Transcripts For CSPAN Q A 20121029 : vimarsana.com

We started discussing what was the future of this place. In october of 2009 i came with my crew for three days just as an experiment and film in the city just as an outsider. Talked to a few people. Absolutely riveretted by the people and the plays. I thought theres definitely a movie here. We need to make a film in detroit. Host when impacted, i read your father had an impact on you watching him and his business over the years. Guest , thats right, my father is had a manufacturing company. He really like in the 1980s with the rise in japan had to innovate and come up up with new ideas and making it difficult to create products. He started engineering complicated things that couldnt be replicated or stolen or easily made overseas. Thats now his business arrived. I kind of had a front row seat to what it was like going you in the 1980s. How he survived was interesting it was all about being nimble and innovative. Which i think detroit needs and the rest of the country pretty much needs right now. Host his Business Partners over the years, around detroit moved out of there to mexico or some other place other than the United States . Guest my dad ran the business with his two bores. They were adamant to keep their products made in the United States. However, i would say the vast majority, Something Like 60 of my fathers went out of business. Partly because of it was just cheaper to make things overseas. Host how many documentaries have you done before this one . Guest a lot. Ive been making films over ten years. This is our fifth documentary feature off of theaters. We made a lot of small and large Television Products for hbo. We make our living in the nonfiction world which is rare and lucky. Host are you based . New york city. Which of those documentaries made it biggest . Guest jesus camp. We made a film called jesus camp. We lost to al gore convenient truth. We all knew we were going to lose. It really sort of struck a nerve. It was really a look at the evangelical right through the eyes of children who are being home schooled and creationism, etcetera. It was at that time in 2007 a real window into this world. We impact judgment on the kids. Sort of put a face on the nameless christian right. Christian right responsible for electing george bush. For us, we went in and met these children and their families. We realized pretty quickly that these were the socalled foot soldiers for the right wing of the republican party. They also just believers and religious people and you know, going to the beat of their own drum. Really, it was eye opening for us. We really tried to just paint the picture of how things are with these communities without passing any judgment. Host i saw that documentary and he question as i was watching, why did this camp let you in . Guest the families are proud how they raised their kids. Becky fishers believes very strongly shes saving souls and shes bringing children to the lord. Actually when we went to each familys home, long before the film premiered, we make it our business to go and show the final films the sum of our film. The first thing becky fisher, head of the camp said was, kind of watered it down. No one is going to watch this, its so boring. I said becky, i come to you from a secular planet. You have to listen to me. People are not going to just turn this off or not talk about it. This is considered i wasnt considered radical, this is considered hard core faith and belief. She was just like, all right, well, thats fine. All the parents and kids loved the film. They felt like it was an accurate representation of their lives. Really, the strong reactions came from the outside of people. I thought that was very interesting. I became a much more tolerant person, much bigger protector of freedom of religion and speech after making that movie. I saw how some of the family and kids were ridiculed. Thank god it wasnt today because it was really pretwitter and all of that. I was really alarmed by some reactions to be honest with you. We hadnt really expected that. Host what documentaries . Whats the motivation . How much of it is a business versus you just like this medium . Guest its a terrible business to be in. If i was financially motivated, i would be doing Something Like reality television, god forbid. No one gets into documentary motivated by the business allure or the financial allure. Although, we do make a fine living at it. But, really, its rachael and my codirector and i, we share an incredible curiosity to learn and its incredible gift that were giving to be able to pick up the phone, knock on someones door, go to someones community and say hi. Please talk to me because im trying to tell this story. We ended up meeting people and experiencing things that most people never will. We never would. Part of its a little bit selfish because youre exposed to the world and especially our country because we focus mainly on domestic issues. Almost exclusively. We do it because it becomes addictive. You know how that goes. You never run out of topics. I cant imagine that any scripted film people would say the kind of things they say in real life. In fact, with detropia with our new film, i get asked is anything is scripted in the film. The answer is of course, no way. Some of the things that are said are so right on. Its like regular people, people just cant believe what theyre hearing. Host how did you get the money . Guest for which one . Detropia was easy to find strangely. We pitched the film, took about six month to raise the money. Our two major partners were the Ford Foundation. Not ford motor company, Ford Foundation in