It’s hard to imagine turning a story of unspeakable childhood trauma into a film that can make you laugh and fill you with hope. But that’s exactly what writer, performer and filmmaker Gerad Argeros did with “Fox Chase Boy,” a short documentary based on his one-man show in which he confronts his trauma of being sexually abused as a child.
In the early ’80s, when Gerad was 10 years old and served as an altar boy at St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in the Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood of Fox Chase, he was sexually abused by The Rev. James Brzyski—one of the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s most brutal abusers, according to a 2005 grand jury report.
Gerad stayed silent about his abuse for decades until the tragic deaths of two childhood friends, also victims of Brzyski’s, and the death of Brzyski (who evaded prosecution and died as a free man) moved him to speak out publicly.
In 2017, he broke his silence in a Philadelphia Inquirer article titled “Stolen Childhoods.” And it was the catalyst he needed to write “Fox Chase Boy,” originally a monologue he performed as a one-man show for family, friends and Fox Chase community members who had personal ties to Bryzski’s widespread abuse at St. Cecilia’s Church.
With clergy sexual abuse happening around the world, Gerad knew he wanted to reach a global audience that might find hope in his story. He teamed up with filmmaker Kaya Dillon to create the “Fox Chase Boy” documentary, which combines footage of his one-man show with reflections from friends and family.
To coincide with the film’s distribution on The Guardian (it’s available to watch now), I sat down with Gerad and Kaya to talk about the impact of the film so far, the intersection of documentary and journalism, and how support from the Independence Public Media Foundation (MIF member since 2019) contribute to the film’s success.
Adriana Imhof, Communications & Program Associate, Media Impact Funders: In the film you’re talking to the mother of your late friend Jimmy Spoerl— who was also abused by Brzyski during his childhood and passed away in 2016 after struggling for decades with trauma and drug addiction—and you say to her, “I don’t know who this is for. I don’t know if it’s for me, or if it’s for him, or if it’s for all of us. But my hope is that it’s for all of us.” How have your thoughts on who this film is for evolved since that moment?
Gerad Argeros, Director, Producer, and Writer, “Fox Chase Boy”: My ambition to discuss this point is not shared universally, so part of what I was speaking to in that moment is still true, which is: I am not here to demand from people who are suffering a conversation that agitates that suffering.
There are certainly folks who were not abused, but it was all very familiar. We were all in the same pool. There’s a felt sense of knowing what the inside of those rooms felt like, knowing what it was like to have abusers at the helm.
I know a little better now that it is for me, and it is for them and for his legacy, and for my community, and for frankly, any one of those nameless people who is sitting in the audience, who is a survivor, because I was that guy.
What happens when you sublimate this stuff is that the life of it does not expire within you. In 2016, Jimmy Spoerl died. In 2017, Jamie Cunningham died. In 2017, Jim Brzyski, the abuser, died. In 2022, John Delaney died. I don’t like those numbers, because I’m one of those four. If anything, I’m next on the list. There’s nobody left in the story. But the truth is, there are people left in the story. All of those deaths that I just listed are happening at other parishes, and they’re happening in other countries. What’s not happening is this conversation. Maybe if one of those people who is next on that list finds this story and sits in the theater or comes to a show, then maybe they get crossed off that list.
I got lucky that somehow I stayed in the game and kept going to counseling and then over the years picked up someone like Kaya who was willing to sort of say, I’ll walk this stretch of this with you. It’s a lonely, lonely space, and for good reason, because most people continue to suffer in silence and in the extreme case of our community, there were three deaths connected to this abuse.
Meeting in an art house is more meaningful to me right now than meeting in a counseling room. I want to advocate, I want to support, but where I need to be is in a place where there is enough electricity of creation and hope. Some place that can hold this because this can’t go in every container. Something about this container is holding it, and it’s holding it in a way that I think you saw, and that’s why we’re talking. That’s what makes me sit back and go holy shit, people are willing to hold this with me and that’s beautiful. That’s this magic.
Kaya Dillon, Director, Producer, and Cinematographer, “Fox Chase Boy”: From the film perspective, because this project is hybrid in that the film documents Gerad’s one-man show and the reactions to it, you’re seeing the impact right in the film, in the conversations we’re having with Gerad’s family and community. The point of making the film was to take that exact kernel and expand it to as many people that need to see this film as possible.
