Thought Process
DOC U M E N TA RY
Ry Russo-Young’s Family Movie ry russo-young ’03 began her career telling fictional stories on film, but for nearly three decades, she was preoccupied with a very true story: her own. Russo-Young grew up as the younger daughter of Robin Young and Sandy Russo, a lesbian couple who helped pave the way in the 1970s and 1980s for LGBTQ+ people to have children. They found a sympathetic donor in Tom Steel. But Steel soon came to want a larger role in Russo-Young’s life. Her mothers insisted this was not the family they had in mind—what they wanted was a nuclear family. Steel sued 10
for paternity and visitation rights. Russo-Young was just 9 years old when she was thrust into the spotlight of the case. “I had wanted to tell this story since my mid-20s,” Russo-Young says, “It was a defining event in my childhood. I had done a lot of press about it, and I always wanted to come to understand it further, but I wasn’t clear on what I wanted to say or how I felt about it.” Instead, she directed TV episodes and films, including the novel adaptations Before I Fall and The Sun is Also a Star, and two films which she also cowrote—You Won’t Miss Me and
Nobody Walks, written with Lena Dunham ’08. Still, her own story was never far from her mind. Using footage of her family she had filmed as a hobby growing up, along with press footage from the 1999 PBS documentary Our House, which featured the Russo-Young family, she worked with an editor to create a mock trailer for what a film version of her story might look. From that beginning came Nuclear Family, a three-part documentary that premiered last fall on HBO Max, where it continues to air. “I had always been telling the story, but my
CO U R T E S Y O F H B O
BY KYRA MCCONNELL ’22