| Credits |
| 2005. 27 mins. (AFI)
Director: Anthony Dominici Producer: Arlene Knight Screenplay: Leonard Hartman Director of Photography: Hyun Sung Kim Editor: Matt Kregor Cast: Rudy Moreno, Robert Madrid, David T. Hayman, Mark Ankeny, Felicitas Roque, Jay Portillo, and Monique Nicole Roque. |
| About |
| Film contains graphic footage of a dramatized autopsy.
Anthony Dominici's film Gray Matter follows a Los Angeles coroner from his visit to a crime scene to the autopsy on a young girl who was apparently the victim of sexual abuse. In choosing to make his protagonist the coroner, Dominici claims he was seeking to follow someone desensitized to violence. "Who was more desensitized to seeing the effects of violence and death every day than a coroner in L.A.?" he asked. The director's main consultant was a Los Angeles County Coroner's Investigator named Eric Arbuthnot. Another coroner, Audley Broadey, consulted with the filming of the autopsy scene. "I'm proud to say," notes an obviously pleased Dominici, "that Audley thought ours was the most accurate autopsy he'd ever seen on film." As the unexpected conclusion shows, the scientific process can yield unexpected results. Dominici's previous work includes commercials, music videos, documentaries, movies (including Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking), and several episodes of the PBS series Frontline. He currently brings his talents to his work on the hit reality series America's Next Top Model. Gray Matter was his thesis project at the American Film Institute. The film is seen from the "point of view of an invisible character who I sort of played behind the camera," says the director. Of his fictional counterpart, he adds, "he isn't the most responsible filmmaker -- he silently pushes his way into homes and into people's very private lives. He shows you very disturbing images. Through this 'documentarian's' point of view, I take the viewer to a place that I hope pushes their comfort level far beyond what they're used to." Asked if he had hesitation about showing the autopsy of a child, Dominici says, "Not at all. A major purpose of the film was to show the autopsy relentlessly in order to make the viewer feel uncomfortable." At a screening at the Sundance Film Festival, some viewers were so uncomfortable, they walked out. The director is unapologetic. "I think that the graphic nature of Gray Matter makes it much more effective in having the audience 'wake up' to the malaise of death and violence we see every day on TV. I hope they question the intentions of the TV news, TV shows and commercials, and everything they watch." And that includes his film. "In a way," says Dominici of the Sundance audience members revolted by the film, "the people who walked out of the screening did the right thing." |
| Online Resources |
| "Interactive Autopsy" and "The History of Forensics," HBO Autopsy Definition and Information, Medicine.net Forensic Pathology, Florida State University |
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