new york. Obviously had ties to detroit and works in detroit and has initiatives in the city of detroit and also has a large film, called just films. They were a major financier of the film. Pbs was our second biggest funder. The private Family Foundation and finance documentary fund kicked in a little bit of money and Impact Partners which is an equity organization. The collection of us together, they financed the film. No one had editorial control. That was one of the deal thats we had. We were able to raise the money without having to make promises to anybody which including pbs and including broadcaster. Host dave bling was mayor of detroit. What mayor is he . Guest hes a clean mayor. Hes an honest mayor. Theres a history of corruption and all kinds of business with some of the city council and the mayors of detroit including kilpatrick who is now on trial. Detroit is just come out of a feeling of sense of being empty handed and betrayed and tricked by their previous mayor. I think most detroiters will say kilpatrick tricked them. Dave being the right answer to kwame. Dave bling has the most thankless job in america. The problem this man has been saddled with are almost insurmountable. The city declared bankruptcy in april and very narrowly averted it by going into a consent agreement with the state. Republican governor schneider and mayor bling are comanaging the finances of detroit. Its a very slow recovery financially. Theres still talk about a possible take over by the state. It will be the largest city ever taken over by the state. Stock in california might be the largest of 300,000 people. Mayor bling is an honest man. I dont know if hes a fantastic charismatic leader. You now, i think that detroiters like people are a little bit of swagger and attitude. To be forthright as a mayor, hes been kept in closer to the vast than most detroiters are used to. Host lets look at a little bit of your film. Obviously its a commercial product and we will show bits and pieces. If people want to see this or they want to see jesus camp, how can they get them . Detropia is playing in theaters across the country now. It in over 50 cities. People go to detropia. Com. Its in all secondary markets. D. C. , new york, l. A. , philadelphia, baltimore, etcetera. Its probablily its a very experience. All of other films you can see on netflix or online. This film, detropia will be on dvd. Host run this opening and explain whats going on here. [video clip]. Youre watching live one of 10,000 homes they are trying to get done in the next four years over the course of the four years of mayor bling term. These are houses that are never coming back. Not right now, no. One family every 20 minutes is moves out. Moving out of drought. These houses are disappearing from the landscape. 90,000 are ready to go. Everyday nonstop. Everyday. Get them done, get another list. I know we got like 11 on this street. Host this is early in the documentary, why . Guest its very early in the film. Its very important to set the stage to acclimate the audience. We chose a scene that is played out many times all day long all over the place in every season. We didnt start with something that was so provocative that we happen to capture it. This is something that we saw hundreds and hundreds of times happen. You almost dont see it more when you drive through detroit. These buildings really must come down because theyre not being occupied and dangerous structure. The city is doing what it must. Its still alarming at first to see so much going away. Host you point out detroit used to have close to 2 Million People and now its got 7er hundred thousand. What happened to the population . Guest the population, well, you know, many people left. They didnt all leave the state. At least a Million People moved to the suburbs of detroit, including my parents who were part of that socalled white flight out of detroit. But the truth is that there are riots in detroit in 1943. The population was never that comfortable with the arrival of so many africanamericans in the south who came for the good jobs for the jobs when detroit became democracy and started becoming the center of world war ii. Even more people that already come, already started the great migration. More and more people came. The white population was never that comfortable with that. Segregation is a very real part of the detroit pass. With the riots, it was really almost the final point. Host at 82 africanamericans in detroit, it is the most africanamerican city in the United States . Is it . Guest im not quite sure. Its up there. Im not sure if its the number one. Im not exactly sure. Whats washington d. C. . Host its down to close to 60 or 55 . Guest i believe its one of the top. Host you went about your task, partner white woman director, what was the reaction to you . Guest well, one of our photographers is africanamerican. Race is always just under the surface. I just would sort of bring it up right away and explain quickly i was raised in Farmington Hill and my parents were detroiters. I just sort of addressed it right away. I know what youre thinking. A girl from the suburbs, i dont live here anymore, i went to mercy high school. Lets get it out of the way. But i would spend my weekends in detroit and i know the city but im an outsider and a little bit of an insider. I would acknowledge it right away so we could talk about it. Just pretending theres not some kind of racial divide or pretending were exactly the same is fool hardty. Host you took your cameras in to watch mayor bling and talk in the future. [video clip]. What were seeing is that virtually the city illustrating some level of population decline over the last 50 years, weve lost about 50 of our population. If we were at about 1. 