It’s rare for moviegoers to meet-and-greet the director of the film for which they’ve paid admission. In its Director’s Spotlight series, West Newton Cinema offers viewers much more than that. Each Q&A session marks the start of a dynamic conversation between audience and filmmaker. After seeing Justin Schien’s film, Death and Taxes, on August 21, attendees asked questions about anything from the minutiae of the United States’ laws surrounding taxation to the broader psychology and motivation behind the nation’s most wealthy individuals.
Director Justin Schein has significant experience as a cinematographer on more than 60 movies and co-founder of Shadowbox Films, an independent documentary production company. This experience shows through in the polished look of Death and Taxes, with camera footage that appears closer to grainy home video seamlessly intertwined with images of decades-old newspaper clippings, collages, infographics, and even animations by artist Roberto Biadi.
A search for the American Dream
Death and Taxes centers on the life of the director’s father, Harvey Schein, who had a decades-long career in entertainment at some of the world’s most prominent distributors of auditory and visual media. After briefly serving in the United States Naval Reserve and completing his education at New York University and Harvard Law School, he began his career as a lawyer for Columbia Records and later was appointed general manager.
He was most known for his role as president of the Sony Corporation of America (SONAM). After leaving his position at CBS to take on this role, Schein Americanized SONAM, oversaw the release of the Betamax home video recorder, and doubled Sony’s United States sales during his time at the company.
Described by his wife as “tormented by his own personality,” Schein repeatedly fought with management at Sony and was ultimately forced out of the company in 1978. Yet through it all, issues with Schein’s temper and personality followed him everywhere – from within his own home, where his unpredictable outbursts became routine, to public interviews, where he openly spoke on national television about his hot-headedness.
Growing up in poverty on the “scrappy streets of Brooklyn,” Harvey Schein worked very hard to achieve a comfortable lifestyle. This was his ultimate goal: a life where he would be comfortable, and – above all – one that would allow his children and future generations to feel comfortable as well. In the film, Schein tells his son about the spartan sacrifices his mother would make, supposedly for the good of the family and youngest members of the household: “It’s your money, your children’s and grandchildren’s money, and you can’t waste it. My mother said that, and I thought, how ridiculous can you be? And now I find myself being ridiculous.”
This is just one of the beliefs Harvey Schein seems to have inherited from the hardship he experienced in his early life – just one of the many “rules” that governed his life and his household. These “rules” included strict money-saving strategies, such as shopping only on “double-coupon” discounted days and setting the thermostat to the lowest possible temperatures in order to lower the family’s energy bill. Strict constraints like these often led to Schein’s son butting heads with his father in his teenage years, to the point where the adolescent would opt to visit a payphone over enduring his father’s lectures about paying phone bill prices when rates were high.
Charismatic but controlling
Schein was known to have a standout character: His wife said that he simply “radiated energy” from the moment she met him. But this energy came with a price: he had an “intimidating presence” at home, according to son Justin, and a persona that led to clashes with his coworkers at Sony and beyond. He brought this same forceful tenacity into his efforts to evade the estate tax (which he called the “death tax”) – most notably choosing to relocate to Sanibel, Florida, largely because of its reduced tax obligations for residents. This tore the family apart, as Schein’s wife found herself drawn to New York through her love of dance and city culture. In Sanibel, Schein gave back to the community and supported his wife’s love for performing arts through his funding of Schein Hall, which is now part of the Barrier Island Group for the Arts. Yet despite this action of love, Schein and his wife still separated. Wife Joy Schein described feeling that she “had everything [she] needed…[she didn’t] have this pressure to do everything, this fear just disappeared.”
Schein ultimately reunited with his wife, but conflicts continued as time went on. As his grandchildren were born, Schein had a minor stroke and later developed leukemia. His son Justin describes simultaneously taking care of both his newborn son and father, saying that each action of care “gave more meaning to the other.” Harvey Schein passed away in May of 2008, evading the “death tax” as he’d originally planned and leaving his family holding onto memories. “I can still hear Dad’s voice, telling me to hold onto what he’s built,” reflects director Schein.
A live panel reviews and reflects
Does this portrait frame the director’s father in a positive or negative light? Immediately following a showing of Death and Taxes, audience members were able to evaluate this for themselves, often noting in their Q&A contributions how “tremendously moved” they were by Schein’s story. “I find myself loving your father… the tax system really did him a disservice,” one panel member expressed, while another implied that the film was more negative in capturing the way the tax system “hit a nerve” for Schein.
The discussion panel consisted of Justin Schein, director of Death and Taxes and son of Harvey Schein; Ray Madoff, author and professor at Boston College Law School; and moderator Gilbert Metcalf, professor emeritus of economics at Tufts University. In addition to considering the movie’s illustration of Harvey Schein, there was extensive discussion regarding the economic principles behind the central conflict of the film. “What would be a solution to all of the debates about the existence of the estate tax? What could legally be changed?” one viewer queried. Madoff, Metcalf, and Schein provided invaluable perspectives on these complex questions.
The future of “Death and Taxes”
Justin Schein hopes to bring his father’s story “far and wide,” from putting the film on the classroom desks of local economics students to taking it to streaming platforms in following years.
The West Newton Cinema’s collaboration with Schein in showing the film and creating this Q&A event is just one example of its current programming, through which new movies synergize with lively discussion.
Chloe Carrano is a Fig City News summer intern and a rising sophomore at Newton South High School.
