Golden Moment

At 6:45 a.m. Tuesday, Cynthia Wade received the call she was hoping for: Her film Freeheld was nominated for an Academy Award in the short documentary field. Freeheld tells the wrenching story of policewoman Laurel Hester’s battle to bequeath her 25-year pension to her partner of six years, auto mechanic Stacie Andree, before Laurel died of lung cancer. The governing “Freeholders” of the conservative stronghold of Ocean County, N.J., did not want to grant that right to same-sex partners, even though they had the legal authority to do so.

The Advocate spoke to filmmaker Wade on the afternoon of her big day: She called from snowy Park City, Utah, where she was attending the Sundance Film Festival (the event where, a year before, Freeheld won a Special Jury Prize).

Cynthia Wade shooting Freeholders meetings

How does it feel to win an Oscar nomination?
It’s been an amazing day. I’m thrilled. We all thought we had a good, healthy shot, but you never know these things.

The genesis of Freeheld was that you and a small crew just showed up at a meeting of the Freeholders where they were discussing Laurel’s case.
I had two cameras, two assistants, and release forms. I didn’t know that they’d let me shoot. And within 15 minutes I knew this was my next film and I’d throw everything aside professionally in my life to do this.

And they just let you shoot?
There was a hush and tension in the room and I thought, All right, let me start shooting unless someone tells me to stop. It turns out that in New Jersey you can film anything at a public meeting. That’s the law. And I didn’t need release forms from the Freeholders. Afterward, I went up to Laurel and Stacie and introduced myself and asked if I could tell their story. And Laurel said yes. She had always wanted to write a book, and realized she was running out of time.

You spent a lot of time with Laurel and Stacie during the last 10 weeks of Laurel’s life, often staying over at their house.
It was just me and Laurel in the house during the day in early December [2005], looking at old photos and newspaper articles about her life as a detective. She actually seemed in a better mood and less depressed doing that. Stacie was at the auto shop all day, and there was definitely a wariness from her in the beginning -- Who is this filmmaker, and why has Laurel let her come into our lives? But as Laurel got sicker, Stacie began to lean on me more and liked me coming down [Webb lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.]. That’s when I crossed the line into being a friend. There’s a tradition in documentary film that you should be this fly on the wall, but there was so much at stake with them that I didn’t feel I could do that.