Lori Felker’s “Patient” cleverly takes the viewer on a few unexpected turns. Intelligence is not the point, but personality is, or at least it could be. We begin by listening to several conversations between patients and their doctors as they answer a series of questions designed to get to the heart of their concerns. We are all here. Our doctors ask us questions about our lives that end up revealing something about us that we would rather not admit out loud.
We listen to these people wearing white clothes anyway, identifying their secret and perhaps the sorrow in their life. The doctors, all young and perhaps beginners, listen with great understanding as they take notes and repeat the answers their patients give back to them, without judgement. Finally, they find a solution, and we hope, for the patient’s sake, that the medicine or help will be adequate and affordable. End of conversation.
The only explanation is that, because this is a short film that is best watched without any prior knowledge of what’s going on.
Director Felker is interested in both topics on screen, as we see many interviews. Doctors and their patients are given equal screen time and weight. We are the same as patients, but we also understand the need for doctors to tread lightly and make conclusions without appearing too vulnerable or critical. It’s a real balancing act.
Felker’s film will remind documentary readers of the great Frederick Wiseman. The camera stays still all the time, and we wonder: Is this a bedside manner? Or about the experience of seeing a doctor? America’s health care system? Or all of these things? A sense of listening and gratitude for not being in a doctor’s office or hospital yet will be felt, but we also walk away from “The Patient” wondering what we just watched. See for yourself.
Q&A with Lori Felker – SPOILERS AHEAD.
How does this happen?
“The Patient” was born from research for a feature film also called “The Patient,” where the main character is a suspended patient. While writing that script, I visited several acting centers in the Midwest to incorporate research into my writing. Soon after meeting the team at the University of Wisconsin Health Sciences Learning Center, I knew we had to make a short film together. Working with them gave me the opportunity to get to know this special process up close, as well as practice working with the facilities of this unique facility, direct improvement, and designing medical cases.
All SPs in this short film work there like SPs in real life. All medical students are also played by SP. For the most part, they did their job as they always did, except I wrote the cases and character descriptions patiently, and there were movie cameras in the room.
This may be too much, but if the question goes back to how I became interested in general patients, it was from reading Leslie Jamison’s “Sensitivity Tests”, where she writes beautifully about her experience as an SP in college.
What was the casting process like? And did that play into the writing process in any way?
All the actors in this short film worked at the Madison casting center, and they were talented, generous, and caring. They really inspire me. I met most of them the day I went to do research and put them directly into the film as SPs or Med Students. Kathleen Tissot, who plays the role of the director in the film, plays herself and does what she usually does at work. There isn’t really a script; I wrote an outline for the day, backgrounds for the three main characters, and worked with Kathleen to write medical cases for the SPs to work with.
In the middle and final scenes, I had a narrative thread and I knew how I wanted them to feel and how the day was going for them, but I would also ask, “Where do you usually live when you do this?” Or what do you usually do at this time? And they were showing me, and I was wrapping that up. There are shades of visuals, acting, documentary, and fiction throughout the film. I was a little short on actors, so we sent a call to their full SP to see if I could get a few more people I hadn’t met during my research trip—three roles were cast this way.
How did you and the actors do this while shooting? Did you all consider it a better job? Were there multiple versions of the scenarios?
They were doing their job, but they also coached me the way they did theirs on the road. I wrote medical cases (with guidance and examples, of course!), then met with the SPs and Kathleen over Zoom (as they often do) to review the cases, answer their questions, and make sure they were communicating and could do the learning objective. These cases are only a few pages long and are not formatted like a script, but they provide basic medical information, a learning objective, a character trajectory, and a road map to answer the med student’s questions.
SPs memorize/absorb those cases, then improvise on them in the room for about 15 minutes. Then, when it comes to feedback, they switch back to themselves as teachers and have an honest conversation with the med student. We followed that format. I wrote two medical cases, and each med/SP combo student did both with feedback, 20 minutes straight. We filmed the rehearsals with two cameras, and I never said to cut or ask them to redo anything. I was trying to capture the real flow of the conversation, looking for questions and answers, and the progression of real interactions between these real people.
Originally, I wanted to work with real Med students to make it more realistic, but that was not possible for obvious reasons. The SPs were the first to speak up and say, “Nobody knows Med students better than we do!” and it’s true! They knew the processes, questions, and even the feelings of these students well enough to develop from those models.
In the end, I got 160 minutes of 20-minute film tests.
How many versions or versions did you go through in the editing process before you decided the best time to express what was happening here?
I knew from the beginning that I was interested in making the audience think that the first encounter in the film was “real”, even if only for a moment. I knew I had to establish Gayle (played by Ronna Trapanese) and Melanie (Rainy Armstrong) as people we felt we knew and cared about before we parted ways, but I had to find the right cutoff point.
Immediately, I tried to cut my hands, showing where the pain was as I jumped from one actor to another. When I showed my friends the quick method, it was clearly successful and became the basis for the flow and organization of the entire film. It showed the repetition and consistency of what they were doing, but there was also no doubt that the two characters were not the same person at all.
After that, gradually. Some people pick things up quickly because they are familiar with the idea (from a medical relative or Kramer on Seinfeld). Some viewers don’t hesitate to say “oh!” until the SPs are in the living room, walking in their clothes during the movie. I think the reveal starts early and slows down gradually, allowing the viewers to find a time that works for them.
Have you ever sat in sessions like this?
I did it! At several centers in IL and WI, I sat down at a computer monitor with headphones and could switch between rooms or watch multiple tests at once. It was a visually interesting way to see the similarities and differences between the games and personalities in the room. I was also able to focus on the students’ “games” and how nervous or confident they were.
I know that the “Patient” version of the feature works. Is there anything you want to tell us about?
The feature version of “Patient” is a mix between the interesting work of standard patients and some of my frustrations in medicine. There’s the main character, Reggie, and the family and the roommate, and there’s a complete script, but there’s also scenes from Reggie’s work that seem like I lifted them out of the short (because we edited and shot them the same way). This feature is in the mail, and I hope to have a premiere later this year or early 2027.
