Growing up in Montana’s Big Sky Country, Kimberly Reed was told that anything could happen there. And it did.
Her younger brother Todd came out as gay. Her other brother Marc — adopted as an infant — had part of his brain removed following a bad accident, and still suffers bouts of fearsome anger and violence. While searching for his biological parents, he learned he was the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth.
As for Kimberly Reed herself: Through high school, she was Paul McKerrow. He was class president, valedictorian — and captain of the football team.
The story has all the makings of a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction movie. Which is exactly what Reed — a filmmaker — has produced.
Prodigal Sons — her yearlong look into family dynamics that makes the Royal Tenenbaums seem like the Brady Bunch — opened last month in limited release. It airs on the Sundance Channel in June. As an 86-minute documentary, it may not receive widespread exposure. But as a vivid example of the power of biology, chemistry, geography and fate to shape lives, it is worth seeking out.
The device that anchors the film — Reed’s return to Helena for her 20th high school reunion — sounds trite, almost laughable. It turns out to be the perfect vehicle for a remarkable journey.
Reed expertly weaves still photos and videos of her childhood and youth; interviews with Helena High classmates, family members and friends, plus her own narration. Shots of Montana’s boundless vistas reinforce the idea that life unfolds in a sprawling way — one that is impossible to comprehend with only a glance.
Too much happens in Prodigal Sons, which was produced by Big Sky Film Productions, Inc, to recount here. Suffice it to say that the film Reed ended up with is not the one she imagined when she began. As she and Marc confront their pasts?—?he is still trapped in a brotherly rivalry she long ago abandoned?—?she realizes that it is not Marc who thirsts for an identity, but herself.
The film is ultimately not about a family grappling with sexuality, adoption, family, sports, Hollywood, growing up or going home. In the end, Reed said, it is “quite simply about love, and how one family faces challenges and triumphs that no one would ever have imagined.”
Last month, days before the film’s release, Reed discussed the project. “With non-fiction documentaries, the challenge usually is to increase the drama,” she said. “With this, we had the opposite problem. We had lots of dramatic hand grenades. We had to figure out how to throw them without blowing everything up. We had to stick to everyone’s humanity.”
When Reed was Paul, she said, being a football star was “an icon.” “Everyone knows what ‘high school quarterback’ means. We didn’t have to dwell on that.”
Video of games are used in the documentary as “symbolic images of who I used to be,” Reed said. “I’m haunted by these images.”
When people hear “jock,” they think “straight dude,” Reed added. “When I transitioned, I stopped being athletic at all. I had always conflated athletics with maleness, with a particular sexual and/or gender identity.”
Now, she said, she has gotten back into athletics and exercise, particularly swimming and yoga. “Hopefully, I’ve found a way to be both athletic and feminine.”
One of the film’s surprises is the easy acceptance of her former teammates. “Montana is a surprising place,” she explained. “Montanans are very independent. They like to make up their own minds about things.”
On camera, a football co-captain calmly tells Kim about the changes that have occurred over 20 years: “We’re all fat, bald and old. And you’re a girl.”
Her football team, she said, was “a really cool group of guys. I got lucky.” One of the lightest moments?—?in a film that is, for the most part, deadly serious – comes when Tim, Paul’s best friend in high school, recounts a bad driving experience from those years. Back then, Tim jokes, “I didn’t know she was a woman driver!”
At film festivals in the U.S.?—?where it has won numerous awards?—?and as far away as Finland and Estonia, viewers have the same consistent, positive reactions, Reed said.
Yet as instructive as the film is for audiences, its effect on the filmmaker herself is equally powerful. “I started out believing this film was about Marc’s quest for identity,” she said. “But it was about my own.
“I thought my transition was complete. Instead Marc taught me I was only halfway there, and that I had to somehow resurrect the first half of my life I had buried alive. This freed me to return home and reclaim my past.”
Paul McKerrow no longer throws game-winning touchdown passes. But this may be Kimberly Reed’s most important victory of all.
Focus on the NCAA
It’s one thing for Apple or Doritos to hawk their wares during the Super Bowl. It’s another thing entirely for Focus on the Family to do so.
