But West and Cohen were intent on making Giffords’ aphasia a central part of the film, using footage shot by Kelly of her early months of recovery, interviewing her surgeon and speech pathologists and filming Giffords as she worked with her speech therapist to record a campaign commercial for Kelly’s 2020 Senate run. Of course, working with a subject whose ability to communicate is compromised posed a unique set of challenges. In the back of the freezer, in a Tupperware container next to some empanadas, was a piece of Giffords’ cranium that the two had saved as a kind of memento. “So they started walking around: ‘Here’s the living room, here’s this, here’s that.’ Then they went to the freezer and showed us what was inside, and we were like, ‘Whoa, OK. “At one point, Gabby and Mark said, ‘Do you want a tour of the house?’ ” West recalls. It didn’t take long for West and Cohen to realize how compelling a subject Giffords would be. “Betsy and Julie do a wonderful job of celebrating women’s lives. Giffords was wearing RBG socks, which she proudly showed off, and was eager to share her story with filmmakers whose work she admired. In spring 2020, Erspamer arranged for Giffords and Kelly to meet with West and Cohen via Zoom. I talked to a friend who is really close to her and said, ‘You know, there should be a documentary about Gabby someday.’ ” “Despite not being able to necessarily say everything that she’s thinking, she somehow really shows up and you can really feel her. “I remember being really moved by her connection to these families who were going through such horror,” says Erspamer, who is a producer of the new documentary. The project’s roots go back to early 2013, when former “Oprah Winfrey Show” executive producer Lisa Erspamer met Giffords after the deadly Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn., as she consoled victims’ families. And I’m just excited for people to watch it and learn more about her, her recovery and how tough she is.” “This documentary is the chance for Gabby to tell her story in a way most people have never seen before. “Gabby is such an inspiration, not just to me, but to so many Arizonans and Americans across the country,” Giffords’ husband, former astronaut-turned-Arizona Sen. But while the gun issue continues to roil a bitterly divided country, Giffords expresses hope that perhaps, as we’ve so often heard in the past, this time might really be different.Īsked what she would like people to take away from the film, Giffords says, in a halting but emphatic staccato, “Save lives. I love to talk - I’m Gabby! So quiet now.”Ĭo-directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, who made 2018’s Oscar-nominated hit “RBG” and last year’s Julia Child doc “Julia,” “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down” is arriving in the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., Uvalde, Texas, and Highland Park, Ill., and just weeks after Congress passed the most significant bipartisan gun legalization in decades and a controversial Supreme Court ruling expanded gun rights. ”Aphasia really sucks,” says Giffords, 52, offering an explanation of her condition that she has honed through repetition. “Life is old there, older than the trees / Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze.” “Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River,” she sings. As it happens, Giffords is a born performer and a bit of a ham, and within minutes of arriving for an interview in Los Angeles, she lets out a big smile and raises her left arm as she croons one of her favorites: “Country Roads” by John Denver. When Giffords sings, though, the words are right there, bypassing the damaged language circuits and flowing as effortlessly as they once did. The bullet that entered an inch above her left eye and tore through her brain left her with aphasia, along with a paralyzed right arm and other physical impairments, making it a daily battle to get the words in her head to come out of her mouth. Ever since a would-be assassin shot her and 18 others during a meet-and-greet outside a Safeway supermarket in Tucson one January morning in 2011, former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has struggled to speak.
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