Documentarian Tod Lending has crossed the line between observer and participant a few times in his career, most recently a year and a half ago. He was in the middle of shooting his latest film, about two men who’d been in and out of prison, and one of his subjects, Leon Omar Mason, told him he was $85 short on rent. “I thought, well, if I don’t do anything I’m going to want to go and film him getting kicked out of his house and show that this is part of the struggle of reentering the community, trying to make it, blah blah blah,” Lending says. “But on the other hand I’m thinking, how can I do that? What’s he gonna think of me going there filming him getting kicked out of his house?” He gave him the $85.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Lending, who’s 46, admits he sometimes gets a little too involved with his subjects. While filming heroin addicts in Pilsen ten years ago, he was so intrigued by their rituals that he asked a case manager with a needle exchange if there was a way to experience the feeling of getting high without actually shooting up. The case manager, a recovering addict, offered Lending his dose of methadone. “I was blotto for weeks,” he says. “I realized later, what the fuck am I doing taking his dose? This is a guy who’s been a heroin addict for 20 years!” He says it took him two months to get back to normal.
Lending started his career as a freelance editor in New York, working on a TV show and a feature, then shifted to researching, writing, and producing documentaries in LA. In 1991 he moved back to Chicago and worked on a Harpo Studios documentary before deciding it was time to start filming projects he chose. Three years later he had his own company, Nomadic Pictures, and had finished an hour-long video for PBS titled Growin’ Up Not a Child, which examined the lives of children growing up in Chicago’s “war zone” neighborhoods. Among the people he interviewed was Dorothy Jackson, who talked about her 14-year-old grandson Terrell Collins. Shortly after the interview Collins was shot to death on his way home from school.
“I had to be really careful how I approached these two guys, the language that I used,” says Lending. “They’ve done so much time, their space has always been invaded, they’ve been out of control. To get as intimate as I did with Omar took a lot of sensitivity, and it took a lot of patience.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/A. Jackson.
