Filmmaker Phelim McAleer. (Photo: Pawel Supernak/EPA/Newscom)
Producer Phelim McAleer talked today at The Heritage Foundation about his new project, “Gosnell,” a movie that examines the case of criminal abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
Speaking at Heritage’s Bloggers Briefing, McAleer mused about why the media had largely ignored the Gosnell case:
They just find more interesting stories when a story puts abortion in a bad light. It comes too close to the moral choices they have made. And shines a spotlight on their opinions and beliefs. It asks too many awkward questions.
“I’m not saying what the answers are,” he added, “but they don’t want the questions asked. And that’s what I’m doing. I’m asking questions.”
McAleer was in Philadelphia working on another film, FrackNation, when he went into a courtroom to hear a murder trial, as is a practice of his when he has days off. He happened to hear the Gosnell case, and recalled, “It was the most boring court room I’ve ever been in. It was dead.” Whole sections reserved for media at the trial were empty.
The evidence and outcome of the Kermit Gosnell case moved McAleerand his wife, Ann, greatly. “We realized the one thing that kept us awake at night…was the Gosnell case.” But his company, Ann and Phelim Media, was already working on other projects. “So we phoned the investors and told them to take their money back,” McAleer recounts. “We weren’t going to work on our other projects. We worked on the Gosnell project.”
McAleer is trying to raise $2.1 million to finance his movie about Gosnell.