Ghost Boy’ Director on Why He Wanted to Tell Martin Pistorius’ Story: It Was About ‘Human Connection

By Jazz Tangcay

According To The variety “Ghost Boy” director Rodney Ascher first learned about Martin Pistorius through the NPR podcast “Invisibilia.” “I remember hearing the story and thinking, ‘This is the kind of story that I would like to tell.’”

The producers of the documentary, premiering Friday at SXSW, reached out to Ascher. They felt the same way: Pistorius’ story about a 12-year-old South African boy who emerges from a vegetative state with no memories, unable to move or speak, but all too aware of his surroundings, needed to be told.

Ascher was keen to pursue the story. Pistorius was inside, a human, but others doubted he was fully aware of what was happening. He took in conversations, like an eavesdropper. He caught TV shows left on for him. In the doc, Pistorius communicates through text-to-voice augmentative and alternative communication software. He spends time reflecting on his journey and the family, friends and caregivers and how over the years he had observed them.

For Ascher, it was similar to his film “A Glitch in the Matrix,” which is about people who had fallen into isolation and the dangers it could lead to. “Ghost Boy” was the opposite. “It was great timing to move from that to a story that went the other way, one that led out from isolation to human connection. Ahead of the film’s premiere, Ascher spoke with Variety about making “Ghost Boy.”

Martin will be at the premiere tonight, but how is he doing today?

The last time I saw him was when we were working on the film, and he was doing well. He’s married and he has a family. He has a home and a job. People are excited to hear what he has to say. The thing he talks about with the most passion is the importance of communication and connection. At that TED talk, he succeeded in his ambition to reach people, connect, share his story and listen to theirs. I’ll find out later this afternoon because he’s here in Austin with us.

What was the first conversation that you had with Martin like, and how did that evolve?

I spoke with Martin on Zoom, and it was a getting to know you conversation. It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to approach the movie, and I didn’t necessarily have my head around what was going to be the best way to do it. That first meeting was something I really had to sit with because it’s a very internal story, and there’s not a ton of archive. So it was really about establishing a relationship before pitching ideas

Once you started filming, how did that all start coming together?

What I’ve always done in most of these film projects is long-form and first person storytelling.  I knew that I didn’t want to talk to a dozen people about him. I wanted to hear him tell his story, and then I watched his TED talk, and what was so amazing about that to me was the setup he speaks through – the text-to-speech software – so that he had the speech loaded up and he pressed play. But when the camera would cut to him, there was so much expression and feeling in his eyes, as he was simultaneously speaker and audience. He was projecting to the crowd, but also reflecting back on what he had gone through. I thought that was special and fascinating.

Were there any inspirations for you in the filmmaking and storytelling?

The two Spalding Gray movies “Swimming to Cambodia” and “Gray’s Anatomy” as well as “The Kid Stays in the Picture” were films that have always been an important inspiration for me. But the approach of letting him tell his own story in his own words and his voice in his way became the driving force behind how we were going to do this.

How did you and your cinematographer work to capture Martin’s emotion the way you did – because you don’t have a typical talking head interview?

George Feucht and I talked a lot about this because half of the movie was just going to be looking in Martin’s eyes and reading the expression on his face. I knew that we wanted him to be looking straight into the lens. George selected a camera system that had a large sensor which gave us a critical shallow depth of field that emulates medium and larger format photography, which allows the eyes to be super sharp and in focus.

Without revealing the ending, what was it like seeing that all come together?

This is the first happy ending I’ve ever done, which was a nice change of pace. So much of it was inspired by the story that he describes in his book, the bones of it were sketched out ahead of time. We had a pretty rough idea of what the beginning, middle and end were going to be, but the very end was a discovery. With some documentaries, there’s a big leap of faith that you’re taking because you don’t necessarily know what all is going to be. You leap in with your best intentions, and you try to be aware of things that are going on around you. And you know you may have, you may think that you have everything planned out, but you know, be ready for those left turns and those surprises when they come, because they’re gifts.

What was it like working with Martin?

Working with Martin was so amazing. I was nervous because this was a guy who didn’t know me very well and was trusting me to tell his story. If I took a leap of faith, jumping into this, hoping that the pieces that I would need to put the puzzle together would somehow appear when I needed them, the leap of faith that he took allowed me to be part of telling a story was 1000 times greater and generous.