Creating 'controversy' Decatur native produces show on Martina McBride's"Independence Day"
By Emily McMackin , Current Page Editor
NASHVILLE — Step inside the downtown headquarters of Country Music Television, and you feel as if you're walking into a music video. A receptionist, resembling Faith Hill, greets visitors on the fourth floor. Bright, plush armchairs flank the lobby. Big-screen televisions entertain visitors in a waiting area.
Anne Fentress-Nichols interviewed Martina McBride and Maya Angelou for a television show she produced about controversy in McBride's 1994 hit, ''Independence Day,'' a song about domestic violence.
Security makes it easy for famous singers to trek through. Stars sometimes treat CMT employees to impromptu musical performances during lunch.
Television producer Anne Fentress-Nichols, 28, enjoys working in the atmosphere, not for its glitzy setting, but for reasons as modest as her blue jean attire and simple, suede boots.
"There is a lot of poetry in country music," said Fentress-Nichols, a Decatur native. "It's about the plight of the common man, lost loves ... subjects and feelings that everyone can relate to."
Petite and personable, Fentress-Nichols likes being the storyteller that you don't see, the invisible narrator who pieces words and images together to create a compelling story that "makes people think."
"Whatever job she's had, she's always wanted to make a difference," her mother, Rita Fentress, said.
When Fentress-Nichols left print journalism and took a job in television three years ago, she knew little about producing. Now, with her first show approaching, she's glad she took the risk.
"The things that make television interesting are the same things that make novels interesting," said Fentress-Nichols, a fan of pop culture, Southern literature and old country music singers like Patsy Cline. "It hits you in the gut. It speaks to what people know is true."
"Controversy" airing on CMT on Friday at 7:30 p.m., deals with domestic violence, a reality that touches the lives of millions of women and children. The program centers on the debate that surrounded Martina McBride's 1994 hit, "Independence Day," a song about a mother who burns her house down with her husband inside to free her daughter of his physical abuse.
"Even though it's about a song, it's about a song that means something — a song that will hopefully help people get out of what could be a fatal situation," Fentress-Nichols said.
The show is the seventh in a series of programs about famous artists who took flack after using their music to take a stand. Songs featured in previous series include Loretta Lynn's "The Pill," Tim McGraw's "Indian Outlaw" and Merle Haggard's "John Walker's Blues."
When McBride released "Independence Day," some radio stations refused to play it because the sensitive subject matter and vivid video didn't fit country music's image. Support for the song grew, giving McBride the breakthrough she needed to get the attention of record executives and fans.
The song "paints a picture of what people, who live in abusive situations, lives must be like, and what a tragedy it is," Fentress-Nichols said.
She started her research in June, talking with McBride as well as songwriters, producers and record executives who were working with McBride at the time.
Visiting with author Maya Angelou, a country music fan who has written about domestic violence, was the highlight of the project. After the interview, the two sat at Angelou's kitchen table at her home in Greensboro, N.C., and chatted for a while.
"It was like listening to the earth speak," Fentress-Nichols said. "She was so wise and so eloquent ... she had an aura about her that exuded peacefulness."
In retracing the timeline of the story, Fentress-Nichols discovered a connection between the song's groundswell of success and the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, who was abused and allegedly killed by her football star husband, O.J. Simpson. A jury found him innocent of her death.
Until that point, "People didn't know it (domestic abuse) was happening," Fentress-Nichols said. "It wasn't one of those things that was out in the open."
For her show, she also interviewed Denise Brown, Nicole's sister, and Tiki Barber, a New York Giants running back who has worked with domestic violence organizations.
She included Barber in the piece "because a lot of people associate African-American football players with O.J.," she said. "I wanted to make sure that everyone had a voice."
She whittled down 50 hours of tape into a 30-minute television segment, sometimes working seven-day weeks to meet her deadline.
"I was always thinking about what to put where, how to make it better and how to tell it in the best way," said Fentress-Nichols, who admits she gets her ideas in bathtub.
Destined to create
Running out of creative ideas has never been a problem for Fentress-Nichols, who was drawn to books and writing as a child. In middle school, she experimented with fiction and poetry and wrote her first book about "the things that live under the bed."
"A lot of kids are in touch with their emotions in middle school and write poetry but stop when they get older," her mother, a middle-school music teacher said. "She never stopped writing."
As a senior at Decatur High, she chose her "dream school," Brown University in Providence, R.I., and was accepted.
During the summers, she interned at THE DECATUR DAILY and U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer's office in Washington, D.C. Though she was a political science and environmental studies major, she didn't like the slow pace or the pre-packaged nature of Washington.
"I wanted to find a job where I could be creative and get paid for it," she said.
At Brown, she worked 60 hours a week as editor-in-chief of the Brown-Daily Herald, the state's second largest morning daily newspaper, while still maintaining a high G.P.A.
Moving to New York, she worked as a research editor at YM Magazine for teens and as a celebrity reporter for Time-Out New York, interviewing stars such as Ben Affleck, Courtney Love and Ethan Hawk.
The most interesting thing she learned from the experience? "Never wear a black (formal) dress, if you want your picture in Vogue," she said.
She traded New York for a California national park, where she worked for a few months as a naturalist and trail guide.
"It was good for her to get back to a natural setting," her brother, Ben Fentress, said. "It was what she felt like she needed to maintain her sanity."
After time in the woods, she moved to Chattanooga, planning to write a book, but finding a husband instead. When the couple relocated to Nashville, Fentress-Nichols gave television a try, working for Nashville Public Television, before accepting a writer/producer position at CMT.
"In writing, the pictures are in your head," Fentress-Nichols said. "Television adds another layer. In one sense, it's easier because you don't have to use the words to create the pictures. The pictures are the pictures, and they tell the story."
Though producing the "Controversy" segment caused her to skip her honeymoon and 10-year high school reunion, she didn't mind putting in the late hours and exhaustive research.
"Hopefully, people will see that it (abuse) is real, and that it happens, and if it helps somebody, that's even better," she said.