THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, JUNE 30
DOCUMENTARY
Grads raise money to film
Left to right: Jason Badgett, Terrie Johnson and Brad Johnson are raising Phelps, the son of Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps.
ERIN ORRICK
news@kansan.com
The message "from hate to hope" is promoting a University film alumni's Kickstarter project to create a documentary about Nate Phelps, the estranged son of deceased Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps.
"Not My Father's Son" will chronicle Phelps and his journey from growing up in an extremely religious environment to breaking away from his family and starting a new life for himself.
Brad Johnson and Jason Badgett's goal is to raise $55,000 by July 7 in order to cover the costs of producing the full documentary. As of Sunday, they need almost $40,000 to reach their goal.
The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka is best known for picketing military funerals and for its continuous stream of anti-homosexual rhetoric.
The 2010 University graduates are co-directing the film with Johnson's mother, Terrie. She served as inspiration for the project and helped to form a connection with Phelps that would ultimately bring him on board.
"A little over a year ago I got an email from Brad's mother, Terrie," Phelps said. "She had attached the video she did about her coming out, and I watched that. She went on to explain that her son had asked her to write me because he had been interested in doing a documentary."
Phelps said that the nature of Terriie's coming out video and the emotion it conveyed really made an impression on him. They met in Lawrence a month later.
"From that conversation, I knew they were the best ones as far as understanding the story and understanding the importance of reaching people's hearts," Phelps said. "That was the reason I said 'yes, let's do the project."
The documentary has been in the works for nearly a year and became a fluid combination of ideas from both Johnson and Badgett.
Badgett was familiar with the Phelps family in high school having grown up in Kansas. Once he started
film school at the University, documentaries began to interest him and his fascination with the Phelps family and Westboro resurfaced when Johnson suggested to document Phelps story.
"It was a story about hope, a positive story to put out there as opposed to something negative," Badgett said.
Johnson and Badgett said they aren't too worried about backlash from Westboro.
"We've already heard from them," Johnson said. "Within a couple of days someone had, on Twitter, tagged them on something and they responded calling us out with some crazy Westboro response."
Despite Westboro's commentary, Johnson said funding the documentary through Kickstarter has been well-received by people all over the nation.
"It has served its purpose by getting our foot in the door and getting the awareness out about the project in a way that really I don't think we could've done without," Johnson said.
Johnson said that being able to call people in to donate and read about the project on a web page has been extremely helpful to get it in front of people.
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