ALBERT INSINNIA
"OVER THE GW" Reviews
Updated: 7/24/07
NY Times - Variety - NY Post - NY Sun - Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Free Will, Held Hostage for Years in
a Zealous War on Drugs
Seventh Art Releasing
George Gallagher as Tony, a Bronx youth who is held against his will at a New
Jersey drug rehabilitation center, in “Over the G W.”
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: June 27, 2007
The war on drugs may have temporarily lost ground to the war on terror, but the
rehab drama is here to stay. “Over the G W,” Nick Gaglia’s lean yet harrowing
dramatization of his own experiences with drug rehabilitation in the late 1990s,
follows a troubled brother and sister (George Gallagher and Kether Donohue) as
they are removed from their Bronx home and committed to a New Jersey treatment
center by their well-meaning parents.
As an expected 30-day stay stretches to two years, the siblings are
systematically brainwashed into a state of abject fear by cult like staff
members and the center’s menacing director (Albert Insinnia).
Imprisoned and physically abused, the inmates are encouraged to inform on their
erstwhile “druggie friends” and persuaded of their inability to survive outside
the clinic. These scenes, remarkable in their restraint, strikingly capture the
gradual erosion of free will and the seductiveness of tipping from rebellion to
compliance.
Interweaving gritty black-and-white with saturated color — a sickly yellow-green
for inside the center and throbbing reds and blues outside — “Over the G W” is a
disturbing look at reprogramming that masquerades as rehabilitation. Having been
forced to drink the Kool-Aid, Mr. Gaglia has produced a work that’s as much an
act of emesis as of filmmaking.
OVER THE G W
Opens today in Manhattan.
Written, produced, directed and edited by Nick Gaglia; director of photography,
Mr. Gaglia; music by John Presnell and Will Di Martino; released by Seventh Art
Releasing. At the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, 155 East Third Street, at Avenue A,
East Village. Running time: 76 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: George Gallagher (Tony Serra), Kether Donohue (Sofia Serra), G. R. Johnson
(Mr. Morris), Albert Insinnia (Dr. Hiller), Michael Mathis (Joe), Justin Swain
(James) and Jessika Graff (Jeanie).
Over the GW
By JOE LEYDON
'Over the GW'
Writer-director Nick Gaglia explores abuses in a rehab center in the
documentary-style feature 'Over the GW.'
A Seventh Art Releasing release of an Over the GW production. Produced by Nick
Gaglia, Theresa Gaglia. Directed, written, edited by Nick Gaglia.
With: George Gallagher, Kether Donohue, Albert Insinnia, Nicholas Serra, Julia
Moriarty.
Drawing upon his own harrowing experiences in a now-defunct cult-like rehab
center, writer-director Nick Gaglia has fashioned a documentary-style drama that
is too narratively disjointed to achieve maximum impact, but too emotionally
potent in fits and starts to be dismissed out of hand. Ultimately, "Over the GW"
resembles nothing so much as a rough draft for a more conventional feature. But
its raw energy and real-world underpinnings might attract venturesome auds to
screenings at commercial and nonprofit venues.
George Gallagher appears as Gaglia's autobiographical alter ego, Tony Serra, a
drug-abusing Bronx teen whose worried mom (Julia Moriarty) checks him into a New
Jersey rehabilitation clinic where physical restraint, mental abuse and
will-breaking brainwashing are routine therapies. Gallagher easily generates
sympathy as he's repeatedly brutalized by the overbearing minions of the
center's frightfully zealous (and apparently, medically unlicensed) Dr. Hiller (a
manic Albert Insinnia). But Kether Donohue (as Tony's sister, another
clinic inmate) and Nicholas Serra (as Tony's increasingly concerned father) make
more powerful impressions in slightly more multifaceted roles. Pic overall is
haphazardly constructed -- the passing of time is announced, but never felt --
but skittish DV lensing is effective.
Camera (color, DV), Gaglia; music, Will Di Martino, John Presnell; sound, Dale
Chase; associate producer, Kether Donohue. Reviewed on DVD, Houston, June 24,
2007. (In Slamdance Film Festival -- competing.) Running time: 76 MIN.
MINOR CRUELTY
By V.A. MUSETTO
Rating: stars
June 27, 2007 -- 'OVER the GW" is an assured first feature by 25-year-old
writer-director Nick Gaglia. One reason it rings true is because the script is
based on Gaglia's real experiences.
As a teenager, he was confined for 2½ years in a corrupt, now-defunct
"rehabilitation" center in New Jersey.
"You weren't allowed to talk to your parents," Gaglia has said. "You weren't
allowed to look out the car window. You weren't allowed to read. If you read the
back of the ketchup, you got yelled at."
In the no-budget "Over the GW," a troubled brother (George Gallagher) and sister
(Kether Donohue) are placed by their well-meaning parents in a cult-like rehab
center in Jersey - over the George Washington Bridge from their home in The
Bronx - where they are mistreated mentally and physically.
Both newcomers, the two leads impress, as does veteran actor Albert
Insinnia as the center's psycho director.
