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Critics' Corner
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"TheWorkingGirl.com" movie is scheduled to be completed in July, 2001. However,
due to interest during production, the movie has already been featured on
television, on the radio and in print as a work in progress.
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TheWorkingGirl.com
These are not your grandmother's working girls. Sad, funny, shocking,
infuriating, provocative, informative, energetic, and in your face...this
remarkable film is all of this and more. The only thing it isn't... is
boring. You won't get this stuff in the pages of Cosmo.
-- Rex Reed
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COVER STORY
NY Press April 11-17
Paid Per View: On the Net, Sex Is Recession-Proof
..."TheWorkingGirl.com" is a feature-length documentary film currently in
post production. It was written and directed by James Ronald Whitney, whose
first project, "Just, Melvin," debuts April 22 on HBO. Hearing that I was
writing about amateur adult porn as a cottage business for Mom 'n' Pop in the
new recession, Whitney suggested I screen a rough edit of his film, since it
touches upon some of the personal and professional pitfalls people encounter
when running an amateur online adult site.
"TheWorkingGirl.com" focuses on a single Midwestern mother named Sharon Alt
whose adult website was failing.
Whitney explains, "About a year ago I was contacted by my old friend Sharon
Alt, who'd written to tell me she couldn't pay her bills, especially the
health insurance and preschool bills for her four-year-old son, Jake. Sharon
said she'd done due diligence and concluded that the internet was the place
to be, because of the terrific amount of money going specifically to these
amateur sites.
"Essentially," says Whitney, "my old friend had decided to become an amateur
porn star to pay her son's bills. The problem was she had no audience."
Alt appealed to Whitney, a vice president at Wall Street brokerage firm
Tucker Anthony, and he set to writing a business plan.
"I soon realized that if I made a movie about her business venture, the movie
audience might then traffic her Web site. If they liked what they saw, they
might pay for membership."
...But first Whitney had to do some due diligence of his own. To learn how
to properly design and market an adult Web site, he turned to none other than
Rabbi, Jay Servidio.
In "TheWorkingGirl.com" Servidio struts the floor of the Cybernet Expo 2000
Trade Show in New Orleans, introducing the doc crew (Whitney, et al.) to all
of the big players in the online world. Later, at a table inside of what
appears to be a Cracker Barrel restaurant, Servidio gives Alt a
point-by-point tutorial on porn site marketing and design.
Unlike so much of the popular discourse on the subject of porn and porn
people, TheWorkingGirl.Com suspends moral judgment of its subject matter,
leaving that entirely up to the viewer. The lighter, if less effective side
of the movie pokes self-effacing fun at the director and crew, whose
purportedly monastic sensibilities are quickly drenched in the sticky fluid
of the reality of shooting porn (sights, sounds, delicious smells). In the
course of preparing content for Alt's new web site they take "Porn
Cinematography 101" lessons with online triple-X celebrity Teri Weigel and
her manager/husband Murrill Muglio who shout out instructional tips as they
are performing sex, "You'll want to use hairspray on the headboard to keep
the glare down."
So it's a film with an avocation (and vice versa): to drive membership to a
web site, whose profits will then fund a trust for Alt's four-year-old son...a
fierce, exhaustive and objective mining of the ethical issue at its core.
By turns, funny, steamy, educational and sad, TheWorkingGirl.Com delivers
that which P.T. Anderson, for all of his ambitious originality, promising
characters and interminable talkiness rarely seems to: A purpose. (Sure,
this is documentary, or a kissing cousin thereof --may I offer
"real-umentary"?-- Still, Mr. Anderson's fictions would prosper from a
viewing of Whitney's work.) Thoroughly explored are Alt's tangled
relationships, bizarre vacillations and dubious motivations for doing porn.
One of the film's more wrenching scenes shows Alt in a bitter quarrel
with...was once love, there's now only paint-peeling hatred.
That scene, which occurs late in the film, eventually delivers a much-needed
cathartic chestnut. But neither woman emerges victorious in any substantive
way. This is reflective of how Whitney, an auteur of steeping resentments and
final confrontations, prefers his art: unsettled, unsettling.
