Jon Baime was always quite content with his family.
By his own admission, he had a charmed childhood growing up in New Jersey with his two older brothers, his mother and his father. But there was always a lingering feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
Then, Baime discovered that his parents had been harboring a secret from him for his entire life. A secret that would have life-changing consequences, and one that would start to break down the walls between Baime and his mom and dad.
After taking a DNA test at 54 years old, Baime discovered that the man who had raised him was not his biological father. After struggling to get pregnant, Baime’s parents had procured a sperm donor, never telling their children the truth about their parentage.
But that wasn’t all. Baime also discovered the existence of numerous donor siblings – other men and women whose parents were unable to get pregnant and all ended up using the sperm of the same man, Harrison Sheld – otherwise known as Hesh.
“When it hit me, it just hit me like a curveball,” Baime said about the initial discovery. “It takes time. It takes time to process this.”
To help him process things, Baime decided to make a film. “Filling in the Blanks,” Baime’s movie about his discovery and what happened next, is now available on VOD. Baime, who now lives in Decatur, made the film with an almost entirely Atlanta-based crew, and hopes the film can be healing for those who might be going through their own life-changing discovery.
Rough Draft Atlanta spoke with Baime about the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The movie shows you throughout the course of figuring out that your father was not your biological father. At what point in the actual journey did you decide you wanted to commit the story to film?
Jon Baime: I would say the point I decided to commit this to film was around the time COVID happened. It actually started as a COVID project, and then I recorded people that were in the movie – a lot of my donor siblings, my bio dad – just like we’re recording now using Zoom, or FaceTime. I put together about a half hour. I got about a half hour into it, and I thought you know what – maybe I should really just go full throttle with this and do it as a real movie rather than just a bunch of Zoom calls and see how it works.
I feel like we all had one of those, right?
Baime: Exactly, yeah. This was mine.
Had you ever expressed interest in filmmaking before, or would you consider doing it again now that this is over?
Baime: Well, my background is in video non-fiction journalism. I spent 14 years at CNN in Atlanta, which is why I live there still. I did all kinds of things – started editing for what is now HLN, it was called Headline News at the time. Then I worked on a kids TV show, a kids news show, for a couple of years, documentaries with TBS for about six years.
Non-fiction storytelling has always been the foundation of what I do. I’ve always been telling other people’s stories, but I was kind of surprised and realized – gee, I’ve got a story of my own to tell. I never thought I’d get to that place, but there I was, and I thought, What the heck? I’ve got these skills. I’ve been doing this for years. Why not?
What were some of the challenges that you bumped up against in telling your own story versus telling someone else’s? How do you make that transition?
Baime: There is sort of a transition. You know, this movie is really a character study, and it’s odd because it’s kind of a character study about myself. So that was a little challenging. I had to work with people who could help me separate from what I see, and help me see the bigger picture. That helped me tell the story, by working with people who had an outside view of this. People who shared my experience as being donor conceived, and just people who worked in the video film industry.
Speaking of those people – the way this is formatted is sometimes you’re interviewing people, but sometimes you’re the one being interviewed. How did you go about picking those people who are more behind the scenes to help you figure those aspects out?
Baime: These are people who I’ve worked with for years, who I’ve worked closely with and who have become very close personal friends in a lot of cases. The film’s editor, Kimberly [Munn] O’Neill, she’s somebody I’d worked with for years. My background is being a guy who grew up here in New Jersey – Jewish kid. Kim grew up as a military brat and then in Canada actually, a little bit. She had a completely different experience, so she was going to cut this with fresh eyes. That’s really what I was looking for – somebody who didn’t have this experience growing up the way I did. It might have been too much of looking in the mirror. It might have been too narrow. But having somebody with fresh eyes cut the film was something that I felt really helped it.
It’s interesting to watch somebody put together scenes. I mean, yeah I wrote it. But she would do things, and I’d be like, hey – that’s an interesting thing. You know? I would have never thought of that. I think it helps it with a broader appeal.
