When Alysa Nahmias began looking for the four Girl Scouts who would anchor her documentary “Cookie Queens” — in theaters Friday, Aug. 7 — she wasn’t searching for the country’s top cookie sellers.
She was searching for stories.
The writer-director and her team fanned out across the country, contacting Girl Scout councils, parenting groups and Facebook communities while also relying on old-fashioned word of mouth, all in search of girls whose lives might illuminate the film’s larger themes.
Eventually, they were led to the Girl Scouts Hornets’ Nest Council of Charlotte — and to Olive Gordon.
Already something of a local celebrity after setting a state record for cookie sales, Olive found out about the opportunity while in Savannah, touring the birthplace of Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low.
It was an easy call for her family.
“So we were doing, like, our rite of passage sort of thing,” recalls Olive, then 12, now 14, “and my mom one night gets a call from our council, and she goes, ‘Hi, there’s a there’s a documentary that’s about Girl Scout cookies that’s interested in talking to you. Are you interested in it?’
“And our family says yes to everything, so of course we said yes to this.”
After several Zoom calls, Nahmias flew to Charlotte without cameras, spending a few days simply getting to know Olive and her family.
It didn’t take the filmmaker long to realize she’d found one of the film’s four central characters.
Olive was transitioning into middle school. She was beginning to wrestle with what it meant to be known as “the reigning champ.” She was balancing Girl Scouts with theater, American Sign Language classes and a close friendship with fellow Troop 219 member Celia Kaul (who is also featured prominently in “Cookie Queens”). And she had an uncommon ability to say out loud the kinds of complicated feelings many children keep to themselves.
Says Nahmias, simply: “I thought that was a really relatable, universal story.”
One scene in particular explains why.
A surprisingly grown-up conversation
The scene was shot at her home in the evening. Olive is deep into another cookie season, but as she’s talking with her mom, Carrie Ochal, she seems to be wrestling with wanting to pull back from selling cookies in the future. And with pressure.
“Sometimes it feels like you want me to sell more cookies,” she says on screen. “Sometimes it feels like you’re kind of making me sell more cookies. I mean, obviously, it’s — I guess — ultimately my choice, but sometimes it feels like if I don’t do it, I’m going to let you down because of some of the things you say and the ways you act.”
Their chat gets even more thoughtful and poignant from there, until Mom finally asks: “Do you think I’m making you feel that way the most, or do you think you kind of, like, put some of that pressure on yourself?”
Olive looks away for a moment. Then she lightly shakes her head. “Maybe.”
That’s it.
No dramatic confrontation. No villain. No easy resolution. Just an early-adolescent girl trying to untangle the pressure she feels from others and the pressure she puts on herself.
“I think they get to the heart of the story I wanted to share in the film, which was — again — not really about Girl Scout cookies,” Nahmias says. “… It’s not just Girl Scouting or scouting. Whether you do piano or sports, if you’re a young person who’s enthusiastic about something, and you’re a parent who has a child who’s ambitious, you’re going to navigate — all of us do — around ‘how much do we challenge our children,’ or ‘how much do we let them say no, enough is enough?’”
But today, two years after that filmed conversation, Olive sounds more at ease with the questions she was asking herself.
‘I recognize that I am very lucky’
Seeing herself on screen for the first time, Olive admits, she mostly watched for herself.
“When you’re watching a movie that you’re in for the first time, you’re kind of watching to see, like, Where am I? What scenes made the cut?”
But she says “then when we saw it again at Sundance, I really got to appreciate the film for the beautiful way it was shot and the other girls’ stories. … Like, Okay, I kind of know what to expect now. I can lean back and actually watch the film.”
The audience responded with a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival screening last winter, and Olive says she has since watched “Cookie Queens” several more times at other film festivals. At the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham this past April, she and her friend Celia — with whom she remains active in Girl Scouts — even led a post-screening Q&A together.
Meanwhile, away from the cameras, Olive has continued to do what first drew Nahmias to her: speaking candidly about complicated feelings.
“I think that in a situation where you feel pressure, the best thing to do is talk it through with someone,” Olive says, reflecting on the pivotal scene with her mom. “… I am so lucky to have two parents who will listen to me and hear me, even if I’m saying something negative about them. I know that not everybody gets that, and I recognize that I am very lucky.
“But it doesn’t always have to be a parent. You can talk to a teacher. You can talk to a best friend. … I know that teachers and schools use the term ‘trusted adult’ a lot, and if you’re a kid and you’re reading this article, then that might sound kind of cringy to you, but that’s really what I found that I needed. So if I don’t feel like I can go to my mom, I know I can go to one of my other troop leaders.
“And worst comes to worst, I can always go to Celia. She always has an answer.”
Théoden Janes
Source link