-- Andrew Baker
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The Jenny Jones Show
Guest: James Ronald Whitney
Subject: "TheWorkingGirl.com"
Air date: April 11, 2001
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JENNY JONES |
Our next guest is the director of a documentary that is currently in
production entitled, "TheWorkingGirl.com". Please welcome James
Ronald Whitney...now after putting himself into adult film boot camp...
can't wait to see what that is... he actually...you followed this woman
around and this was her dream...and... Before we talk about that, you
did another documentary called "Just, Melvin" and I've heard...it was
very highly acclaimed and it just got sold to HBO, right? They're going to
air it in April? Is that right?
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WHITNEY |
Yea, ironically you just had a clip of "The Sopranos," and ...("Just, Melvin")
airs April 22, right after...
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JENNY JONES |
...right after "The Sopranos." So it's on Sunday night? |
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WHITNEY |
Right |
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JENNY JONES |
This is the world premiere of "Just, Melvin," and this, also I heard, this is
the most money that HBO has ever paid for a documentary. So, congratulations about that. (applause)
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WHITNEY |
Thanks, thanks. |
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JENNY JONES |
So, "TheWorkingGirl.com"... I mean how...A friend of yours comes over
and says, "I need to get some hits for my Web site" ...Tell us what happened?
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WHITNEY |
A year ago today I got an email from a very, very close friend of mine, and she said
that her little kid is now four years old, and she had no money to pay the bills. He was in
home schooling, because she couldn't afford pre-school. They didn't have insurance, and
she said, "I've decided to get involved in this new venture and I want you to help me with
it, but forget that it has to do with sex"... because she knew I'd probably have an
aversion...especially coming out of a movie dealing with child molestation.
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JENNY JONES |
... and you'd never seen any porn? |
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WHITNEY |
No...not that I'm against porn, but I've never been in... |
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JENNY JONES |
Why don't we go to tape right now... we'll just take a little look at the
clip... we'll continue talking in a second. Watch this.
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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WHITNEY |
...So I decided that if a child psychologist was okay with a mother
becoming a porn star, then I'd do whatever I could to make Sharon's business successful.
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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WHITNEY |
...Most porn stars are never known personally, only professionally. But I thought it
was important for Sharon to be seen as both a friend, mother, daughter even an ex-wife in
order for the audience to get to know her, and care about her. |
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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WHITNEY |
...Sharon was nervous about telling her mother about her new career, and asked us to be there for moral support |
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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WHITNEY |
...Well, obviously nobody knows more about the adult entertainment industry than the
porn stars themselves but I also wanted to ask these experts what they thought about
religion, their parents, their finances, and whether or not they had kids.
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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WHITNEY |
...Well things don't always go as planned. Sharon didn't exactly turn out
to be the amateur porn star she thought she wanted to be
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JENNY JONES |
Wow, and then...people can watch, they can check it out and we'll
have information on our Web site but it was great having you on our show. Thank you so much.
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WHITNEY |
It was great. |
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JENNY JONES |
...wish we had more time, but we've got to say goodbye...We want to thank
all of our guests. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you. (to the audience) Thanks for watching.
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"MAKING THE MOOST" OF IT
[aired repeatedly throughout April, 2001] |
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ANCHOR #1: |
How do you titillate an audience without showing anything? Or without at least
resorting to full frontal pixelation? |
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ANCHOR #2: |
CNN's Jeanne Moos gets it right on the DOT! |
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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JEANNE MOOS: |
There's so much blurring and fuzzing going on that media professor,
Robert Thompson, wonders tongue-in-cheek about its effects on our youth.
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Mr. THOMPSON: |
Seeing an actual naked human being for the first time on their wedding night and going,
"What's that? You're in focus. What's wrong with you?" |
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "AUSTIN POWERS"] |
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JEANNE MOOS: |
Austin Powers hid behind the nutcracker, but the technique we like
to dote on is the DOT.
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[SHOW CLIP FROM WILLIAM KENNEDY SMITH RAPE TRIAL] |
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DIANNE SAWYER (to the alleged rape victim): |
...sitting behind that (blue dot) everyone saw on television... |
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Alleged rape victim: |
I'm not a blue blob, I'm a person. |
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JEANNE MOOS: |
Pity the poor dot operator trying to keep the alleged victim in
the William Kennedy Smith rape trial covered. CNN opted to make the dot bigger and inexplicably blue...
