St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase: YES! IN MY BACKYARD and GATEWAY GUARDIANS

East St. Louis is a filthy, crime-ridden slum, an urban prairie where vacant buildings are crumbling and whole blocks are overgrown with vegetation. The industrial city once thrived but its population has decreased from a peak of 90,000 fifty years ago to just over 30,000 today. Like many cities, it has suffered due to deindustrialization and the general restructuring of the steel industry in the second half of the 20th century resulting in a devastating loss of jobs and business. YES! IN MY BACKYARD is a 45-minute documentary by Michael ‘Finni’ Finocchiaro that chronicles, through narration, the depressing history of East St. Louis and how it’s become a dumping ground for toxic waste. Unfortunately Finocchiaro’s film is an amateurish anti-corporate screed disguised as a documentary. He spends 90% of his film’s running time being driven in the front seat of a car with his camera pointed out the window filming the streets of East St. Louis while he talks about the city’s dismal finances and current decayed condition. Finocchiaro narrates and rushes through his term paper-ish text, stumbling over and mispronouncing words. Predictably he blames East St. Louis’ problems on “racism” and “corporatism” without offering evidence of those tired accusations. He doesn’t impart any information anyone who’s lived in St. Louis hasn’t known for years and offers no solutions. I’m sure if he’d bothered to get out of his car, he could have dug up some archival footage of East St. Louis in its heyday for variety, but aside from 3 or 4 old photos, it’s  non-stop driving around. He could have interviewed city officials or historians but he seems to have spent all the film’s production time in the car (I kept wondering if his doors were locked and where he gassed up). It’s an unpolished, hastily made film, and it’s deadly dull (though occasionally something interesting happens like a quick glimpse of his driver’s chin).

At the halfway point, Finocchiaro drives (in fast motion) over to the nearby town of Sauget where he spends the rest of YES! IN MY BACKYARD wearing  his young anti-corporate crusader cap.  Sauget has a much higher tax base than East St. Louis but is a stinky, polluted city thanks to an abundance of chemical factories (and amateur night at the strip clubs). Finocchiaro points out the pollution spewed by the Big River Zinc Mining Company, the third largest of its kind in the US, but like the recent FOOD INC., Finocchiaro saves his sharpest knives for Monsanto. Finocchiaro spends much of the last part of the film criticizing the St. Louis-headquartered biotechnology giant which has, as he labels it, an “infamous” chemical plant in Sauget. Both Big River and Monsanto have been fined for failing to secure toxic waste and Finocchiaro gets out of his car for a few minutes to scan newspaper headlines about the fines that they’ve had to pay. A lot of accusations are tossed out but again, no solutions or alternatives are suggested. Should we stop the smelting of zinc altogether so Sauget smells better? Monsanto has to put its chemical plant somewhere, so where exactly does Finocchiaro suggest they put it (Not in my backyard, pal!)? I suppose he’s for even more government regulation and oversight but he doesn’t have answers because his movie is about victimization and not ideas.  He slows down his narration for this second act but becomes more shrill. At one point he actually says “If you can’t tell I hate Monsanto by now, I suggest you start this movie over” (no thanks, Finni!). I get the feeling he’d be happy if Monsanto and every other St. Louis-based corporation folded so all of St. Louis could become like the east side. As a lifelong St. Louisan who used to drive to East St. Louis in the late 70′s to purchase contraband (who remembers the Colony porn palace and ‘pot-in-the-box’?), I did find a few of the historical anecdotes of the first section of the film interesting, especially a now-and-then look at the historic Majestic Theatre. In fairness, Finocchiaro’s  passion, idealism, and political voice are loud and clear and I’m not suggesting his facts aren’t well-researched. In the end credits, he thanks Michael Moore, Jesus, Kurt Vonnegut and TJ Keeley (a co-producer of the film) in that order. I’ve no doubt Finocchiaro’s hero is Michael Moore, who’s well-known for his left-wing politics, confrontational style, and getting out of his car!

GATEWAY GUARDIANS is a 56-minute documentary directed by Webster University film professor Rebecca Ormond that will be shown on the same bill as YES! IN MY BACKYARD at the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase and is in many ways, the perfect companion piece, especially if it’s shown second. YES! IN MY BACKYARD provides the lay-out and history of East St. Louis while GATEWAY GUARDIANS profiles a volunteer organization called the Gateway Guardians that feeds, rescues and helps adopt hundreds of stray dogs each year off the streets of that city. Lead rescuer PJ Hightower is profiled and she is clearly a brave and tirelessly dedicated woman. The film captures heartbreaking footage of the homeless hounds (there are thousands of them in East St. Louis), and chronicles Hightower and the other Gateway Guardian volunteers who pick these dogs off the streets, then take them to veterinarians and foster homes. GATEWAY GUARDIANS is a well-made and moving documentary.

YES! IN MY BACKYARD and GATEWAY GUARDIANS play at the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase  at noon Sunday July 18 at the Tivoli Theatre.