Gabby Giffords on her shooting, recovery and new movie about her life: 'I'm optimistic'

The first thing you notice when speaking with Gabrielle Giffords is how she talks.

There’s no way around it. Giffords, the former congresswoman from Arizona, was shot in the head during a mass shooting at a Tucson Safeway on Jan. 8, 2011. Six people were killed, including 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green.

The damage to her brain left Giffords with aphasia — difficulty speaking. Enthusiastic, even bubbly, she has a lot to say, but it’s an effort to say it.

But oh, when she sings.

Giffords is the subject of “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down,” a documentary directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West. The three of them spoke by Zoom recently about the making of the film. Giffords talked, often, in excited bursts. Her outgoing personality is evident in the film as well.

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'She's kind of a ham, come on'

“Gabby is such a natural,” Cohen said. “Her performance skills — not everyone knows this — go back to school when she was in a performance of ‘Annie.’”

And with that, Giffords launched into “Tomorrow,” singing it clearly and passionately.

“She’s kind of a ham, come on,” West said.

The film is unsparing in its documentation of Giffords’ recovery. Her husband, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, made extensive videos of the process, nearly from the start. “When we started looking at that stuff, it was extraordinary,” Cohen said.

It really is. And it’s a crucial part of the film.

“We’re so grateful that Gabby and Sen. Kelly shared that material with us,” West said. “Because I think it really allows people to see what it takes to come back from such a profound injury that Gabby suffered, and the slow, step by step process. We condensed it, but it’s pretty excruciating, what Gabby went through.”

Cohen and West also directed, among other documentaries, “RBG,” about the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the U.S. Supreme Court justice. In fact, that film provided a quirky link between the filmmakers and Giffords. Someone had been trying to introduce Giffords to the filmmakers; finally, a call was set up.

“Gabby opened up the call with a reference to the documentary ‘RBG’ and the person RBG,” West said, “and she lifted up her leg and showed us she was wearing RBG socks. That kind of connected us in a pretty cool and fun way.”

Fun is not a word to be avoided here. As horrific as the shooting was, and as grueling and at times almost cruel as Giffords’ continuing recovery can be, her personality is delightful.

“She really doesn’t look back at what happened and think about oh, what might have been,” West said. “She looks forward to think about what can I do now? How can I make a difference? It’s very profound. It’s very real. And it’s pretty inspiring — as a lot of her friends would say, ‘Gabbifying,’ and we feel that way, too.”

Yet one of the more frustrating aspects of watching the film is that, despite the work by Giffords and others to prevent gun violence, it keeps happening. It’s as if they could update the film forever.

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“This is such an important issue,” West said. “The fact that Gabby doesn’t throw up her hands and give up is pretty inspiring. It’s a profound problem in our country that we have to deal with. We can’t just pretend that it’s not there.”

“On a personal level, I will say I sometimes do get discouraged,” Cohen said.

“No!” Giffords interjected. “No way!” Then she hugged Cohen.

“This is why you need somebody with Gabby’s spirit and personality who’s just not going to let the sadness, the daily news, overwhelm the desire to really make a change,” Cohen said. Indeed, Giffords seems incapable of not looking on the bright side.

“Oh, I’m optimistic,” she said. “It’s a long, hard haul. But I’m optimistic.”

Giffords was excited to talk about the part of her skull in her home freezer

She’s also funny. At one point during the conversation, she said, “Oh, the skull.”

That would be her skull, a chunk of which, as we learn in the film, she keeps in the freezer at home. “Right next to the empanadas and sliced mangos,” Kelly says in the movie. Surgeons removed it to lessen the pressure on her brain after the shooting, and replaced it with artificial materials. Giffords wanted to keep it.

“How many people do you know that keep a portion, about a third, of their own skull in the freezer?” Cohen said. “Only Gabby Giffords.”

Giffords grinned like she was letting everyone in on a secret, and loving it.

But back to the music, because the film returns to it so often. Music was a crucial part of Giffords’ recovery; singing is often easier than speaking for those with aphasia. And Giffords’ love of pop songs — we hear songs by U2, the Police and, of course, the Tom Petty song from which the film gets its title, among many other selections — informs a lot of the movie.

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“We had no idea, really, when we came down here, the extent of Gabby’s love (of music),” West said, at which point Giffords began singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” as she does in the film.

“We actually had to change the music budget for our film a little bit because Gabby kept singing pop songs that are so appropriate and profound and so wonderful that we had no choice,” West said. “But we think it does make the film pretty entertaining. And we don’t shy away from that word. We hope that people enjoy this movie.”

'I hope others are inspired to keep moving forward'

Told that the filmmakers owe a lot to Giffords’ love of pop hits, Cohen said, “You say we owe her a lot for her musical taste. She may owe us tens of thousands of dollars for the extra film budget.”

Maybe. But there was no question about trying to work the songs into the film. Nor any question about whether they would be allowed to.

“When you’re asking for permission to license a song, you let the musicians and the rights holders know what the film is about,” Cohen said. “And when we said the name Gabby Giffords, it may not have been free, but the answer from everyone was yes.”

Giffords remains upbeat. Her attitude, she said, is, “Be grateful for friends and family, and live every day to the fullest.”

And that, she said, is what she hopes audiences take away from the film: “For me it has been really important to move ahead, to not look back. I hope others are inspired to keep moving forward, no matter what.”

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How to see 'Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down'

The documentary is in theaters July 15.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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