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Premiere Magazine
April 2000
Bound for Glory
Where do indie-film legends and rising stars alike go to grab the
world's attention? To Park City, Utah, where the Sundance Film Festival
makes, breaks, and shakes up careers. Here in this special portfolio
and behind-the-scenes report, are the movies you'll be talking about
this year and the performers who earned their stripes...
'Just, Melvin' In this searing documentary, James Ronald Whitney trains
a klieg light on his family's darkest corners. For years, his step
grandfather, accused murderer Melvin Just, sexually abused Whitney's
mother, Ann (pictured here with Ron), her sisters and half-sisters,
and children from his second marriage. Now many of these women are
trapped in cycles of alcoholism and homelessness. "Melvin Just
will be blamed forever," says Ann, who escaped at age 15 to become
a nanny but was suicidal for years. "I didn't realize that it
had to do with the residue of abuse," Ron says, "and the
guilt, knowing that her sisters were still being molested." ...As
her reward, she got to see her son confront Just on camera..."That
was the best therapy," she says. "I couldn't have done it,
because I know how to load a gun now."
-- John Horn
and Sean M. Smith
Photographed by Jake Chessum
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