Some stories rarely get told, not because they aren't important, but because nobody believes there's an audience. C. Fitz was told exactly that. No grants, no studio interest, just a two-to-three-minute tribute video that spiraled into something bigger. Six years and a ten-and-a-half-hour rough cut later, the world finally met Jewel Thais-Williams.
In this episode of Amiga Handle Your Shit, Jackie Tapia sits down with C. Fitz, director and producer behind the award-winning documentary Jewel's Catch One, now re-released on Apple TV, Amazon, and Google Play. C. Fitz shares how she carved out a career as a female director in an industry that rarely encouraged one, moving from production assistant to commercials to unscripted television, including helping develop the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, before a volunteer project turned into the calling that would define her career. Her story matters because it's proof that the projects worth doing are rarely the easy ones, and that persistence, not permission, is often what preserves a legacy.
The conversation traces how C. Fitz met Jewel Thais-Williams, the trailblazing founder of one of the first Black-owned discos in the country and a sanctuary for the LGBTQ+ and Black queer community through decades of racism, homophobia, police raids, and the AIDS crisis. They talk about the impossible task of condensing one woman's decades of impact into 85 minutes, the devastating history of the fire that burned Catch One to the ground, and why C. Fitz kept pitching a project nobody wanted to fund because she knew it was too important to let go.
The most powerful moment comes when C. Fitz describes sitting beside Jewel in the theater as she watched her own story on screen, crying during the AIDS crisis chapter of the film. After years of being overlooked by the very industry that should have celebrated her, Jewel finally received a standing ovation, not once, but across film festivals from Los Angeles to London. It's a reminder of what it means to finally be seen after a lifetime of quietly showing up for everyone else.
Tune in to episode 289 of Amiga Handle Your Shit for a moving conversation about persistence, representation, and what it takes to ensure the people who quietly change our communities are never forgotten.
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