Special Report: Julie Cohen on Every Body (2023)

Old Jeers boots. It should people pay good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater. They want cold sodas, you want hot popcorn and no monsters in the projection booth. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring, turn it off.

Just existing as an intersex person is rolens for celebration. Great society generally considers that biological sex isn't cut and dry. Actually it's not cut and dry. We don't fall neatly into that male female box. I was born intersex, and although I was born with a vagina, I was also born with internal testes.

We live in a society that so binary. So it's an intersex person. Where do I fit? The definition of intersex is any variation and a person's sex characteristics. They told my mom, you have a child that we feel is abnormal and this body was a problem that needed to be fixed fixed, and that I should never tell anyone about it.

It's therapeutically highly desirable to have them surgically corrected at an early age. I just remember like a lot of pain. In most cases, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that surgery pismatically necessary. I can walk into the doctor change the course of my life. I did not consent to that surgery.

I had to tell the world what had happened. So we've just spend silent about this for so long. I'm going to come out today. I'm going to tell the Texas Senate I was born with balls. I think we're at the cusp of something cool.

Our goals to pass a bill to condemn these medically unnecessary surgeries. A huge revolution starting right now. Surgery just existing as an intersect person is grounds for celebration in the whole world that doesn't see us. But you know what I am intersect. We are here now.

If helks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth. I'm your Spike White. On this episode, I'm talking with director Julie Cohen all about her latest film, which is Everybody. There Is a Space in Between, There, There is a Space in Between There. It is a wonderful documentary about intersex people, the struggles that they have faced for years and what is currently going on with them.

So a wonderful, wonderful movie, especially to watch during Pride month. It is premiering at Tribecca this weekend, and by this weekend, I mean the weekend of June. And by this weekend, I mean the weekend of June ninth, tenth, eleventh. It will be at the Tribeca Film Festival. Highly recommended if you can see it there.

Otherwise, keep an eye out for it. It is something special. Hope you enjoy the movie, and I really hope you enjoy this interview with miss Cohen. Hope you enjoyed the movie, and I really hope you enjoyed this interview with miss Cohen. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into documentary filmmaking.

I'm sure it was for the money. It's really the opposite. I actually went into docks when I had made enough money that I could afford to become a documentary filmmaker. Like I didn't start making docks until I was in my forties. I had career in much more traditional journalism.

I was a producer for Dateline NBC for quite a while, and at a certain point, about fifteen years ago, I decided that I wanted to take the skills that I had learned long form storytelling and put them to different kind of stories. I actually loved working at Dateline, but I didn't love the true crime. I like it as a viewer, but it's like, it's a pretty heavy stuff subject matter to spend years and years and your life on. And I think that people will note that most of the films I've made since then have been overall quite a beat. I like films that have a lot of fun and joy in them.

That was my path from journalism, and then at a certain point I'm like, no, I'm going to leave this and start trying to make docs. But with the thought that I understood that I was going to not be making like a corporate broadcast news salary anymore, and I doubt so. There you go. How do you choose your subjects. I like to make a film that I'd want to watch.

That's one thing. I'm totally happy to watch a dark film. But I really want to make films that have some fun, some humor, some joy and some love in them. That's big With Betsy West, who is my directing partner for RBG, and Julia and a couple others, like we've gravitated towards stories of amazing women whose stories have been undertold or trivialized or in need bringing in a big way and truthfully once we made RBG, so many other possibilities occurred to us or came to us, or like, that's just a question of deciding what other women's stories were we interested in telling, and on individually have some other things. I like telling stories about and I like films that are really warm and loving.

I also like stories that are really mind blowing. And the thing about Everybody is it really combines both those elements. There's a lot of real inspiration and positivity and love in it, but it's also there's also like some stuff that you're like, holy crap, how did I not know that? How did you decide to do Everybody? This film stemmed actually from my relationship with my former bosses at NBC who NBC News Studios in twenty eighteen asked me to come back and spend some time looking through their archives for stories they'd covered that might make good jumping off points for documentaries.

And there's a historic story in the middle of Everybody that came from an NBC story that's in the middle of this film, and that led me stories amazing and mind blowing, and I'm like, oh, would be so good to build the doc around this, But I'm not quite sure how the story is quite old, everyone involved is no longer living. How does it relate to what's going on today? And that's what led me to the connection of that story to the treatment and the medical protocols that have surrounded intersex people, and then looking more into what the modern day intersex movement is up to, it turned out like, Wow, they are up to a lot and a lot of it's incredible, and it's really deeply and organically intersex with some of the main issues about gender that we're all talking about, And like, I was just floored to hear that all of these state laws that are being fought over now and some of which are passing, which are restricting care for trans kids, have provisions in them that allow for surgery and non consensual treatment on intersex kids.

