In the mercurial culture of filmmaking, the documentary filmmaker has the most to lose since venues are limited and monetary payback can be a will-o’-the-wisp. Add to that a taboo subject matter, and the impediments exponentially increase, derailing a production even before it starts, or making distribution difficult. Unafraid to tackle controversial issues which frequently are shunned or overlooked by mainstream media, Cambridge-based Interlock Media stands out in the issues-oriented documentary field, although they also produce low-budget fiction/narrative films as well. Interlock’s documentaries strike socially aware chords that resonate in refreshingly different ways.
Its latest documentary, TURNED OUT: SEXUAL ASSAULT BEHIND BARS, is ostensibly a grim but finally satisfying, informative film which dovetails with Interlock’s mission of making socially significant documentaries in the areas of human rights, public health, and the environment. Jonathan Schwartz, Interlock’s Director and director of this film, says, “That’s our mission and we’ve never varied.” He doggedly worked three years to bring this against-the-grain project to the screen.

Schwartz, 46, who has a remarkable resemblance to producer-director James Schamus, settled around a picnic table near his office on a recent spring afternoon to talk about TURNED OUT. As is often the case in the genesis of a film, serendipity dealt its hand and led Schwarz to the subject. Pete Reilly, former CPA and now treasurer of Interlock, also was treasurer of the advocacy group, Stop Prisoner Rape. He suggested the subject to Schwartz who told him, “We’re looking at a half-million dollars.” Reilly said he had $2,000. Schwartz recalls saying, “I’ll take it, and we’ll get a film made.”

Eventually, TURNED OUT was produced for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through the Independent Television Service (ITVS). Other funds were provided through grants from several foundations including the George Soros Open Society Institute Documentary Fund, the Massachusetts Foundatioin for the Humanities and the Threshold Foundation.

As the documentary opens, the narrator, actor and former convict Danny Trejo, reveals the statistic that of the two million inmates in United States’ prisons, one in five are victims of rape. The very term “turned out” in prison language means sodomized. Particularly vulnerable are newcomers to prison, especially young ones, and non-violent drug users. Veteran inmates view the “boys” as “fresh meat.” One new inmate, David Mendenhall, “Mindy,” his prison nickname in the film, says with resignation that if he didn’t accede to the sexual demands, “I’ve been told I’d be on TV. My folks would see me on TV-dead, murdered.”

TURNED OUT grew from a previous documentary that Interlock had helped produce for David Aikerman of BBC-CORRESPONDENT, although it was filmed in the US. Schwartz calls it a “classic public affairs piece on prison rape.” He built off that film when TURNED OUT became his obsession. Interlock researchers, including 20 paralegals, studied approximately 1,300 cases of inmates around the country. Finally, they settled on fifteen and, after shooting in several states, chose Limestone Correctional Facility in Capshaw, Alabama near Huntsville, as the film’s centerpiece. Limestone is one of the largest lockups in the nation. “It was in the cutting room that we decided to stay focused on Limestone because it covered every kind of victimization,” says Schwartz. “We have the story of the surrogate family and the story of the predators who are turned out-- in a sense, turned out by their very own victims who sensitize the predators since the victim may come from more middle-class backgrounds where they’ve experienced friendships, and not just gang alliances. Limestone was a place where a whole group of characters were interconnected, giving the piece a dramatic story line.”
As the film details, a finely-tuned social hierarchy operates behind the walls and razor wire as well as a complex business economy with precise rules of governance. “Transactions in the penitentiary are as exact as NASDAQ,” Trejo says.

Of course cash money is illegal in prison. So the currency is junk food and toiletries, cheap change to outsiders but valuable tender to inmates. Underground businesses thrive in an economy of scarcity. Fritos, candy bars, shaving cream, and bags of coffee are parlayed like green Hamiltons and Jacksons. Sometimes inmates employ terror tactics and “loan sharking” to obtain cookies and supplies. Limestone warden David Wise describes his penitentiary as a “society away from society.” He elaborates, “There’s religion, schools, drugs, sex, and all types of vices. And I tell you, I wouldn’t want to work in a prison that didn’t have some vices in it. Sometimes those things keep them busy and keep them out of our hair. And there again, I don’t condone it, and if we catch them, we’ll punish them. But I know it goes on and it probably does have some element of helping us to keep control.”

But the dark side of the prison economy is wantonly interwoven with sexual assault, which often is linked to race and youth. In the delta states region of the Deep South, the film tells us, eighty-five percent of the prison population is black; fifteen percent is white. Race is a potent factor in prison sexual assault: most victims are white. In filming, Schwartz tried to strike a balance in presentation, among both victims and victimizers. He, along with his assistants, was able to elicit unusual candor from the subjects. At times the process was long and arduous to get the inmates to open up about their intimate lives. Lamark Moore, (known as Mark), imprisoned for a gang murder, rattles off his seduction strategies as if he’s talking about his favorite sport. Family structure with surrogate authority figures accounts for the most common hierarchy, and “wives” are not uncommon. Gangs serve the same function of belonging to a group as they do on the streets. Mindy becomes Mark’s “baby.” Mark tells the camera, “It became a challenge to see a pretty little boy come in and everybody shooting at him.” In time, they became a couple that partied together (with prison julep-orange juice punched up with yeast) and also lovers. “We was there for each other,” Mark says. “He was like my shadow. I cared deeply about him. You don’t find many people who are kind to you. I love him.”

