Documentary to Book: The Making of “Growing Up Fast”

Joanna Lipper shares the story of how she made a documentary about teenage moms, exploring the emotions, relationships and psychological forces that lead to teen pregnancy and parenthood.

It was Carol Gilligan who first invited me to come to Pittsfield to videotape the workshops she taught with Normi Noel at The Teen Parent Program and offered to allocate some grant money she had received towards this purpose. Our relationship dated back to the Boston Festival of Women's Cinema, where in 1998 she had moderated a discussion following a screening of a documentary film I had produced and directed, entitled, Inside Out: Portraits of Children. That particular screening happened to be a benefit for The Guidance Center, a multicultural nonprofit organization in Cambridge that addresses the needs of economically and socially challenged families. Their mission is "to provide innovative prevention, intervention, and educational programs that empower families to confront challenge and crisis proactively."

Carol was deeply moved by my film about the imaginary worlds of children. She encouraged me to consider making a documentary film about teen motherhood. A year later, I joined her in Pittsfield to explore this possibility.

During the first workshop session I attended, Carol showed the teen mothers a section of my previous film, which was narrated exclusively by its subjects, children between the ages of five and twelve. After the screening, I asked the teen mothers how they would feel about being in a documentary and explained what this endeavor would entail. First and foremost, they had to want to be seen and heard. They had to believe that what they had to say was valuable and important. They had to have the courage to place their thoughts, feelings, emotions and intimate family histories and relationships under a microscope in front of a judgmental public. They had to be strong enough to confront their own vulnerability and live with it. Each girl had to be driven by the desire to shatter what up until now had been her own private silence.

A few members of the group were interested and felt strong enough to attempt this. Those who were game tested the waters and allowed me to interview them. Those who felt comfortable being[img_assist|nid=4413|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=83|height=124] videotaped identified themselves as being interested in participating as subjects. Aware of the level of intimacy, involvement, scrutiny, and commitment that the project required, they agreed to let me into their world.

Recognizing that their lives were incredibly stressful and busy, I made myself available to meet with them completely on their terms, at home, at work, at school and at social gatherings. We caught up with each other during their fifteen-minute lunch breaks, between classes, late at night after their kids were fast asleep, early on bitterly cold days when their early morning shifts were slow, in between customers at the drive-thru if the manager happened to be on break, and on weekends, if and when they were lucky enough to have half of a Saturday or Sunday off from work.

Occasionally the teenagers would lose track of time and forget to call to cancel scheduled meetings when excursions to the lake or the mall lasted longer than expected or when they were overwhelmed with errands or doctor's appointments, or when they had to work late unexpectedly, or if transportation got tricky. In those instances when they were late or didn't show up at all, I would wait in my car, often for hours, parked on street corners or in the parking lots of housing projects, staring out my window, watching children playing, mail being retrieved from mailboxes, snowflakes falling, leaves burning, raindrops splattering on the windshield, and people coming and going.

Ultimately, this patience and unwavering dedication constituted the foundation upon which our relationships were built. As the teen mothers witnessed my respect for them, and my commitment, I was rewarded with their trust and raw honesty.

Not too far removed from the ups and downs of my own adolescence, I empathized with their fluctuating moods and their many conflicting obligations. I was sensitive to the crushingly high levels of stress that saturated their daily lives. We shared good days, bad days and many very ordinary days. I witnessed private and public moments. As they introduced me to the fathers of their babies and to their parents, slowly I began to get a sense of their romantic relationships, their friends and their family histories. What initially had been a blank canvas began to take on color, shape and dimension as I learned more and more about the different layers of their lives.

The short documentary we made during the first few months we worked together screened at venues ranging from the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, to Harvard's Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, to HBO's Frame by Frame Film Festival in New York City, to the Health Class at Reid Elementary School in Pittsfield. The film was distinguished as one of the outstanding short documentaries of 1999, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was screened in their annual documentary series at UCLA.

This documentary covered the teenagers' lives through their last months of high school. After the documentary film was completed, the teen parents and I agreed to continue videotaping interviews with the objective of creating a book. Over the course of four years I continued to interview them and their families while simultaneously operating a hand-held, Sony VX-1000 mini-DV camera, relying on natural light and trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. I also continued to photograph and videotape them as they went through their days, visiting them at home, at work, at their parents' homes, and in the case of Jessica, at Berkshire Community College.

I attended children's birthday parties, the senior prom, graduation, family barbecues and other special events. We spent substantial amounts of time hanging out, driving around, and talking when the camera wasn't running. In addition to all the videotaped material, some interviews were audiotaped, conducted over the telephone or in person. All the interviews were transcribed and edited, with an emphasis on maintaining the integrity of each voice, while trying to extract the most clear, vivid story from hours of material.

These four years of research and observation culminated in a 400-page book entitled Growing Up Fast. In 2005, the book and excerpts of the film were featured in a thirty-minute special on NBC, as part of The Jane Pauley Show, in a program that focused on influential approaches to sex education in the United States. This program emphasized the influential educational impact of the book and documentary film, and examined their role in facilitating parent-child dialogue, and showed how they have served as catalysts for discussions and debates about public policy at state and national conferences and on radio programs across the U.S.

I began this project without any agenda other than curiosity about the lives of teen mothers, which at the outset, I knew very little about. All my subsequent research was motivated and spurred on by the content of the oral histories I collected. The interviews with the teenagers and their families left me with many questions. As a voracious reader, I began my search for answers in books, and gradually expanded the scope of my interviews to include members of the community, such as the Mayor, social workers, teachers, physicians and law enforcement.

Throughout the project I was inspired by Dorothy's Allison's stark, incisive, courageous, gripping memoir, Two or Three Things I Know For Sure.

Behind the story I tell is the one I don't. Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear. Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the clothes the world has made for me.