Composer Morgan Physician likes her high-waisted, wide-legged pants, a donation after her dwelling with spouse Ondi Timoner (“Final Flight Residence”) was destroyed by the Eaton Fireplace. “She often wears skinny denims,” stated the documentary filmmaker.
They’re Zooming with me from the again of an airport city automobile en path to JFK. When the Eaton Fireplace exploded January 7 in Altadena, they had been going to mattress in Rome, getting ready to embark on interviews and scouts for an upcoming and untitled Nazi documentary in Budapest, Vienna, and Florence, earlier than returning to Rome. In a single day her dwelling burned to the bottom, together with a good portion of her life’s work.
“I’m just a little bit swollen from crying,” stated Timoner. “I’m so exhausted that I continually put my chilly fingers on my eyes, as a result of they burn so exhausting.”
The devastation of dropping a lot is overwhelming and incalculable. Nonetheless, the peripatetic filmmaker continues to satisfy her skilled obligations — taking pictures the documentary, selling “Dig! XX,” heading to Sundance to privately display screen “The Inn Between” and “All God’s Kids” for consumers, and discovering the power to verbalize her grief in a number of interviews, together with this one. For Timoner, the best way out was by way of.
Timoner and Physician had been leaving Rome for Budapest after they realized that their Altadena home was gone. Relations (together with Timoner’s brother David, co-founder of their Interloper Movies) and diverse animals initially evacuated from their Altadena houses to hers, however then needed to hold transferring as the hearth approached. Among the many irreplaceable losses had been her mom’s cat (who hid beneath the mattress), a protected with $40,000 and jewellery, and a crypto pockets price $30,000.
“My job over that hour, moreover attending to the airport, was discovering a spot to place 5 people and 7 animals,” stated Timoner. “I begin asking round, and a pair individuals can take two individuals, and most of the people can’t take the canine, or some individuals can’t take the cats. And I’m attempting to determine it out. And by the point I’m checking in on the airport, Harry Vaughn, previously from Sundance, now a producer in South Pasadena, is like, ‘Deliver all of them to my mother’s home.’ I couldn’t imagine it. I really like Harry, and he was swimming in my pool simply this summer season, and he is aware of how stunning that home was.”
Timoner liked entertaining in the summertime. “I hosted an entire outside screening collection at my home, and we’d have potluck,” she stated, “and everyone would sit up on the yard, and we’d play films, after which I’d have the director there speaking. Individuals would watch from the pool.”
Timoner and Physician stored to their itinerary; there was nowhere to go. “We went by way of the scout in Budapest all day lengthy,” stated Timoner. “We had been checking that [fire] map. It by no means up to date, really, till the subsequent day, it stated the home was nonetheless there. It stated that the hearth was two blocks away. I heard from a neighbor, after coming back from the scout, that my home didn’t make it. Morgan is crying, I’m in shock.
“Once we discovered that Mother and David left the cat [hiding under a bed], that was my first time crying,” Timoner stated. “As a result of simply to think about Rosebud dying scared in our room was nightmares, and it’s been nightmares ever since. We’ve got nightmares each evening. Both every thing’s high quality after which I understand it’s not, or every thing’s burning within the dream.”
The couple took a practice to Vienna the subsequent morning to interview a Holocaust survivor. “At this level, the manufacturing firm I’m working for stated, ‘We perceive if you need to cancel’,” stated Timoner. “Effectively, I can’t cancel on this holocaust survivor as a result of I had been at a focus camp with him in November, and he was so traumatized being there. He was six years previous there when his father was murdered. And I used to be going to Vienna only for three hours on my solution to Florence with the entire crew to doc him.
“If I can do good work, I’m going to proceed, as a result of my city’s on fireplace,” she stated. “There’s nowhere to go. Every little thing’s been destroyed, I would as nicely create one thing. So we went and I did it, and it gave me such perspective, and it made me really feel, ‘Wow, I can nonetheless make one thing, despite the fact that every thing is gone.’ I completed the interview, and I stated, ‘We’re gonna go on.’”
And they also went, taking pictures in Italy for 2 days. Nonetheless, as quickly because it wrapped, Timoner started to vomit. “I used to be deathly unwell for a day, specified by Rome.”
When the couple arrived in New York, they continued to satisfy obligations (“I’m homeless now too, the place are you going to go?” stated Timoner) because the magnitude of their loss began to sink in. She attended two screenings and Q&As for sequel “Dig! XX,” which Oscilloscope is screening at Sundance. She was additionally capable of consolation her co-director brother’s 25-year-old son, Eli Owen Timoner, whose father’s dwelling was lowered to rubble.
Earlier than our Zoom, Timoner texted me: “I even have an look on ABC Information dwell tomorrow for our movie [“The Inn Between”] about the one hospice for the homeless within the nation (which is ironic as a result of now we’re homeless) and that’s at 5:45 PM so we thought since our flight was routing by way of New York to do these appearances, we must always try this and type of buffer and recalibrate earlier than we return to the ruins of our dwelling and no dwelling.”
In New York, documentary filmmakers Liz Garbus and Dan Cogan nurtured Physician and Timoner, bringing duffel baggage full of garments — just like the wide-legged denims. “The love of mates and our movie neighborhood has been so unbelievable,” stated Timoner. “It’s a lot help that it was sufficient to buoy us to have the ability to perform and never need to simply surrender completely, as a result of there’s no solution to wrap your head across the totality of the loss. [The house] was my sanctuary. It was my protected place. It was the place I labored. It was Morgan’s studio. It was my studio.”