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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JEANNE MOOS: |
...a decade later the "blue blob" has come along way. |
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V.O. (male): |
...We put a little bit of glean on the "sex dot"... |
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JEANNE MOOS: |
Steve Marchand spent days dotting the racy parts of a documentary
by James Whitney called "TheWorkingGirl.com." They settled on the
"seX dot" after rejecting the "disco ball" and a marbelized dot. Maybe
you think dotting is sexy and it's titillating...
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STEVE MARCHAND: |
It's a drag. |
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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JEANNE MOOS: |
The dot in the documentary was way too small by CNN's standards, so
we dotted the dot.
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[JEANNE MOOS ATTEMPTS TO DOT A CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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JEANNE MOOS: |
Oops... I'm a little slow on the dot (she laughs). What we should be
covering up is that couch, or that chair...
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[SHOW CLIP FROM "TheWorkingGirl.com"] |
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JEANNE MOOS: |
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York. |
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Producer Profile
James Ronald Whitney
Tackling tough subjects, from sexual abuse to cyber porn
October 2000
James Ronald Whitney is something of an anomaly among feature doc producers - he isn't constantly
worried about money. A stockbroker by day and filmmaker by night, the New York-based
producer/director is in the process of wrapping his second feature documentary project,
TheWorkingGirl.com (Fire Island Films). As with his first film Just, Melvin, which
premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Whitney didn't seek finishing funds or pre-sales.
"The market has treated us very well," he explains. From 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Whitney happily
maneuvers the money markets as vice president of Wall Street firm Tucker Anthony. "During market
hours, it's the most exciting way I could imagine spending a day," he says. "[But] once 4 p.m.
comes, nothing excites me more than filming or editing or composing music or writing, and going into
the film spectrum."
The idea for TheWorkingGirl.com, a documentary about his friend
Sharon Alt's foray into the cybersex industry, came after she sought Whitney's financial advice. He
explains: "[Sharon] had started an adult entertainment site that features her and her boyfriend and
the problem was that she wasn't getting enough hits on the site." Whitney became intrigued by the
people of the porn industry while researching ways to make Sharon's internet venture more successful
and decided to make the film. (He will also launch a companion web site.)
Whitney has teamed with
Julie Cooper, a producer with u.s. broadcaster ABC (who is also working on the project independently
of her day job), to finance the feature doc. He estimates the budget will come in under us$500,000.
Working Girl is a significant departure from the filmmaker's first doc project. For
Just, Melvin, Whitney turned the camera on his own family to explore the painful legacy of
sexual abuse at the hands of his maternal grandfather, Melvin Just. His directorial debut was well
received at Sundance and went on to win first prize at several u.s. film festivals including Santa
Barbara, Newport Beach and South Beach. It also caught the attention of HBO execs Nancy Abraham and
Sheila Nevins. Whitney entered into talks with HBO in early February and concluded the deal in
May. He adds, "I was in the black after this deal," though he refuses to elaborate. Whitney
describes the deal as equitable, but says money wasn't the key factor. "This was a hugely personal
story for me," he says. "Reaching the widest audience possible was my primary objective." Whitney
was also pleased with the terms the cablecaster offered. "The HBO rights are simply u.s. broadcast,
video and other media, but not theatrical. I'm looking at offers theatrically in the u.s. and the
rest of the world, and I also have the rights for broadcast and video [outside the u.s.]." As part
of the agreement, Whitney adds, HBO is responsible for ensuring Just, Melvin qualifies for
Oscar consideration. This entails a theatrical run of at least seven days in New York and Los
Angeles, followed by a six-month delay of the TV broadcast. When time allows, Whitney continues
to work on a documentary about the other side of his family, called Dad (w/t). Whitney was nine when
his father left to become a Hell's Angel. Later, his father married Melvin Just's sister. Whitney
saw his dad for the first time in 23 years when he interviewed him for Just, Melvin. "It's
all on film - the reunion, the questions I asked him. It was quite an experience."
-- Susan Rayman
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[James Ronald Whitney was on "The Howard Stern Show" in April, 2001, and
soon, the transcript will be posted on this site.]
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
May 3, 2000
HBO acquires 'Melvin' docu
HBO has acquired the domestic broadcast rights to the feature-length
documentary "Just, Melvin," filmmaker James Ronald Whitney's study of a
family's history of sexual molestation.
The acquisition price was not available, and no broadcast date has been set
for "Melvin," which focuses on Whitney's grandfather, Melvin Just, a man who
sexually abused about a dozen women in his family.