If These Cold Walls Could Talk
Movies
By NICOLAS RAPOLD
June 27, 2007
The hit-and-run drama of "Over the GW" is as grueling and disorienting as its
grim subject: a drug rehab program that engages in cult-like dehumanization in
the guise of boot-camp tough love. Based on director Nick Gaglia's own ordeals
at just such an organization in the 1990s, the film's account of cruelty and
wretchedness rings true, but the rough-hewn filmmaking and confusing
storytelling withhold too much from the already battered viewer.
"Over the GW," which opens today at the Pioneer Theater, begins with the
humiliating admission process for a young Bronx addict, Tony (George Gallagher),
to a rural rehab center. Strip searches and repeated five-point restraint
introduce him to his new world of pain. Humiliation and degradation at the hands
of obnoxious staff and peers are the hallmarks of the program's day-long group
sessions, which take place in a desolate, fluorescent-strafed room resembling a
school gym in hell.
Convincing, documentary-style interview clips with Tony's father ( Nicholas
Serra) and grandmother ( Minnie Krakowsky) break up the scenes of abuse.
Trusting and old fashioned, the two comment on the events after the fact,
offering the film's only (and scant) explanation of the rehab program's
bewildering escalation. (The movie's title refers to the family's fateful trip
across the George Washington Bridge to drop their son at the program.)
But Mr. Gaglia, not interested in the critical remove of a documentary, lets the
cabin fever and shell shock of the program define every aspect of his film.
Watching "Over the GW" is like being trapped in the nightmarish hidden-camera
portion of a newsmagazine exposé, at the hands of an impatient editor. The
handheld camera scurries about, recording without explaining, and keeping the
big picture at bay.
On the one hand, this yields a wrenching depiction of Tony's loss of will and
the tyrannical control exerted by his handlers. We're yanked through bunker-like
corridors and sleeping quarters, from one tirade to another; the camera ventures
outdoors mainly when someone tries and fails to escape. Brutal Marxist-style
peer condemnations grind on and on, incited by a saturnine head psychologist (
Albert Insinnia) who might not even be a real doctor.
But the storytelling in "Over the GW" is often needlessly cryptic, and not
always because the drama bravely resists coming up for air. When Tony is joined
by his sister Sofia (Kether Donohue), ostensibly for moral support, it's not
clear why or how she then gets sucked into the program permanently. The
vagueness might be faithful to the shattered memories of a survivor, but the
uninitiated need some firm ground to stand on, especially to understand pivotal
moments in what becomes a two-year stay for Tony.
It's also hard to move beyond a basic, visceral sympathy for Tony and Sofia,
because the 75-minute film finds little time to establish their pre-brainwashed
identities. Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Donohue's youthful charisma does at least make
the horrific evacuation of Tony and Sofia's self-awareness that much more
tragic.
"Over the GW" ably observes all the Orwellian details of cult-style programming.
The "doctors" force patients to refer to suspect relations as "druggie friends,"
whether or not they are involved in drugs, and the inmates' thoughts are so
regulated that it is forbidden to read even the back of a cereal box.
Perversely, abuse is immediately followed by "I love you" choruses. And in a
particularly weird practice, people in the group sessions must signal their
desire to speak by making the same arm-pumping gestures as a baby throwing a
tantrum.
The film's distributor, Seventh Art Releasing, has made the slightly mondo pitch
that "Over the GW" builds on the cult-world muckraking of its previous release,
"Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple," a documentary about '70s cult
leader Jim Jones. "Over the GW" has a happier ending than " Jonestown" (it'd be
hard not to). But it's too faithful to the discombobulation of its subject,
which, ironically, limits its impact.
Through July 7 (155 E. 3rd St., between avenues A and B, 212-591-0434).
Harrowing true tale fails to connect
in "GW"
Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:21PM EDT
By Frank Scheck
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Filmmaker Nick Gaglia has based this debut
feature on his own hellish experiences in a New Jersey rehab center that
subsequently was shut down by the authorities.
But while one can readily sympathize with what he must have gone through, it's
not enough to excuse "Over the GW," which he wrote, directed, edited and
photographed. As has been proved so many times before, good intentions don't
excuse amateurish execution. The film recently received its U.S. theatrical
premiere at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater in New York.
George Gallagher plays the role of the filmmaker's alter-ego, Tony Serra, a
troubled Bronx teen who's shuttled off to a rehab center in Jersey (the title
refers to the George Washington Bridge) by his concerned parents because of his
drug and alcohol dependencies. His sister (Kether Donohue) is soon consigned to
the same fate.
But what was supposed to be a 30-day stay stretches into 2 1/2 years. The
siblings are subjected to brutal treatment at the hands of the center's clearly
psychotic director (Albert Insinnia) and his cultlike employees, who deliver
physical and emotional abuse in a variety of ways that the film depicts in
harrowing fashion.
Unfortunately, the innate power of the story is dampened by a mainly incoherent
script, lackluster direction, annoying cinematography that alternates between
black-and-white and garish color and ineffective performances. Running a mere 76
minutes, the film seems to depict its characters' incarceration in all-too-real
time.