LI filmmaker to host screening of his LIRR massacre documentary
Charlie Minn, whose 2013 documentary, "The Long Island Railroad Massacre" will screen in Merrick. Credit: Paul Ratje
On Monday evening, Joyce Gorycki of Mineola will gather with friends to commemorate the mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road that left six dead and 19 injured on Dec. 7, 1993.
“It’s been 25 years,” says Gorycki, 72, whose husband was killed in the attack. “And we’ve got more shootings now than we ever did. Why is this still going on?”
Gorycki and others connected to the tragedy will be at the Merrick Cinemas Monday for a screening of “The Long Island Rail Road Massacre: 20 Years Later,” a 2013 documentary by local filmmaker Charlie Minn. The film will screen again on Tuesday. “The Long Island Rail Road Massacre” features interviews with Gorycki and other survivors, who recount not only the shooting but the bizarre trial of the shooter, Colin Ferguson, who served as his own lawyer and wound up interrogating his victims. Ferguson was sentenced to 315 years in prison. (A shorter version of Minn’s film aired on the Investigation Discovery channel in December 2013 under the title “Terror on a Train.”)
“I think it’s a crime that changed Long Island in many ways,” says Minn, a Manhasset Hills native. “I don’t want to say it was the first modern-day mass shooting, but it felt like an early one. People’s reaction was, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ If it happened today, we might not think that much of it.”
Minn is a former broadcast news reporter who turned to directing documentaries in the early 2010s. His first, “A Nightmare in Las Cruces” (2011), revisited a mass shooting at a New Mexico bowling alley in 1990; “8 Murders a Day” (also 2011), focused on Mexico’s drug wars. Minn now splits his time between Manhattan and El Paso, the Texas border town that served as a home base early in his career, and continues to produce films at a rapid pace, sometimes releasing three or even four in a year. In October, Minn released “Parkland: Inside Building 12,” about the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
Minn describes himself as a “victim-driven” filmmaker who tries to avoid focusing on the perpetrators of crimes. “In the film, I did look at Colin Ferguson,” Minn says. “Since then, I have had this policy where I don’t mention the killer’s name in movies anymore. I feel like why should I give them what they want? They just want attention.”
Since the shooting, Gorycki has worked as a gun safety advocate along with former New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, whose husband was killed and son was severely injured on the train. “I want them to remember,” Gorycki says of audiences who come to see the film. “All we get is more shootings and massacres. This should have stopped a long time ago.”
“The Long Island Rail Road Massacre: 20 Years Later” screens Monday at 7:30 p.m. with Minn and others in attendance, and Tuesday, at 1 and 7:30 p.m. at Merrick Cinemas, 15 Fisher Ave. For more information, call 516-868-1601 or go to merrickcinemas5.com.
