Desperate Dysfunction
Morgan Dews documentary Must Read After My Death reveals long-kept family secrets

Dark. Harrowing. Creepy. These are not words that usually come to mind while watching an American family’s home movies from the fifties and sixties. But then again, Allis and Charley weren’t the parents in an ideal all-American family.

Documentary filmmaker Morgan Dews constructed the new movie Must Read After My Death from a suitcase of old 8mm home movies left by his grandmother Allis, who died in 2001. After one of Dews’ uncles sent him ten hours of Dictaphone letters recorded by Allis and Charley during his yearly business trips to Australia, his aunt told him about a box of reel-to-reel diaries Allis had made for her psychiatrist.

“It was a friend, though, who ultimately told me about a file of tape transcripts and notes labeled Allis’ ‘Must Read After My Death’ file,” said Dews from his home in New York.

Allis and Charley’s words in the film don’t match the visuals of everyday life in suburban Connecticut. Alcohol abuse, depression, infidelity and Allis’ inability to care for the couple’s four kids during Charley’s extended absences, all give the film a sense of desperation that belies the family’s public façade. Charley is clearly something of a control freak and his instructions to his kids from his annual four months in Australia are filled with foreboding menace.

“I grew up sort of playing with the films and running them through the projector,” said Dews. “When Allis died I decided to make something out of them but I didn’t really know what that could be. A couple of years later Bruce recorded all of the Dictaphone records—the letters from the family back and forth when my grandfather was in Australia—and he sent them all out to us. It was ten hours of these letters and I thought that I would do something with that.

“I found out about the diary tapes in 2004 in a really offhand way. I was actually visiting my aunt, Bruce’s ex-wife, and we were talking about it and I was telling her about how excited I was about the making of this film.

“And she said, ‘Are you using all the tape recording diaries she made?’ I didn’t know anything about them, so I contacted my family and got them to send them to me.”

Allis’ taped diaries reveal a marriage in crisis, a family in turmoil and a woman on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. Despite all of that, the family stays together until Charley’s mysterious death.

“I knew Allis as an older independent woman who lived down a country road and did exactly as she pleased,” said Dews. “The person the diaries revealed had a completely different life. It was also an entirely unique window into suburban life in the 1950s and ‘60s—like nothing I’d ever seen.”

Dews states that he could have formed various stories out of his source materials but that Allis’ diaries overwhelmed all of the lighter anecdotes.

“It’s a funny thing, there are lots of stories in those tapes, but there’s no one that goes quite as far or is as quite as omnipresent,” said Dews. “I would say that half of the material in the audio tapes was this stuff about how the marriage was going wrong. I mean, I knew all these other stories about my grandparents and my original intention was to do one of those. But more and more I realized that the really amazing thing was the story that she was telling.

“Then I worked really hard just to get out of the way and let that story come to the top. Obviously, it would have been a much more pleasant film to make and to watch if I had concentrated on some other anecdotes, but there was nothing else that had that dramatic weight to it.

“I kind of let the story tell itself and let her express what she wanted to express. Then I tried to present an even enough picture for you to read it in different ways.”

Over the past year, Dews has attended screenings of Must Read After My Death at film festivals all over North America and Europe. The film won the International Grand Prix at FID Marseille, Best 1st Doc at DocLisboa, the Audience Award in Florence, and Special Mention Awards in Pamplona and Florence.

During the question and answer portion of the screenings, Dews has been surprised to find out how strongly the audience feels about both his film and his family. They have even argued among themselves about the root cause of the family’s obvious dysfunction.

“People bring up all these factors at screenings,” said Dews. “It’s kind of amazing because the audience is very strong in informing me about what’s going with the people in the film, which is shocking.”

He is also frequently asked if he feels if Allis made the documentary more than he did, and if the film somehow betrays the family by baring its intimate and dark secrets.

“I think this is wonderful,” said Dews of those questions. “It’s very important that a story seem to both tell itself and have no other possible way of telling itself. It is really the highest praise for art to appear effortless. Naturally I credit my grandparents with the cinematography, archiving and audio recording of my film; any filmmaker is aware of what an amazing, singular treasure it is to find material like this.

“My feeling was that the issues my film deals with—marriage, infidelity, alcoholism, raising children, psychiatry and psychoactive prescription drugs, and women’s role in society—are all still extremely contemporary.”

Dews is taking a rather innovative approach to presenting his film to audiences this month. On Feb. 20 the film will have a theatrical run at the Quad Cinema in New York City, and then a run at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 in Los Angeles starting Feb. 27. At the same time, it will be opening nationally as a purchasable download video via Giagantic Video at www.giganticvideo.com. The cost of the download is $2.99.

“In a way, this film wouldn’t have gotten made ten years ago,” said Dews. “It certainly wouldn’t have been distributed a couple of years ago. We’re trying this bold approach using both theaters and digitally through the Internet. Gigantic blocked out the market where it is playing theatrically to give theaters an incentive to play it theatrically.”

ï:Dews also hopes to find a home for his documentary on cable television after its initial theatrical run. “It’s almost like a dramatic film but then it’s very much a historical film,” said Dews.

Must Read After My Death is not rated. For more information and/or to view a trailer of the film, visit www.mustreadaftermydeath.com.