Foundation For Large Families
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My Flesh and Blood
FROM: "What You Need to Know About:"
Parenting Special Needs
MY FLESH and BLOOD premiers in New York, Los Angeles, and San Franciso on Thanksgiving Weekend. It will be featured on HBO next season.
Winner of the Sundance Festival Award
When you walk into the Tom house, you’re immediately greeted by gregarious children who compete for your attention. They are disabled, all of them, but soon you don’t notice. The burns are gone when Faith begins singing. Xenia does pull-ups and you forget she has no legs.
When I first met the Tom family, I had this overwhelming curiosity about Susan Tom. How does she do it? Why does she do it? As we began to shoot the documentary I discovered those questions are easy to answer, but larger questions remained: how do you raise a child with both physical and mental illness? How do these eleven children handle teasing at school? How do they approach the issue of dating? What will happen when they eventually grow up and leave this comforting family? As two of them fight for their lives, how do the Tom kids come to understand death?
I’ve worked as a television journalist for over a decade, and in that time I have never found a story more worthy of a documentary film. As a student of verité films, I knew I had a story here that could be told without voice over narration, with little music, with none of the devices used in mainstream television. Here, I could create a powerful portrait of a family simply by being a fly on the wall, and I’m so thankful we’ve done it. This is a story following a woman with tremendous heart and conviction, but caught in a year of her life that threatens the foundation of her family. Joe, her troubled teenage son, was prepared to act on his darkest impulses against his mother and his siblings. His physical and mental illness raised important questions I never set out to answer.
Director Jonathon Karsh
MY FLESH AND BLOOD is a feature length verité documentary about the Tom family - eleven special needs children adopted by Fairfield, California mother Susan Tom - and the story of Susan's battle with her emotionally disturbed teenage son. With limited help from the state, Susan cares for a bustling and often chaotic house of children with conditions ranging from genetic skin disease to missing limbs. Encouraged by Susan to feel a sense of self-acceptance, most of the children thrive despite their disabilities. But Susan's limits are tested when her enraged 15 year-old son threatens to kill one of his siblings. And when one child unexpectedly dies, the Tom family must come to understand death at an early age.
MY FLESH AND BLOOD follows the Tom family in what turns out to be the most tumultuous year of their lives.
Susan Tom gave our production one year to film in her home in Fairfield, California.
That was it. If we didn’t get what we needed, then we were out of luck. But in that year, she gave us complete access to every moment unfolding inside her house. She only had three rules: no bathroom shots of her, no bathing suit shots of her, and no one could tell us to stop rolling except for her. The first two rules were easy to follow, but the last one proved to be challenging when one of the children, Joe, became extremely hostile towards the crew.
We are often asked how we dealt with shooting around such a large number of kids. Initially we played a game - "we're here" or "we're not here". When Jonathan told them "we're here", he would laugh and joke with them. When he said, "we're not here", they quickly came to understand that the crew was “invisible” and would just ignore them. Then after a while, they took a cue from the boom microphone - if it was down, they knew they could play around. If it was up, they knew the camera was rolling.
With the family living within close proximity to the production company base in San Francisco, we were afforded the incredible advantage of being able to pick-up day shoots here and there, rather than having to rely upon a pre-determined shooting schedule. Jonathan was in daily contact with Susan, inquiring about any and all events going on with each child. Additionally, Susan played a key role, as she was savvy as to what a filmmaker might want to know about, and would call to let us know if something worth filming was taking place.
Both Susan and Jonathan felt a certain “kismet” about the year we happened to document their lives. It was a time when the family was in crisis, when Susan was trying to maintain a happy household in the face of threats from one son, and the failing health of another. Having a documentary crew present during the toughest moments, dissecting every situation and comment, she says, was “like a free year of therapy.”
Shooting progressed for one year, with principal photography wrapping in June of 2002. Editing began in February 2002, and the film was completed in January 2003.
Movie Release on Thanksgiving Weekend
about jonathan karsh
d i r e c t o r
MY FLESH AND BLOOD marks Jonathan Karsh’s debut as a feature documentary director. He first met the Tom Family during the three years he spent as a host and writer for “Evening Magazine” on KPIX TV; the CBS affiliate station in San Francisco. While at CBS, Karsh won three consecutive Emmy Awards for his work on the show. It was the life-changing experience of meeting the Toms that led him to quit his job and pursue making this film full-time. Previously he has also hosted shows for ABC News, The Discovery Channel and CNET Television. For four years, Karsh honed his writing and interviewing skills as a national correspondent for the news magazine show “American Journal”. Most recently Karsh has been commissioned by MTV, AMC, and National Geographic to direct segments for their original documentary series.
by:
~ Jody Swarbrick
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