Being filmed doing this would be a big added challenge. This involved her having to expose herself on a day-to-day basis to people and situations that triggered her acute anxiety states and panic attacks - walking out in the town, visiting a pub, reducing her make-up. My plan, openly discussed and agreed with Gail and Dr Veale, was to use the presence of a film camera as an adjunct to her Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Two weeks later I went to Gail’s hometown of Lowestoft with Alan James, Roger’s cameraman of choice for particularly sensitive observational situations, to gather more material for the pilot. It seemed only too right that I, too, should be an on-camera participant given the courage she was showing in letting us film her. Afterwards I volunteered to be filmed by Roger chatting with her about our respective BDD experiences. She had big, open eyes, heavy make-up and numerous piercings including in her tongue and navel – I was to learn that these were designed to draw attention away from her nose and her chin, the two features that caused her the most particular self-revulsion.Īccompanying her was her shy boyfriend Darren, asĭarkly handsome as a young protagonist in a Pasolini movie.Īs we filmed her session with Dr Veale it was immediately apparent to Roger Graef and I that Gail, with her disarming candour and articulacy and enormouslyĪppealing personality, was a gift as a subject. Through the Hospital’s Roman column-flanked entrance came a very pretty girl in a black mini-skirt and chic blouse. From her voice, with its gentle Suffolk burr, I imagined an apple-cheeked young countrywoman. To my surprise and gratification she not only agreed to the idea of appearing in a documentary by me – she was keen to help fellow sufferers – but also to me filming her session with Dr Veale as ‘pilot’ material to help raise TV interest in the project. Gail was due to visit Grovelands Hospital a week later to see Dr Veale. For 1 ¼ hours we talked like old friends, in one leap transcending age, sex and class as we exchanged intimate details of our BDD experiences, still vividly memorable for me.Ī particularly potent memory was how the sufferer’s extreme sense of physical alienation from the normal world extended to an estrangement from one's own past and to any conceivable future, leaving leaving one trapped in a despairing perpetual present (this memory would inform my dealing with later projects like Living On The Edge and Blind Flight). It was an electrifying conversation for both of us, the first time either of us had found a fellow sufferer to whom we could confide. Then out-of-the-blue on a July morning I got a call from his patient 21-year old Gail Bettinson. Weeks passed by as 1999’s Spring turned to Summer and Dr Veale’s prognosis looked all too correct. He had a young woman who had recently come into his care after almost killing herself with the savagery of her arm slashing. As world leading BDD specialist Dr David Veale at the Grovelands Priory Hospital in North London pointed out, the idea of being seen on camera for somebody obsessed with their ‘hideousness’ would probably be insuperably daunting.īut he agreed that my own personal experience offered a ray of hope – I could possibly bridge the crippling shyness, loneliness, sense of alienation and terror of the normal world that a BDD sufferer endures. I was under no illusions as to how hard it would be to find a sufferer who would be willing to be filmed. I wanted it to have a personal feel and not be ‘medicalised’. From the outset I wanted the film to try and convey the emotional impact of BDD on a sufferer.
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