'Beyond Human Nature' poster
On Nov. 22, 1992, an unusual story made headlines around Wisconsin and even caught attention from editors elsewhere. Tom Monfils, a worker at the James River paper mill in Green Bay, was found dead at the bottom of the mill’s pulp vat. Tied around his neck was a 40 lb. weight anchored to a rope. Two years passed before arrests were made. Six of his coworkers were convicted. Each maintained he was innocent.
According to Milwaukee filmmaker Michael Neelsen, he was unaware of the case until he attended the 2013 Green Bay Film Festival where his previous film, Last Day at Lambeau, about Brett Favre’s contentious departure from the Packers, was screening (and won Best in Show). He was approached by advocates on behalf of the Monfils Six, as the convicted coworkers have been dubbed. One of those advocates, Cal Monfils, is the victim’s brother. The result of his inquiry is the documentary Beyond Human Nature, distributed on VOD nationwide May 2 (preorder April 2) by 1091 Pictures and receiving its local premier at the Milwaukee Film Festival.
They “told me they had my next story,” Neelsen recalls of the Green Bay encounter. “I listened to them over a couple meetings, and I thought the story was fascinating on many levels, but I wasn’t interested in making an advocacy/activist project. Nothing against that kind of work, but it just isn’t what I do. So, I made that clear to them that I would attempt to go into the project without bias, interview as many different points of view as would speak with me, and tell the story however I thought made sense. They were on board with that.”
Beyond Human Nature makes no conclusions about the guilt or innocence of the Monfils Six. “In my opinion, documentaries about contentious stories carry far less weight when only one side of the debate is represented,” Neelsen says. “So, I reached out to everybody’s name who came up in research. I ended up interviewing people on the Monfils Six side, such as Mike Piaskowski, Cal Monfils, Steve Kaplan, the children of Brian Kellner, Steve Stein, and I also spoke with the lead investigator, Detective Sergeant Randy Winkler, and the prosecuting district attorney in the case, John Zakowski.”
Neelsen feels that all sides cooperated fully, including the police and prosecutors. “Randy Winkler was my longest interview of the entire project—twelve hours over the course of two days in May 2014,” the director says. “He brought boxes of investigation documents and materials and let me go through them and scan whatever I wanted for my own archive. He was helpful and always willing to participate. Same with Judge Zakowski, who came to be interviewed at our studio in Madison and then allowed me to follow up multiple times to his office when I had specific questions.”
He also commends those on the opposite side, “in particular Piaskowski, Cal Monfils, and Steve Kaplan, who, in addition to being interviewed, all allowed me to follow up with them throughout the years of production, come to their homes, borrow/copy documents, etc.”
Neelsen adds that his interest wasn’t in making a case for either side, “but in exploring how a story like this grips the soul of a community like Green Bay for 30 years. To this day, if you ask anyone on the street in Brown County about Tom Monfils, they have an opinion. How does that happen? Why this case and not another? What’s it like to have your life wrapped up in a story that won’t go away like this? And is there anything we can learn from it in hindsight? Those are the questions I tried to answer for myself by making this film.”
Beyond Human Nature screens 12:30 p.m. April 29 at Times Cinema and 9:15 p.m. May 1 at the Oriental Theatre as part of the Milwaukee Film Festival. The film releases on nationwide VOD May 2.
