Finding Normal

Listening to the Q+A session after the film, it was good to hear that some of those depicted in the film have seen the film and liked it. They were present at screenings of the film in Portland and were able to interact with audience members, validating their process and strengthen them at the same time. Lindstrom said that he made the film because he believes in the program’s strength, and that it deserves to be replicated in other communities. He admitted that there were ethical concerns of following individuals on such a fragile journey, and, to his credit, said that their recovery was the most important thing. He said that if he thought at any time that their recovery was in jeopardy, he would have backed off. This responsible approach validates the folks in the program, giving them strength, and, by the director’s own accord, telling them that they are important and valuable human beings.
The director Brian Lindstrom took great care in patiently setting up the story of each character involved. The film follows three of the people involved in the running the mentoring program, David, Jill, and to a lesser extent, Randy. Their stories are told through their interactions with the people entering treatment. The film focuses upon three key individuals, a 36 year old white kid (who I thought would surely drop out of the program by the end of the film — he didn’t), Peni, a recovering drug addict (Peni eventually drops out), and a black ex-con who was to me the most ready to change from the very beginning of his introduction into the program.

David, the main councilor, is amazing as he non-judgmentally walks new inductees through what they can expect as they enter into the program, telling them in a no bullshit way what they’re up against. At the same time, David validates their addiction and fear of overcoming it through personal stories. David, like Jill and Randy, believe that people can change, and believe that the change is so profound and so worth it that they are willing to do everything in their power to help those who want help.

Jerky camera work and editing throughout the movie seemingly paralleled the confusion of someone entering and participating in a recovery program. Cutting back and forth between letting those in recovery tell their story, and letting those running the mentoring program tell their story, the film does a good job of depicting the difficulty of overcoming addiction. Around about the half-hour mark in the 77 minute film, I began to get fidgety. Lindstrom’s choice to attempt to tell two distinct stories is the film’s largest fault. Attempting to blend both the stories of the people in recovery as well as the stories of the people running the program proved to be too big a task and weakened what could have been a stronger film. Had he chosen to focus on one or the other of the stories, the secondary story would have told itself, and with more grace. The stronger of the two stories in the film as it stands is that of David, Jill and Randy.

The three mentors have been through so much in their lives, and have beaten their addictions in order to create new lives for themselves. The power of this accomplishment leads them to want to reach out and provide that opportunity for others, and that, to me, was the story the film was telling most eloquently. During the question and answer session after the screening, Lindstrom’s comment about “..what David, Jill and Randy had to deal with…” as they provided help to those in the program spoke to this idea that the film really should have been more focused upon the program itself, and those who created and run it.

Butte, America

Growing up in a union household in a workingman’s town, I felt a strong bond with Butte, MT the first time I visited it. My father was the union president for the Fraternal Order of Police in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and he did his time working a union job in the rubber shops of Akron at Goodyear and then at Firestone, just as his father had. I remember listening to him tell stories of the difficult conditions when he was building tires, conditions that the union always fought to improve. And I remember him telling me, as union power in America began to decline, that it is because of unions that American workers have many things that we take for granted, like eight hour days and five day work weeks.

Remembering this, I very much looked forward to seeing Pam Roberts’ rough cut of her work-in-progress, “Butte America”. Roberts, a Montanan, but not a Buttian, sought to tell a Montana story that had national significance, and she found her story in the dusty hills of Butte. She knew the challenge ahead of her and recruited Edwin Dobb, a Buttian who wrote the 1996 Harpers article Pennies From Hell: In Montana, the bill for America’s copper comes due. Dobb, who returned to Butte after a 25 year hiatus, was dragged “kicking and screaming” into the project, wary of “entering into such an extreme collaborative process”, being used to working alone as a writer. The time away gave Dobb perspective with which to help craft a compelling film.

The duo formed a good team, creating a movie that spans 120 years of history — the rise and fall of the labor unions in Butte, and, by extension, in America. They capture the “feel” of Butte well, illustrating the ambivalence of a town’s dependency on “The Company” via footage with former miners, old timers who worked underground before they were “turned into truck drivers”, or just quit mining altogether when the pit mines opened, because their spirit was broken, their livelihood and stolen from them. They were proud men who did hard work in the mines underground, and they helped to build America.

But the story is more than just a story of workers and a boomtown gone bust. The story is a human one about the bonds that hard work can forge within a community, how hard work can actually become the defining element of a community. Those bonds and that sense of identity can be destroyed when work dries up. In the case of Butte, the work dried up as a result of corporate greed, when finally, mining left the town forever.

Roberts acknowledged, in the Q+A session after the showing, that one difficulty she faced in making the movie was the lack of first-hand accounts available. Many of the people who were alive during Butte’s heyday are dead. Killed in the mines, or by miner’s consumption. half of the characters in the film, Roberts told us, have died since the film was made. Roberts gracefully used the live resources available to her to create a beautiful film that blends archive film footage and photographs, donated home movies, and recreations, telling an important story in American history. Though the film is technically unfinished, (the movie still had many editor’s marks like running times and other video notations), the screening was a gripping one.

Roberts intends to put the finishing touches on the film, including more voice-over narration and more original scoring, in time for a spring 2008 release. I’m looking forward to seeing the final version.