The documentary and short film Deciding Vote is one of the most important documentary shorts audiences will ever see. This film comes from the genius minds of Jeremy Workman and Robert J. Lyons of Wheelhouse Creative. The film had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and went on to go on numerous awards at profound film festivals. This would include Best Short Documentary at the Woodstock Film Festival and won the Social Impact Award from Indyshorts. This short gives the audience an eye-opening experience of who George Michael is. Over 50 years ago, George Michael was a New York State assemblyman who casted a single vote on New York’s abortion bill. This would change the course of American history and would destroy his political career. Workman and Lyons dove into the history of exploring George Michael by interviewing his family and those who supported him. Workman and Lyons educated audiences on important figures in American history, and we had the chance to connect with them as they shine a light on the critical film.
Kristin: I was thoroughly invested. For a short film it works in many, many ways. I applauded to both of you because I was very fascinated. So why was this important to explore a topic like this and how did you to get involved to work on this project together?
Robert: Jeremy had a previous film that was making the rounds and he did a lot of screenings. Someone in the audience, Doron Steger, had seen the film along with his wife Sherry. They were in the audience and talked to Jeremy afterwards. They were really impressed by the film and had remembered this story. Doron is a bit older than us and remembered it from 1970. He called us up afterwards and came into our office and showed us this YouTube video of the George Michael speech. It was the only thing that we could find at the time that was available this sort of grainy black and white little clip of the speech. It wasn’t even the complete speech that was up at the time. We were just blown away! Jeremy and I were both floored by it! We’d never seen a politician behave this way with this kind of courage and self-sacrifice. It really sent us on this long journey. This was during the pandemic and we thought, oh maybe this would be an archival film that we would go pull together, we knew that there were multiple cameras in the chamber which was rare for the New York State Assembly at the time, but this was a big deal. It was national news at the time. A story that had been forgotten under the coverage of Roe and for 50 years there was this protection in place. People forgot this, this big moment in the history of reproductive rights. We started looking into the archives and we had an amazing archival producer, Melissa Jacobson, who helped us find a lot of material that wasn’t online. We started piecing it together and we realized that even in his speech he talks about his son and we thought, who are the other people who sort of know this story from the inside. We spoke with Jim Michaels (son of George Michaels) first and we were just blown away by him. This was over zoom. We were doing research at the time and we spoke with him and we spoke with Sarah Michaels. We really realized how big of a family story this was – how much of this happened around the kitchen table. How involved Sarah and Jim really were in turning his mind and just informing him and how open to that he was. That made us realize that we really needed to include Jim and Sarah. Ultimately, we got Lee Michaels and Becca Michaels, his granddaughter, as well. We were just so blown away by the bipartisanship at the time. This is a Republican led piece of legislation, and George Michaels was a Democrat. It was the Democratic Party that sort of cut his knees out from under him after he flipped his vote. It was just such a similar topic, we’re in a similar place now, but it was a very different environment. This issue is so manipulated over the last 50 years that it just struck us as really important, but dug into it a little bit more.
Kristin: It’s interesting now how it plays such an important role given how times have changed in the last like year. What was it like making the connections with George’s family and say, getting them to say yes to this documentary?
Jeremy: As Rob indicated, we didn’t really know how much the kids had played such an important role. I think the pandemic, in a weird way, had helped us because it allowed us that time to get to know them. We really saw primarily the son Jim, who is now a retired rabbi in Maryland. George Michaels’ daughter in law Sarah, who, at the time was married to the other son Lee, we kind of discovered just like how much they were involved in all this. I think it brought back like a real flood of memories for them about kind of being social activists and advocating for different political civil rights, women’s rights. I think that was really eye opening when we were with them and just sort of hearing from them and how this was so personal for them. It was really striking when we were interviewing Sarah, who was the daughter in law and then they got into a divorce. She’s sort of like lost touch a little bit with the family. She spent most of her career in the accounting department at Syracuse University. When we were interviewing her just her kind of realization of her role in this story was pretty striking. For her it was like he or she was chirping in the ear of this assemblyman. It wasn’t that she was the daughter in law, but yet having this profound impact on what happened, we found that just fascinating. Those personal stories were just as potent as George Michaels moral of courage in a way.
Robert: Yeah, we were really struck almost like in real time. She was realizing she was putting it together like wow, this was a big deal, in a way that you know they’re not sitting around thinking about this all the time. They, but they’re really heroes, each one of them. Yeah. In swaying his mind, you know I love what role every person has, you know, to play in these kinds of things.
Jeremy: Yeah! Also, just this notion of moral courage is lost so much with politicians today. The other thing that’s lost so much or is the idea of people changing their mind. It seems like you’re not allowed to change your mind on any topic at all. This is like a reminder that it just like, you see it in action. It’s startling because people don’t do this. Politicians don’t do that.
Robert: There’s just that openness and listening to the other side. The conversation it’s like, it’s just gone from our politics.
Kristin: I was just going to say, I feel like George would stand out tremendously today given what has been going on in today’s political climate.
Robert: Yeah, he’s anti-Santos.
Kristin: Definitely! He’s just the opposite of what we have today. I just love the fact he was just like so beloved and was compassionate and listened. What was it like working with the New Yorker on this?
