Pittsburgh native featured in 'Crutch' documentary doesn't lean on disability
Everyone uses crutches.
Some are just invisible.
As Bill Shannon crosses a city street on film, his movements are unstable with crutches under each arm. He collapses on a patch of grass after reaching the other side.
What you see is man with a disability who has fallen.
What you miss is a creative man who is a father, a skateboarder, a dancer and an artist.
A man who consistently gets up after he falls.
Shannon is the subject of a documentary, “Crutch,” co-directed by Sachi Cunningham, another Pittsburgh native and assistant professor of multimedia journalism at San Francisco State University. Twenty years in the making, the 93-minute film premieres Nov. 11 at DOC NYC, a documentary film festival.
The production is being released during the year of the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The film takes viewers from Shannon’s childhood, when he was diagnosed with Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease, a rare, degenerative condition of the hip. It weaves through the story of him attending a Florida camp as a visiting artist for youngsters with the same condition.
He shows them a disability doesn’t have to define them.
“It’s surreal to watch a documentary about yourself,” said Shannon, 50, a self-employed artist who describes his work as conceptually driven interdisciplinary performance in media. “There are a range of emotions I was feeling, not just one reaction. There are lots of different components. It’s complicated.”
He said the film is “captivating and entertaining,” and more. He prefers not to sum it up in one sentence.
Visually inspired
“Crutch” includes video and audio footage from his five decades of life.
The film takes viewers through his journey dealing with a rare medical condition, chronic pain, the evolution of his crutch dancing and skating to his growth into a performance artist. It shows his street performances, in which he exposes the hidden world of assumptions disabled people encounter in public, on a daily basis. He takes on New York City with a skateboard, crutches that have rounded bottoms instead of the standard rubber tips. Traffic and pedestrians can’t stop him.
One portion of the film highlights Shannon choreographing his crutch dances for other performers in a Cirque du Soleil production.
As a little boy, Bill Shannon’s mom noticed after he would run around a lot, he would limp. Doctors suggested an operation, which the family decided against and went with leg braces and crutches. There were people who thought Shannon was faking because they couldn’t see the hip pain –but he definitely felt it. That didn’t keep him from experiencing everyday life.
His mother recalled a neighbor telling her, “Your son is jumping off walls with his crutches.”
That was just the beginning of what Shannon would accomplish.
Pittsburgh connection
Cunningham is a filmmaker and photographer. She co-produced the documentary in addition to co-directing.
She attended Peabody High School in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood with Shannon and knew him when they were children. She recalled memories of Shannon with leg braces, standing alone at recess in grade school at Fulton Elementary School in Highland Park.
The two reconnected and Shannon, who had been approached by other people about doing a film, trusted Cunningham to share his story. She collaborated with Chandler Evans, known as Vayabobo, from Los Angeles, to co-produce and co-direct the piece. He wrote “Visions of Everest,” a feature-length documentary about the first blind man to summit Mount Everest.
Cunningham and Vayabobo created a promotional video and then a Kickstarter campaign which raised over $100,000. It was posted on YouTube and featured by several media outlets.
“Bill didn’t want it to be a ‘triumph over adversity’ film,” said Cunningham, who grew up in Highland Park. “He did not want to be that spectacle as the guy on crutches. He wanted us to dig deeper at how society looks at people with disabilities.”
“We wanted it to be how he is a dancer, a skateboarder, a performance artist, who happens to use crutches,” Vayabobo said. “He is not trying to give rules and regulations on how to deal with people with disabilities, but to abandon assumptions.”
Brotherly love
Cunningham and Vayabobo followed Shannon around the world. They incorporated footage from VHS tapes and 8mm film. The documentary features shots of Pittsburgh, New York City, Sydney, Quebec, Madrid, Helsinki, Moscow, London, Paris, and Tokyo.
“Seeing it, I am very proud of my brother,” said his younger brother, Ben Shannon, 48, a teacher at Shaler Area High School and musician.
The documentary explores the lifelong bond between the Shannon brothers.
“He is a one-of-a-kind uniquely American phenomenal skateboarder, and break dancer, and this brought that all together in a way I have never seen anywhere else,” Ben Shannon said.
Tickets for the film can be purchased here.
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop is a TribLive reporter covering the region's diverse culinary scene and unique homes. She writes features about interesting people. The Edward R. Murrow award-winning journalist began her career as a sports reporter. She has been with the Trib for 26 years and is the author of "A Daughter's Promise." She can be reached at jharrop@triblive.com.
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