James Ronald Whitney, who wrote, produced and co-edited "Melvin" and made his
directorial debut with the film, said it should serve as a "wake-up call to
society."
"Melvin" screened at Sundance 2000 and was awarded best documentary feature
at this year's Santa Barbara (Calif.) International Film Festival and the
Newport Beach (Calif.) Film Festival.
Whitney is working on a documentary about Sharon Alt, an amateur porn star
who conceived a son while married to another woman.
HBO original programming division executives Sheila Nevins and Nancy Abraham
represented the cabler in the deal.
-- Chris Gennusa
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indieWIRE.com
Wednesday, May 3, 2000
HBO Signs Deal With "Just, Melvin"
(indieWIRE/05.03.00) -- HBO announced yesterday that they have acquired
the exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to James Ronald Whitney's
documentary "Just Melvin," which premiered at this years Sundance Film
Festival. The film, which chronicle's the generations of abuse in one
family, has won three first place prizes at film festivals including
Santa Barbara, Newport, and South Beach and was a runner-up at the South
by Southwest Film Festival.
The deal was struck by Whitney and HBO's, Sheila Nevins and Nancy
Abraham, who said of the deal, "We're excited about working with [James
Ronald] Whitney to bring this unique and powerful documentary about the
generational effects of evil to the widest possible audience on HBO."
Whitney is currently in production on his next film, 'Love, Sharon'
(working title), about the life of Sharon Alt, who conceived a son while
she was married to another woman and her foray into the amateur porn
industry.
-- Maya Churi
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New York Times
April 30, 2000
A Broker's Painfully Personal Trail
NEW YORK -- On Wall Street, intimate self-disclosure usually involves the size of your co-op
apartment, the price of your car or the perils of your $20,000 trek through the Andes.
But for James Ronald Whitney, 36 and a star broker at Tucker Anthony, it involves telling how
his maternal grandfather sexually abused Whitney's mother, uncle, aunts and step-aunts, some
from the age of 2, they said. And telling not just his friends and business associates, but also
the world, through a feature-length documentary film, "Just, Melvin," shown at the Sundance Film
Festival in January, praised by Roger Ebert as "one of the best docs of the year" and recently
sold to HBO, which plans to show it in 2001.
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"The film is about a courageous family, my family, who has a powerful and chilling story to tell
about the abuse they suffered because of my grandfather," Whitney -- Ron to friends -- said in a
conversation at his 3,000-square-foot downtown Manhattan loft. "I want it to serve as a wake-up
call to society and as a warning to those monsters like my grandfather who are still out there."
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So far, no one -- neither clients nor colleagues -- has been put off by a film whose tone is so
contrary to a universe-mastering culture.
"I was shocked that he opened himself up to the straight-backed guys on Wall Street," said
Jeanne Moos, a CNN correspondent and a client of Whitney. "But the film actually convinced me to
invest with him. You have to invest with someone, and when I saw the film, I was impressed with
that."
Executives like Rakesh Khilnani, a Tucker Anthony senior vice president who has worked with
Whitney since 1994, were sympathetic. "It's serious stuff that was happening in his family,"
Khilnani said. "We don't take it lightly. But it's important that it be spoken about."
The idea for the film began brewing three years ago as Whitney's maternal grandmother lay on her
deathbed. He decided that it was time to explore a forbidding topic: how his grandfather, Melvin
Just, a mechanic from Carlotta, Calif., traumatized his family. Whitney wanted some answers.
"He molested my family, including my mother, and made her suicidal," Whitney said, adding that
his parents had split when he was nine years old. In some of the movie's most emotional scenes,
Whitney confronts his grandfather, who died at 71, shortly after filming was completed. Just
denies all the accusations. In 1979, he was convicted of 12 counts of child molestation in his
family and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He served less than nine years in a state prison in
San Luis Obispo, Calif.
On camera, aunts of Whitney discuss drug and alcohol problems as well as being molested. Three
of them also say they witnessed Just rape and murder a social worker who was assigned to protect
the children from him. Although Just was a suspect in the killing, he was never charged in the
case, which remains unsolved.
"It's possibly too honest for some people," Whitney said of the film. "But I think society is
ready for some honesty."
Whitney, who is divorced, worked on his film during free time and on vacations, traveling around
the country to interview relatives, many of whom he had not seen in years. The film won the best
documentary feature award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and Newport Beach
Film Festival.
