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Not Going Quietly follows father and disability rights activist, Ady Barkan. The film received three IDA nominations and a nomination for the Critics Choice Documentary Awards. In addition, it won the Audience Award and Special Jury prize at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival and was also later screened as an official selection of Tribeca Film Festival. Alma Magazine named it the Best Jewish Documentary of 2021 and the City of West Hollywood honored the film with a Disability Service Award.
Director Nicholas Bruckman captures Ady’s rise to stardom in progressive politics after his confrontation with a powerful senator on an airplane goes viral and ignites a once-in-a-generation movement for universal healthcare. In Not Going Quietly, viewers follow Ady on his journey across the United States to fight his fight, as his health is rapidly declining due to ALS.
Nicholas is the founder and CEO of People’s Television, a New York-based creative studio that aims to enact change on a national scale. Their multi-Telly award-winning campaigns and advertising work have contributed to flipping the Senate, furthering the discussion on climate change, and bringing Black Lives Matter to homes everywhere with their first ever national broadcast advertisement.
Hi Nicholas! How have you been? Walk us through the past few months for you and the success of Not Going Quietly.
It’s been such a whirlwind experiencing the reception of the film and Ady’s story. The most amazing moment was showing the movie with Ady present at our LA premiere and seeing him get the standing ovation that I promised him when we started this movie, now almost four years ago. I really wasn’t sure then where this movie would go, between Ady’s health, the pandemic, and as we were making it, whether Ady’s voice would still work as well with his technology. The most awesome part of all of this has been celebrating the success of the movie with him as he’s still out there fighting, running the Be A Hero campaign, and watching his children grow up.
What was it like working with Ady on Not Going Quietly?
Ady can be, as you get to see in the film, a total riot to be around and would constantly make everyone laugh, usually by telling dirty jokes and making them uncomfortable. Of course, on a personal level, it was an emotional journey growing so close to Ady and seeing him go through a disease like ALS. But Ady’s dedication, work ethic, sense of humor, and resilience forces you to feel immense gratitude for your health and for the people in your life. When you’re feeling down or hopeless or like it’s not worth fighting for something but then you see Ady continuing to fight, it forces you to ask yourself, “what’s your excuse?” which is hugely motivating. Ady was always pushing himself and our crew to the limit.
Can you take us behind one or two of your favorite scenes in Not Going Quietly? Tell us more about your process and how you decide the right way to approach it.
My favorite scene to direct is the one where Ady is getting stoned with his comrades at night in the RV. The scene has all of the film’s main characters celebrating the last night of the “Be a Hero” tour. You get to see all of them as their true selves, and it’s a great demonstration of the communal spirit of activism. It’s a moment where Ady is achieving something so heroic and experiencing something so tragic, and yet being too high to eat a smore – it’s hilarious and poignant. This scene is captured in a verité, fly-on-the-wall style. We were always shooting, always present with the camera, and acting as naturally as possible in that circumstance. So often we were both part of the scene and part of the story while also separated from it. I think that’s what gives this scene the level of intimacy that it possesses.
Let’s talk about your IDA nominations (congrats!) – how does it feel to get this recognition?
It’s a huge honor to see the IDA recognize the film. Not only to have the best picture nomination, best writing (shared with my co-writer Amanda Roddy), but being nominated for best director alongside Questlove and Jonas Rasmussen who made some of the most important, accoladed films of the year is incredible. So many of the members of the IDA and the voters are people whose films I grew up watching and who inspired me to become a documentary filmmaker, and there’s nothing more gratifying than knowing the folks whom I admire and who have been making these iconic films recognize this work in Not Going Quietly and Ady’s story.
Did you approach filming Ady and his family in Not Going Quietly in a specific way at all?
One of the biggest challenges was that, as a filmmaker, I wanted to interview Ady every day that we were on the road, but his voice was actively deteriorating on a day-to-day basis. So there would be days when he would only have 30 minutes of speaking power in him before it would give out. As a result, I often couldn’t interview him, because if he spoke to me, that would translate to time he couldn’t spend giving a speech, or on a video call with his family. Creatively, that forced us to take a cinema-verité approach to production, which I think ultimately helped the film, but that caused us to have to make difficult, emotional filmmaking decisions on a daily basis.
Not Going Quietly feels like a major passion project, could you talk a little bit about how it feels to create such a powerful documentary?
Making Not Going Quietly was one of the most important things I’ve ever done in my life and career up until now. It’s the third feature film I’ve worked on as a director and producer. It feels like a culmination of a lot of the work and activism and storytelling I’ve done, both in the long-form and in the short-form of the social justice brand work that we do at my production company, People’s Television. I felt from the first day I met Ady a responsibility or a calling to make sure that his voice was heard and recognized, especially as he was actively losing it. There was this huge urgency to make it because of the progression of ALS, and I felt like I had to get it right because, in my opinion, Ady is one of the great civil rights leaders of our time. I wanted to be a part of helping him be remembered. I feel grateful to him for opening his life, family, and journey to me and for the friendship that we developed which has carried through all the way to today – Ady has been a big part of helping us release and promote the film. I hope that the film, in addition to being a moving cinematic experience, makes people more aware of him and the Be A Hero campaign, which is still running today and fighting for universal healthcare in the United States.
What are some of your other favorite past projects?
I’m really proud of the work that we do at People’s Television, which is our NY+DC-based production company that produced Not Going Quietly as well as the Sundance Award-winning narrative feature, Valley of Saints. Day-to-day at People’s Television we make documentaries and commercials for some of the most impactful social justice brands, social movements, and non-profits in the country, such as Greenpeace, Black Lives Matter, The Nature Conservancy, and many others. It’s rewarding to be able to do important storytelling in our brand work that also plugs directly into the missions of organizers, activists, and social movements who need those stories told in order to move the needle on the important issues they’re working on, from immigration to healthcare to climate justice.
What else is happening next for you or People’s TV?
I’m directing a new feature documentary that the company is producing to be announced soon (very different from Not Going Quietly!) We are always interested in seeking outside documentary, fiction, and episodic projects to produce, especially ones that have potential for social impact. We’re working with a lot of amazing brands, like TED, on short-form work and environmental sustainability stories. You can check out more of what we are up to at, www.peoples.tv or on social: instagram.com/peoples.tv twitter.com/peoplsTV
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Thank you for reading! You can learn more about Nicholas Bruckman here and People’s TV here.