Adriana Imhof: What do you hope audiences from around the world will take away from this homegrown, hyperlocal film?
Kaya Dillon: This is a global story. I think sports, small towns, and nostalgia are all entry points. They’re things everybody can relate to. People walk away from this film learning about Fox Chase, an obscure community in Philadelphia. It’s specific. It’s accessible. It’s not like, for example, the R. Kelly documentary. We can’t get into those spaces. Those are like fantasy worlds that don’t really relate to our common shared experience. The more specific we get with Gerad and his life and experience, the more accessible it is for a wider range of people.
Adriana Imhof: The film weaves in your deep love of Philadelphia sports—we see nostalgic footage of the Philadelphia Eagles and Phillies interspersed throughout, “Fly Eagles Fly” plays in the background at various moments, and you share stories of Philadelphia’s World Series and Super Bowl wins. Tell me more about your decision to use sports as an entry point to discuss trauma and abuse.
Gerad Argeros: I had an agenda, especially with men. If I can get men to drop whatever the idea of their butchness is, and what they do and don’t talk about, and if I have to fucking sandwich them in between a Phillies’ World Series and an Eagle’s Super bowl, then I’m not above that.
He put on a big show up in the sanctuary, and I was up there. He tricked us. They asked us to bring our kids to them and we did, and then he locked the door behind us. I can’t get over that. I really can’t get over that. I know I’m not the only one who recognizes that truth. But it’s a very hard truth to speak to because people’s hearts are in this place. This is where we bury our dead, and this is where we get married, and this is where we bless our children. And so it’s very hard to also hold that other truth.
In a way, I feel like this version of tricking people, like, “Hey, come on in, come get some Eagles” is much more benign in terms of trickery. I can’t overstate that. But we are gonna seed the bed with the Eagles and the Phillies and cheesesteaks and family and community and bad jokes. But what we’re doing is something much more serious in its nature than the Phillies and the Eagles.
Kaya Dillon: My uncle is a pretty stuffy guy, and he went to a screening with his boys, and they’re a mega sports family. They don’t watch a lot of experimental documentaries. They don’t go to film festivals, but they came out to support me. During the film, my uncle was weeping the whole time. It strikes a nerve by having that thing that you love and worship, and feels totally safe, which is in our case sports. It draws you into the room and makes it so you don’t have to walk out of the theater like I can’t handle this.
Masculinity is ultimately a big part of what destroyed the other men in the story. The beginning of the end for them was actually coming out and being on the record for the first time in their lives. They were gone shortly after that. That’s what really destroyed them.
We wanted to create a way of talking about this where you might have a smile at some point, and maybe you can walk away from the film and not feel completely depleted. Part of Gerad’s work is deeply about regaining agency in his own life story. The point of making an art piece was to maybe allow other people to at least begin to regain agency of their own stories as well.
Adriana Imhof: How did philanthropic support shape your process and what’s important for philanthropy to know about supporting filmmakers like you?
Kaya Dillon: It’s hard to get grants and funding. It’s a really competitive field. Film is becoming a more egalitarian format, and nonfiction is even more so than scripted.
I was surprised and grateful that we were able to receive funding from IPMF (Independence Public Media Foundation); the ambiguity of IPMF’s grant was the benefit. It was a grant to support a Philly-based artist. There were no earmarks for how that had to come out. It was just: you’re doing important work, we’re going to support you.
Gerad Argeros: Our Consulting Producer, Tara Culp, who is also based in Philadelphia, shared an early cut of the film with Ted Passon, another Philadelphia filmmaker, and he pointed us to IPMF. I feel lucky that Nuala [Cabral] from IPMF saw the film and felt it was meaningful work and something that IPMF could get behind as an institution.
What I can say about how philanthropy affected the process was that it invigorated it with hope. It was a shot in the arm, for sure. I don’t have to take another credit card and max it out. As much as people have love for this project, there is nothing that replaces institutional partnership.
Kaya Dillon: I’m a full-time filmmaker. I just finished a really well-budgeted studio documentary for Hulu, which started on grant funding. If we were looking for that same grant, we would’ve been competing with people from focus features and Oscar-winning directors. I would say that the success in our instance was that the funding was regional, it was based on where the work was happening. If we had to get a grant in New York City and were competing with celebrity docs, etc. accessing the same pool of money, this movie wouldn’t get made.