Still, he always kept a finger on the stock market. At the Sundance festival in January, he had
a cell phone in his hand as he conducted interviews.
"CNBC was my alarm clock," he said. "In the mornings, I equally grabbed the entertainment and
business sections of all the newspapers. I knew when Coke was getting rid of 1,200 employees."
With no previous filmmaking experience, Whitney, who grew up in Las Vegas and studied economics
at Arizona State University, invested nearly $500,000 of his own money to produce "Just,
Melvin," which he also wrote and directed. HBO agreed to pay what a spokeswoman said was "six
figures" for the film.
"Between the monetary awards from festivals and the HBO deal, the film is in the black," Whitney
said, although he declined to give specifics.
Whitney was already used to being before the public. As a dancer, he was a contestant on the
"Dance Fever" and "Star Search" television shows in the mid-1980s. In the film, he is seen
competing on television game shows and performing with the Chippendales dancers.
Even while performing as a dancer, Whitney ran a frozen yogurt and ice cream shop in Los
Angeles, among other small businesses, and gave investment advice to friends. He passed his
brokerage license exam in the early 1990s. After working for a smaller firm, in 1995 he joined
Tucker Anthony, the banking and brokerage firm that was formerly part of John Hancock Mutual
Life Insurance. "My mom raised me to be an overachiever," he said, a Cheshire cat grin spreading
across his decidedly clean-cut, innocent features.
Given his critical success, he is already at work on another film, about a friend who is
involved in the cybersex industry. But he is keeping his day job, which he says thrills him. "I
get so excited by empirical data," Whitney said. "That's why I'm a stockbroker. I like to solve
puzzles. Market hours are play time for me. It's like one big game show that begins at 9:30 a.m.
It's like the final round of 'The $25,000 Pyramid,' because it's so time-sensitive. During
market hours, as 4 O'clock approaches, I get sad."
Besides, he can put the money to a good use. "My financial success on Wall Street," he said,
"has allowed me to afford my creative outlets."
-- Abby Ellin
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Research Magazine
May 2001
[COVER STORY]
Broker Benefactors
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A look at those...who contribute as much or more to civic and community
causes as to helping their clients...these broker-heroes are as successful on
the business side as they are in making a difference in the lives of others
less fortunate.
...HBO last month broadcast "Just, Melvin," the award-winning
documentary written and produced by Tucker Anthony financial advisor James
Ronald Whitney about generations of sexual abuse in his own family. Whitney
will be honored May 22 with a humanitarian award for the film, which has been
championed by child-abuse advocates and lauded by film critics in several
countries.
...With the disturbing documentary, "Just, Melvin," James Ronald
Whitney...engages in the rarest kind of disclosure--that his maternal
grandfather, a convicted child molester, sexually abused all 10 of his
children and stepchildren, some from the age of 2 and 3. A few of the
children grew up to become child abusers themselves. Whitney himself was
molested by an uncle when he was 4. In their own voices, Whitney's mother
and aunts talk about their demons--suicide attempts, drug and alcohol abuse,
prostitution in some cases. And Whitney reveals a few demons of his own.
When he was younger, for instance, he pretended his mother was dead so that
if she did kill herself it wouldn't hurt so much.
But as he says in the film that Roger Ebert called "one of the best docs" of
2000: "We can't just sit back and act like victims, or we become the losers.
It's all about finding a way to survive."
Whitney, a star broker in Tucker Anthony's Wall Street office, began making
the movie, his first, in 1997--writing, directing, editing and producing, all
in the hours after the stock market closed.
"This is a wake-up call to society to say, "Hey, [children] do remember.
[Children] who are abused do remember. In the case of my family, they never
had childhoods, adolescences, or adult lives that were clean and sober. They
choose to live in a world of fog," he says. "If they lived with perfect
clarity, they'd have to face what happened."
In the film, Whitney even interviews his grandfather, a chilling
confrontation that is as uncomfortable as it is unforgettable.
"He was obviously very courageous to make this film because it's not only
about the subject of incest, but about his own family," according to Karel
Amaranth, executive director of Victim's Assistance Services of Westchester
County N.Y., a non-profit that will honor Whitney with its Art of Vision
award this month.
