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Filmmaker Pete Nicks’ TheWaiting Room is about whatmakes up a community, he says.The San Francisco Chronicle callsthe film “haunting and moving.” AnnHornaday of the Washington Post wrote,“If I could choose one film to play in theWhite House screening room this year, itwould be The Waiting Room, Peter Nicks’magnificent documentary portrait of ahospital emergency room that eloquentlyportrays the faults and limitations ofthe American health-care system, evenas it punctures some of the most toxicstereotypes surrounding it.”Nicks graduated from journalismschool at Berkeley and says, “My mentorswere social-issue storytellers. Imake films because I want people tothink differently. But I don’t considermyself an activist.”The film, which has complementarysocial media components, including apatient video blog, opens with an energeticand optimistic emergency roomreception staffer, Cynthia Johnson (C.J.),soothing patients in the overcrowdedwaiting room. C.J., says Nicks, was bornat Highland Hospital and raised in Oakland,and her cultural currency helps herspeak to the community in crisis.The Waiting Room weaves togethervignettes of patients and workers managingmultiple crises with too few resources.The figures in this drama include adivorced and unemployed father whobrings in his feverish young daughter; anangry man in need of dialysis; a studentwith testicular cancer, desperatelyseeking an operation; a carpet layerwith bone spurs who needs back surgeryand is facing foreclosure; and an addictwhose heretofore supportive pastor hasgiven up on him. The compassionate,practical and exhausted ER staff anddoctors add to the picture of humanity.It’s the hospital itself, however, thatNicks deems the protagonist in this castof intense characters. “The premise isthat the system is broken but the peopleare not. It’s the broader system that is thevillain,” Nicks says.Nicks first learned of Highlandbecause his wife, a nurse, worked there.He was riveted, he says, by the storiesshe came home with daily. Years later, helearned that a project featuring HighlandHospital needed a producer. “I called up[the team] and came on board,” he says.The project fell apart, but Nicks pickedup the pieces. Through a hospital boardmember, the initial team had approvaland access to shoot with little constraint.“In documentary,” he says, “access iseverything.”Nicks’ own story might help explainhis drive to tell the story of others whoare struggling or at risk. As a young adult,he became addicted to cocaine and spenttime in jail. He says that the support ofhis Nobles friends was one of the strongestfactors in his recovery. “I’ve kind ofseen it all,” he says. “I felt comfortablewith the people who flow[ed] throughthere [the emergency room].”According to the film’s official website,“The Waiting Room lays bare thestruggle and determination of both acommunity and an institution copingwith limited resources and no road mapfor navigating a health-care landscapemarked by historic economic and politicaldysfunction. It is a film about onehospital, its multifaceted community,and how our common vulnerability toillness binds us together as humans.”“I didn’t want to make a film justabout the uninsured,” Nicks says. Thefilm touched a nerve, Nicks thinks,because of what all people share. “Whenwe get sick, when we walk into a doctor’soffice, there’s that vulnerability.“It’s remarkable…the diversity andhumanity,” he says. “It makes youthink about what it is that makes up acommunity.”Nicks says that one aspect of thefilm for further exploration is theemotional impact on under-resourcedcaregivers. The film shows staff who,often heroically, try to give each patientthe best possible care within the limitsof a flawed system.Nicks is an Emmy Award–winningdocumentary filmmaker. He has directedspring 2013 Nobles 39