Robert: It’s amazing! When we started making this film a few years ago, we thought our target audience was the New Yorker audience. They are there just exactly the place for it and you know, short films are tough. They don’t get the attention that feature films get. We always intended to make this as a short. It’s funny, we’ve gotten some concern like, oh man, the only thing we didn’t like about this movie is it’s just too short, I wanted more. We really specifically thought that this story as we went into it, thought about it as a short because there’s so much going on here and there and there are so many other characters. Constance Cook and other people involved in this story is just one part of a much bigger story. We thought a short was a great format for this. The New Yorker is just the only place that really releases short documentaries of this quality. Last year, I think they had five films nominated in the short categories, some of them were narratives and things like that as well. It was just exactly the target place and they just have a smart readership. The fact that they release it for free we were fortunate that we’re not trying to make money on this film. We just wanted to raise awareness about George Michaels and it really was just a place we thought the best platform to get this word out and sort of share it with the world.
Kristin: They do put out interesting Docs but I haven’t really watched them because I’ve seen some of their shorts at film festivals and all. I know that this film showcased a couple different film festivals, which is great. Just from getting that access is tremendous! I want to get into the works of the two of you, what makes you two like a perfect pair for each other. What’s it like working with each other?
Robert: It’s a great question. We’ve worked together for about 20 years Jeremy and I. We met at the Sundance Film Festival and have collaborated on a multitude of things since then over the 20 years and a lot of it is in the movie marketing world. I’m more of a producer and Jeremy is more of an editor from our pasts. We’ve sort of converged making this company Wheelhouse where we really work in the indie film world. We love independent films, documentaries and international cinema. We’re both cinephiles. Jeremy has made a number of feature films that are just amazing and we’re very hands on and guerilla style. We can make you know, we make movies by ourselves in many ways. There’s a big support team and there’s an amazing editor that we had on this film, Kristen Bye. Eric Khan is a producer who helped us out immensely. We also did a lot of the shooting with very small crews. It’s me and Jeremy and one other camera person. Frequently even the stuff that we shot at the archives of the Cayuga Museum was just Jeremy and me. Jeremy with a camera in his hand. We love telling stories and we’re good collaborators and we’ve collaborated with a lot of other award-winning filmmakers. Over the years, we just have a shorthand that we know how to work without even communicating. We just sort of dive into it and get stuff done. Jeremy’s an amazing storyteller, tenacious and hard working. This is what we do all day all the time. We’re passionate about it and just to have a lot of different skills that really complement each other, I would say.
Jeremy: I mean, I was just going to add that this was also a neat opportunity for us to kind of work with a bigger team. Rob and I are sometimes always doing our films ourselves. Rob mentioned we worked with a new editor who was awesome and we had other producers involved. The person who kind of originated Doron Steger, we invited him into the process. It was also like a neat opportunity for us to kind of like expand our team and really focus in on this bigger picture. I think that was attractive for both of us.
Robert: We’re really interested in politics too, but haven’t had the opportunity to have done some political work. However, this was just a great opportunity to really explore sort of a different topic than we’ve gotten into before. We also as men feel this is an interesting story for us to tell a story about women’s reproductive rights. A lot of times it’s not, there’s no easy way for us to get into this story. We thought the story of George Michaels was a very fascinating way into this conversation because we feel that men do have to have a voice in this conversation. This was a really great way for us to let our voices into this topic.
Jeremy: Yeah, I sort of felt just to add to that this wasn’t George Michaels issue but he kind of rose into it. He said, okay, we all have to embrace these fights, these political battles, we all have to kind of contribute. I think that was really inspiring for both Rob and I that just like even George Michaels that this wasn’t his issue. He rose to it and said, I’m going to join in. So that’s kind of like what we were trying to do a little bit of.
Kristin: You make him so inspirational. I love that from what he does in his short time because I never knew him from all the history classes I’ve taken.
Jeremy: Nobody did!
Kristin: The only George Michaels I knew was from WHAM! Even when I searched on Google, I was like, the politician. He comes up as the third search and I just want to thank you both for educating me on such an important political figure. My last question for both of you is what’s next for the two of you?
Robert: Before we answer the person who really did remember and the reason she’s in the film was Ruth Messinger because she’s been lecturing about George Michaels. It’s been sort of falling on deaf ears somewhat, but she was so thrilled and so excited about being a part of this. It was great to get to know her and she’s just a powerhouse and has done amazing stuff in New York politics. It has been really exciting having her support.
Jeremy: She was like a one person encyclopedia about this because she had been keeping this story alive for years. She was teaching about it in schools and leading lectures on it. The only person who had been, but otherwise pretty much everybody else never heard this story before.
Robert: But what is next for us is that Jeremy has an amazing film that he just finished a feature doc.
Jeremy: I have a new movie that’s premiering 2024 called The Secret Mall Apartment. It’s like a kind of a bananas story about a bunch of people that secretly live in a mall.
Kristin: That’s amazing!
Robert: I’m producing another feature doc about the managing founding editor and managing editor of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, a woman named Julie Campbell. Again, it was a surprise and I had no idea that it was a woman who started that franchise and ran it for 35 years. It’s called The Sunshine Issue: A Portrait of Julie Campbell and it’s directed by her daughter in law, Joe Campbell.
Go watch Deciding Vote available right now on The New Yorker website.
