Davis Guggenheim Talks ‘Deaf President Now!’: ‘It’s an Injustice That the Story Has Not Been Told’

In “Deaf President Now!” directors Nyle DiMarco and Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim recount eight tumultuous days in 1988 at Washington, DC’s Gallaudet University – the only Deaf university in the U.S. At the time students were protesting after the school’s board of trustees appointed a hearing president over several very qualified Deaf candidates. In the University’s 124-year history, Gallaudet had never been led by a Deaf person despite growing sentiment from the community that it was time for a Deaf leader.

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For the documentary, DiMarco, a Deaf actor-advocate, and Guggenheim interviewed the four Gallaudet graduates – Greg Hlibok, Jerry Covell, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, and Tim Rarus – who were responsible for organizing the week-long movement that consisted of rallies, boycotts and protests. In the film, the foursome describe events in their own words, which are signed on-screen and spoken aloud by unseen actors. Told primarily through American Sign Language, intermixed with archival footage and experiential use of silence and sound, the Apple+ doc tells the story of a game-changing protest.

Initially, DiMarco worked with producer Jonathan King on scripted versions of the Gallaudet protests. But with countless hours of archival footage and the four movement organizers willing to sit down for interviews, DiMarco and King determined that the events were dramatic and compelling enough to make a documentary. DiMarco and King eventually approached Guggenheim, with whom King had collaborated on “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.”

Guggenheim had never co-directed a film and was initially “terrified” to make the doc.

“I think that the hearing world looked past this moment because they didn’t take the time to understand Deaf culture and Deaf history,” says Guggenheim. “It’s actually an injustice that the story has not been told. I grew up in Washington, D.C., not too far from Gallaudet, and I didn’t know about the protests. So, Nyle has been so generous in allowing me to step into this and to help him tell the story. That’s what it takes to co-direct – two people who need each other. I was ignorant, and Nyle needed a little bit of my experience.”

Variety spoke to DiMarco and Guggenheim ahead of the May 16 Apple+ debut of “Deaf President Now!”

The film is told from a hearing and a Deaf point of view and liberally cuts between those two perspectives. Was incorporating both perspectives always the plan, or did that idea happen in the edit?

DiMarco: Davis and I, in early discussions, knew that we wanted Deaf people watching this film to say, “That’s our movie.” So, we actually worked together to come up with a concept of what we called the Deaf POV. These were places within the film where we could thrust a hearing audience member into the Deaf experience. We did that using a different tools, whether it was with sound design or with some of the visual elements that we were able to play with, most notably lights.

Did you have to convince the four Gallaudet graduates who led the protests to be in the doc?

DiMarco: We met with each of them individually. Their biggest concern was about having a hearing person sort of co-opt this and tell this (story).  So, when I met with them, I wanted to be really clear that this would be something that would have Deaf people at the forefront, really leading.

Rather than presenting the four students as a unified front, you leaned into their differences of opinion, inviting each subject to comment on one another. Why?

DiMarco: It speaks to so many things that are really timely today, most notably with the protests that we’re seeing happening in the political landscape. I think showing those flaws really helps us illustrate that in order to be successful and reach a goal, you do have to sort of unite.

Guggenheim: I think the hearing world or the mainstream world tends to look at disability through a kind of like Hallmark lens. You know, aren’t these noble people who suffer and have this terrible disability – I’m saying this with sarcasm. That’s not how it is, and that’s not from what Nyle has told me, that’s not how he feels, and that’s not how our characters feel. They want to be portrayed as real people with real problems, with dimension, and not as an archetype.

Was that one of the goals of the film to show the Deaf population in a realistic light?

Guggenheim: I would widen it out even further, and if you look at the protests on campuses all across the country last year, and the division and the violence, and actually the sides that are so inseparable and turned off to each other, this movie is even bigger than the story of Deaf culture. It’s about how collective action works and how leadership is born in a week, and how it’s possible to do something good for the world. I do believe protests can be successful, and we need them right now. If people saw this movie, they would see how it can be done successfully.