The company shot footage throughout Chicago, focusing on various aspects of the city, including Operation Breadbasket, a project to aid the poor organized by Rev. Jesse Jackson as an outgrowth of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “It was marvelous. I’ve never been to anything like it in my life,” recalls Verna. “We had to get up at 6 o’clock in the morning to get a seat at the meeting at 8. It goes on until noon, and it’s not just a meeting, it’s a political rally, a jazz concert, a soul-singing event.”
Medium Cool has left its mark on her in less definable ways. “I never thought much about what film could do, but I certainly became aware of it as a result that experience. Being in Chicago at that time, seeing the tanks in the streets, I felt I was witnessing the beginning of the end of America. But I realized when I made my second film that they weren’t all going to be like Medium Cool. For all its flaws, that film had tremendous feeling in it, something I’ve never been able to find again.”
