|
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Editions | myCNN | Video | Audio | Headline News Brief | Feedback | |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Enlightening with 'Dark Days'Documentary invites audiences into 'homes' of the homeless
(CNN) -- Marc Singer doesn't own or rent a place of his own in New York. He is, to a certain extent, homeless, but at least he has friends who have homes around town. "I'm staying anywhere I can," he says in a recent interview. At the moment, he's talking on a phone at the offices of his publicist in Manhattan. Singer, 27, is also worn out, the result of spending the last six-plus years making and promoting his first film, the documentary-with-an-agenda "Dark Days." The movie is about homeless people who for years lived in an underground shantytown in a Penn Station railway tunnel in New York. Singer devoted much of his life and all of his finances to making the film. According to published reports, it's left him about $150,000 in debt. "I'm pretty beaten up from this, myself. My personal life and finances, they're pretty much in shambles," he says.
It should be noted that there's not an ounce of regret in his voice, perhaps because his hard work is paying off. "Dark Days" won three awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including the Audience Award. Now, it's finding new audiences as it slowly releases to 20 markets across the country this fall. "Dark Days" won't be accused of cold objectivity. Singer felt that telling the story of the homeless people who lived underground could help them make enough money to get out. He also wanted to offer a different perspective on the people who are often referred to as "vagrant," "beggar" and "bum." "If there could be a little less hatred directed at people in the street" because of this film, he says, "that would make a huge difference." Going to the sourceAccording to the National Coalition for the Homeless, over 700,000 people in the United States are without proper shelter on any given night, and that number is steadily increasing. Singer saw his share. Seven years ago, the London native had just moved to Manhattan by way of Miami, Florida, and he was confronted by the presence of the American homeless every time he looked outside. "I'd see people in the middle of winter sleeping under a blanket in the snow," says Singer, who was 20, working part-time as a model and living in the East Village. "I'd be looking at them from my window and I would think, 'What's going through that person's mind?'" But Singer wasn't content to leave the question unanswered. He'd often seek answers from the source -- a person on the sidewalk, someone shivering on a grate. "I would plop down next to somebody and start talking," he says. "What's the worst that can happen? They just say, 'F--- off,' you know what I mean? But they could say, 'Hi.'" Going into the tunnelsMost greeted him kindly, and as Singer became friends with the homeless in his neighborhood, they told him about an alternate world -- one that measured its days not by the passage of the sun, but by the passing of trains. "One of them, who I became really friendly with, used to talk about the tunnels," says Singer. "He'd say, 'In the wintertime, I'm going into the tunnels. I'm sick of sleeping out here.'" Singer went looking for the tunnels, a collection of underground shacks sitting next to tracks where Amtrak trains roared by. The residents warmed themselves by campfires and illegally wired their used appliances to the city's subterranean circuits. They also warmed to him. Over a fire one night, one resident offered an idea: "Someone should be making a movie about us." Singer, who had never picked up a camera, saw an opportunity to make a difference. "I just wanted to help these people," he says, "and film seemed like the best way to do it." An enlightening sightSinger headed to a camera shop, rented a 16-millimeter camera and used his subjects as his crew, giving a dozen of the homeless -- three who have since died -- part ownership in the film. He sold most of his belongings and his bed, received $10,000 from a modeling-industry pal, and started living with and filming his new friends. Eventually Kodak chipped in with free film supplies. Singer says now that he was eager to erase stereotypes, which he believes have been perpetuated by other people who have attempted to document this social condition. "I'm not the first one to have gone down there (in the tunnels) and done something," he says. "But I'm the first one to put in any time. Every other film or project done on people living on the street, they're just so inaccurate. "When you watch all these other projects, you always see the little guy, sitting in the corner, feeling sorry for himself and blaming the whole world," Singer says. "You don't see a normal person." In "Dark Days," viewers who are normally wary of making eye contact with a homeless person are presented with an enlightening sight -- people acting at home, telling stories, grooming with electric razors, brushing their teeth, cooking on stoves, playing with their dogs, arguing over keeping their shacks clean. Viewers get to know the subjects on a first name basis -- Tito, Tommy, Ralph, Henry, Clarence, Ronnie, Julio, Lee, Brian and Dee. The documentary also captures the flip side to their cozy world -- drug addicts doing crack, digging in garbage for food, fending off rats the size of cats.
'Ready to shoot myself'Each resident of the subterranean city clearly has deep emotional scars, which in turn provides a comforting bond between them. Two residents, Ralph and Dee, share hauntingly similar family tragedies, made all the more poignant by the fact that they live in the same shack. The film makes an interesting statement: These people choose to live underground, closing themselves off from the real world. At the beginning of the documentary, one tunnel resident provides a telling argument for life below ground. It's a great place to hide. "Ain't nobody in their right mind gonna come down (here)," he says. Occasionally, Singer admits, he wondered if he wasn't a little insane, too. "There were times when I was ready to shoot myself," says Singer. "It takes you through the whole emotional range, making one of these things. It took me to places I never thought I would go, and it really tested me. "It showed me what I'm made of," he says. "But it's nothing compared to what all these guys went through living in the tunnel or living on the street. That's a different league than what I went through." Staying in touchIn the last segment of the documentary, Amtrak officials force the community to vacate the tunnel. For some, that means heading back to the streets, while others are given small apartments as part of a federally subsidized housing program. Ralph is one of the latter residents. In one revealing moment, he stands in his new, white-walled digs and contemplates his recent past. "I ask myself now, 'How could I have done that?'" he says. Though the film is finished and Singer longs for a vacation -- a permanent place to live, too -- he still keeps in touch with the friends he met underground. Often, they'll meet at a coffee shop and talk, he says. And the roles are often reversed. "It's very different now, my relationship with them," says Singer. "They're like my family. And when I have a hard time, I normally go to them for help now. "It's interesting. We've been through something together and I've seen them at their worst," he says. "Now I'm seeing them at their best, or striving for their best. It's quite nice to do that, to meet somebody in a coffee shop that you used to meet in tunnel. And only we know that. "It's the most beautiful thing I ever saw, seeing somebody get out." RELATED SITES: Dark Days |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Back to the top |
© 2001 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines. |
![[CNN Money]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/images/main/fn.logo.newsnet.gif){kind=logo}
![[SI.com]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/images/main/si.logo.gif){kind=logo}
(
