The Co-Directors of the landmark documentary on the 1988 Gallaudet Protests discuss crafting a film that bridges the Deaf and Hearing Experience
With Deaf President Now!, trailblazing actor Nyle DiMarco and Academy-Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim create a striking new documentary about the 1988 Deaf President Now! protests. For one week, Deaf college students at Gallaudet University protested the appointment of yet another Hearing President by shutting down the campus until the University’s all-Hearing board appointed Gallaudet’s first Deaf President in 124 years.
These protests hold a special place for me growing up as cornerstones of my family’s history, with my parents joining other family members and friends in participating in DPN. DiMarco and Guggenheim’s documentary doesn’t just bring their stories to life: the film shines a dramatic and exciting spotlight on the Deaf experience, depicting a crucial turning point in Civil Rights history to unite Deaf and Hearing audiences in ways I’ve never seen before.
Deaf President Now! continues its successful festival run ahead of its exclusive May debut on AppleTV+ with screenings at SXSW 2025. During their time in Austin, Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim generously sat down with me for an extended conversation about the illuminating process of crafting this documentary from a wide variety of perspectives, as well as their thoughts on the ever-evolving relationship between Deaf history and media accessibility.
This piece has been edited and condensed for conciseness and clarity. Major thanks to both Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim, as well as Nyle’s ASL Interpreter Grey Van Pelt and Kory Mello at Obscured Pictures.
What was the process of collecting all of the Gallaudet archival? I feel like none of that’s really seen the light of day before.
Nyle DiMarco: This project actually started six years ago, which I think is important to know. I was working with another producer named Jonathan King about this potentially being a scripted narrative project. We moved forward with a certain version with writers who were able to deliver us a couple of drafts.
And after the first and second pass, still feeling unsatisfied, we started to realize that a script might not be the right format. Which was actually when I had a chance to meet with Davis [and show him the script], he was like, “No, no, no, this actually needs to be a documentary. It’d be so much better that way, and it’s a format that, can really speak to the story.”
But the biggest question that we had was whether or not we would have enough archival footage. Growing up, I’d always seen the same images in the same videos again and again. So it would seemingly be a limited archive. I sort of doubted whether or not we would find enough, just based on my own experience.
But we reached out to Gallaudet and they shared with us an immense vault of footage that was just gold. Together we were able to comb through it, and that really became the answer to everything. We’re very thankful to Gallaudet for being so generous in allowing us to use the footage, as well as sort of having unfettered access and the ability to play with that.
Davis Guggenheim: We saw some of it online right at the beginning, as well as on this show “Deaf Mosaic.” Did you grow up seeing that at all?
I believe I did, yeah.
Davis Guggenheim: And that was cool because it seemed like Gallaudet had a functioning TV studio, where they were sort of a central news source.
Nyle DiMarco: They had a team that was telling the story of Deaf culture, but especially DPN. So that was a core source.
You said it started as a scripted project. I’m curious as to what brought both of you to tell the story.
Davis Guggenheim: Nyle brought this in and said this story has been forgotten for too long. I read a draft of the scripted version, and I remember a lot of kind of cheesy things in it. The one that stuck out to me was Jerry (Covell) being so angry that he burned down the lacrosse shed. Which was clearly not true. I come from a place where I directed a lot of scripted stuff in my 30s. But to me, the real Jerry is so much more interesting than the Hollywood Jerry that some writer was conjuring.
Nyle DiMarco: I think one of the biggest problems, specifically with the scripted version, is that it’s really difficult to encapsulate all of it: not just so much the protest, but all of the layers of oppression and the experience of Deaf people, and what we had faced for 150 years. It was important to build [DPN] to a place where you can understand the protests on a deeper level, because it was so much more than just a protest. This scripted version didn’t really answer that.
Meeting with Davis initially, he was very interested in the DPN Four (Jerry Covell, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Tim Rarus, and Greg Hlibok). I myself come from a fourth generation Deaf family, and they would have seen their parents’ and their grandparents’ struggles as well as their triumphs, and the different levels of oppression that they might have faced. So we can see over time that things have changed.
But of course, because of their generations of advocacy, it brings folks like us to a place where, you know, we very quickly are, ready to unite and collectively protest for, you know, the betterment of our community. So we wanted to really explore that. It’s funny, Davis and I didn’t really realize that their parents’ and grandparents’ stories would be so much of the vibrancy that brings this film to life.
