October 27th

I couldn’t make it down to Louisiana today for the first hearing in the Lenny Nicholas project, but we sent my producer, Melissa Brown, with a cameraman to document the occasion. In actuality, we’re potentially looking at years of legal wrangling and indeed, the DA’s office made it very clear that even if they had a long shot to win the case, it would a very long time before Lenny Nicholas walks out of Angola.  He’s already in his mid 50′s so they’re hoping that the prospect of his spending another decade behind bars will force him to negotiate for a lesser charge.  What they don’t want is a wrongful conviction lawsuit and the huge financial penalties that follow.

A little after mid day Melissa called and told me that everyone down there is completely supportive of what we’re doing and especially, Will Ourso, Lenny very generous and impassioned friend who is the mainstay behind the effort to free Lenny.  Will has been very hesitant about letting us film him or for that matter to let us make this film.  And i don’t blame him at all.  It is his mission to not only get justice for Lenny but use the film to reveal the truth about the unfairness of our legal system. He was not interested in giving away the rights to Lenny’s story until we could convince him that we were going to help Lenny (and surely not hurt him).  He also wanted help right now  and the truth is most documentary films take years to get out and have little direct nor immediate impact on the subjects (at least until the film gets out) and he didn’t want to make Lenny wait any longer.  When I told him that our making a film would not impede them from pursuing a 60 Minutes piece or a 48 hours he relented.   As far as I’m concerned, he’s right and we have to design more dynamic ways of storytelling so that our work can get out in more efficient and effective way.

Tomorrow morning I head down to New Orleans to see where the next leg of the story will take us…