What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life_ - Bruce Frankel [52]
Thanks to the Enron scandal, the nation’s ire over political contributions was finally aroused. And in February 2002, Congress revisited the bipartisan campaign finance reform bill nearly a year after the House of Representatives had buried it in a committee. And once again Doris headed to Washington. This time Alidra followed the crusading nonagenarian into representatives’ offices where Doris delivered valentines and her message. Alidra captured Doris using all the celebrity, charm, and bluntness that made her an irresistible lobbyist.
Meanwhile, Alidra also interviewed Senator McCain on camera. He was happy to praise Doris and her walk across America. “It’s one of the most remarkable feats of political history,” he said. The interview went well enough, though Alidra recalled that the future Republican presidential nominee appeared at once adrenalized and uptight. “Did you get what you need?” he asked repeatedly.
To an exhausted Doris’s delight, the House of Representatives approved the campaign finance bill on Valentine’s Day. A month later, the Senate passed a final version and President George W. Bush signed it into law.
The bill’s passage proved a pivotal moment for Alidra. She had been using up her own modest savings to make the documentary. She had already spent $135,000 (and would eventually spend still more) on travel, freelance crews, equipment, logging footage, and editing it. It was money that Alidra had once hoped would pay for housing when she retired someday. She had cut deeply into her remaining assets and desperately needed an infusion of cash.
In the hope of enlisting a public broadcast station and of raising donations to support her work, Alidra put together a five-minute trailer. She showed it to Doris and her son, Jim Haddock, to persuade them to share the “Granny D” donor list. Jim loved the trailer. And soon the three were excitedly making a list of people to whom the trailer might be sent to encourage contributions for the film. Bubbling with optimism, Alidra returned home to New York.
“Then I get a call from Jim. He says something like, ‘I feel like, excuse me for saying this, I’m cutting off your balls. But we sent the trailer to Dennis. And he believes—and we have decided—that our energy would be better put into direct action rather than doing a film,’ ” Alidra said.
Burke and the Haddocks told me they figured that because Alidra was a psychotherapist in New York City, she did not have to worry about money for what they believed was only an avocation. They had no idea how much of her own resources Alidra had already risked or how important that money was to her.
When Alidra learned of their decision not to help her get funds for her film, she was crushed. She had no idea where she would get the money to finish the film. Deeply hurt, she was not sure she wanted to finish it. To get her bearings, she decided to go to the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, north of San Francisco in Marin County, where she did a two-week stint as a volunteer worker and struggled with feelings of desolation. She returned to New York and within six weeks, Alidra sold her country house in Copake, New York, gave up her office in Manhattan, and referred her patients to other therapists. Then she drove cross-country. “I didn’t know if I would ever do the film. I knew that I needed to save my life and I needed to make big changes,” she said.
In fairness, she says, she was already struggling with traumatic emotions stirred by 9/11 and volunteer work doing therapy with