The right-wing Christian political organization?—?known for its strident opposition to both abortions and LGBT civil rights?—?provoked a national uproar when CBS agreed to air an anti-abortion commercial featuring University of Florida quarterback Ted Tebow during what turned out to be the most-watched program in American television history. (The controversy was stoked in part because in 2004 CBS refused to air an ad in which the United Church of Christ showed that it welcomed everyone?—?including gays and lesbians.) The network said its policy on “advocacy ads” changed in the intervening years.
The anti-abortion spot aired, and the republic survived. But within days, a new controversy arose. Within a few weeks, CBS was televising the men’s college basketball tournament?—?and more Focus on the Family ads were planned.
This time, though, it was not the network that drew activists’ fire. It was the organizers themselves: the NCAA.
Pat Griffin has worked closely with the NCAA, as both a former University of Massachusetts coach and director of the Women’s Sports Foundation’s “It Takes a Team” anti-homophobia project. Now a blogger on LGBT sports issues, she set her sights on the powerful oversees of most American collegiate athletic programs.
The NCAA’s own constitutional principles explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, she wrote. Yet Focus on the Family wants to “impose their values on the NCAA tournament… . (The NCAA and CBS) are rolling out the red carpet, and I am deeply offended by the NCAA’s complicity in this.”
The NCAA, Griffin said, “cannot have it both ways. They cannot claim to care about the quality of the athletic experience for LGBT student-athletes and provide educational programs to assist schools in making sure that LGBT student-athletes can compete with respect and dignity, and (at the same time) allow Focus on the Family to use the NCAA Web site and men’s basketball tournament to promote their discriminatory right-wing Christian agenda.”
Griffin asked her readers to pass her blog post on to friends — and the NCAA. She urged anyone who attends — or once attended — an NCAA school to call their university presidents.
Other LGBT blogs, including the influential Towleroad, picked up the cause. Within a day, the NCAA relented — a bit.
NCAA spokesman Bob Williams said the decision “came in response to vocal protests from a small number of advocates for gay and lesbian athletes, who complained that the group’s views that homosexuality and abortion are immoral is inconsistent with the NCAA’s stated non-discrimination policy. Focus on the Family did have a banner ad on NCAA.com. Today, it was decided to remove the ad from the Web site as a result of concerns expressed by our membership.”
Williams’ words went from combative (“vocal protests,” “small number of advocates for gay and lesbian athletes,” “complained”) to acceptance (“concerns expressed by our membership”) in the span of three sentences.
No decision was announced, however, about the television ad?—?which was, after all, more of a case of the ball being in CBS’s court.
And then something really interesting happened. The NCAA statement was changed. Suddenly, the language was less provocative, more objective: “The decision by the NCAA came in response to vocal protests from advocates for gay and lesbian athletes?—?which quickly grew into a broader audience of critics who sent e-mails and set up what has now become the standard, a Facebook page?—?who complained that the group’s views that homosexuality and abortion are immoral are inconsistent with the NCAA’s stated non-discrimination policy.”
Griffin wasn’t through. She used the NCAA’s own Advertising and Promotional Standards to argue that Focus on the Family’s ads violated the organization’s stated mission. NCAA advertising, the standards say, should support ideals that include diversity, gender equity, non-discrimination, ethical conduct and student-athlete welfare.”
The connection between the NCAA and CBS turns out to be quite close. According to Inside Higher Education.com, the ads were part of a larger package deal between CBS?—?which manages NCAA.com?—?and Focus on the Family.
Griffin kept up her attack. Focus on the Family’s definition of “family,” she said, is restricted to those in which heterosexuals marry. The group is “entitled to their perspectives on controversial issues,” she said. And of course “they have a right to buy advertising time if their ads meet the standards of CBS or any other for-profit media group.”
However, Griffin argued, a line must be drawn when non-profit educational organizations like the NCAA have missions and values that “do not square” with those of groups like Focus on the Family.
Griffin said she would like to follow March Madness with the same excitement she always has. She does not want to feel “sold out” by the NCAA “or need to go to war about it.”
But, she warned, “I will if I have to.”
Dan Woog is a journalist, educator, soccer coach, gay activist, and author of the “Jocks” series of books on gay male athletes. Visit his Web site at www.danwoog.com. He can be reached care of this publication.