A good friend swiftly arrange a GoFundMe for Physician and Timoner, which learn: “As documentarians and musicians, they misplaced not simply their dwelling however irreplaceable footage, household archives, all their cameras and devices, and each sentimental and priceless merchandise you’ll be able to consider. They misplaced their historical past and future work, all rigorously collected over years… in a single day.”
Timoner has lived in Altadena for 13 years. Her home, studio, and pool had been nestled within the foothills of the mountains. “It’s stunningly attractive there,” she stated. “And I really like my city a lot that my coronary heart is ripped open over it. It was the best place to dwell. We had wild peacocks within the entrance yard, little child peacocks rising and being born. You’d open the entrance door to let somebody in and there’d be a mating dance taking place.”
Timoner’s major Interloper Movies workplace in Pasadena didn’t burn that evening, however there’s smoke harm. The day after fires erupted, a member of Timoner’s help employees bumped into Interloper to seize the Nexis and a number of other computer systems. The workplace continues to be closed on account of smoke harm. There could also be extra drives there. After that workplace suffered {an electrical} fireplace final Might, Timoner moved her most essential private archives to her home.
“I left my journal of the final two years subsequent to my mattress for safekeeping as a result of I had notes in it that I wanted to transpose nonetheless on to digital,” she stated. “I’m in love with the Cloud now. I used to not likely just like the Cloud in any respect and be pissed off about it, however now I’m a giant fan as a result of every thing’s gone.”
It’s what can’t be backed up that hurts. Each time Timoner provides to the insurer’s checklist of their belongings, she is stabbed with what she’s misplaced: Her son’s hand-drawn birthday playing cards, framed and hung within the toilet. (She discovered one on her iPhone.) Her big David Bowie poster. Her varied awards, particularly the 2 Sundance jury prizes. Publicist Chris Albert has promised to switch all her awards. “I don’t make films for that purpose,” she stated, nonetheless tickled by the gesture.
Among the many issues misplaced at Ondi’s dwelling had been 500 hours of video footage of her father Eli, the topic of her 2022 documentary “Final Flight Residence,” which chronicled the final weeks of her ailing father’s life, as surrounded by his spouse and household, he ready to legally die by medical-aid-in-dying.
“You’re not going to place Dad’s life story into [two hours], you’ll be able to’t match it in,” she stated. “Thank God for ‘Final Flight Residence.’ However the footage that I shot over these 15 days with Dad, that’s most certainly gone.
“My first movie ever, ‘The Nature of the Beast,’ a couple of lady in jail in Connecticut, all that’s gone. There’s one digitized copy, thank God. However my first movies that I made on the public entry station once I was 19, I don’t know that they exist anymore. And I had 100 tapes of my son rising up, and I used to be going to perhaps make a documentary about him someday. I had all of them on the shelf to be digitized, to be backed up, they usually by no means obtained backed up.
“I’d have grabbed each exhausting drive that I may get my fingers on and thrown them within the trunk, and I’d have taken among the photos of my father off the wall,” she stated. “And we misplaced these two scrapbooks that my mom had put collectively of my dad’s airline, as a result of I’ve been engaged on a scripted model of ‘Final Flight Residence’ for 10 years. A part of the footage that has probably been misplaced now’s me studying him the script on his deathbed, getting his closing notes and phrases. We wrote it collectively on the telephone, me on my sofa in that place in my home I used to like to take a seat and write and have a look at the timber and him in his chair.”
Timoner doesn’t need different filmmakers to make her errors. “Again every thing up. Duplicate every thing,” she stated. “Hold them at completely different areas. We misplaced the uncooked footage of ‘Model,’ ‘Mapplethorpe,’ and ‘Jungletown.’ Fortunately, the 2 movies I’m making proper now should not destroyed. They had been backed up on LTO, which is a tape backup. And in case you love one thing, take an image of it. I treasure each picture of the home.”
Once they arrived in L.A. on January 17, Timoner and Physician retrieved her automobile and headed to Vidiots in Echo Park for a sold-out “Dig! XX” preview. They now have momentary shelter at Warren Beatty and Annette Bening’s visitor home. Bening not too long ago attended one other Timoner screening on the Museum of Tolerance, “All God’s Kids.” This documentary reveals her older rabbi sister Rachel’s struggles to make good with a well-intentioned Brooklyn gospel pastor and his Baptist church. (There’s one obstacle to sweetness and lightweight: Jesus.) Timoner’s older sister, on sabbatical in South America, has known as day by day with grief counseling. “It’s useful having a rabbi within the household, I’ve to let you know,” stated Timoner.
On January 20, armed with a press project memo from IndieWire and a hazmat go well with, Timoner went to her home. It was ash and rubble. A web page from a spiritual guide floated within the pool. The protected was burnt to a crisp with every thing in it. So had been the crypto pockets and the Sundance awards.
Whereas the insurers kind it out, Timoner works. After Sundance, she’s off to the Santa Barbara Worldwide Movie Competition, the place “All God’s Kids” performs February 6 and seven. She’s prepping a documentary, “All That We Are,” about screenwriter Lesley Patterson (“All Quiet on the Western Entrance”) and her husband Simon Marshall’s adaptation of “Man’s Seek for That means” by Austrian psychologist and Auschwitz/Dachau survivor Viktor Frankl.
“He stated that we are able to’t have happiness in our lives with out that means, and the one means we are able to have that means is thru work, love, or struggling,” stated Timoner, “and that struggling is how we attain our best human potential.”