Despite their origins, not all sexual relationships between inmates are lovey-dovey. Some are old-school coercive or violent rape. And, not all prison rape is between inmates. Schwartz sheds light on one such instance in the penitentiary in Tallahassee, Florida. Using surveillance footage from the Department of Corrections along with interviews with inmate Robbie Craig, Schwartz demonstrates the plight of prisoners under the unscrupulous watch of predatory guards. Craig sued the state of Florida for abuse by one of its guards and in effect won the case. But an old law on the Florida books that allowed authorities to charge back rent, thereby reducing the settlement to almost nothing, offset his settlement. Craig asked for a chance to get out of the state to escape the shame, and he was transferred to a model minimum-security penitentiary in Iowa, where Schwartz filmed a follow-up. Yet, Schwartz says more and more states are passing laws barring journalists so exposing stories like Craig’s will be nearly impossible. “If the trend on banning tape recorders and cameras in prison continues, it will be a rare day in hell that anybody will be allowed in juvenile halls, jails, or prisons to pursue any story.”

Schwartz uses the backstory of two of his subjects as a device to flesh out details about their backgrounds. Mindy’s father is a guitar-strumming trucker who “really wasn’t there” in his son’s life as he grew up. His grandmother ended up raising him. “If he’s learning things he should be learning from the prison daddies, wonderful,” he says. “I hope the things he’s learning that a person doesn’t need to know, he forgets or doesn’t take to heart.” Meanwhile, Mark, was one of nine brothers and four sisters whose father left when he was nine years old. He was raised by his mother and “surrounded by a bunch of ladies.” Searching for authority figures, he joined a gang, and he became “lost” at around age twelve. “He made the choice to do what he wanted to do,” his father resignedly says.

Seeking family cooperation in making the documentary was a major challenge. “In some cases it took years of convincing and earning trust,” Schwartz says. “With Mark’s father, it wasn’t a question of talking about it with some northern TV producers, it was a question of talking about it at all. Families, loved ones, and former inmates practice a lot of denial. They can avoid the subject of what their kin are experiencing in prison forever. We’re dealing with the most taboo subject imaginable. With a family like Mindy’s-Holy Roller and Bible Belt-and among the more urban communities, which can be equally homophobic, these are tough, tough topics. We talked to some of these folks about these issues who probably never talked about them in their lifetimes.”
What gives TURNED OUT the strongest sense of verisimilitude occurred because Schwartz shot a good portion in High Definition Digital Video, a first in prison documentaries, he’s proud to announce. But even that came about serendipitously. At an International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula, Montana and later at the Jackson Hole Film Festival in Wyoming, he approached Michael Brinkman, now deceased but then a key executive for Panasonic in Hollywood. At the festival, Schwartz pointed out that most of the High Def demo material was natural history, animal films, or shots of models on the runway. “Where was the gritty indy stuff?”
Brinkman arranged to furnish Interlock a Panasonic HD camera and deck. Through Brinkman’s urging, Canon agreed to provide lenses as needed, and Ira Tiffen arranged for filters, which enabled Schwartz to create a lifelike texture to the film. “The cameras provided greater acceptability for the audience because the images are realistic. The inmates don’t look like monsters or like angels. They look like who they are because HD is like 20/20 vision.” And he adds, “We were able to shoot at night in the slums north of Mobile with HD equipment, even in low-light conditions.”

Schwartz praises senior producer June Cross (THUS FAR BY FAITH, FRONTLINE) for keeping him on track and returning him to his original intent. “She is responsible for me cutting the piece down to 56 minutes and for making me stick with my story.” Also, he singles out one of the principal directors of photography, Bill Megalos of Los Angeles, who helped him bring his vision to the screen, which comprised of 40 days of shooting in 12 states.

Still, it’s the content, which makes a documentary memorable and perhaps even influential. And with the US Congress considering the Prison Rape Reduction Act, appropriating $15 million to study the problem, the timing and release of the film for airing nationally on TV later this year, couldn’t be more propitious. TURNED OUT stands a chance of being on the leading edge of exposing this pressing social injustice to a wide audience. Soon, a version will be released on DVD and another as an 88-minute theatrical cut.

If the status quo prevails in prison sexual assault, then Mark Moore’s candid summation near the end of TURNED OUT increasingly will be a self-fulfilling prophecy among others. “I stopped caring about the outside. I fell in love with the lifestyle…. Prison turned me out-to a sort of freak.”

And someday he will be released.