Lexington, KY - On June 25, 2009, Kentucky - and the world - lost a great treasure and cultural icon (though he would likely never consider himself so) with the passing of James Baker Hall, who died after a long illness at the age of 74.
The many whose lives Hall affected, even if only through his work, knew him as a poet, novelist, teacher, artist, photographer, devoted UK basketball fan, father, husband, friend and mentor - but also as something more than that. To his students, friends, family and fans, Hall was a beacon and guiding light, teaching by example the inescapable interconnectedness of art and everyday life, and the iron necessity of kicking the BS to the curb.
"I remember him saying in class that art can do what therapists and priests and medication claim to do," said Whitney Baker, a former student of Hall's who later worked as a gardener for Hall and his wife. "A lot of people who have studied with Jim, I think, have realized that art must be a part of their life. I think he helped engineer that realization - certainly he did for me."
Baker's current major art project, in fact, is directing a forthcoming documentary about Hall's life. The film draws from more than 30 hours of footage shot over the past year - conversations with Hall, footage of his work and interviews with various people in his life, including several former students and his wife of 25 years and "best friend ever," Mary Ann Taylor-Hall. The idea to make a film about Hall first came to Baker close to a decade ago, after he had taken Hall's creative writing class ("I took it four or five times," he said) and came to learn more about who Hall was, and how he came to be that person.
As Baker saw it, Hall as a compelling subject for a film was multi-faceted. There was Jim Hall the teacher, who changed the lives of his students class after class by imploring them to candidly examine their own lives in a way that many of them had not experienced, before or since. Then there was another Jim Hall, the man and artist who used creative expression as a means to rediscover a childhood that had been erased by the trauma of his mother's suicide, who, as a result, championed art as a matter of life or death.
The only setback was that Baker, an artist, writer and landscaper (who bears no relation to Hall, despite the common name), had virtually no filmmaking experience. For years, the film got put on the back burner. Last winter when Hall became ill, however, Baker re-evaluated the priority of getting the film made. "I had just made a short movie with my daughter and my niece and nephew," he said. "I was hooked on Jim, and I became completely obsessed with the task of filmmaking."
Baker teamed up with Sarah Wylie Ammerman, a recent film graduate from San Francisco Art Institute, who did much of the camera work and editing, and Griffin Van Meter, who helped produce the film. Segments of the film were shown at Hall's public memorial at the Carnegie Center in July; however, Ammerman estimates it will be a couple months before the film is a finished product and ready to premiere.
"For a (film) like this, a gestation period - just waiting and seeing what happens - is really important," said Ammerman, who grew up Cynthiana and served as Hall's studio assistant for six years during her undergraduate career at the University of Kentucky. "I didn't expect that Jim's passing would come during that period - at all. But if I think extremely narrowly about it, I can see that it's a 'passing on' too. It's as if we needed to finish the film without him, or actually with him, but in this new way... owning his guidance rather than just letting him be the guide."
At the time of Jim's passing, the film was relatively far along (edited to a "decent rough cut"). The filmmakers still had enough leeway to turn the project in one of two directions, Baker explained - one being more biopic, with lengthy interviews and summations; the other (the one they chose) being "a film that was of Jim, that was in his tone."
"That was my original intent, to create some semblance of the experience of James Baker Hall for those who could not or did not know him," Baker said.
Hall's writing students knew him as an unconventional teacher, one who regularly taught class in bars or restaurants and prioritized deep and sincere honesty over craft or style. He encouraged his writers to delve into topics often avoided in the classroom: "sex, death, abuse ... the things that are too risky, too heavy to talk about in an ordinary academic setting," former student Alex Brooks told Ammerman and Baker's camera. "It was really revolutionary for me to have this authority figure not only tell me it was OK, but that we should be talking about these things."
Ammerman said the autobiography class that she took of Hall's piqued "the cognitive and visual and even spiritual part of (her) brain."
"I feel like what was born out of the relationship with Jim was how to live," she said. "It was actually really mundane things, like how to get up and live, and enjoy the day and go to sleep. And that in and of itself was extremely challenging, and extremely good."
"Jim gave us all he could spare in his last year. It was tremendous the way he showed up for us," said Baker, returning to the process of creating the film. "If I had one regret, it is that I never got the shot of him watching the Cats play basketball. It was then he became absolutely free. Nothing was about him then, it was about the Cats. Then the boy inside was released."
The film about James Baker Hall by Whitney Baker and Sarah Wylie Ammerman is expected to be wrapped up this fall. For details on a Lexington premiere, stay tuned to www.smileypete.com.