GREAT! I Stutter. But I Need You to Listen.

[jesse_the_k]

Back in July 2021, I raved about James Morrison’s NYT Op-Doc short film "Look me in the eye." I’m thrilled the New York Times has published three more of his short films.

First up: I Stutter. But I Need You to Listen focuses on writer John Hendrickson, a writer who stutters.

Morrison’s 8:15 film (pro captions and audio description) shines with visual representations of stuttering, while demonstrating what happens during disfluency and how quickly we can become better listeners.

direct YouTube link

Watch on YouTube

The audio description script is narrated in synthetic speech, which is an odd choice.

I first encountered John Hendrickson in his great Atlantic essay about candidate Joe Biden’s stutter:

Back in New York, I start to wonder if I’m forcing Biden into a box where he doesn’t belong. My box. Could I be jealous that his present stutter is less obvious than mine? That he can go sentences at a time without a single block or repetition? Even the way I’m writing this piece—­keeping Biden’s stammers, his ums and pauses, on the page—seems hypocritical. Here I am highlighting the glitches in his speech, when the journalistic courtesy, convention even, is to edit them out.

I spend weeks watching Biden more than listening to him, trying to “catch him in the act” of stuttering on camera. There’s one. There’s one. That was a bad one. Also, I start stuttering more.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/joe-biden-stutter-profile/602401/
Archived version