How did you find that balance between all four of those stories, especially with as sprawling of a narrative as it already is?
Nyle DiMarco: We always tried to give the four of them equal screen time, not just for the sake of sharing them, but also to tie them in individually throughout the protest. Pieces of each of them really tied into the protest to help us focus and tell the story of what happened over those seven days. We had an incredible editor, who was a huge help in that arc.
Davis Guggenheim: To add to that, the archive is so good, especially the footage of that first night. It’s so visceral that we thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to just stick with those seven days, within the experience of those four leaders?” The experience of these four leaders is a very tight container of that experience and gives you enough to tell the whole story.
Were your parents Ducks?
My Dad [Paul Singleton] was a Duck, yeah. He drafted the Four Demands.
Davis Guggenheim: No! My God, that’s crazy! He himself, or in a group?
He wrote the final language.
Nyle DiMarco: His Dad was in the DPN council. When students were pushing for protest, his Dad was like, “That’s great, but then what? You need to have demands. You need actionable things.”
Davis Guggenheim: So, apologies to you!
[laughing, waving away] Oh, no!
Davis Guggenheim: There are a lot of people whose details of their stories are not as fully, you know, fleshed out. And we have a line that “there are leaders who came before us who’ve been working on this for years.” But we decided, “Wouldn’t it be great to just stick with our four characters?”
Nyle DiMarco: On top of learning about the Deaf world, we’re expecting the audience to really understand this protest, so I can’t imagine pulling in too many other elements because I think it can be more confusing.
It works well. You struck a really good balance in crafting the historical narrative outside of Gallaudet, from the different Historical approaches with Alexander Graham Bell, to the feeling that this is still an ongoing fight. It really felt like this history didn’t exist in a vacuum.
Davis Guggenheim: One reason why we stick with our core four is that there’s all this history, but we don’t ever talk about the history until our characters hit this moment when that history needs to be understood. And it’s from their perspective.
So they’re in the hotel room with Spilman and, you know, their lips are moving, but [shakes head]. So, the idea of staying so distinctly in the four’s experience allows you to get to the history when their experience asks for it.
Nyle DiMarco: Very much so. We always said, you know, this protest couldn’t obviously have been done without the students, which is really the only reason why Gallaudet exists in the first place.
Absolutely. And I feel like following the different experiences of those four Deaf students shows that the Deaf experience is not a monolithic thing.
Nyle DiMarco: Very much so. It’s one of my main goals in any story that I work on from the early stages of development. It’s core to everything that I do that we’re not, you know, playing with the same tropes of us being a monolith and instead exploring the differences in language fluency, background, and cultural knowledge. I think that’s part of a much larger goal.
Working with those four leaders, you can see moments where they didn’t get along perfectly, right? But they were able to get past it because the overarching, larger goal was a fight for the community. That’s what was important rather than what was happening just in their group.
Having grown up with the story, did you feel like you discovered anything new about DPN?
Nyle DiMarco: Oh, man. What have I learned? [signs “Um” ellipses, group laughs]
I knew the story of the four as well as Jerry and Greg having a little bit of tension there, but the interviews really opened this world in a way that was much deeper than I had anticipated.
I feel like growing up, I learned so much about it because, you know, my mom was obviously best friends with Greg and his family. What about you, Davis?
Davis Guggenheim: Well, I come from a hearing perspective, and before I worked on it, I just read a lot. I know a little bit, but I’m mostly ignorant.
Now, after spending a couple of years on the film, I know a lot more of what I don’t know. I still feel pretty ignorant. It’s a rich, dimensional, beautiful world that I never understood before, and one I will always be an outsider to. The gift of it is being able to collaborate with Nyle and to be trusted to step into the world with Amanda and help Nyle with his big idea of how to tell a story.
I feel like something y’all capture really well is that Deafness isn’t simply just the absence of hearing or the absence of something. I feel like that’s how it’s defined in a lot of media.
Davis Guggenheim: I remember we were at a restaurant in Martha’s Vineyard. We were talking, and Nyle said, “Hearing people, they are so uncomfortable with silence.” I was like, “That’s me.”
You know, silence is not just not hearing. It’s deeper, richer than that. [At Nyle] Is that fair enough?
Nyle DiMarco: [laughs] Totally.
