowed it.”

Wade continued: “I very quickly fell into Laurel and Stacie’s lives, spending nights in their guest room. I wanted to film it with the perspective of a love story. It might be surprising, since I’m a heterosexually married mother of two.”

But perhaps not so surprising. Cynthia Wade was no stranger to lesbians and lesbian issues. She attended Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and had also worked on a documentary about three biological females on the butch-FTM spectrum of gender called Gender Rebel, which aired on Logo (AfterEllen.com’s parent company) in 2006.

Plus, her family lives in Brooklyn, where, Wade said, “diversity is a given. When my oldest daughter was two, she asked me why she doesn’t have two mommies!”

Freeheld opens with footage from that first Freeholders meeting Wade attended. Hester’s fellow police officers spoke as did members of the community who were outraged at the Freeholders’ previous denials of Hester’s request.

The film does a subtly powerful job of showing the issues at play. One of the Freeholders, John Kelly, was adamantly opposed to the idea of granting pension benefits to same-sex partners, saying that it would undermine the sanctity of marriage. Another, John C. Bartlett, Jr., spoke mostly about the cost of the benefits, and about the issue of renegotiating union contracts.

Freeheld includes statements from local newspaper reporters about how disingenuous many of the Freeholders’ arguments were and how they had no support from the public. What was true is that the Freeholders in all of New Jersey’s counties did have the power to grant these benefits to same-sex partners, but due to the strong objections of two of the Ocean County Freeholders, it didn’t appear that that county would do so.

In the film, Dane Wells speaks about the “united front” that the Ocean County Freeholders wanted to maintain, and how their decisions were always “5-0 or 0-5.” That kind of “united front strategy” was not mandated, he told AfterEllen.com, “It was just back-room politics.”

He explained that New Jersey, which has a Democratic governor (John Corzine), has a de facto Mason-Dixon Line running through it, and Ocean County sits in the middle of that border. All of the Freeholders at the time were Republican, which had been the case as long as Wells remembered, with just three exceptions.

Things moved very quickly in the last few months of Hester’s life. On Nov. 18, 2005, the Freeholders first formally turned down Hester’s request, and Dane Wells started working on her behalf. The Dec. 7th meeting was when Wade arrived and began filming.

There was another meeting on Jan. 18, 2006, which Hester was too sick to attend. Supporters arranged for her to film a message that was played at the meeting that evening. And then, rumors started surfacing that the Freeholders were going to hold an emergency meeting on Jan. 25.

At that meeting, Freeholder Director Joseph H. Vicari told the gallery that he had received a call from Governor Corzine, and that this call helped him see how they could change their minds about Hester’s request. Wade’s camera showed the vacant seat of Freeholder John Kelly; with his absence, the Freeholders were able to present a united front and grant the pension benefits to same-sex partners with a 4-0 vote. Hester, wearing a protective mask and gloves and accompanied by Andree, was there to hear the ruling.

Laurel Hester died on Feb. 18, 2006, less than a month after this victory. She was 49.

Freeheld strikes a beautiful balance between depicting the political and social justice aspects of the story and the personal tale of a couple in love while facing mortality. Cynthia Wade films them at their home, hanging out with their cat and dogs, and snuggling together. She shows Andree at her job as a mechanic, calling medical billing offices on Hester’s behalf during her break. We see Andree doing yard work, making more phone calls, and being fully present for her partner. “Stacie was the most unbelievable caretaker,” Wade said.

With Wade’s continued presence in the couple’s lives, their friendship grew, and Wade faced tough choices about what she should film, even though she had largely been given carte blanche by Hester. “If I had uncomfortable feelings,” Wade explained, “I put the camera down. I couldn’t continue to film when she was in pain. I erred on the side of being conservative.”

During the last few weeks of Hester’s life, Wade left a camera with Andree, who shot some of the final footage. Hester had made a provision in her will that Wade be the only one allowed to film at her memorial service, and that footage closes Freeheld.

Things moved quickly for the filmmaker as well. “Documentaries often take several years to film and edit,” Wade said, but Freeheld was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007, not quite one year after Hester’s death.

Wade, who had attempted to interview the men on the Ocean County Board of Chosen Freeholders on numerous occasions and was refused, attempted one last time when she found out that Freeheld was going to be screened at Sundance. “I sent them a certified letter, told them about the screening, and told them I wanted to give them one more chance to tell their side of the story,” she said. “I received a certified letter back from them saying that they ‘respectfully declined’ to speak with me.”

Freeheld won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance and went on win awards at numerous festivals throughout 2007.

It was especially warmly received at LGBT film festivals such as Outfest, where it won the Audience Award, and Newfest, where it won Best Short Documentary. But Wade’s goal all along – which she had shared with Hester and Andree during filming – was to take the film outside the community.

“My goal has been to hit as much of the heterosexual audience as possible, especially as we head into the 2008 election year,” Wade said. “Just like An Inconvenient Truth raised awareness about global warming, this film – this film can be a catalyst for change. Laurel was part of the tide of change [in New Jersey]. When Governor Corzine signed the civil union bill into law, he mentioned Laurel’s name.”

Wade decided to create Freeheld as a short documentary rather than a feature-length one. “I thought it would compete better as a short, and I explained this to Laurel at the time,” she said. At 38 minutes long, though, it is longer than most short films and was a difficult length for some festival programmers to cope with. “We missed out at some festivals as a result,” Wade admitted.

But it’s the perfect length, for example, to be shown in a 50-minute class or at a city council meeting. “I want to live in a country where equal means equal, not separate but equal,” Wade said. She feels a strong responsibility to get this film and its message out to as many people as possible.

Dane Wells, who has seen Freeheld three times to date, was “bowled over by the artful way Cynthia Wade told Laurel and Stacie’s story.”

And Stacie Andree said: “I think Cynthia did a great job at putting the film together. I believe that she deserves every award that it has gotten and hopefully will get.”

In an email interview with AfterEllen.com, the intensely private Andree told us about the impact of the very public battle with the Freeholders, the publicity about the film, and how she is doing now, two years after the events depicted in the film.

“I like my privacy and still try to keep it,” Andree wrote. “I try to avoid being noticed … I am doing well. I work a lot of hours and spend time with my animals and friends. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work on my house, anything to keep busy, and I like it.”

She’s hopeful that the film will have a positive impact: “The more publicity it gets, I hope the drive for equality will come about. … I would like people to realize that we are not all treated equal. I never thought my relationship was any different than my mother and father’s until this all happened.”

Andree is sure Hester would have been pleased with the final film. “Laurel would absolutely love it, without a doubt,” she wrote. “She would want everyone to see it and grow from it.”

For more on Freeheld, visit the film’s official site. The 80th Annual Academy Awards will be presented on Feb. 24, 2008, on ABC. To watch a never-before-seen clip of an interview with Laurel Hester, click here.

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