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By Heidi Neubauer-Winterburn
Film & Facts: The Bridge and Eric Steel:
Eric Steel is the producer and director of the 2006 film The Bridge.
Steel began his career as a creative executive at Disney, and went on to serve as a VP at the art film distributor Cinecom. After working in the book publishing industry and producing films like Shaft, Angela's Ashes, and Bringing Out the Dead, he started his own film company, Easy There Tiger. The Bridge, a documentary, marks his directorial debut. In shooting The Bridge, Steel and his crew filmed the Golden Gate Bridge during daylight hours for 365 days. During that time, they filmed 24 people who jumped from the bridge into the San Francisco Bay. One of them survived. Six such suicides are shown and the film also includes interviews with friends and family members. Notably, the one suicide survivor, Kevin Hines, is now active, with his father, in suicide prevention awareness efforts in San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge, which does not have a suicide barrier, has had over 1,300 suicides since it was built. The issue of building a suicide barrier has been debated for decades, and the main arguments against such a barrier are aesthetic and economic.
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