...A former TV-quiz-show sensation and professional dancer...Whitney's second
documentary, "TheWorkingGirl.com," due out [soon], is about a friend in the
cyberporn industry. His third film will revisit his own family, this time,
his Hell's Angel father.
Whitney says his dual roles as stockbroker and documentary filmmaker keep him
grounded. "our brain has two hemispheres. One side is artistic and
creative, the other empirical. They are inextricably interwoven to me. It
completes the balance."
-- By Ellen Uzelac
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 |
St. Petersburg Times
April 22, 2001
One pedophile, many broken lives
In a harrowing documentary, one family tells a painful story of childhood
abuse and its unending effects.
For a guy who seems to have so much going right in his life these days, James
Ronald Whitney isn't having the greatest morning.
Talking to a reporter about Just, Melvin, his intimately personal
film about the grandfather who sexually molested his 10 children and
stepchildren (including Whitney's mother), the filmmaker finds his cell phone
connection from Manhattan to Florida constantly cutting out.
When the reporter calls back for a third time, there's more bad news: Part of
the hotel where Whitney has housed his eight aunts and mother, who last week
attended HBO's lavish screening party, is on fire. All he knows so far is
that one of his relatives caused it.
Still, once Whitney determined that nobody was hurt and the fire was under
control, he was ready to finish the interview.
After all, for a guy who's seen his own mother attempt suicide too many times
to count, a stray hotel fire barely breaks his stride.
"Well, there's lots of things that (might seem) pretty traumatic for some
people," said Whitney, 37, who initially believed his mother's suicide
attempts were rooted in his father's abandoning the family with his wife's
best friend. "In our family, that's a Tuesday morning."
Just, Melvin documents the emotional wreckage created by Melvin Just, a
mechanic in a small northern California town who consistently molested his
own children and stepchildren by two different women.
According to the victims' recollections, Just also prostituted them to other
pedophiles, eventually raping and murdering a nurse- social worker who tried
to protect them.
Evidence of the fallout unfolds throughout Whitney's film. Each of Just's
daughters and stepdaughters has attempted suicide, struggled with substance
abuse, fallen into prostitution and homelessness, and more. Few of them can
point to many periods of stability or productivity in life.
In one of the film's most telling moments, Whitney's Uncle Jim - one of
Just's stepchildren - calmly discusses offering to let one of his
half-sisters share his home as his wife to avoid homelessness.
"I think that two consenting adults . . . whatever they deem is right, is
right," Uncle Jim tells the camera. "To have sex with a . . . sister, I don't
think that's all that wrong."
This is how Whitney illustrates the enduring cycle of abuse that has
devastated his family and many others. There's no gravel-voiced narrator to
lead viewers anywhere; instead, the voices of Whitney, his aunts and other
relatives form the framework of the story.
Whitney's mother, Ann Marie, tells of trying to shoot Just while he was
beating her mother, only to discover that the gun was empty. One aunt tells a
story of being taken near a garbage dump to have sex with other pedophiles;
another says her mother took diapers off a baby sister to lay her in bed with
a naked Just.
"Grandpa Just destroyed my family and almost destroyed my mom," Whitney
narrates to the camera over footage from one of his Star Search dance
competitions (an appearance he made minutes after learning that his mom had
tried to suffocate herself with car exhaust). "When I'm finished with him,
he'll either be in jail or he'll be dead. That's a promise."
Yet Whitney, who serves as co-writer, co-producer, director and co- composer
on Just, Melvin, insists he's not angry about his grandfather's crimes, which
earned Just an eight-year prison sentence for child molestation in the late
'70s.
"Instead of being angry, spinning around in circles going nowhere, I have
disgust that I've turned into something positive," says the filmmaker, who
also works as a stockbroker for a Wall Street firm. "I have much more
satisfaction."
Just, Melvin caught HBO's eye during the Sundance Film Festival, where
Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert championed the film (on his TV
show At the Movies, Ebert called it "one of the angriest, most painful
documentaries I have ever seen . . . and it's one of the best."). Though it
didn't win a prize at Sundance, it did take honors at film festivals in Santa
Barbara, Calif.; Austin, Texas; Vancouver; and others.
Sheila Nevins, the executive who heads HBO's America Undercover documentary
series and helped shape Just, Melvin for TV, says Whitney's documentary
exemplifies the kinds of films she's planned for America Undercover's first
regular time slot on HBO's schedule.
