03.26.04
Be it ever so humble, a landfill is still home
Documentary tracks the ups and downs of a bare-bones village
– Joseph Gallivan

   It took Tomas McCabe and his co-director, Andrei Rozen, nearly four years to make the documentary "Bums' Paradise," which looks at the inhabitants of a Bay Area hobo jungle and how they deal with the threat of eviction.
   The shooting was tough. Film editor McCabe had read about the encampment in 1999 and hotfooted it down there with his video camera.
   "I thought, 'If I lose my job I could well end up here,' " he says.
   But few of the 60 people who lived in wooden shacks built in the shrubbery of a disused landfill in Albany, Calif., would cooperate.
   "It wasn't until I gave one of them a camera that people warmed to the idea, and to me," he says. "It blew things wide open."
   It was his act of trust -- lending the camera -- that won them over.
   Robert "Rabbit" Barringer got some great footage of the toothless and the tanned. He captured the characters and their feeble struggle against the police who finally came to disband the camp so that it could be turned into a park.
   You get to see the couples, the paranoid loners and the soda can collectors relaxing at home, in a place they love because no one bothers them.
   Some are French; some have kitchens. You see their artwork, especially the castle being built by "Mark," who calls it a spaceship and only works on it at night. You also hear a pretty disgusting anecdote about the punishment meted out to a loud, obnoxious couple to drive them out.
   "First time I went to bring Rabbit new batteries, he was all shaking and tweaky," McCabe says.
   "He was so nervous about losing the camera he hadn't touched drink and drugs for three days. The only footage he had was 20 minutes of a duck, and it wasn't even at the landfill. I told him to relax, and once he started drinking again he was all up in the cops' faces, asking questions."
   Rabbit's journal was the basis for much of the voice-over, and McCabe even had him come and watch some footage, then go away and write text to accompany it.
   With three entities claiming to manage the landfill, McCabe does not expect the park to open anytime soon.
   McCabe says Reed College has given him and Rabbit $800 to cover their expenses in coming to Portland. While here, they'll also be screening it at the Jerusalem of homeless encampments, Dignity Village.
   It's timely stuff: The landfill residents, some of whom drifted back after they were booted out, just got another eviction notice last week.