So it's almost like some of the people pushing this legislation are like, Oh, if we had to do like the wrong thing, hey, in every case, what would we choose? So it just seemed really relevant and really revelatory. And then I looked for and found and then was introduced through some of the intersects that Alicia, one of the intersex activists, to others who were just like Oh my god, these people are incredible and they're doing so much fascined. They're like fighting this really fascinating battle and they're starting to which they're starting to win. So was there any reticence on their part or did they just go, oh, this is the lady that co directed RBG.

There was not a lot of reticence. I will say the way that I approach people isn't I'm doing a documentary, Are you in or not? Like it wasn't like so I almost don't give anyone the opportunity to cut it off at the start. I'm just like, looking into make a documentary about this. Can we have a conversation?

And in the case of both Alicia and Sifa, I probably had like probably an hour to an hour and a half conversation zoom conversation because this was in COVID times already by the time I reached out to them in twenty twenty, So I had long conversations with them where I'm listening to them but also saying where I'm coming from. And then by the end of that, i'mlike, you can be as involved as you want or not. What do you think? And two of them had each done a lot of media have done a lot of activism, so they're used to the invasion of privacy. Frankly that it entails, but they also know the benefits in terms of people like trying.

They're trying to get their story out there, and this helps to do it. And I think we felt good about each other. They liked me, I liked them. River came into the story a little bit later. They were friends with Saifa and Alicia and doing some activism together, and River just showed up to join an action where they were all making posters for a protest, and I did little interviews with the seven or eight people who were like everyone who was there, and River was just so incredible.

I don't even know they were an actor at that point, and they were so cool and had so much camera presence that I'm like, I think we might have the third kind of star of the film right here. This film literally feels like it's ripped from the headlines right now, right year in mid twenty twenty three. Was the writing on the wall back in twenty eighteen as to where we were going to be or I would say yes, I'll say one thing that I said to the NBC executives that I was talking to you, I was like, if we start working at this on this film now, I think at some point in the time we're making it, or maybe just after, and maybe the film can be part of this. I actually think this story is just ripe to be much more, just spread, much more widely than it has to be in the news, much more than it is at one point recently, I hope, so maybe we would do some media with the college press.

And I was looking through to see what coverage there had been in the college press about intersects issues, and there's so little, like in the way that things tend to go in waves. There was a long period where talking about gays and lesbians wasn't done, and then that became such a big subject, you know, trans people over the past fifteen to ten years. I've really like, this is just like these conversations are storing to happen, especially now that you have intersex people who are talking openly and proudly about intersex, about being intersects, which just wasn't true a while back. It's got to be great for the documentary, but it's just a shame that is all of this stuff is happening right now to really force this conversation.

It's great that this conversation is happening, and I'm so happy that it is. Like a lot of things in this country right now, it's a really mixed bag. There's obviously some really terrible legislation being enforced and imposed on trans and intersex people. Like intersex people are also discriminated against legally by some of these same laws that's just talked about less. There's a lot of best but there actually are some good things going on.

For every state that's like cracking down on trans rights, are also states and federal regulations and things that are coming up that are trying to support the trans community in I think in June there's going to be some federal guidelines on better treatment of intersex people for the first time ever. So this issue is central. There's a lot of bad stuff happening up to including a lot of trans women of color, like literally being murdered. So you can't get more terrible than that. So there are terrible things happening, but they're also there is also progress.

There are also people's minds being opened, and I think you know it as far as intersex issues, like there's a real opportunity for people to learns enough that they want to make a change in a problem. But they didn't know that, like unfair medical treatment of intersex people was an issue, Like it's just an issue that a lot of Americans aren't familiar with at all. You said the word revelatory earlier, and that's definitely what this documentary is. And it's so appreciated to see it, and you just run the gamut of emotions. We're talking about the joy but also the sadness and just the unfairness of everything.

It's such a wonderful conversation starter and builder. What have been the reaction to the film so far? There hasn't really been much because the premiere is happening at Tribeca this weekend, so I'm really excited to see the film. Reactions have all been internal, so I think a lot of people are going to both have their minds blown and because this is like a lot of the experiences that these intersects young people have had are pretty mind blowing, but also just feel like psychs. To have the opportunity to meet three pretty amazing people.

Miss Cohen, thank you so much for your time. This is great talking with you. I really appreciate this. Thank you. He's a mess.

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