Rivers's Sculpture Still a Big Issue in a Small Town

After traveling the film festival circuit for the last several months, the documentary “Legs: A Big Issue in a Small Town” arrived on Oct. 10 exactly where it began: in Sag Harbor Village, where Larry Rivers’s 16-foot-tall “Legs” still stands — as either an illegal structure or an artistic sculpture, depending on one’s viewpoint — attached to a house at the corner of Madison and Henry Streets, even as it awaits a State Supreme Court decision on its fate.

For the documentary’s filmmakers, Beatrice Alda and Jennifer Brooke, a couple who live in Sag Harbor themselves, this particular screening of “Legs” was special. Not only was there a full house at the Bay Street Theater, but the doc was part of the Hamptons International Film Festival.

“We’ve been in 20 festivals, and it felt completely different,” Ms. Brooke said. “I guess people knew a little more because they’re local.”

“What the audience laughed at, snickered at, applauded at — all different!” said Ms. Alda.

That very idea, being “local,” is one of the themes explored in the film, which uses the 1969 sculpture to kick off a discussion about larger issues. Through interviews with well-known village figures, among them the newspaper publisher, the mayor, artists, business owners, and many residents, it becomes clear that it may not be enough to own a house and live in it year-round to be considered “local” in Sag Harbor. Roots matter. So does having an opinion about what does and does not belong in the village — or whether that understanding itself is part of the problem. 

Another central theme of the film: the concept of tolerance versus acceptancewhen it comes to issues of equality among people of different races, sexual orientation, economic status, and more.

Ms. Alda and Ms. Brooke began the project by interviewing the current owners of “Legs,” Ruth Vered and Janet Lehr, who still live in the house to which “Legs” is attached. The onetime couple wonder whether they were targets of discrimination or whether their freedom of speech had been hijacked with the attack on the sculpture. Its critics say it is not art but rather an architectural structure that does not conform to the village building code, citing its nearness to the house’s property line.

“Legs” has been the subject of legal action since 2012, when Vered and Ms. Lehr filed suit challenging a Sag Harbor Zoning Board of Appeals decision that the work had to be removed.

The larger issues have been resonating with audiences in the festivals wherever “Legs” goes, the filmmakers say, which they find highly gratifying.

“Making it was hard work, and it was long, but there is a lot of joy in taking it across to different parts of the country and hearing universal themes arise,” Ms. Alda said. “That makes me feel like we made something people can relate to, and we can maybe shed some light on their views of who they are in their town.”

“Everyone seems to have a small town in their experience that gets hung up on seemingly minor issues as a vehicle for acting out their major issues,” Ms. Brooke said. “Everyone’s got a story like this, and that’s because we’re all humans.”

Although the documentary addresses all sides of the controversy — the sculpture’s supporters, the naysayers, and those who couldn’t care less — it tilts heavily to the supportive side. That was just what emerged in the process, the filmmakers said.

They themselves regard “Legs” as a piece of art that should remain where it is. As they made the film, they said, their opinion did not change.

“I would say my view of the town changed,” Ms. Alda said. “Maybe it didn’t change as much as we became enlightened. Our perception really expanded,” meaning, she said, that people’s views about the work did not always correspond to demographics. For example, the filmmakers expected longtime residents and politically conservative people to despise “Legs,” and that newcomers and liberals would love it. That was not universally true, they realized.

From the start of the project, they knew the sculpture itself would only be part of the film.

“We always knew we weren’t making a film about a sole piece of artwork on the side of a house,” Ms. Brooke said. “Beyond ‘Legs,’ we always wanted to find a way to capture what we find incredibly charming about the town. We did always know we were going to explore the village and its inhabitants, which is one of the things that makes it so special.”

Ms. Alda remarked, though, that there would be no documentary if Sag Harbor were without flaws. “I personally don’t shy away from the notion that it’s not perfect,” she said. “I think what it shows is that there are chinks in the armor of perfection. People sometimes disagree and don’t like what is going on in their neighborhood . . . and at the end of the day, you have to figure out how to live together.”