David Wiegand, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Prison Town, USA: Documentary. Directed by Po Kutchins and Katie Galloway. 6 p.m. Sunday, "Truly California" documentary series, KQED.
Many documentaries, particularly those focusing on contemporary issues, become a kind of video mosaic of talking heads. Better films, such as "Prison Town, USA," go a step further and use the format to create a narrative.
"Prison Town," which was produced by KQED as part of its "Truly California" series, is the story of a small town in the high desert of California where not only the economy but also life itself is dominated by the presence of three prisons (with more on the way). Back in the day, Susanville thrived on sawmills, thanks to its proximity to large forests. But as the logging industry faded because of environmental and economic factors, the town withered.
So when the state came along with a plan to build prisons in the area, it seemed like a win-win situation. Since crime never goes out of style, the prisons would be filled with inmates who would need to be fed, whose families would need places to eat and stay when they visited, and, of course, there would be employment opportunities for local residents.
Instead, as "Prison Town," directed by Po Kutchins and Katie Galloway, demonstrates through a series of linked narratives, Susanville (Lassen County) and its residents feel today as if they're the ones behind bars. Mike O'Kelly's family has been in the dairy business for generations. After the mills died out, he was able to keep his business going by supplying milk to the prisons. But now there's a proposal out of Sacramento that would put an end to patronizing local milk suppliers and, instead, buy milk in bulk for the entire state prison system.
Mike's best employee, Gabe Jones, likes his job well enough, but his salary can't compete with what he would make as a prison guard. So, even though Mike's always treated him well, he quits the dairy to start training to become a prison guard. Another man from Susanville, named Dawayne, also enrolls in the class, but when he fails the final exam the first time he takes it, his family worries that there won't be any other source of income.
And then there's Lonnie Tyler, who stole $40 worth of canned tuna and other food items from a convenience store because he was out of work and couldn't feed his wife and two kids while they were traveling through town a couple of years ago. He was caught and sentenced to 16 months in prison, during which time his wife rented a tiny house and waited for his release. Finally freed, he has to stay in Susanville as long as he's on parole. And since there is virtually no economy in the town other than the prison system, Lonnie has a tough time getting and keeping jobs.
The filmmakers capture our attention by telling human stories. But along the way, they also talk about the explosive rise in prison construction in the United States, about how many of these prisons are built in rural areas, about what they do both for and to the local economy, about how half of all inmates in the country are in jail for nonviolent crimes, and about how the punishment for many crimes is considered significantly more severe than in it is in other countries.
That's a lot of information to pack into an 86-minute film, but Kutchins and Galloway do it well - well enough to make us want to know more, not just about how things turned out for the four families at the heart of the film's narrative, but for Susanville and all small towns that may have looked to prisons as economic saviors but ended up, in effect, economically imprisoned themselves.
The information is what you'll remember from the film, of course, but it will be hard not to recognize the quality of the filmmaking. This is documentary making at its best because it is, at heart, storytelling at its best.
E-mail David Wiegand at dwiegand@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/28/DDEPR8EEP3.DTL
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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