{"id":81422,"date":"2025-12-04T15:40:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/81422\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T15:40:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:40:12","slug":"why-marlee-matlin-not-alone-anymore-is-not-a-traditional-celeb-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/81422\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ‘Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore’ is not a traditional celeb doc"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In her documentary about the groundbreaking Deaf actor Marlee Matlin<\/a>, director Shoshannah Stern<\/a> realized that sound was everything. \u201cMarlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore\u201d<\/a> is an intimate account of the performer and activist\u2019s triumphs and struggles, which include her 1987 Oscar win as lead actress in \u201cChildren of a Lesser God,\u201d a first for a Deaf actor. (She also holds the record for youngest person to win in the category, at 21.) Approaching the project as a Deaf actor herself, Stern found innovative ways to help viewers connect with Matlin\u2019s perception of the sound around her.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone thinks, \u2018Oh, this is a celebrity doc, very traditional.\u2019 But then slowly the film does shift,\u201d Stern says via her interpreter, Karri Aiken, on a recent video call. \u201cYou\u2019re realizing that you do see things more from Marlee\u2019s perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most obviously, Stern presents her conversations with Matlin \u2014 the women curled up opposite each other on a cozy sofa \u2014 entirely in American Sign Language, using captions rather than a verbal interpreter or voice-over, which allowed for more accurate translation. \u201cSometimes, interpreters don\u2019t get everything right in the moment,\u201d Stern says. The soundtrack captures the subtle smack of lips moving and the flutter of expressive hands moving through air, as well as extraneous sound like the hum of a jet passing overhead. On a routine set, the interview would pause during the distraction. But Stern felt no need. \u201cI wanted this to be an immersive experience for audience members.\u201d<\/p>\n

That thought also applied to the design and use of captions throughout the film, which begins with witty wordplay during the title sequence.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time, captions have been made by hearing people,\u201d says Stern, who collaborated with d\/Deaf\/hard-of-hearing artist and filmmaker Alison O\u2019Daniel, whose 2023 documentary \u201cThe Tuba Thieves\u201d reimagined closed captioning as a descriptive playground. \u201cPeople always feel like it\u2019s a burden to add captions \u2026 [but] it\u2019s a place where you can enhance a film.\u201d The creativity underscores Matlin\u2019s advocacy before Congress, whose passage of the 1990 Television Decoder Circuitry Act mandated closed-captioning technology for televisions sold in the United States.<\/p>\n

Among other details, the captions can pop up anywhere in the frame and are even coded to fit the personality of the person speaking. \u201cWe were trying to use certain colors to meet peoples\u2019 aura,\u201d Stern says.<\/p>\n

\"Stern, <\/p>\n

Stern, left, and Matlin photographed earlier this year at the Los Angeles Times Studio at the Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n

(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

To plunge viewers into Matlin\u2019s world, the filmmaker worked closely with sound designer Bonnie Wild to illustrate the often confusing sonic free-for-all that Deaf people can experience through hearing aids (which both Matlin and Stern use). The scene is a family dinner in which ordinary household noises \u2014 the scrapes, plunks and clatter \u2014 and speech are pitched at irregular volumes and lack directional focus. At one point, Matlin\u2019s brother Marc takes a moment to interpret a discussion she struggles to piece together.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs hearing-aid users we can \u2018read lips,\u2019 but because we \u2018read lips,\u2019 people assume that I understand everything that\u2019s being said,\u201d Stern explains. \u201cReally, there\u2019s a huge amount of work on our end to catch one word. I\u2019m like: noise, noise, noise, oh, word. I can catch one word, but then I have to figure out what were the noises that I missed, and then try to put them all together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wild, who works as a supervising sound editor at Skywalker Sound, borrowed a hearing aid from the mother of a friend to get an idea. \u201cI was taken aback by how the high end is so boosted,\u201d she says. \u201cThings don\u2019t have the same depth of field. When my friend was tying her shoelaces behind me, it was just so loud. Things spatially were being thrown. It was disorienting.\u201d Thanks to a Dolby Creator Lab Grant, Stern was able to work with Wild to shape a purposefully incoherent soundscape, using Dolby Atmos to fling sounds all around.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of times as a Deaf person in real life, you\u2019re exhausted trying to go to an event like that. Everything becomes so muddy, sound-wise,\u201d Stern says. \u201cA lot of times we give up trying to understand sound. That\u2019s what we tried to portray in that scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps most resonant was another moment in the film, shot during an interview while the project was still in development. The scene finds Matlin reading a caption from a studio publicity still for \u201cLesser God.\u201d It alludes to her being \u201csensually lost in her own silent world.\u201d The camera tracks her reaction. \u201cShe\u2019s shocked and then she\u2019s laughing. And she says, \u2018It\u2019s not silent in here,\u2019\u201d and she\u2019s pointing to her brain. I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, my God, yes,\u2019\u201d says Stern, who knew then that she had her thesis for the film. \u201cI come from the fourth generation of being in a Deaf family and our Deaf family is so loud always.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In her documentary about the groundbreaking Deaf actor Marlee Matlin, director Shoshannah Stern realized that sound was everything.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[46503,46504,28729,1924,46505,48,52,51,46506,28236,47,50,49,26382,46502,16145,40786,592,2489,24925,10607],"class_list":["post-81422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-caption","tag-deaf-actor","tag-documentary","tag-film","tag-interpreter","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lip","tag-long-time","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-marlee-matlin","tag-matlin","tag-moment","tag-noise","tag-people","tag-scene","tag-sound","tag-stern"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}