HEALING POWER
Calgary native Laura Marie Wayne’s debut film chronicles love, hate and forgiveness
Near the end of Laura Marie Wayne’s raw and intimate documentary, Love, Scott, we see the film’s subject show a rare flash of anger.
Actually, the audience doesn’t really see it. The whole scene unfolds in near blackness, with only the imagery of swirling dark water juxtaposed on top of a voice-over by Scott Jones and a haunting soundtrack by Sigur Rós.
Jones has every right to be angry. The musician was stabbed outside a bar in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, in 2013, leaving him paralyzed. It was an attack he believes was motivated by homophobia, even though police and prosecutors refused to label it a hate crime.
Wayne’s new film chronicles his recovery and subsequent activism, a journey that eventually leads to him forgiving his attacker. But at this point in the process as filmed, Jones is still angry at the young man who paralyzed him. He is still angry at the system. He is still angry at his circumstances.
“It infuriates me because this all happened because of some a—hole who didn’t know any of us and yet what he did is affecting so much more than just me,” he tells Wayne.
It’s one of many powerful moments in Love, Scott, Wayne’s debut feature film. It turns out, the Calgary native recorded this exchange not long after Jones had been attacked. He was still in the hospital, coming to grips with the new reality that he would be spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair. But the filmmaker wanted to put the scene near the end of the film to reflect the reality of Jones’ ongoing healing journey.
“Recovering from, or just dealing with, trauma is not a linear process,” says Wayne, who will be on hand for the screening of her film as part of the Calgary International Film Festival on Friday, Sept. 28. “It’s not that he was down and now he’s up and everything is fine. That’s an over-simplified version. What I observed is that there has been waves of grief, waves of anger, waves of sorrow. That’s why, in the film, we use the water metaphor a lot. That’s how trauma works. You think everything is fine and there’s just this wave that comes.”
All of which may have made Wayne’s film relentlessly grim if it didn’t also highlight her friend’s kindness and resilience. Love, Scott took four years to film, with Wayne accumulating hundreds of hours of footage. While there are obvious references to the crime and subsequent trial, the most powerful moments are those when Wayne and Jones revisit various spots that seem key to his healing.
We see Jones return to the scene of the stabbing. There are poignant scenes of him returning to his childhood home in Nanaimo, B.C., and a pilgrimage to Park Falls near New Glasgow, a favourite spot Jones feared he would never be able to access again due to his paralysis. We see him conducting a choral group singing Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now in Halifax and giving a talk in Toronto as part of his anti-homophobia campaign.
The music, the gorgeous scenery, the occasional use of blurry home videos and the non-linear narrative all help give the film a dreamlike, lyrical feel. But Love, Scott also addresses what Jones and Wayne see as a major failure in the justice system to not investigate and prosecute the stabbing, and other attacks on LGBTQ people, as a hate crime.
His attacker, who was 19 at the time of the 2013 stabbing, was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison. But both Wayne and Jones believe this fell short of justice.
“Ifwecan’tnameitforwhatit was, then how do we begin to address the problem?” Wayne says. “I think it’s almost like a double trauma to the victim of a crime if they ’ve already been attacked and now that part of the attack isn’t recognized, or it isn’t believed, or is questioned. It becomes like shaming for that person. In terms of the health of the victim, I think it’s important that we name the attack for what it is. One of the main arguments, also, is that when a member of the queer community is attacked, it’s not just an attack on an individual. It’s an attack on an entire community. This is something that has a ripple effect, which is another reason we need to talk about it and address it.”
Therehas been waves of grief, wavesof anger, waves of sorrow. That’s why, in the film, we use the water metaphor a lot. That’s how trauma works.
Wayne met Jones more than a decade ago when both were music students at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. Wayne would go on to study film at the prestigious Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV in Cuba, becoming the first Canadian to graduate from the school.
That’s where she was in October of 2013, when her mother called to tell her Jones had been stabbed. At the time, it wasn’t even clear he would survive the attack. Wayne immediately took a flight to Halifax to be by his side.
“It was so devastating,” she says. “I don’t think there is another moment in my life that I remember like that, just the wave of rage and sorrow that came. I flew from Cuba to Halifax and somewhere in there I just had this impulse — there was not a long-term plan or anything — it was just a gut instinct that I needed to bring my camera.”
While still at the hospital in Halifax, Wayne and Jones quickly decided they would make a film. Initially it was only going to be a 20-minute short. But, after four years of gathering footage and the National Film Board of Canada becoming involved, the film expanded to feature length.
Wayne says she believes the process was cathartic for Jones. It also had a huge impact on her.
The Central Memorial high school graduate has been making films since she was a child and would enlist her brothers to act out plays and horror movies for the family camera. While still in high school, she joined up with both the Emmedia Gallery and Production Society and the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers before heading to New Brunswick and then Cuba.
But Wayne says she isn’t sure what is next for her. Making Love, Scott was an all-encompassing experience.
“You can’t make a film that you don’t deeply, deeply care about because it takes up so much of your life,” she says. “It’s not like something you can do on the side. I dreamt about this film. It was with me all the time. When it’s a documentary, it’s almost like a baby. Its needs come before your own.
“There’s a part of me that says I don’t know if I can ever do this again. There’s another part of me that says I just need a bit of time. I can’t just jump to the next thing, it has to be something that really calls me because I know what it will ask of me.”
Love, Scott will screen Sept. 28 at 6:30 p.m. and Sept. 29 at 2 p.m. at Cineplex Odeon Eau Claire as part of the Calgary International Film Festival.
Filmmaker Laura Marie Wayne is scheduled to be at both screenings. Scott Jones will be at the Sept. 29 screening.
Visit calgaryfilm.com.