Alison Stewart: This is All of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, we'll hear about the new documentary Blink, which follows how a family's life changed after they learned that three or four kids have an incurable disease that leads to blindness. They travel the world. We'll hear all about it. We'll hear excerpts from this week's Get get lit with all of it conversation with Eric Larson, author of The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War. Plus a live performance from the band Sons of Town Hall. By the way, that get lit conversation was sold out. They tend to be that way, so you might want to go ahead and reserve tickets now for this month's event.

I'll be speaking with author Denaw Mengestu about his new novel, Someone Like Us. It's about a journalist searching for answers about his father's death and his mysterious past. New Yorkers can borrow an e book thanks to our partners at the New York Public Library, and then join us on Wednesday, October 30th at 6:00 p.m. to talk about it in person. For details and free tickets, got to sign up for them, though, head to wnyc.org/getlit. That's wnyc.org/getlit.

Now let's get on with today's show with Patrice: The Movie. Patrice Jeter is an excellent school crossing guard, a natty dresser, a train collector, a figure skater, a girlfriend and an advocate for disability rights. Well, you know what? Let's hear from Patrice herself from a new movie about her life called Patrice: The Movie.

Patrice Jetter: Hi, my name is Patrice. I am a totally cool person with a disability who could do most anything with the exception of bungee jumping, pyrotechnics and uber dangerous stunts because then I need a stunt double for that.

Speaker 1: Patrice is a big magnet for people.

Gary: She is hands down, the most famous cross garden in Hamilton Township. She might as well be Madonna.

Alison Stewart: That was Gary, who is her longtime partner and he has cerebral palsy, and the film shows the couple in their day to day life. They share meals together. They go swimming. They make each other laugh all the time. Patrice and Gary spend time together almost every day. However, they live in separate towns about 20 minutes away. He lives in Princeton. That's important because while the couple dreams of getting married, doing so would put them both at risk of losing their disability benefits.

That includes Social Security, Medicaid, and help with basic needs. Despite the challenges, the two of them decide to proceed with a commitment ceremony, but roadblocks pop up along the way. A review in Indiewire states, on paper, Patrice sounds like a heartbreaking story, but the documentary is as joyous and life affirming as they come. Patrice: The Movie is now streaming on Hulu. Today we're joined by the director, writer, and producer, Ted Passon. Hi, Ted.

Ted Passon: Hi.

Alison Stewart: And the star herself, who's also a writer on the film, Patrice Jetter. Hi, Patrice.

Patrice Jetter: Hey, how's it going?

Alison Stewart: It's going forward. Thank you for asking me. I appreciate it. Patrice, tell us how you know Ted.

Patrice Jetter: I was introduced to Ted more than 20 years ago by my niece, Kimya Dawson and Kimya is an awesome musician with the Moldy Peaches. And she got her big break when she did the soundtrack for the Juno movie.

Alison Stewart: I know her from the wayback machine. Holy cow. That's awesome. [laughs] Ted, when did you realize that Patrice's story would make a really interesting movie?

Ted Passon: Well, the first time I met Patrice, I realized that she was awesome immediately, as I think anyone does, and always had it in the back of my head that it'd be great to do something together. We didn't do that until around 2021. I worked on a series for Netflix called Warn Stories that was created by one of our producers on this project, Emily Spivak. And we discovered that Patrice is extremely comfortable on camera, as it turns out, which is not a shocker.

It was so fun working together, and we just felt like, okay, maybe there's just something more to do. Let's talk about it and as we were kind of thinking about what might be a story worth covering from Patrice's life, right at that time, Gary asked her to marry him. And I did not know at the time that if you are disabled and you're collecting benefits and you get married, that you will likely lose those benefits. And so that that really seemed like, okay, that's the story that we're here to tell, and we should be following that.

Alison Stewart: Patrice, when Ted said, "Okay, we're going to make a movie." What parts of your life that you really wanted to see on screen?

Patrice Jetter: I wanted to put something with all aspects of my life from growing up because at the age of 50, I had some pretty interesting stories to tell. I had started trying to put the stories in a graphic novel because as outrageous as some of the stories are, you need the pictures to go with them because then it makes it funnier. Some of the stuff wasn't funny at the time it was going on, but if you know how to tell it, it can make people laugh.

When we started coming together to do this, we wanted to incorporate those stories in the movie because one day, I'm not going to be here to tell them to people and we, of course, had to include my mom in and I wanted it done from all sides so that it wasn't just from my side, but it was also from my mom's side and the events that led up to what made me Patrice today.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about that, Ted. These recreations from Patrice's life, they feature Patrice, and sometimes they have little kids playing different ages. Sometimes they're playing her mom, sometimes they're playing a teacher. Patrice plays herself at various ages as well. When did the idea for recreating these moments come from?