In the past, Nevins' documentaries might air any time on the pay cable
channel. But executives decided to give America Undercover a regular home
after The Sopranos for 11 weeks, funneling viewers from HBO's biggest hit
into documentaries about dwarfs, killers of abortion doctors and Melvin Just.
"It's sociology meets archaeology meets television," says Nevins, noting how
Just, Melvin fits into HBO's vision of documentary filmmaking. "It's not a
newsmagazine piece, and it's not interrupted by commercials. You can stay
with this family until it's unbearable."
Whitney blends in kitschy clips of himself (in full, feather- haired, 1980s
mode) competing in Star Search's dance contests and game shows, breaking the
tension from his family's harrowing tales. Using surround sound, he sprinkles
shards of sonic touches throughout the film, re-creating the sounds of Just
yelling at his children or assaulting the nurse in the background of certain
scenes.
But even though he often faces the camera himself to relate matter- of-fact
stories of abuse - including his own molestation by an unnamed uncle at age 5
and a sexual encounter with a 9-year-old cousin two years later - Whitney
accepts no praise for his family's painful honesty.
"Getting to the heart of an issue is what my family is about," he says.
"We're okay going down in those valleys because, ultimately, we're going to
find a top."
According to Whitney's relatives, Just would make a game of his molestations,
telling the children to "play horsey" or giving them money, which he would
increase according to the child's actions.
According to several of Whitney's relatives, when nurse Josephine Spegel
threatened to take away the children during an unannounced visit in 1969,
Just raped and killed her as some of his children watched, burying the body
in a remote location. He was never charged in that incident.
By the time Whitney confronts Just, he's in a wheelchair and living in a
nursing home. For the price of a McDonald's Big Mac and fries, Whitney lured
his grandfather to a waterfront boardwalk, peppering him with questions about
the abuse allegations.
Just denied it all. And a few weeks later, he was dead.
"My mom said the most satisfying thing for her was seeing me get in Melvin
Just's face," says Whitney, who runs the film's credits over bittersweet
footage of his aunts getting drunk and insulting Just during his funeral.
"All those years later, he was finally called on it."
Just, Melvin also presents a horrifying picture of poor, rural family
dysfunction that lives down to the worst stereotypes. But Whitney, who
counters that he can't bother with being "politically correct," simply rolls
the camera and lets his relatives speak.
The filmmaker denies feeling any anger, but Just, Melvin nevertheless seemed
drenched in frustration and pain, fueled mostly by Just's cruelty and the
inability of any adults to stop it.
Whitney, a former Chippendale's dancer, is a talented pianist who says he
stumbled into a finance career while helping successful friends manage their
money. These days, he juggles a Wall Street career with work writing musicals
and completing a new film, TheWorkingGirl.com, about children whose mother is
a porn star.
And even as he admits that his tragic past fuels his competitive drive,
Whitney hopes Just, Melvin educates adults about the unending, destructive
cycle of abuse one brutal pedophile can spark. (Whitney includes a link to
the charity Childhelp USA on his Web site for the film, JustMelvin.com.)
"The idea for this is to serve as a wake-up call to society," says Whitney,
noting that April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. "We call it child
abuse, like (the effects) end at childhood. But even now, (none of his aunts)
have had clean or sober or functional lives."
In the documentary Just, Melvin, Melvin Just's family says he
sexually molested his nine daughters and some of his stepchildren. Just,
above, with his daughter June, was sentenced to eight years in prison in the
1970s.
With the bribe of a McDonald's hamburger, filmmaker James Ronald Whitney
lures his grandfather, Melvin Just, above, to a pier for a confrontation.
When peppered with questions about his crimes, Just denied everything. A few
weeks later, he was dead.
-- Eric Deggans
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The Bremerton, WA Sun
5/28/2000
Filmmaker Whitney is a picture of accomplishment
Just how would you pitch a documentary about James Ronald Whitney?
Would you use the director of "Just, Melvin" as a case study for ultra competitive overachievers?
Would you sell Whitney to Hollywood as Forrest Gump but with a high IQ and an acute sense of
awareness? Or would you say he's just like the rest of his troubled family?
All three descriptions might fit the 36-year-old Whitney.
"I'm as f-----d up as the rest of my family,"he said Tuesday. "I just look at life differently."
That view starts with his family tree, which looks like it grew out of a "Jerry Springer"show.
