Life Imitates Art and Vice Versa for Filmmaker
With Dejerine-Sottas Disease

Writer-director-filmmaker Judy Garland Piersol recently "wheeled out of the closet" about her disabilities caused by Dejerine-Sottas disease.

by Christina Medvescek

There are a lot of handicaps in the path of an aspiring filmmaker — lack of money, lack of equipment, lack of interest by people with money and equipment.

To Judy Garland Piersol’s path, add a few more handicaps: lack of stamina, lack of strength, lack of mobility.

But no one ever got anywhere focusing on what she lacks. So Piersol, who has Dejerine-Sottas disease and uses a power wheelchair, is achieving success by building on what she has: lots of perseverance, lots of creativity, lots of skill, lots of belief in herself. Oh, and lots of credit cards.

The San Francisco filmmaker’s "Split Real" was recently accepted into the New York Independent Feature Film Market, a key step for attracting investors and distributors. The film — which she cowrote, coproduced, directed and edited — is a semiautobiographical dramatic comedy about two women, one of whom is disabled, who are trying to raise money to make a film. Hmmm, sounds familiar…

"The film is about pursuing your dreams no matter what obstacles get in the way," says Piersol, 36. "The main character has to come to terms with the obstacles of her disability."

Denying Disability

Judy Garland Piersol — named after her mother’s favorite actress — first knew she wanted to be a filmmaker when she was 7 years old and her professional photographer father handed her a camera.

Piersol, with her business partner Adria LaRose (right), who co-wrote, co-produced and acts in "Split Real." Jill Pixley (left) portrays Bette Davis Crawford in the film.

"A rock star or a filmmaker — those were my dreams," she laughs. Growing up in rural Strasburg, Pa., she acquired a Super 8 movie camera but had no money for film, so she made invisible movies.

At age 11 she received a diagnosis of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1, as did her mother and brother. The diagnosis was changed later to Dejerine-Sottas, a type of CMT. Up to that point, she’d thought she was just clumsy.

Piersol’s mother — who for many years was told she had polio — told Judy and her brother that their disease wouldn’t make much difference in their lives.

"My mother has an attitude of ‘I can do anything,’" Piersol says. "At the age I am now, she worked in a factory to support two children. I can’t imagine the kind of pain she was in. She never talked about it. But even now she won’t go out in a wheelchair. She’s a strong person and she doesn’t want to be seen that way."

"Seen that way." Piersol adopted her mother’s attitude of denying her disability. There was nothing wrong with her. She didn’t have a problem. Then a car accident in 1988, which accelerated the progress of her disease, solidified her belief that she had to hide her growing weakness.

"I had to use a wheelchair after the car accident and I started wearing back and leg braces," she explains, somewhat haltingly. "I was popular and had a lot of friends but when I got in the chair and started to do stuff for MDA — being a camp counselor, working the local Telethon, organizing fund-raisers — it was like … weird. People’s attitudes toward me changed pretty dramatically."

Friends stopped asking her to go out clubbing with them after work. Her boyfriend referred to her behind her back as a "cripple."

"It was like the braces and the chair turned a lot of people off, like I was a different person. I didn’t want to be that person."

Already dissatisfied with her filmmaking options in the East, and now motivated to recreate herself as a person without a disability, Piersol headed for California. "I just loaded up my Suzuki Sidekick with my clothes and guitar and took off," she recalls. "I had a feeling that in California I could leave it all behind me."

In short order she enrolled in a master of fine arts program in San Francisco, planning to support herself by teaching. Within a few years, she was teaching subjects like screenwriting, digital editing and film production at schools like University of California-Berkeley Extension and other facilities around the Bay area. She later headed the Motion Picture and Video Department at the School of the Arts, a performing arts high school in San Francisco.

And she told no one about her neuromuscular disorder.

"I’ve spent a large part of my life hiding that I have this disease," she says. "I hid my leg braces and used a cane and said I was in a car accident. It took all my energy to look physically the way everyone else does."

Why the charade?

Fear, says Piersol. "I was afraid that if I told the truth, it might limit my opportunities. I was afraid they would say, ‘How can you be a filmmaker from a wheelchair?’ And I thought that, too."

Coming to Terms

There was little doubt in Piersol’s mind that she would be a filmmaker. Determined to make a feature film out of "Everyday People," an 18-minute short she’d created for her thesis, Piersol teamed up with Adria LaRose, an attorney looking to quit the legal world and follow her own dreams. Together they formed — with spit-in-the-wind defiance — Strong Girl Productions.

But defiance doesn’t pay the bills. To do it right, making the film required money. As a joke, a friend suggested she write a typical Hollywood script, sell it for a bundle of money and use the proceeds to finance her movie.

And thus was born "Split Real," a movie that superficially is about making a movie, but on a deeper level is about following your dreams.

Garland lines up for a shot for "Split Real" while Director of Photography Jason Herrick runs the camera.

In the film, two women dream of making an artistic feature film and write a formulaic script to try to finance it. The crummy script, of course, becomes a big hit and the women are both offered high-paying jobs as screenwriters.

But the character with a disability, Bette Davis Crawford, realizes her physical condition is rapidly deteriorating, and, if she waits, she may never be able to make her film — "her baby," as Piersol calls it.

"The script is about public and private realities," Piersol says. The character’s disability is "a large part of the story. She doesn’t even tell her project partner the severity of the issue. But by the end of the movie, the audience is shown a successful Bette, in a wheelchair, with a boyfriend, making her movie. She’s come to terms with it."

Facing Fears

So now life mirrors art. Piersol also is coming to terms. Though she thought she could leave her disability behind when she came to California, it caught up with her. After years of hiding, she finally has "wheeled out of the closet" in her power chair.

"It’s only been in the last few years that I have started sharing this with people," she says. "I only got the chair in the last year, and for a long time I wouldn’t use it except when I taught high school."

Besides her concerns for her filmmaking career, a part of Piersol’s resistance to a chair was that she is still single. "I felt like when I did, well, that’s the end of that [dating]."

Piersol realizes now that this fear springs in part from the notably insensitive boyfriend who called her a cripple years ago. Although she repressed that memory until very recently, she never again told anyone she dated that she had Dejerine-Sottas disease.

But the fatigue, muscle weakness and chronic pain finally reached the point at which "I couldn’t do this anymore." She began to let friends in on the realities of her life and discovered with relief that "I have extremely supportive friends."

Now that she’s become more open about her disability, she’s finding that her career fears also may be unfounded.

"My only obstacle is stairs," she laughs.

And, of course, time and money. "Split Real" was created by maxing out both Piersol’s and LaRose’s credit cards, and shooting on 59 Sundays, the only day of the week Piersol doesn’t teach. Now that the partially completed film has been accepted by the Independent Feature Film Market, she’s hoping to attract a "name" actor to play the small but pivotal part of a TV interviewer, and to find funding to finish it.

Beyond that dream is an even bigger one, to open a film-video-multimedia school in San Francisco, with an attached production studio that would give students real-world experience. As much as she wants to create, she also wants to "give back."

Another part of giving back, she’s starting to realize, is learning how to accept help. "It’s sort of like it helps people to help you," she muses. "And sometimes it comes across as rude when you say ‘no.’ But I am a very independent person. I want to do things for myself."

Asked about her long-term physical prognosis, Piersol is blunt. "I don’t ask," she says shortly. "But I look at my mom, she’s 62 and not in great shape, in and out of hospitals. But she’s a fighter, she’s my inspiration.

"My mom says the Dejerine-Sottas builds character," she laughs. "And I say, I certainly am a character!"

Piersol can be contacted at stronggirl2@earthlink.net.