The Basement Talks, a film about "leaders who did something both difficult and brave"

Today we share an interview with Sarah Perkins & Josh Sabey, filmmakers of "The Basement Talks", and an opportunity through MWEG to host a screening & discussion of the film in your home.

If you’ve been following along with the Peacemakers Needed newsletter and would like to try something new to put ideas into action, we have an exciting opportunity to share with you. For the National Week of Conversation, MWEG (Mormon Women for Ethical Government) will guide you in hosting a screening of “The Basement Talks” from your home, with whomever you would like to invite.

From MWEG:

This film is an inspiring documentary about the aftermath of the shooting of two abortion clinic workers in the 1990s -- and the path to peace paved by years of secret meetings between women on opposite sides of the issue. This film does not take a position on abortion. Our previous in-person screenings have been characterized by feelings of goodwill and hope, and we are sure you will love sharing this film with friends and family.

If you’d like to try this, don’t be nervous; MWEG will walk you through all the details of hosting, upon registration. Register and learn more here.

And now, we’re honored to share with you an interview with Sarah Perkins & Josh Sabey, the Latter-day Saint filmmakers who brought this story to the public.

Those we disagree with are not “a blight to repair or a burden to be overcome, but as a true, invaluable, irreplicable gift.”

Josh and Sarah Sabey are a husband and wife filmmaking and writing team. Together they co-directed The Basement Talks and authored The Book of Mormon Storybook. They relocated from Boston to rural Idaho with their two sons, which tends to be a good conversation starter.

What is this film about and why should people go see it?

So, the sales-y answer is that this film covers the 1994 Brookline abortion clinic murders and the clandestine, underground dialogue that took place between the leaders of the pro-life and pro-choice movements that came out of it. It’s a fascinating and dramatic story with all the true-crime twists that you’d expect. And that’s all true.

But more fundamentally, this is a film about women building peace. It’s about leaders who did something both difficult and brave. It’s about the actual possibility of peace and friendship across intractable differences.

That’s something a lot of us are struggling with right now. We have issues that matter deeply to us. There are political differences that feel unbridgeable, or at least like bridging them requires more than we have to give—more skills, more patience, more accommodating, more longsuffering.

But these six women were full of passion and opinion. They never compromised their values or even their issue positions. And still, their willingness to meet in dialogue had a marked impact on the tenor of the rhetoric on a fatally divisive issue across the state. This work matters. It is possible. And we are all more capable of it than we think. That’s what this film is about.

Can you tease the story of John Salvi that set off the chain of events that led to the basement talks?

On December 30, 1994, John Salvi entered two abortion clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts and opened fire. The attacks devastated the community and shocked the nation. His trial became a media frenzy, with a lot of grandstanding between lawyers as well as activists and pundits trying to register their sound bytes.

Like most people who perform political violence, John Salvi was a lone wolf. He was a deeply schizophrenic man who largely became swept up in hyper-charged political rhetoric. So while it is true that he was responsible for pulling the trigger, there was also a larger, more diffused responsibility for allowing the mode of debate around the issue of abortion to become so polarized, heated, and dehumanizing.

In response, there were vague calls for “common ground” talks. Governor William Weld, a proponent of abortion access rights, and Cardinal Bernard Law, a staunch abortion opponent, met publicly to disagree and search for common ground. They invited others to do the same. They shook hands at the press conference, and that was the end of it.

But literally underneath the cameras and political jockeying, six women agreed to meet in a windowless basement on the condition that their conversations would be strictly confidential, and that finding common ground wasn’t actually a requirement. They agreed to four meetings. In the end, they met for more than 150 hours across six years.

How did you two get involved in filming the Basement Talks, and how did the experience require you to grow as storytellers?

When we first came across this story, we were living in Boston. Sarah was getting her doctorate at an east coast social justice university, and we were both active in our ward community. In both spaces, we observed worrisome trends. There was a thoughtful, intelligent, well-informed member of Sarah’s cohort who was secretly praying that abortion would end in the United States, but who felt unable to voice her deeply felt authentic belief for fear of some kind of retribution. Josh observed members of his elder’s quorum who were self-censoring for the same reasons.

It worried us that neither the university — where ideas are meant to be expressed, exchanged and challenged — nor the church — where members are supposed to be able to be fully present and engaged with one another — facilitated the sort of openness that is required for real dialogue across differences. Neither space seemed to invite the honesty and presence that is a harbinger of real peace.

We were both anxious to make a movie that meaningfully addressed political polarization; ideally, we wanted the film to reach people who weren’t already invested in addressing polarization. So it couldn’t be something that would just preach to the choir. It needed to have a strong hook and compelling characters.

Around this time, Josh’s brother sent us an article written in the Boston Globe back in 2001. It was authored by six women, opponents in the abortion debate, who had been meeting secretly for six years. We knew then that we had our story.

Years later, how has your experience of filming The Basement Talks shaped your life? Where do you see the lessons learned coming up in your life?

There’s one point in the movie where the former executive director of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts is talking about how she is grateful and even proud that there are thoughtful, smart, capable women involved in the movement she opposed. That was a striking remark.

One requirement of making this film is that we had to be sure the editing was completely issue-neutral on abortion. That wasn’t actually particularly hard for us, because neither of us experience abortion as a wedge issue (though we know and sincerely respect wonderful people for whom it is). But we do have our wedge issues, movements that we are personally and profoundly invested it. We have experienced real frustration, sorrow, and hurt that thoughtful, smart, capable people — even family members — with access to all the same information we have believe differently than we do.

This story has been enormously helpful in learning to see those who disagree with us not as a blight to repair or a burden to be overcome, but as a true, invaluable, irreplicable gift. These are the people who reveal our weak points, who invite us to respond better and more correctly, who challenge us to consider what exactly we believe, and when, and why. And to acknowledge again the goodness and contribution of people working towards a different sort of good.

What these women did in that basement is remarkable. The friendship they developed in the reality of their intense and irreconcilable differences is difficult, and precious. But then, peace always is.