86 million in 1955, were arguably somewhere between 800,000 and 900,000 today within the stay city city of the same size. The number of jobs actually decreasing more. Youre probably up into the 50 real unemployment in the city. Even though you may have some detroiters that get a job in detroit, once they get to a certain level of income, they get the hell out of town too. That seems to be the direction a lot of folks take. But the reality of thinking that were going to repopularize this area in significant numbers any time in the near term, i dont see that as not a reality. When do we think well be able to identify those neighborhoods that are stable where you really want to make investments . We have to start doing something. Thats got to happen. Otherwise, youre going well lose the people. Host part of what i noticed watching the documentary its dark. You dont seem to use much artificial light and you certainly didnt in there i assume. Guest we dont use lights at all. It all natural lights. That was a very dark space unfortunately. We didnt do that on purpose. There was a quality to that scene that is hunkering down trying to solve the problem. Leaning in, what are we going to do. This is what were dealt with. In a way the look fit well with this particular scene. Because the city is trying to figure out what to do and these problems are multifaceted. They are trying the best they can but theres only so much a administration can do in light of this kind of breath of problem. Host how do you pick the people . Guest we met so many people. We could start by asking some reporters and some friends. Wed say if you were making a film in detroit, who were the ten people you absolutely would not miss. Who are we going to miss that we shouldnt miss. We could get list of ten. In that meeting, many hundreds of people and eventually, we sorted out the chorus of people we thought could best tell the story and who we ended up filming are detroiters who middle class detroiters who could leave but have chosen not to. The majority of our characters really could go. Actually there was a poll taken today on the detroit news very startling poll. That people responded to and said 50 of detroiters if they could leave tomorrow, would leave. 40 say they intend to leave within the next five years. The accident has not stopped. There are newcomers but it has not bottomed out. It makes it even more significant the people we chose, for some reason, for one reason or the other feel that detroit needs them and theyre going to stay. Host you mentioned this earlier, what impacted the riots of 1967 have on the city . Guest i think the riots i think you dont want to overstate it. There have been riots in the past. It was pretty devastating. Partly it was never dealt with soon after. The next administration didnt deal with the racial divide. The city suburb divide was cemented and even from my aunts and uncle and the way they talk about detroit is sometimes its not with derision and theres still anger there and that was their city. They feel in some way they had to leave. Theres a lot of miscommunication and theres detroiters who stayed that would have left. Theres still that very strong divide and i really havent seen it anywhere else in the country. I say the impact was pretty heavy. Host statistics that i found, 43 killed, 400 injured and 7000 arrested in that. Guest , National Guards had to come in and tanks in the street. Host i want to show you something. It popped up in the interview some professor at a university. He was there. Lets watch this. [video clip]. It started on a saturday night. We had spent all day saturday in canada often people in detroit crossed the bridge and go fishing. When we got back, there was a full flown riot going on and it was a very hot evening. I was about 12 or so then. Nobody was inside. At one point, my mother, my sister and i walked down couple blocks to this sort of main intersection where there was hundreds and hundreds of people. After being there for a while, a car drove up and two white men got out and fired at the corner. They lifted shotgun and fired. Every one on the corner was hit. It was probably about 20 people. Everybody was hit except for me. My mother was shot, my sister was shot. Some of the injuries were more serious than others. But everybody was people were bleeding and of course panic. Host the statistics, ten or 12 of the People Killed were white and rest were black. How much money has been federal money has been sent into detroit and state money trying to rebuild it and what impact it have . Guest theres a lot of efforts right now not just from the state and the federal government. But actually theres so many sort of g. G. O. N. G. O. S. Every foundation you can think of was set up in detroit. Every person you can think of around the world was like n. G. O. Hot spot. Everyone has their pet project and pet neighborhood and their initiative, be it education and farming. Everyone was dependent upon detroit. Other people you know, feel that its their responsibility, and foundation to assist the people and poverty. Its a very low performing school system. Theres a high rate of illiteracy. Theres something for every foundation in detroit. Just recently, actually, you mentioned federal funding, 164 firefighters were laid off as part of this downsizing, as part of this effort for mayor bling to get the finances under control in the city. Firefighters, which detroit needs because its got sort of the highest case of arson in the country. These guys are laid off. About two weeks later, miraculously