One of the other things that we really wanted to do was play with the sound design and visual elements of what we called “visual noise.” In so many other pieces of media and film out there, you have this narrative of Deaf people and Sound being mutually exclusive and not having a relationship with one another. The assumption is that Deaf people can’t enjoy music or have a relationship with Sound in any way, but we do–it’s just different.
So the concept of visual noise, as well as the sound design, was something that we really wanted to play with everywhere, from the lights to the banging car hoods to the very beautiful drum scene. We wanted a Hearing audience who may not be able to comprehend that to really see and experience it, and understand that on an instinctive level.
I actually wanted to ask you all about the development of that visual noise language. From the flashing lights to moving the school buses to watching the TTY type in that small office, it’s like you’re watching Argo or All the President’s Men.
It bridges that gap between a Hearing visual language in Cinema that we’ve had for centuries and the Deaf experience in ways I’ve never really seen before. What was the process like in crafting that sensory experience for the film’s recreations?
Davis Guggenheim: I remember being inside the school bus. It was dark, and it was Nyle and me with some Deaf crew and some hearing crew. For the Hearing crew, the experience was completely flipped because we couldn’t see or hear anything. Nyle, Wayne [Deaf Lens Producer Wayne Betts Jr.], and some of the Deaf performers could talk just fine through ASL while we were trying to figure it out.
Nyle and Wayne were really smart about how these Deaf students could communicate with each other in the dark without being caught by campus security. We didn’t really know exactly what the plan was, but Nyle had the idea that the shadow of ASL on the roof of the school bus communicated to the guy in front of the bus.
And that was really fun to explore, not just to tell a good story, but it was the visceral experience of me feeling like, “people are talking, and I can’t understand.” The tables were flipped in a way that I could experience.
Nyle DiMarco: It’s funny. In that scene, we have the song Fight the Power while you see illustrated on the screen how Deaf people can use ASL as sort of a superpower, right? Especially with that scene in the bus. I think the sound design and the visual elements really do tie in perfectly there.
I talk about it in my review, but I feel like those scenes make a scripted version redundant. It’s like having your cake and eating it, too.
Nyle DiMarco: I agree!
Davis, did that experience challenge any preconceived notions on how to direct or assemble a film?
Davis Guggenheim: The whole time. You know, we had to keep reminding ourselves (Guggenheim, Amanda Rohlke, and Jonathan King), three Hearing producers, “We can’t be Spilman, we can’t be Spilman.”
From everything that I’ve heard from Phil Braven, who was on the board at the time, [former Gallaudet Chairwoman Jane Basset Spilman] was a really kind woman. That’s a big thing that revealed to me: just because you have nice intentions and said, “Oh, I like Nyle, I like Gallaudet,” that doesn’t mean you’re not doing Deaf culture harm.
I constantly found myself on an average day just doing what I always do. And sometimes, that was not stopping and saying, “Wait, are we just proceeding from the point of view of Hearing culture?”
Nyle, did you have to unlearn anything from your perspective as an actor in order to direct this film?
Nyle DiMarco: One thing that I learned specifically from Davis was how to reveal things. Obviously, as an actor, I can show up, deliver my lines, and leave. Of course I have to think about the context, but so much less about the environment of the story. It’s something that you deliver in a very different way.
Davis really taught me how to reveal things within a story that would provide an audience with a much better understanding. It was a great education for me, I learned so much from him on set in every way. But really, the revelation portion just really stuck with me. The whole notion of not giving things away and saving it so that people are living in the moment.
Paired with the archival, it’s such a real-time experience that y’all put together.
Nyle DiMarco: That was the goal. I’m really glad that it’s landing the way that it is. Even though there were a lot of awkward cuts with that much archival we were receiving, it gave us a lot of opportunities to creatively edit and tell a story that worked to our advantage.
Did y’all have many different cuts as you went through this process? And how did you find that sweet spot?
Nyle DiMarco: The first cut was actually just archival, because we wanted to see it actually laid out and sort of strung together. Then, as we were talking about what we would refer to as Deaf POV, we started to compile a list of places where we could storyboard that would make sense within the film and assist with some of those transitions.
We really had to figure out how to give the four their place in the movie as well as their own story. After a few cuts, we started to realize where things maybe didn’t make sense than we thought in the beginning, and it took shape over time.
Davis Guggenheim: Nyle’s right. The archive was our foundation. We just looked at it and said, “What do we have? What don’t we have?”
