|uly IB. 2003 ’
a»* 37
FILM
he popular PBS radio show This American
Life recently rehroadcast one of its most
riveting episodes about three young men
who received long-term prison sentences
for a murder they didn’t commit.
Ending the show was a discussion of how
law enforcement manipulates confessions. Host
Ira Glass then ran a particularly poignant
recorded examination of a 14-year-old boy who
police convinced had killed his little sister—
even though he hadn’t.
The entire program called into question a
system hell-bent on finding perpetrators fast
and how the outside world inadequately per
ceives confessions and investigations.
New York director Andrew Jarecki has final
ly equaled on film the depth and breadth of this
astonishing social phenomenon in Capturing the
Friedmans, now playing at Regal Pioneer Place
Stadium.
His subjects are the Arnold and Elaine Fried
man family of Long Island, N.Y., whose 1987
Thanksgiving dinner was interrupted by police
who arrested both Arnold and his 18-year-old
son, Jesse, for child molestation.
So begins a story that challenges even the
most patient viewer with a barrage of conflict
ing information, community assumptions and
acute family dysfunction that provides, accord
ing to Jarecki, “no objective truth.’’
The filmmaker originally set out to do a
documentary on party clowns; David, the old
est Friedman son, happens to be New York’s
most celebrated. But it was David’s family
Jarecki began to find irresistible.
He also found the Friedmans’ home movies
irresistible. Well before video cameras were the
norm, the family “documented itself incessant
ly,” right up through the arrests and trials.
“While most families.. .document special happy
T
Family matters L
H mold Friedman’s brother, Howard, agrees
U that Capturing the Friedmans is a “brilliant
■ ■film.” Still, the Portland-area resident
wishes “it hadn’t been made.**
Howard, who lived with his partner, Jack,
on the Oregon coast for several years before
moving to Milwaukie last December, is featured
in the new documentary exploring the strange
Long Island case of Arnold and Jesse Fried
man’s arrests for child sexual abuse in 1987.
The articulate, soft-spoken man explains
that, rather than bringing people who clearly
had tenuous relationships to begin with closer
together through exposing possible injustice,
the film has “tom asunder” the family. “My
oldest nephew, David, and my middle nephew,
No objective
truth
Capturing the Friedmans
proves truth
is stranger—and more
elusive—than fiction
by
L isa B radshaw
celebrations like birthdays, this family never
turned the camera off.. .starting with 8 mm
films shot three generations ago,” says Jarecki.
This footage, mixed with the director’s own,
provides a view into the home through two
alternatively fascinating windows.
rnold Friedman received child pornogra
phy through the mail, a federal offense.
Jesse and Arnold Friedman under arrest in 1987
The police also find that the respected
and surfacing evidence of Arnold’s prior offens
high school teacher is giving computer and
es, the audience goes back and forth in believ
piano lessons to boys in his home, assisted by
ing who is guilty of what.
his youngest son. They begin questioning the
Queer viewers will take special note of some
students, using methods including hypnosis,
specifics of what was allegedly happening to
largely believed to conjure up those dreaded
children in the Friedman home under the
“false memories."
noses of the rest of the family. Some of the
Amid echoes of This American Life, a detective
claims are not physically possible, and the
interviewed in Capturing the Friedmans chillingly
accusations themselves smack of not just hyste
states: “Children want to please very often. They
ria but homophobia.
want to give you the answers that you want.”
Just below the surface of Capturing the Fried-
It goes from bad to worse for the family, par
mans lies a sense of what could be happening
ticularly young Jesse, who claims innocence
to a man whose homosexuality has undergone
but becomes confused about his own memories.
a lifetime of severe repression. Around the ref
Or does he? Between the lies the Friedmans are
erences of a non-existent sex life with his wife
encouraged to (or believe they should) tell,
and a former student’s description of Arnold as
their vastly differing takes on the same stories
A
“being kind of a nebbish” creeps in the notion
that from suppression and confusion eventually
enipts unhealthy, dangerous behaviors.
Obviously, this is dangerous territory. But
this film introduces more questions than it
answers—intelligently, carefully and without
talxxi. Queer sexuality is one of the many sub
tle whispers floating through this amazing study
of an American family in extreme crisis.
“What I would like to see happen,” says
Jarecki, “is that people leave and say: ‘You
know, I’ve seen a lot of films this year where,
at the end, I’m supposed to think something,
and here, I’m not supposed to think some
thing. I’m just supposed to think.’ That’s my
hope." jn
Oregonian. Howard Friedman
on his family and the truth
where he isn’t sure Jesse is telling even him die
truth and thinks “the truth lies somewhere in
between what die children said and what my
brother and Jesse did.. .1 don’t know for sure.”
Howard identifies as gay, but he does not
Seth.. .have nothing to do with their mother.
consider his brother to have struggled with
They will not see her, they will not call her,”
that identity. “Most pedophiles are not (gayl,”
Seth refused to be interviewed for the film
he states. “I don’t believe he was gay.”
and is angry at the rest of the family for par
It’s jarring to have your family’s “dirty linen
ticipating. “But we all realized,” says Howard,
up on the line,” Howard notes. “That picture
“that this director was going to make the film
they use in the ad...1 took that picture; it was
regardless...we could be interviewed and
my nephew’s bar mitzvah. I took that picture!”
have some say in the film or just tell him to
The
entire difficult public process, though, has
go jump in the lake, and he'd still make it"
Milwaukie resident Howard Friedman in
been made bearable by his partner’s support.
Howard opted for the former, noting that
Capturing the Friedmans
“I could not have made it through all of this
he wanted “some positive things" about his
without Jack. 1 could not have.... If you’re lucky
admits. “This thing is knocking on the door,
brother to be known and said in the movie.
enough to share your life with someone...tell
and the door’s opening.”
One of those was Howard firmly denying
him
you love him, hug him, go out and buy him
Talking with Howard doesn’t necessarily clear i
any memory that his older brother abused him
up questions the movie ultimately raises about
some Krispy Kremes. That’s what I have to say.”
as a child, contrary to Arnold’s own claim.
—LB
guilt, innocence or truth. He notes instances
Now Howard is “remembering more," he
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