Ted Passon: We knew we wanted to include Patrice's backstory and in trying to figure out how we were going to visualize that, we knew that we also needed to get Patrice's artwork into the film. She's a phenomenal artist, and her aesthetic is so strong. The film had to see the world in that way. And so at some point, the idea was, well, Patrice should probably draw the world. It should just be her design and so we kind of started with the idea of her designing the sets and placing her in that world as herself.

Patrice also used to have a kid's television show on public access years ago for kids, and she loves kids and loves being around them. As we were trying to figure out, how do we also mimic Patrice's storytelling style, where she can tell you something really dark but keep it funny, we realized that if we had kids playing all of the other parts in this world, that that would allow us to keep it light while at the same time also providing a sneaky gut punch, because when you hear some of these things in the system coming out of the mouths of children, you really get a stronger emotional sense of how inhumane the system is when you put it up against the innocence of a child.

Alison Stewart: Let's let people hear this a little bit. This is from the clip from the movie Patrice: The Movie where she's telling a story about her mom. Let's listen.

Patrice Jetter: Before I was born, mom always dreamed of being a dancer, but she had to do other jobs instead. Mom used to work in Willowbrook hospital. It was a notorious institution where they used to keep people with developmental disabilities and it wasn't a nice place. My mom couldn't take it. She quit. Mom knew that I could end up in one of those places places and she always got worried when I attracted too much attention to myself.

Speaker: She did what?

Patrice Jetter: And I was good at that.

Alison Stewart: Patrice, how did not talking about your disability shape how you were treated by teachers and other kids?

Patrice Jetter: Well, one of the problems was that no matter how much you try to hide or mask something, other people pick up on it, and they don't buy it. It's almost like in the Christmas special, Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, when his dad put that cap on his nose to try to hide it and thought nobody would notice but eventually, people notice when you're trying to hide something, and it always comes out of.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Patrice Jetter and Ted Passon. We're talking about Patrice: The Movie. It's streaming now on Hulu. A big part of the film is your relationship with Gary. Patrice, how did you and Gary become friends? Just friends first.

Patrice Jetter: Well, me and Gary met over 35 years ago in a sheltered workshop for people with disabilities and our personalities just matched. We just clicked, and we would make each other laugh. Even at work, it got to the point that the supervisor would separate us and put us on opposite sides of the room, and we would still make each other laugh.

Alison Stewart: Ted, when you saw Patrice and Gary together, what did you want to show about their friendship and also about their relationship?

Ted Passon: Well, I honestly, I think Patrice and Gary just love each other so much and so openly and so authentically that, I think they have what I think everybody wants to find. Just being around a relationship like that, honestly, I could even just say for me personally, it fills you with hope that that is possible, and it just makes you feel better about the world and the idea that these two people who love each other so much would be prevented from getting married or even just living together by a system that professes to help them is just maddening.

Alison Stewart: When did you realize, Patrice, that Gary was the one?

Patrice Jetter: I'd say about six years ago. And I just started having feelings, but I was in denial, so I decided to write him a letter and just send it to him and just say how I felt and then after I mailed the letter, I had regrets about sending it, so I tried to intercept the letter, but he had already read it. And when he killed me with that, "I just like you as a friend." It was like, oh, man but it turned out that I was ready to be his friend again but things in our lives changed that brought us closer together, and we ended up both falling in love with each other. We realized that we were destined to be together, and the rest is history.

Alison Stewart: It's really funny in the movie, the little kid playing the mailbox, it's just really funny. I don't know why it's so funny, but it is.

Ted Passon: That kid did an amazing job. He definitely [crosstalk] mailbox perfectly.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk a little bit about the benefit situation. It's frustrating. Your point, Ted. It is really frustrating. Two people who love each other so much they can't even move in together, they can't get married, they might lose their Social Security benefits. How did you think about incorporating that in the film? Because it could become the focus of the film, but-- it is but it isn't.

Ted Passon: In some ways, I think, we consider this film in this maybe part of new wave of disability cinema, starting with Crip Camp and I Didn't See You There, and Coda. There is a lot of tropes in stories about disabled people, especially when non-disabled people make the stories where you usually have a story where somebody is overcoming their disability and that's not what this is.

This is people trying to overcome a system that was not built with them in mind. The idea is that this-- so much in the system is really just getting in the way of the simple, basic things that they're trying to have in their life, including loving each other, being together, but also just daily survival every single day. We wanted to acknowledge it as the heart of the conflict of the story but at the end of the day, it's about how the two of them deal with it.

That's our main focus. How do they, as a team, as two people who love each other, do the best they can given the unfair circumstances that they've been thrown into?

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to this clip from the film. This is Gary sharing his frustrations about potentially losing benefits for getting married. This is from Patrice: The Movie.

Gary: For me, personally, I have cerebral palsy. I was born with it. The Medicare and Medicaid thing, I have to have it. I mean, we'd never be able to pay for the bills.

Patrice Jetter: Well, they don't care. It's just simple as that.

Gary: It's just not right. They punish you for feeling feelings that everybody else feels. And it's like, oh, you're disabled. You're not like everybody else.