Do you have any examples of that? Is there anything in particular you can think of that she cut together?
Baime: I don’t know if you remember, there’s a scene where I’m interviewing my bio dad, and he’s putting together a puzzle. At the end, he goes – you leave the last piece for my wife, and then he says, oh Margie! You finished the puzzle. That was all Kim. That was not in the script. She just said, hey I found this, and this was great and I just did it. I said to her – that’s why I hired you.
I edited probably about 4-5% of the film. I did the last scene in Israel, and I did the scene where I’m sitting talking to my dad … at that restaurant. But Kim did the entire rest of it, and I’m very pleased with the way it came out. It’s good to have fresh eyes.
There are a lot of different people in this film – your donor siblings, your brothers. Was it difficult or challenging to get anyone to agree to be in the film? What were some of the hurdles you faced with that?
Baime: I’d say the biggest hurdle I faced with the timeline and putting the film together was COVID-19. That slowed everything down, frustratingly. But no, you’d be surprised. I was in a state of shock, actually, when I looked back. I think, my god – everybody just said yes.
The first time I brought this up to my donor siblings – we have an annual reunion every year. In fact, we’re having one tomorrow in Flemington, New Jersey. We had met maybe two years ago, and I said, hey, I want to do this. Actually, Hesh [Jon’s bio dad] was on Skype when we did this. Everybody agreed. The moms agreed. I could not believe it.
I really enjoyed the section of the film focusing on the moms. I felt like that was one of the more emotional parts, and you’re right – I’m also kind of shocked. I don’t know if I would have agreed so readily.
Baime: You know, those are the moms – the ones that have survived, or are surviving – those are the moms that actually told their kids at some point. So maybe they were a little more comfortable with it.
That brings to another question – what if any reservations did you have about putting the film together? This is a sort of life-altering discovery. Did any reservations come up while you were making the film?
Baime: There were times – again, the COVID thing was frustrating. I’m like, ugh – I shouldn’t have done this, it’s taking forever. Other than that, I didn’t really have any reservations. I would get frustrated at the process, the speed, again mostly because of the COVID-19 thing. But after I would do a shoot, and I was done with a particular shoot, I’d feel really good about it. Then I watch it and be like – oh, maybe I need to keep going on. And then somebody else would say, I’ve got to cancel, we’ve got to move it back a month or two. [Laughs] Oh no!
Not only that, it also adds a little bit of expense. You know, time does end up being money in this process, and that was frustrating too. But in the end, when it was done, I’m very happy with it. I’m very happy with what it turned out to be. I’m proud of it.
At the end of the film, you take this trip to Israel and have a moment of reckoning with your relationship with your parents and what they didn’t tell you. I was wondering if since you finished making the movie, if anything has changed in how you consider their choices, or how your thought process has evolved since then?
Baime: I would say since the end of the movie, since I finished the movie, my thought process has definitely changed. It’s gotten to a point where it’s really one of peace. I’m just not really angry anymore.
You know, the way I look at it is sometimes people think about their parents, and they think about their parents personalities, and they roll their eyes and go – my mother can be such whatever sometimes, ugh my dad can be whatever sometimes. That’s sort of where I’m at with this. It’s just one of eyeroll moments that you just think – you know, they could have done it differently. They didn’t, you know?
Part of this is, as I went through this process, and learned what the other mothers were going through … that was really very changing for me, was talking to those moms and seeing how badly they wanted children. It kind of dawned on me that this wasn’t about me. At first, it feels like it’s all about you. But it’s not. I mean, these were people who were in their 20s, maybe their early 30s. You know, by my standards, they’re kids! And they had to deal with this. We didn’t exist yet, so the decision really didn’t have anything to do with us because we weren’t there.
That’s fair. I always think of that idea of when you’re growing up, the point where you realize that your parents are human as well. This situation feels to me like you kind of had to learn it a second time, almost.
Baime: Yeah, it kind of hit me over the head. Like oh, by the way, you think they did some things – wait til you hear about this one!