“Shelly’s Leg” tells a story that sounds made up: In 1970, an eccentric young stripper named Shelly Baumann lost her leg in a freak parade canon accident, and used settlement money to open Shelly’s Leg — one of the nation’s first openly gay gathering places.
Watching “Shelly’s Leg,” by filmmaker Wes Hurley, you sometimes get the sense that this might all be a fun put-on — because the talking heads in his short documentary are so sweetly wide-eyed, the shots so beautifully composed, the footage as pretty as too-good-to-be-true AI.
But “Shelly’s Leg” is totally true, And the people in it are very real. The film, now playing at the Santa Fe International Film Festival, has a striking beauty and out-of-time quality thanks to Hurley’s clever approach to re-enactments. He enlisted modern-day actors in period garb to read interviews with real life collaborators and witnesses to Shelly’s tale, then aged his footage to make it seem decades-old.
Hurley was born in Vladivostok, in the Soviet Union, and attended the University of Washington after immigrating to the U.S. with his mother. He has written, directed and produced dozens of award-winning shorts, three feature films and two seasons of Capitol Hill, a series he created for Huffington Post. His documentary short “Little Potato” won a Jury Prize at SXSW, and his autobiographical comedy Potato Dreams of America premiered at SXSW 2021 in the Narrative Feature Competition, then won Best Screenplay at Outfest that year.
We talked with Hurley about turning tragedy into fun, recruiting Kathleen Turner for “Shelly’s Leg,” and decidedly not using AI.
Shelly’s Leg Director Wes Hurley on a Unique Approach to Documentary Re-Enactments
MovieMaker: How did you become a filmmaker?
Wes Hurley: I majored in painting and theater, but always knew I wanted to be a filmmaker. I bought my first used camera after graduating from college and started by filming theater, music and burlesque live shows. After getting to know a lot of Seattle performers and I began to cast them in short films and it grew from there. I made my first two features guerilla-style with no crew but big very casts. Over the years I’ve assembled a creative family of collaborators in Seattle that I always work with.
MovieMaker: How did you first learn of Shelly’s Leg, and why did you want to tell this story?
Wes Hurley: A few years ago I read the book Gay Seattle by professor Gary Atkins. It’s a local history book but it’s written so well — it reads like a thriller. One of the stories in the book was about Shelly’s Leg. I instantly knew I wanted to make a film about it after finishing my feature. As in my biographical feature Potato Dreams of America, I’m drawn to wild true stories that are stranger than fiction. I love how tragedy and comedy can overlap in real life, just as in art. Shelly’s Leg story is sad but also very funny and it’s ultimately about what we choose to do with the cards we’re dealt.
MovieMaker: I was sure at a certain point the film was all AI, and I even wondered if Shelly’s Leg was a real place. (It is, of course.) The reason I thought it was AI is because the aged footage looked a little too good and pretty. Can you tell me about the historical re-enactment process you used?
Wes Hurley: I haven’t heard anyone compare it to AI before, but I was definitely concerned that it would happen while making the film, considering that I worked so hard to make the footage seem authentically vintage and that is very rarely successful in films. The conversations about AI were really starting to ramp up around that time and people were telling me about all the things that AI can already do.
I find all of that extremely disturbing and it was important for me to specify that I’m not participating in that technology in any way, shape or form. In terms of making it look 70s, it was a really fun challenge. Not working with a big budget, it was about curating everything that goes on camera very very carefully — finding the right actors for the roles, finding little corners of the city that could pass for another era and working with our brilliant costume designer Ronald Leamon.
I overlaid actual film grain over the final footage to get the right look, along with color correction and other effects. For sound, I worked with Paul Miller at Bad Animals to create scratchy older sounding recordings for all the interviews. I do all of my own color but I don’t know how to do sound mixing. Paul really captured the quality I wanted in our mix. I think he did an amazing job.
MovieMaker: I assumed other people must have thought this was AI as well, given your disclaimer at the end.
Wes Hurley: An even bigger concern for me was that people wouldn’t believe that it’s a true story and that all the interviews are actual things real people said. So I put the disclaimer about all the interviews being verbatim, left by people most of whom are not around anymore. I’m heartened when people don’t realize the interview footage was recreated.
That aspect of the film was most exciting for me creatively but also stressful as I wasn’t sure what audiences and festivals would make of it. I called a few folks deep in the documentary world and explained my process, and they all told me I can still call the film a documentary even though the interviews themselves are re-enacted. I’ve never seen it done before in a doc, though I’m sure I didn’t invent it and there are other films like this out there.
MovieMaker: The voice I wish I’d heard more was Shelly’s — I assume she never sat for a lengthy interview?
Wes Hurley: Yes, sadly Shelly did not give any in-depth interviews. And she passed away before I learned of her story. I’ve read through a thousand pages of legal documents pertaining to her post-accident lawsuit — those had some of her testimony but nothing much of substance or interest there. Except for the quote I use in the film where she wonders to her lawyers whether the whole cannon accident was a hallucination. I thought it’s so fitting for her entire life story and the story of her club and human condition in general. I also thought it was very funny – her attorneys must have not liked it.
MovieMaker: How did you cast your amazing actors?
Wes Hurley: I tried to find actors who look as much as their real counterparts as possible. For guys that was trickier since these men in the film are all hippies and have longer hair and wigs look fake. The one exception was “Mike” — I could not find any images of him or any description. I ended up finding an actor that I really liked but he had a British accent. I decided, what the hell, this guy is great and so natural, and no one seems to remember this man sadly. So in the movie he’s British. I keep expecting someone to come up to me after a screening and ask why “Mike” is British.
MovieMaker: How did Kathleen Turner get involved?
Wes Hurley: I really wanted a recognizable voice that also served as a kind of unofficial spirit of Shelly. When my producer Eliza Flug and I learned that Kathleen Turner was interested, it was one of the happiest days of my life. I grew up watching Kathleen, she’s my favorite actress from that era and her voice brings so much specificity and character to the film. Working with her was a blast. I have a feeling Shelly is thrilled about Kathleen narrating her story too, wherever she is now.
“Shelly’s Leg” plays Thursday at the Santa Fe International Film Festival. one of our 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee. You can read more of our festival coverage here.
Main image: “Shelly’s Leg,” courtesy of Wes Hurley.