Alison Stewart: Patrice, tell us some major misconceptions that people have about disabled people who want to be together, want to have their own rights.

Patrice Jetter: Well, one of the major misconceptions is it's not as easy as folks think it is. A lot of folks don't even know what a person like myself goes through on a regular basis. They don't know that I have restrictions on the amount of money that I'm allowed to make and you're constantly always trying to make sure you have enough for living from paycheck to paycheck.

Folks don't understand that I'm doing everything that I can, but no matter what I do because of the cost of living, the amount of utilities, the amount of food, you're already in a negative balance every month, and you're constantly on this hamster wheel that you can't seem to get off of or get ahead.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Patrice, the movie. You can stream it now on Hulu. My guest is Patrice Jetter and the film's director, Ted Passon. In the series, we see that Patrice has a pretty good support system. She's got great friends. How did you want to show what kind of friends she has?

Ted Passon: Well, Patrice is definitely someone who attracts community around her wherever she goes and it was important to show that network because it's crucial to her survival, number one and also, I think something that the non-disabled people can really learn from the disabled community is just the idea of interdependence. We have this really independent capitalist mindset of, we're going to do it alone, which is not true. Nobody actually does anything alone. That's actually not the case, even though that's a story we tell ourselves and the pressure we put on ourselves, which is extremely unhealthy.

I think to be able to show that spirit of interdependence was really important, but also just to show, she's surrounded by a community of people with different disabilities, different lived experiences, who are all galvanized by the same challenges that they're all experiencing and working together and trying to love each other through the process. And that seemed crucial to include as well.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to another clip. This is, your van won't pass inspection. The tech guy thinks it's dangerous. You're not sure about him. At first, I'm not that sure about him, but then you realize he's saying this for your benefit, and you guys are trying to figure out-- You and Elizabeth are trying to figure out a way to brainstorm ways to make money. So let's listen into the brainstorming session from Patrice: The Movie.

Elizabeth: So, fundraising. Because we got the link out there.

Patrice Jetter: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Other ideas? Fundraising.

Patrice Jetter: We thought about having a penny drive.

Elizabeth: What is a penny drive?

Patrice Jetter: When people have pennies they don't want. Well, I mean, you can't predict ahead of time how many pennies you're going to get. We'll take whatever we can get our hands on. We got do something, or else.

Gary: Who's going to do it? I mean, just--

Elizabeth: You're so limited in what you can do, and I'm here, like, I'm helping you 100%, but even for me, this is a lot.

Patrice Jetter: Well, getting frustrated isn't going help me.

Elizabeth: Yes, I get it it does nothing but how come you're not just annoyed all the time?

Patrice Jetter: Well, I'm tired. It almost makes me sometimes not want to do it, but I have to do something.

Alison Stewart: Patrice, why are fundraising options limited for you?

Patrice Jetter: One of the issues is when you try to do fundraising, you also need other people to help. Sometimes to host things like pancake breakfast and things, you need permits from the town to do these things, and even the permits cost money. I just didn't have the means at the time to pay to get the permits, I didn't have the volunteers to help me pull it off, and I couldn't find the space to host these things.

Sometimes when you call around to get venues, they didn't even return my phone calls, so it just became real frustrating, but at the same time, you've got to make sure when you're doing the fundraising that it doesn't become another hit on your Social Security.

Ted Passon: What Patrice is talking about is that if she were to just do a GoFundMe, as most people probably would, that would count as income against her benefits, and she would be kicked off her benefits because it would put her over the asset limit. That's why she has to think about things like pancake breakfast or collecting cans or penny drives because the options of fundraising when you're on benefits are extremely narrow.

Alison Stewart: Ted, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I watched the film, and I'm not sure Patrice's disability is mentioned in the film. Was that intentional?

Ted Passon: Yes. There's actually-- One, it's not like it's a secret or anything, but the reason we didn't do it is just because there is a new movement in the disability world to just not assume automatic disclosure of one's disability. In the spirit of that, we made a decision, as we're telling the story of the film, that we would only disclose somebody's disability if it was organically related to the story and it was something that was necessary to know. If not, then we just left it out.

Alison Stewart: Patrice, what are you hoping lawmakers will do to make the lives of you and your fellow disabled people to just make their lives easier?

Patrice Jetter: I'm hoping that this movie will help bring change because I know that some of my fellow disabled friends have been trying for years to get this law changed and that maybe this movie will give a boost to help that along and then not only will we be able to get married, so will all of my friends, and we'll be able to go to everybody's wedding and have a good time.

Alison Stewart: Quick question. How's Gary? How's he doing?

Patrice Jetter: He's good. He actually went to the doctors today for a checkup, but he's good.

Alison Stewart: All right, my son. I send good vibes to Gary. Thank you so much for joining us. My guests have been Patrice Jetter and director Ted Passon. Patrice: The Movie is now streaming on Hulu.

Alison Stewart: Thanks a bunch.

Patrice Jetter: You're welcome.

Ted Passon: Thank you so much.

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