Emmanuel Itier

CRUTCH chronicles the gravity defying life of Bill Shannon, an internationally renowned artist, breakdancer and skate punk—on crutches. 

 CRUTCH

https://www.crutchdoc.com

 Bentonville Festival 2021

Interview with Directors: Sachi Cunningham and Chandler Evans

Q: How did you come up with this inspiring Doc about Bill Shannon aka “Crutch Master”, a multi-disciplinary artist who defies gravity with his disability?

Sachi: It all started 20 years ago when I met with Bill Shannon in First Grade in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He was wearing the leg braces you see in the film. During recess he would stand on top of the stairs while the other kids were watching him. And it always intrigued me. I was half Japanese and Pennsylvania was very white with no Asians in my class growing up. I was, like Bill, made to feel like so different. Bill was even more different than me. And I wanted to learn more about him. In high school I happened to date his younger brother and I got a chance to know him better. And then I met Chandler in college…

Chandler: Indeed, Sachi and I went to college together and we met through a multi-racial organization. I had just finished working on a film about the first blind man who climbed Mount Everest. And she asked me to check out the footage she had gathered, over the years, about Bill. He was performing, dancing and skating. I was blown away. So we started collaborated and we cut a 4 minutes promo. We then put it on YouTube who was sold to google and they featured our short. We went viral! We were then featured on ‘Good Morning America’, CNN and on the front page of Yahoo.

Sachi: 20 years later, here we are! It took so long because we followed Bill for 20 years and we were self-financed. But now our film is going to be on Discovery+ and we hope we can then find a foreign sales company to get distribution internationally. In any case this was a challenge as well as impossible to get the right budget in order to follow Bill for 20 years and as his art evolved.

Chandler: We were very lucky that Bill’s art evolved over these 20 years. The first part of the film represents the first initial physical journey and the second part is all about the psychological work he was doing and how he was asking people to abandon “assumption”.

Q: What are the hopes, messages, themes with this film?

Sachi: It’s all about abandoning assumption. This is the main message of this film. Here it’s about disability but you can apply the concept to race and other subject matters. Bill has his own language to describe events that happened to him and during his life. Empathy is another big theme of this film; when someone helps you genially. In my case, for example, I had cancer during the course of this movie and the mom of a good friend just set me up with the best treatment with the best clinic. I ended up not going as I already had another doctor. But this was amazing what she did, genially, with empathy. I think a lot of people can identify to this.

Chandler: This shows that you can have multiple perceived realities that are happening in the same space and time. People can be in the same room and thinking completely different things and believing they know the truth of the situation because perception is reality. In ‘Crutch’ we get a little psychedelic and Bill explores this with his art.

Q: How does it feel to be at the Bentonville film festival?

Chandler: This is our very first film festival in person! Everything has been done on-line because of covid. So, it’s been wonderful! I love Bentonville’s emphasis on diversity and women in films. It’s very inspiring. It’s great they are trying to ger representation for people under-represented. Also, it’s so great to see the film with an audience.

Sachi: It’s fantastic to meet other filmmaker and share our mutual passion. There is a great sense of community here at the Bentonville film festival.