In the Life: Interview with series producer Jacqueline Gares

My name is Jacqueline Gares and I was the series  producer for "In the Life" from 2007 to 2012. In 2007 I applied for a coordinating producer job at with "In the Life" and I interviewed with Dan Hunt, who was  the executive producer at the time. Dan Hunt is an amazing filmmaker and he became  a very good friend and a great mentor. I had known about "In the Life." I'd watched the show for years and I thought it  was a really different kind of programming and... very innovative and independent and it had uhm...  an LGBT focus that I didn't see in other programming. The only issue with "In the Life," I think, at the time was that  that you needed to know when it came on and how to find it. Often it was programmed late at night.  So uhm...it was certainly after ten o'clock at night that it would be broadcasting. Usually around 11. So  you could be asleep and never see "In the Life" uhm... but I used to, you know, I...I used to DVR it. I used to, you  know, just try to catch it when I could. Uhm...many times I'd be channel surfing and just happen upon it but  I did soon realize that that was an issue with "In the Life" was that people were at the whim of  program directors across the country. When I became the series producer for "In the Life" one of my jobs  that I was designated to do was to go and pitch "In the Life" to the APT conference...conferences that were  having nationally and you would have uhm... programmers from all around the country just coming  to hear these pitches and see reels and uhm... it was a great time for me to meet with individual programmers  and get their opinions and to confront them and ask, "Why are you airing 'In the Life' at three in the morning?" Or, "Why aren't you airing 'In the Life?'" Often times they would say that they would get  letters from viewers saying "that the program... the programming was too controversial  and the themes were adult" and they had to certainly program  it after ten o'clock at night. One programmer, in particular, I remember from Louisville, Kentucky decided to program "In the Life" after Charlie Rose  and as a result he received many letters from gay viewers and straight viewers that were really happy that now they knew when to find "In the Life" every month So, it was great. There were also some stations that would never air "In the Life" and as much as I tried uhm...they just...due to opinions or  letters that they said that they would get- death threats, hate mail- places like Tennessee just never would air "In the Life" and we always knew this but there was really nothing that we could do. Our  hands were tied uhm...and we were really happy when we eventually could air all of our content online  because that at least gave people hope and you know a way to see the material. What I loved about "In the Life"  is that it started out as a variety show and it was kind of goofy but it was also serious. It had content that would educate people and they tried to do things that were different  and bring different mediums to television such as plays or poetry or uhm...musical performances in a  way that maybe we hadn't seen before uhm...and it was all gay. That was what was amazing about it. It was...  it was a welcomed place to stumble upon if you were channel surfing, which is usually how I found  it. Uhm...up until that point there really wasn't a lot of visibility for LGBT people on television and  "In the Life" brought that visibility to the screen. I particularly enjoyed when "In the Life" became more  of a serious LGBT news magazine. People would often compare it to a gay "60 Minutes" in the way that it  delivered its content and the seriousness of its segments. I...I was always a fan of these segments  because they delve pretty deep into our rights or uhm...specific uhm...injustices that were happening in rural areas as well as cities. Many of our stories came directly from the headlines of the news that we would read even at the editorial meetings. I would start it...I would start each editorial meeting  with everyone bringing a news item. "What was in the news that spoke to them?" and I think that  really allowed to have a diversity amongst our group but also among the funding pools   that we knew existed. "In the Life" would take a topic and create a segment about it and no one had discussed this in such depth before and it got everyone to rally around huge topics. Uhm...one of...or issues of the day that maybe they missed in the newspapers and one of these stories was "legalizing stigma" which  directly confronted HIV criminalization laws and how people were being thrown into jail for failure  to disclose their HIV status. It was yet another experience at "In the Life" where you look at  something one way in the beginning and because you're a producer you have to be unbiased and you  approach a subject and you research a subject and then you get it. You understand what's at stake here.  You understand the level of...of injustice that's happening to people who are affected by  these laws that are draconian. Over time working with Dan Hunt, the executive producer, we decided to develop new segments like our "Conversation" series which was such a joy to work with because we could book people like Edward Albee and Kathleen Turner and get them to just talk together about the work that they had done and the issues of the day and it was...it was just...you knew you were doing something important but also fun on those segments. Uhm...and working with Dan was great. He was  great mentor. I really enjoyed Dan Hunt's role at "In the Life." When Dan left I had the opportunity  to work with Charles Ignacio and John Catania. They were just a gift because they brought with  them this wealth of experience- how they produced "In the Life" when they were...when Charles was at  the helm as the executive producer. When John and Charles left I thought about the responsibility  it took to be the series producer and I had just completed a documentary that had won an award and  I felt I now could focus my energies on being the series producer. So I told everyone that I wanted to put my hat in the ring and I was lucky I...I was able to become the series producer. My role as the series producer was uhm... challenging but also a gift and a privilege. I...the first thing that I wanted to do was  to get rid of the host format because I felt like the host format wasn't really serving  us the best way that it could have. I didn't feel the host was taking the viewer into any deeper interest.  So I created packages of a voice-over of our host and showed the same segment to the board  with just the voice-over and taking out the host and they loved it. So they felt more engaged. So we ended up creating these mini packages, these little voiceover packages, that would introduce the...  not only the show but also each segment and it kind of turned into a gay "Frontline." At least that's how I was pitching it. Uhm...I pitched it as a   gay "Frontline" to the public television stations. The first segment I produced for "In the Life" was called "Wide Stance"...and it was about entrapment. That subject to me was such a new window to look through. I had never considered entrapment on  such a serious level before. I didn't understand sting operations were set up to catch men uhm... in this kind of activity and during my research I uncovered a reel of film that had been taken by the Mansfield,  Ohio Police Department of a sting that was set-up in a public restroom in a park during the 1960's  and it had...what was amazing about this footage, and we ended up using some of it in the piece, was just how natural men were behaving in a restroom but then how this was taken and used by the Mansfield Police Department to ruin people's lives. It was one of the most edgiest pieces that  I ever worked on for "In the Life" and it gave me a whole new understanding about sexuality and  being sex positive and how that was intricately tied in with our history and maybe question,   "Had we lost some of that?" What I always enjoyed about working at "In the Life" was how we didn't shy away from really hard, uncomfortable, difficult subjects to capture on video or film. One of the...one of  these subjects that was very close to my heart was the "Bullycides" piece that I produced for  "In the Life." It was absolutely one of the more difficult pieces that I ever, to this day, have produced. There were interviews with mothers who had lost their children to suicide because they were bullied. Uh...I had so much support from the team at "In the Life" during the making of this. Uh...it was great to be a part of a group that recognized that being a media maker and putting these...  and putting these images together could be difficult. When I found out that the Department  of Education wanted to use "Bullycides" as an educational material for parents and teachers  and students to talk about and to engage in the subject of bullying in a meaningful way that was better news to me than any kind of award one could get as a producer. We were always operating under the guise that we didn't have history. We weren't documented, you know. These stories were things  that we were uncovering for the first time and "In the Life" just really legitimized our history. I felt like I was legitimizing history  every day when I worked there. One of my favorite things about working at "In the Life" was having access to the archives. And that's what's great about the UCLA Film and Television Archive because it puts people in that same seat that I was in. In our edit  rooms we used to be surrounded by these tapes that went back far beyond even when  when "In the Life" was started in 1992. It makes sense to me that UCLA would have this archive because it is a scholar... it is a scholarly body of work. This is a complete curriculum and it's available   online to teach people our experience... from the AIDS crisis, to gays in the military, to gender non-conforming youth, to marriage equality. It's everything. And...to have this material be available and  online...I have no words for it. It's priceless.