By 1982, Joel DeMott and her life and cinematic partner, Jeff Kreines, had spent more than two years making “Seventeen,” a cinéma vérité documentary exploring the messy lives of high school seniors from working-class families in Muncie, Ind.
Their unnervingly intimate film about the 1980-81 year at Southside High School shows students drinking, smoking pot, fighting and cursing their teachers. A cross is burned on the lawn outside the home of the film’s central personality, Lynn Massie, a brash white teenager who has been dating a Black classmate.
“Seventeen” was to be the final episode of “Middletown,” a six-part PBS series about American life as seen in Muncie. But it was too raw for PBS and the series’ sponsor, Xerox, which Mr. Kreines said withdrew its support after seeing a three-minute trailer and pushed for the removal of “Seventeen” from the series — although it continued to sponsor the other episodes.
Mr. Kreines said that he and Ms. DeMott had refused to cut the segments about interracial romance and to bleep out 238 obscene words. Under pressure from Xerox, as well as the parents of some of the teenagers and the public TV station in Muncie, Peter Davis, the producer of “Middletown,” withdrew “Seventeen” from the series.
Enraged, Ms. DeMott wrote a 25-page, single-spaced typewritten statement excoriating PBS and Xerox. She and Mr. Kreines sent it to critics in cities where the film was shown in theaters.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Joel DeMott, Whose Documentary Was Rejected by PBS, Dies at 78 appeared first on New York Times.