In later versions of that first night until the next morning when they’ve locked down the gates, it was just confusing to people. We were so excited to just have the audience go along for the ride, but then we realized there was some information that we needed to fold in.
So each cut was about how much information to put in like breadcrumbs along the way until the audience had enough information to be invested, but not so much that they, weren’t surprised. It’s a balance that you do with every movie, right?
That process of revelation that Nyle was talking about.
Davis Guggenheim: Reveal is everything!
Speaking of those different perspectives, it’s such a surprise getting I. King Jordan so late in the movie. It’s such an unexpected perspective shift when you’ve been following these students and having that clear distinction between hero and villain in the documentary.
Nyle DiMarco: We were so incredibly blessed that I. King was willing to do this and didn’t have any hesitation at all. It’s funny–before we started interviewing, a question was whether he should sign or speak. Davis looked at me and he was like, “I don’t know what the right answer is, but let him decide on screen.”
And the rest was very telling. He sim-commed [simultaneous communication between voice and ASL], which was so perfect for us. It was a really good transition, I think, for the audience. It just added color, if you will, to the drama of what it’s like in the Deaf community. As you mentioned, you know, it’s not a monolith by any means, and a lot of people have questions about what “Deaf enough” means.
But I. King Jordan was so happy to talk about it. Once we had finished the film, I had a chance to show him the screener with just him and his wife. I was quite worried about his response. Davis and I were a little bit concerned as to what his reception would be like. But he was wide eyed with awe and just amazed and very happy about it. He thought that the way that we described his journey through the film was perfect, which I think was an incredible relief.
Have you had any other response from other Hearing participants at the time, like board members, or response to the film in general?
Nyle DiMarco: I have not heard anything, with the exception of Phil Bravin, who was the chair of the presidential search committee, and he loved it. That was really exciting. I text him all the time, and if I make a post about DPN, he’ll screenshot immediately and send me a spotlight. But, yeah, I don’t know what else.
Davis Guggenheim: Also, when we were at Sundance, the Marlee Matlin documentary [Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, also at SXSW] was there that week. So that was very special to watch. We all went to see it. It was so valuable to see similar themes told through a different person and different lens, and how they kind of unconsciously intersected throughout. It was beautiful. We love her movie, and Shoshannah (Stern) did an incredible job.
It’s so amazing to see two very different perspectives on Deaf rights and accessibility at two of America’s most major festivals this year. Paired with how accessible Sundance and SXSW have been since the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels like we’re in a time where accessibility is really at the top of everyone’s minds.
Have you seen that kind of shift in the arts for accessibility to all audiences?
Nyle DiMarco: Yeah, it’s much, much better than it was pre-COVID. You know, it feels incredibly timely for so much Deaf content to be coming out in mainstream media. It parallels all of the accessibility efforts that people are really championing. So, we’re hoping to see obviously more Deaf content coming.
Also, I think Hearing people are starting to warm up to the idea of having visible access. Years ago, people would say, “No, I don’t want to see captions. It’s distracting.” You know, they really cared about this sort of singular experience of watching a film.
But now everybody watches Netflix with some captions on at some point. So I think people are quite used to it.
It feels like on social media, it’s a faux pas now to not have captions on TikTok and things like that.
Nyle DiMarco: Agreed!
Davis Guggenheim: I agree, it must be said that Apple has been a true champion, for not just this film and CODA, but also just in their products for years. Some companies do it sort of as an afterthought or superficial statement, but having their products be accessible is a real core value that Apple has, and we’re lucky to be making a film in partnership with them.
I think you have the perfect distributor for this, as well as to get the message out, both figuratively and literally.
Nyle DiMarco: Something that might be worth throwing out: it’s funny, while Davis and I did the full edit in Martha’s Vineyard, I asked Davis if he knew the history of Martha’s Vineyard. Ironically, this place where we were doing so much of our work really ties into the origins of ASL back in the 1600s, all the way to the 1900s.
It really brought us to this full circle moment, being on Martha’s Vineyard, editing a Deaf history story like this was just stunning.
And now y’all are keeping that history moving forward.
Nyle DiMarco: That’s right, that’s right.
Deaf President Now screened as part of SXSW 2025’s Festival Favorites section. The film debuts exclusively on AppleTV+ on May 16, 2025.
