The movie is by, who directed the great documentary ' (1994). For years, people asked him, 'Whatever happened to those kids?' -to the two young basketball players he followed from eighth grade to adulthood.
James must often have wondered about the kid nobody ever asked about, Stevie. While he was a student at Southern Illinois University, Steve was a Big Brother to Stevie, but he lost touch in 1985, after graduating. Ten years later, he went back Downstate, to the town of Pomona, 10 or 15 miles down the road from Carbondale, to seek out Stevie. That must have taken some courage, and even on his first return James must have suspected that this story would not have a happy ending. But it has so much truth, as it shows an unhappy childhood reaching out through the years and smacking down its adult survivor. Here are a few facts, for orientation. Stevie Fielding was not wanted.
He was born out of wedlock, does not know who his father is, was raised by a mother who didn't want him, was beaten by her. When she did marry, she turned him over to her new husband's mother to raise. He also made a circuit of foster homes and juvenile centers, where he was raped and beaten regularly.
When we meet Stevie again, he is 23 and not doing well. His tattoos and Harley T-shirt express a bravado he does not possess, and he makes a poor impression with haystack hair, oversize thick glasses and bad teeth. The most important person in his life is his girlfriend, Tonya Gregory, who on first impression seems slow, but who on longer acquaintance reveals herself as smart about Stevie and loyal to him. His stepsister Brenda is also a support, a surrogate mother who seems the best-adjusted member of his family, perhaps because, as her husband tells us, 'they didn't beat her.' Stevie freely expressed hatred for his mother, Bernice ('Some day I am going to kill her'), and she is one of the villains of the piece, but having stopped drinking, she feels remorse and even blames herself, to a degree, for Stevie's problems-especially the latest one. Between 1995, when James first revisits Stevie, and 1997, when production proper started on this documentary, Stevie was charged with molesting an 8-year-old girl. Stevie says he is innocent.
Even Tonya thinks he is guilty. We do not forgive him this crime because of his tragic childhood, but it helps us understand it-even predict it, or something like it. And as he goes through the court system, Tonya stands by him, Brenda helps him as much as she can and Bernice, his mother, seems slowly to change for the better-to move in the direction she might have taken if it had not been for her own troubles. There is no sentimentality in 'Stevie,' no escape, no release.
'The film does not come to a satisfying ending,' writes the critic David Poland. He wanted more of a 'lift,' and so, I suppose, did I-and James. Etl design document template.
But although 'Hoop Dreams' ended in a way that a novelist could not have improved upon, 'Stevie' seems destined to end the way it does, and is the more courageous and powerful for it. A satisfying ending would have been a lie. Most of us are blessed with happy families. Around us are others, nursing deep hurts and guilts and secrets-punished as children for the crime of being unable to fight back.
To watch 'Stevie' is to wonder if anything could have been done to change the course of this history. James' big-brothering was well-intentioned, and his wife, a social worker, believes in help from outside. But this extended family seems to form a matrix of pain and abuse that goes around and around in each generation, and mercilessly down through time to the next.
To be born into the family is to have a good chance of being doomed, and Brenda's survival is partly because she got out fast, married young and kept her distance. Philip Larkin could have been thinking of this family in his most famous poem, whose opening line cannot be quoted here, but which ends: Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself. Search the Web using the first two lines, and you will find a poem that Stevie Fielding might agree with.
Contents. Content In 1995, James returned to, a rural town in, USA. After 10 years with no contact, he attempts to reconnect with Stevie Fielding, a troubled young boy to whom he had been an 'Advocate Big Brother'. James's re-entry into Stevie's life is brief.
The story then picks up again about two years later after Stevie is charged with a serious crime. Through interviews with Stevie and his family and friends, James paints the portrait of a man who is still very troubled, while he tries to understand what led Stevie down the path of self-destruction. Post-release Stevie was the winner of numerous festival awards, including the 2002 Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival's Joris Ivens Award, given to that year's top documentary. The film was a 2003 nominee for Best Documentary at the, as well as the.
By decade's end, Stevie was on numerous 'Best of the 2000s' list. In his list of 'Best Films of Any Genre', Ray Pride of NewCity Film, ranked Stevie at #19. Critic Collin Souter of Efilmcritic.com named Stevie the best documentary of the decade.
Aftermath Stephen Fielding was scheduled to be paroled on February 15, 2007. His original ten-year sentence was completed on October 29, 2009, and he was released from the.
References. International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2002. Retrieved 25 Jan.
Sundance.org. Retrieved 25 Jan. Retrieved 25 Jan. Pride, Ray. NewCity Film.com. Retrieved 25 Jan. Filmsweep.com.
Retrieved 25 Jan. Phipps, Keith. Untitled Keith Phipps Project. Retrieved 25 Jan. Souter, Collin.
Retrieved 25 Jan. External links. at the list. Stephen Fielding Illinois State Offender page. Stephen Fielding Tennessee Sex Offender Page.
SRV's Guitar Stevie Ray Vaughan's main guitar, which he called 'Number One,' along with his various other guitars are in the possession of his brother, Jimmie Vaughan. Ji mmie sold one of Stevie's guitars, Lenny, at an auction for $623,500 in 2004.
When Guitar Center bougth the guitar a very special deal was made. They have soul rights to producing 'Lenny' and selling them only in their stores. Many felt the sale should not have occured. I am in this group. I have every recording and DVD that Stevie produced and taking this very special guitar(named after his wife and bought by a group of his friends from a pawn shop, he didn't have the money) out of what is considered a pricless collection a very bad decission. They are with his brother Jimmie Vaughan but Jimmie did sale one in 2004 to guitar center Corp.
For over 600,000 dollars it wasn't' number one' that's still with his brother t he one sold was the one named after his wife along with a case and hat of stevies some say he was buried with his number one but nobody knows for sure most info about his privat stuff live guitars and pics as well as other things clothes and unheard music is all controlled by his brother Jimmie most people say he is an idiot and always claimed to be better then Stevie.
He began a film, a search, to discover not only what had happened to Stevie over the past ten years but to understand the forces that had shaped his entire life. Part way through the filming, Stevie is arrested and charged with a serious crime that tears his family apart. What was to be a modest profile turns into a intimate four and half year chronicle of Stevie, his broken family, the criminal justice system and the filmmaker himself, as they all struggle with what Stevie has done and who he has become. 'There but by the Grace of God go I'. Stevie never had a chance.at least not at first with his birth mother. It all starts in the womb.
He was never wanted. Except for his story as sad and tragic as it is Stevie would have been better off not to have made it out of the womb. Certainly the little girl he molested would be. The real tragedy is he did have a chance with the Hubers and his Big Brother Steve.both abandoned Stevie and knew it. You just can't trip in and out of children's lives and expect them to be 'OK'. Hubers comment 'well life goes on' was so trite.
What she meant was HER life goes on. Stevies just stopped.again. All Children, especially the Stevies, need a lifetime of commitment. Commitment is what transforms the promise into reality. IT is the words that speak boldly of your intentions.
Documentary Stevie UpdateStephen Fielding
And the actions that speak louder than the words. It is the making of time when there is none. Coming through time after time after time.
Netflix Documentary Stevie Update
Year after year. Commitment is the stuff character is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.
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