Detaching the grant from the industry as much as possible to me is important. I think the regionality part is critical. How do we heal this country? Listen to other people besides somebody in New York or L.A. Regionality creates a level playing field and hopefully more interesting stories and reach.
Gerad Argeros: IPMF had socials for their grantees. They offered consultations, so we all met each other. It was really useful. The cohort was also, in moments, magical. Sometimes it was enough to show up at a Zoom and listen to a speaker to remind me that I was actually doing something because it was amorphous at times.
As a human being, I need scaffolding. To have scaffolding was one of the greatest things about being a grantee at IPMF. I had places to show up to, and I knew that there were going to be people there that were going to be taking me seriously about this work that I was doing, and that was exceptional.
This is where I get a little emotional, but people were calling me an artist and a filmmaker, and like, I’m a dad and a dog walker in my mind. To be reminded by an institution, even though it’s faceless, there is a community— whether it’s a community of funders, a community of journalists, a community of peers, reminding you that the work you are doing exists and is meaningful—that’s so wildly important for the life of things that aren’t necessarily going to a marketplace.
Kaya Dillon: IPMF hosted a really beautiful rough cut screening with our cohort a year before our official premiere, and that was in Philadelphia. It was a beautiful night. It was really energizing. It’s nice to have in person events with other people in the same grant cohort. That kind of stuff is awesome. To see our film and have people react gave us more of a taste of what the road ahead looked like. I’m wanting to continue that, but there’s not really an apparatus for that.
Adriana Imhof: “Fox Chase Boy” premiered in the U.S. at the 2024 Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival, which celebrates the intersection of documentary filmmaking and journalism. What role did journalism play in this film?
Gerad Argeros: When I spoke to Inquirer reporter [and “Stolen Childhoods” author] Maria Panaritis for the first time, the dignity that she brought to the conversation was so powerful to me. I was always a little bit reticent, in part because of the simple argument of, “What are you still talking about this for? This was years ago.”
There’s a voice in my head that’s always been like, “It’s all settled. Get on with your life.” That’s the message that the world gives someone who has been through trauma, especially trauma that they don’t want to articulate, and especially if it deals with a powerful institution like the church, who is constantly trying to move beyond this. They don’t want me out here banging a drum, saying, “wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.”
That’s just the way that I characterize all this to myself. But to have her say, “Let me tell you the background about where [Brzyski] was before and what has happened since and what we found out.” It was further scaffolding to reinforce the idea that the story was essential, that these boys were dying as a direct result—there were drugs and alcohol involved absolutely, but that does not make their story any less true.
Kaya Dillon: Having the story on the record allowed us a grander departure from a nuts-and-bolts description of a crime. We’re not making the movie of “Stolen Childhoods.” We’re now able to do something completely different and depart into more mystical, creative spaces that end up achieving our goal of creating a new language around this.
Adriana Imhof: What’s next for “Fox Chase Boy”?
Kaya Dillon: It was always a real clear goal for me to get onto a platform that had a basis in investigative journalism. The Guardian is really accessible in a lot of ways. There’s no paywall. People are going to be able to just freely experience and share the film, which I think is really important.
And it’s happening at a pretty auspicious moment. The conclave is going to assemble the day after we go live. There’s an opportunity by debuting this film in the midst of all this reckoning within this gigantic institution; maybe this film can be a home for some folks to process this moment. Anytime there’s a huge news moment with the Catholic church, I think it brings up a lot for a lot of people. I feel like part of the love and the gift of this film is it’s going to offer some processing and catharsis for folks.
Gerad Argeros: When we started this, I was just doing something that I felt like I had to do for my heart; so much of it was driven by grief—the grief of losing those guys that I knew mostly as kids. This idea that it’s going to be on this platform that will make it available all over the world, it’s overwhelming because it’s so personal. It feels very vulnerable, and so I’m trying to not get too far ahead of anything and stick with it and just really have hope that the spirit of why we did this and why I decided to make this show is appreciated; because the spirit of it was and still is trying to reach out to people’s hearts that are both hurting in some way around this subject and also needing this conversation.
