John and Brenda Fareri hadn”™t yet driven over to Port Chester to see the film showing at the AMC Loews cinema complex when I stopped at their development company”™s office in Greenwich on an August afternoon. Brenda planned to see “Louder Than Words” on the last night of its one-week run in Westchester. She and her family ”” which includes adult triplets ”” already knew its story intimately, both the Hollywood version and the real-life one.
“I think the whole process brought all of us back to 1995 emotionally,” Brenda told me, speaking of the movie”™s production in which the Fareris were closely involved. She sat beside her husband at a conference table against a papered backdrop of construction plans and design renderings for real estate developments in the works at Fareri Associates.
Eighteen years ago, John Fareri, one of this region”™s prominent developers, and his wife undertook an extraordinary project that arose from grievous loss. Their daughter Maria, in a classroom exercise not long before her death at 13, had wished “for the health and well-being of all the children of the world.” Her parents did what they could to honor that wish with the opening of Maria Fareri Children”™s Hospital in Valhalla in 2004, eight years after their project was conceived. It stands as both a memorial to their daughter and an international model for family-centered pediatric care.
“It really does bring us back to 1995,” Brenda said of the film. Starring David Duchovny and Hope Davis as the shell-shocked, bereft parents, it tells their story of a family torn by grief and the building of a hospital on a foundation of $40 million in donations raised by the Fareris. “A lot of it brought back certain things that you push aside,” she said.
From its opening scene of Maria ”” the inspirational story”™s reassuring narrative voice ”” bicycling beneath trees brilliant with yellow fall foliage, the film captures that dark season in 1995. That September, Maria was hospitalized at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla with symptoms that doctors first thought to be caused by a form of encephalitis. After “a couple days,” as John Fareri recalled, her severe illness was diagnosed as rabies. Unknown to her and her family, she had been bitten by a rabid silver-haired bat. Maria was removed from life support less than two weeks after entering the hospital.
“In the U.S., two people a year die of rabies,” John said, “and there”™s a successful protocol” of shots to inoculate people who might have had contact with a rabid animal. But the diagnosis came too late for their daughter. The virus had already passed into her brain and nervous system.
“It”™s all one long day to me,” Brenda said softly of that terrible time.
They waited 14 hours for a hospital room, John recalled. Maria”™s parents slept in chairs in the hall, a scene portrayed in the film. “There was no privacy at all,” John said. “The conditions were far from ”” it was a county institution that was built years ago. Today hospitals are different. The environment is very important.”
It is that way at children”™s hospitals in part because of a stubborn, fixedly determined developer of not too many words named John Fareri. Brenda said Duchovny”™s taciturn character on the screen captured her husband well. She recalled Hope Davis teasing her co-star on the set: “”˜Did you get your word right today, David?”™ He said so little.”
Having decided he would build a children”™s hospital for Westchester Medical Center, “I found out the construction was the easy part,” John said wryly. The developer first had to raise $30 million as equity. And the project had to be separated from Westchester County, which owned the medical center, and required a transfer of ownership to a public benefit corporation created by an act of the state Legislature.
In the film, Duchovny”™s character speeds to Albany and in sweat clothes storms into the office of former State Sen. Nick Spano, who reassures him that the needed legislation has passed.
The Fareris”™ introduction to Hollywood began with Tamar Lurie, a Greenwich real estate broker whose son, Rob Lurie, is a screenwriter and film director and served as executive producer on “Louder Than Words.” “He thought it was an interesting story,” John said, and about five years ago approached the Fareris about making the movie.
“We had a lot of reservations in the beginning,” said John. “We finally decided to go along and do it.
“It was a very personal story and we weren”™t sure that we wanted it out there. But there were certain advantages.”
“It helped the children”™s hospital,” said Brenda, who chairs the hospital”™s charitable foundation.
It could help other families deal with “a very, very tragic situation,” said John. And it would tell the story of the bright, dark-haired girl ”” “the glue” that binds together her family members, as Maria says in the film ”” behind the state-of-the-art children”™s hospital. “A lot of times you look at a building with someone”™s name and you don”™t think twice,” he said.
Produced by Identity Films, an 8-year-old independent production company founded by a former Wall Street trader, and financed by outside investors, the movie cost $5 million to $6 million to make, John said. It was filmed in 2012 in Connecticut at locations in Greenwich, New Canaan and Milford; hospital scenes were shot at The Nathaniel Witherell nursing home in Greenwich. Hurricane Sandy played an unbidden role, halting filming in Fairfield County for two weeks.
“I was on the set every day; John was there quite often,” said Brenda. The Fareris and their children had cameo appearances in some crowd scenes. None of them, though, were on the set when Maria”™s character, played by Olivia Steele-Falconer, was taken off life support as her parents stood by helplessly. It is still all too real and emotionally raw for the Fareris.
“The movie kind of helped me anesthetizing,” John said. “When you see it over and over, it kind of anesthetizes you.
“Grief affects people in all different ways. You never learn about grief in school. They stay away from that.”
“I don”™t say anything about how people handle grief any more. It”™s very personal,” he said. As if to demonstrate, he pulled from his pocket a cigar cutter, a gift from Maria. The developer carries it with him every day.
“I think when your child dies, you try to give that child some purpose,” he said. “It”™s because of Maria that Children”™s Hospital is there. It may be indirect, but if she didn”™t live, if she wasn”™t born, that children”™s hospital wouldn”™t be there. I know it”™s helped a lot of people and will continue to help people in the future.”
Brenda had seen in David Duchovny”™s performance a spot-on likeness of her husband. And what of Hope Davis”™s portrayal of Brenda?
“I don”™t know if it was me,” she said. “I know what wasn”™t me ”” like throwing the dishes.” As their marriage and family founder with John”™s silence and withdrawal, Brenda”™s character at last erupts in tearful, dish-shattering anger that marks a turning point in the film.
“She doesn”™t throw plates,” her husband said. He bowed his head and smiled like a man of few words.
