December 23–30, 1999

city beat

Lights, Cameras, Dredlocks

An independent film company tried to shoot a documentary about Mumia Abu-Jamal at the spot where he killed police officer Danny Faulkner. Hijinks ensued.

by Noel Weyrich

Philadelphia can be a wonderful town for shooting a movie, particularly if you happen to be Oprah Winfrey or Bruce Willis. But if you’re making a shoestring documentary about the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, the city’s message seems to be: Why not try Pittsburgh?

When a small video crew came here last month to shoot a revisionist version of the 1981 killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner, city officials forbade them from shooting at 13th and Locust, the actual scene of the incident. Then, when the crew set up at an alternative location, the Teamsters union almost shut down the entire production over a minor work-rule dispute. Between the cops, the unions and the politicians, it sounds like an authentic Philadelphia experience. Only the Mummers were missing.

Today, city officials can’t quite agree on why the 13th and Locust site wasn’t available to the filmmakers, whether it was a matter of censorship, "sensitivity" to Faulkner’s survivors, mere traffic worries or serious public safety concerns.

On Point Productions, the Montreal-based film company, isn’t returning calls. But C. Clark Kissinger, one of the more prominent author-activists supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal’s cause, says On Point’s head producer had told him that city officials blamed Mayor Ed Rendell. "He told me he was originally given permission to do this, and then it was revoked," says Kissinger. "He was told that Mayor Rendell had promised the Faulkner family that he would never allow anyone to stage a re-creation of the event at the location."

Rendell denies having ever made such a promise to the Faulkners. As for On Point’s permit request, Rendell says, "I didn’t know anything about it."

Sharon Pinkenson, the city’s film office head, says that it was a recent real-life shooting death near the 13th and Locust location that disqualified the site as a set for a make-believe murder. Says Pinkenson, "We could not have something that had guns and gunfire and the reenactment of a murder at a location where there had been a similar kind of incident only a week before. That was the real reason why it wasn’t allowed there." A police spokesman, on the other hand, invokes only vague reasons of protecting public safety, security and businesses in the 13th and Locust Streets area.

"Whether or not somebody called the mayor, I can’t speak to that," Pinkenson adds. "You’ll have to ask the mayor."

Rich Costello, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, says his conversations with the mayor’s office led him to believe that On Point wouldn’t get a permit to film anywhere in the city. "I called [Rendell chief of staff] Greg Rost and he said that as far as he was concerned, they wouldn’t be shooting. He said the city wasn’t cooperating in any way."

"As usual with the Rendell administration," Costello laughs, "I got three or four versions of the same set of facts."

 

	"The content of this film went beyond legitimate First Amendment issues and entered into the area of slurring a slain police officer," said FOP spokesman Rich Costello. "Put it this way. Would Dallas grant a permit to a film company to show JFK driving down the street shooting at Lee Harvey Oswald? I don’t think so."

What’s not in dispute is that, with the city’s assistance, On Point Productions set up cameras and blocked off the streets around 17th and Pine on the evening of Nov. 22 between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. the following morning. The row buildings, narrow streets and adjacent surface parking lot vaguely resemble the Faulkner shooting scene at 13th and Locust.

The prosecution theory that landed Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row goes something like this: Officer Faulkner stopped a Volkswagen driven by Abu-Jamal’s brother, William Cook. Faulkner first radioed for backup and then left his patrol car. Abu-Jamal, who was working as a cab driver that night, happened to pass by and saw Faulkner struggling to subdue his brother. Abu-Jamal jumped out of his cab, and, with a gun legally registered in his name, shot Faulkner in the back. Faulkner spun and returned the fire, hitting Abu-Jamal in the chest, before falling to the pavement. Then Abu-Jamal stood over the fallen patrolman and fired four more times, killing him with a shot to the forehead. By the time Faulkner’s backup arrived, the injured Abu-Jamal was sitting on the curb bleeding, his emptied handgun by his side.

On Point Productions shot something quite different that night.

"I kind of had a heads-up on the kind of script they were going to use," says Al Kuchler, a 23-year veteran of the Police Department who hung out all night while off-duty at 17th and Pine to watch the proceedings. "It was ugly. They called it a re-enactment, but it’s just their version of the events. It’s because they can slander Danny Faulkner because he’s dead. He can’t sue them for libel."

Kuchler says he saw the filmmakers set up shots that depicted two men in the car stopped by Faulkner. The actor playing Faulkner started beating up on the driver of the car, when another actor playing Abu-Jamal came running across the street, unarmed. Faulkner shoots Abu-Jamal in the chest in cold blood. Only then does the second man in the car emerge and shoot the police officer dead.

The scenario is consistent with Abu-Jamal’s lawyers’ most recent court filing, but Kuchler, who was a friend of Faulkner’s, denounces it as a tale "that’s never been testified to, [but] now it’s suddenly become their gospel. Prior to this, they said the second man had come from around the corner. Now they’re saying he was in the car."

Before the filming even started, though, Kuchler says a member of the Teamsters union stepped forward to stop the shoot, insisting that a union member should be hired to unload the film crew trucks.

Part of the problem facing the film crew was that they had hired New Jersey-based Movie Time Cars Inc., to supply vintage vehicles for the shoot. "I went up to the producer and told him, ‘You should have told me this was a non-Teamster job,’" says Movie Time’s Ron Sargo, who confirms that he threatened to take his cars and go home if the producers didn’t hire a Teamster on the spot. "We just believe that if you’ve got a Teamster town, you’ve got to respect the Teamsters."

Kuchler says that On Point Productions wound up spending several hundred dollars to hire a Teamster driver to stand around that night and do nothing. "This guy was asked to go pick up coffee," says Kuchler. "He said, ‘I’ll drive the car you provide, but I won’t go in to get the coffee.’" Officials with Teamsters Local 107 did not return calls for comment.

 

Both Kuchler and Costello assume that the On Point’s film project is some type of pro-Mumia agit-prop that has been bankrolled by Mumia forces to promote their cause. Kuchler has circulated a long e-mail account of his observations in which he claims "the pro-Mumia people… have commissioned a re-enactment of the murder of Danny Faulkner… which actually makes Danny out to be a criminal, not Mumia."

But Kissinger, who is a close associate of Abu-Jamal’s defense attorney, says he doubts Kuchler’s contention. "I think the people who are making it are undoubtedly supporters of Mumia, but not in the sense of some organized thing." He confirms that Pam Africa, head of the Philadelphia-based International Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal, was in contact with On Point producers, "but it isn’t like Pam was directing the affair."

In fact, Kissinger says, Africa was upset that the filmmakers knuckled under to the city’s change of venue from 13th and Locust. "I know that Pam had quite an argument with them," he says. "She was saying, ‘Just take your cameras down there and shoot it anyhow. Fuck ’em. Let ’em arrest you and see what happens.’" Pam Africa was unavailable for comment.

Costello remains angry that On Point Productions got a film permit at all. "I don’t think the city would close a street if somebody wanted to do an outdoor pornographic film," says Costello, an oft-quoted master of vivid analogies. "The content of this film went beyond legitimate First Amendment issues and entered into the area of slurring a slain police officer. Put it this way. Would Dallas grant a permit to a film company to show JFK driving down the street shooting at Lee Harvey Oswald? I don’t think so."