Columbia-based Filmmaker Robert Greene’s latest documentary, Procession, will have its local premiere Monday at the Missouri Theatre. In Procession, Greene follows six men, all survivors of sexual assault by catholic priests, as they embark in a process of healing through drama therapy. The film documents the men's efforts to create a movie based on their shared trauma, with a goal of taking control over their fears. KBIA’s Fernando Narro caught up with Greene ahead of Monday’s screening. They began by talking about how the idea for the film came about.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Robert Greene: My sister-in-law Mary — who is a Mizzou grad among other things — she told me, "Oh you should read this book, The Body Keeps The Score," and [that] is a book about how trauma is stored in the body. And one way that you can move past or at least deal with that trauma is through drama therapy, is through acting things out. She said to me, "This is what you've been doing, this is what you've been interested in; you probably need to figure out exactly what the sort of therapeutic component of that could be." And then that started us on this journey. Then I saw the press conference which opens the film, saw three of the six guys that we ended up working with, and we reached out to Rebecca Randles, who's the lawyer who's also in that press conference clip. She had been representing these guys, and we started the journey which led to the film. It was a challenge throughout the whole thing. I think the key thing that we did was, metaphorically and literally, we built rooms, right? We built rooms for these guys to walk into and there were always doors in every single wall of those rooms, meaning metaphorically at least, you could walk out. You could always leave. Every single step in the process we considered it to be possibly the last step. You see in the film there's an early meeting, where we're going through the early ideas and sort of meeting each other. We told them that day, this might be the last thing we film, because maybe we decide we don't want to do this. So having that doubt, using doubt and skepticism from the family members and the therapists and the whole entire unit that we built, that you see in the film, the skepticism was just as important as the ideas were. The doubt was just as important.
KBIA: Watching the film, I felt it was very powerful when you see they have decided to go ahead, and they will do these scenes, and they're scouting locations, and many of the times these locations are the exact same places where this really horrific event happened to them. How was it following them as they went into that journey.
Greene: Going back to places where abuse happened wasn't our original idea. We did think we were going to try to get into some of the Catholic churches in Kansas City, that was a goal. But then, early in the process, Ed, who you see in the film, his abuser Bishop Hart was moved from Kansas City to Cheyenne, Wyoming where Ed grew up. And very very early, Ed said, hey what if we go to Cheyenne and I can go back to this cathedral and maybe we can go on Easter Sunday. And that was his idea. His idea was to go back and claim the space for himself. He literally said, "There's this bell, and this bell is connected to myself — my childhood self. And I had joy ringing this bell at this church and I would like to get that joy back." And then he did that. You see it in the film. And then from that point forward, all the other guys started to say, "maybe I can claim my own space." And it was incredibly challenging, incredibly rewarding. But by the time we started doing that we had already built up armor on ourselves; the guys really started to connect. And they really started to feel like they can almost do anything, they can almost slay any dragon. And that really comes from the brotherhood that they had sort of built for each other. So to follow them and to be a part of that, I felt like we were enablers. You know, enablers is usually a word that you use in a negative sense, because we're talking about the people who enabled the abuse. Well, we were enablers in a positive sense.
KBIA: One thing that I saw was there were so many names in the 'film by' in the credits. So how much of a collaborative process was this filming compared to your previous work?
Greene: I think the film was incredibly collaborative, and sometimes even almost frustratingly so. One of the things you realize as a director is sometimes people just want you to direct them. And I kept saying, "Well, it's really your idea. What do you want to do?" The secret of the whole thing is, you know, we had the drama therapist, Monica there, we had Rebecca and Sasha, who you see in the film, they're both trauma trained and they know the guys very well. So we had family members all buying into the project. We had everybody there, but the secret for me was that I know how fun it is to make a movie. We've been doing this for a while, right? You see it in the film, you see Joe say — Joe is one of the guys — he's like, "I used to not be able to walk into a church. And now there's these big lights there. And then everyone, there's all this crew running around, that transformed the space." I just knew that that was what was possible. Making a movie can be very, very fun. It can be a lot of work. But it also can be very cathartic.
KBIA: For people who go and see this film, what do you want them to take away?
Greene: So first of all, the screening at Missouri theater on Monday, November 8, is going to be a very, very special night. For me, for one, just bringing it back to Columbia. I edited the film and directed the film here. A lot of students in the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism were a part of the project. So this is very much Mizzou-made in a lot of ways. But also just being in that space. I mean, after what we've been through with a pandemic like this, just the fact that we can get hundreds and hundreds of people together safely to watch a film that I put my heart and soul in — that we all did — it's just incredibly, incredibly rewarding. It's also going to be really important for the guys. It's going to be seen by a lot of people through [Netflix]. But we made the film to be seen together, the film is literally about coming together. So the fact that we can come together is incredibly potent. And I say this, oftentimes when I'm introducing the film — we premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, and we've been on this run for the last couple months showing the film to various people and in various festivals and around the world. And I always say that the audience is a part of the process that we created; the audience completes the process. In some ways, these guys made this film, and they made it to be seen by you, the audience. They want you to show up, they want you to see how they handle their trauma. And they want you to take some inspiration from that. And if you're a survivor, they want you to feel solace and love coming from them. And that is very, very real, very true. That's what I want the audience at [the] Missouri theater to feel: the love that we put into the film. I want it to be a cathartic night for all of us, frankly. It's just going to be a special night. It's a red carpet event and we're all getting dressed up and it's going to be cool.