Whitney's father was married to Melvin Just's sister and then to a stripper/prostitute before
marrying Melvin Just's step-daughter, the woman who became Whitney's mother. The branches
entwined further when Whitney's aunt married Just's brother.
So don't act surprised when you learn that Whitney is a Sin City product, born in Las Vegas in
1963.
On or off camera, he's not ashamed to tell you that his uncle molested him when he was 5 - and
notes that he lost his virginity to his cousin while still in the second grade.
When Whitney was 9, his father ran off with his mother's best friend and became a Hell's Angel.
He saw his father for the first time since then last year while working on "Just, Melvin."
In between, Whitney and his mother kept moving.
"We moved around a lot,"he said. "As a child, I lived in Tacoma more than any other city."
He and his mother lived in Bremerton, Silverdale, Poulsbo and Brownsville before heading south,
with multiple stops in Oregon and California.
Like the fictional Gump, Whitney had to wear corrective shoes as a child. Doctors told him he
couldn't run.
So he danced. He started dancing professionally at 13, which led to gymnastics and
cheerleading, first at the U.S.Coast Guard Academy, then at Arizona State University. He would
open his own dance studio, perform on "Dance Fever," "Fame" and "Star Search,"and shake his
groove thing for four years as a Chippendale dancer in Los Angeles during the 1980s.
At 21, he married the tightrope walker from the Cirque du Soleil. They divorced eight years
later, though he says they're still friends.
He boasts an IQ near 160, and acknowledges he is an overachiever, brought up by his mother to
compete at everything. He entered games shows as a college student, winning thousands of
dollars on "Body Language" and "Scrabble."
He has owned dance shops and ice cream parlors, smuggled past customs a Peruvian monkey to
raise as a pet, traveled the world, written a musical (and don't forget the film score for
"Just, Melvin"), started work on creating his own universal language and numerical system, and
found time to become vice president of Tucker Anthony, a stock brokerage firm on Wall Street.
He always carries his cell phone and takes stock market calls while simultaneously working the
film festival circuit.
With his first film on screen and two other documentaries in the works, Whitney still makes
sense out of the busy life he's created for himself.
"If anything, it's all about movement,"he said. "It's just a different kind of dance, a
different type of choreography for me."
-- Sean McCarthy
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The New York Times
July 26, 2001, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
When James Ronald Whitney moved into a building on Duane Street three years
ago, the roof was nothing but tar. Others noticed the stunning view. He saw a
screening room with a hot tub.
Mr. Whitney, a vice president at Tucker Anthony Sutro, a venerable Wall
Street investment banking firm, was once a Chippendale's dancer, writes music at
his 1917 Mason & Hamlin grand piano and recently has begun making documentaries.
In addition to designing his rooftop pleasure spa, with its taupe and blue pearl
marble intarsia floor, he says he is creating his own universal language,
alphabet and numerical system.
His startling documentary, "Just, Melvin," shown as part of
H.B.O.'s "America Undercover" series in April, concerned his grandfather's
sexual misconduct with nine daughters and stepdaughters. Mr. Whitney is now
finishing a documentary about children of stars in adult films. Richard
Reichgut, who shares the loft, is executive producer. The 2,500-square-foot
rooftop with a 12-by-15-foot movie screen and seating for 75 is where they show
their work.
The picture is framed by a theatrically "crumbling" wall. Mr. Whitney, 38,
said he was inspired by a visit to Myanmar, where "everything looked decrepit
and beautiful." He added, "Trying to recreate something that is crumbling when
you're making something new is always a challenge."
A spotlight on a wooden water tank gives perspective to the backdrop, which
features the World Trade Center. A small second terrace on the north side
accommodates smokers "so they can have their own place and still see the
screen." In between, a 400-square-foot cabana that is invisible from the street
holds his Runco digital projector. The projector and speakers cost about
$40,000, the screen about $20,000. The bill for the rest came to about $440,000.
To the north is a large government office building, but government workers
leave at 5 p.m., he said. "You can be naked in the Jacuzzi, and have this
exhibitionistic feeling that people are watching, but there's no one around."
How do his colleagues at Tucker Anthony feel about a vice president who
moonlights as a filmmaker and screens his documentaries at a walk-up movie
theater on Duane Street? "Most of them go home to Westchester or Long Island
after work," he said. "To them it's glamorous."
-- Linda Lee
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