a hundred guys are rehired. When you look to find out where the money came from, its actually department of Homeland Security has the funds for things like that. I dont want to overstate, thats something you want to think about. The department of Homeland Security needed to step in to keep detroit as safe as it can be for the moment. Were talking about i wonder, we seen the Auto Industry bailout, weve seen the bank bailout, are we head into an e. R. A. Era of failed city. We talked about failed state. Are we looking at a slew of bailouts that the federal government would have to step in for many municipalities on the brink. Its not just detroit. Thats one of the messages of the film. When you got to tax base and you got a recession and housing bubble. At of our urban centers cant pay the bill and cant protect the people. So detroit in so many ways is interesting to look at as a possibility for several other urban centers in this country. Host back to your detropia. George mcgregor, how did you find him . Guest i found him because of a tavern owner we were filming was hoping that the chevy bolt will help bring his business back. We went up to the plant and found out who was in charge. Host here he is. [video clip]. Guys at 18. 50 an hour, they will be going down to decrease in pay. They want to move them down to 14. 50. For factory support, which is the guys making 14. 35, which they will lose 3. 35 an hour on their wage. I ask him, how do i sit down with one of my members who is struggling to make 14. 35 to sit at the table with their family and tell them that my union and i agreed to take a 3. 35 pay cut. I asked her that. I said, i told you guys, negotiate any kind of agreement, its going to be a liveable wage. What did she tell us about a liveable wage . I i dont care about the guys having a liveable wage. Pointblank. Why . To beat us down. Humiliate us. Why . What good is that . They dont care. Thats the biggest problem. Host how much do they blame the north American Free trade agreement for this . Guest theres a lot of talk of nafta. Host lot of this plant theyre talking about shuts down. Guest basically the men are rehired in mexico. It already move most of its operation. This is the last plant opened. When you look at what the employees are making, i believe its 3. 52 an hour all end. There was no way to these guys could have actually accepted, i believe, that would have convinced or persuaded this company to stay. There in lies the real conversation. We need to bring Corporate America to the table in some kind of way because its just going ton to be on price, everyone will be laid off. This just articulates what that looks like. You hear about both candidates now, the shrinking for the middle class. The middle class is going away. What does that actually mean . What does that look like. In detroit, making this film detropia, we sort of experience what that looks and feels like from people who are experiencing it. Thats what you see. Host both democrats and republicans passed nafta. Both liberals and conservatives supported nafta. Whats the solution . Is there enough money in the federal till to bail out detroit . Guest i dont think there is enough. There might be enough money in the federal till to bailout detroit. I dont know if theres enough money for other cities lining up behind detroit. The one party i could not get to peek to me at all speak to me at all was any representative from any corporation. Which is sad, thats sort of the missing element. We need to figure out you want to persuade some of these corporations that, you know, you want to get them incentives to stay. In detroit, i think should really be seducing businesses to come. Theres a lot of land, lot of people out of work. Tax incentives will come, that will be wonderful. You also need some sort of assurance that these companies are basically decimating the people that would eventually buy their products. I feel like conversation happening. How do we keep the corporations here. How do we make that happen. I would like to hear that. They continue it leave this droves. Host if you watch the full documentary. Theres a lot of music. Not a narrator. Were not giving people the feeling of a documentary. Let me run a little bit George Mcgregor from your documentary. [video clip]. We became a American Made washing machine or the iron. Where did all of your Manufacturing Base go . We built everything. Everything, america did. We have a standard living in america that the working guy provided, a standard of living, which is eroding now but it a standard of living that the working guy. It started right here in detroit. Right here in detroit, a middle class started right here. Everybody know it. We just got to face up to it so were a i believe to to send our kid to school. Middle class. Got a boat. You understand what im saying . Middle class. Host is there anything that people like George Mcgregor or uaw in general did wrong. Guest absolutely. Theres a lot of blame to go around. The unions are not blameless in this. There was definitely a time they had a lot of extras going on. I mean, george described, we werent able to use it in the film, he described a program called the homework hotline so that employees child at General Motors could call 24 hour hotline and get help with their homework and there was someone there to help them with it. Thats really nice but that cost money. The vacation days, the sick leaves, there were people in the past that fall down on the job. It was too hard to fire people. There was a time for sure where it was too bloated and so was management taking sort of producing subpower car and paying themselves too much. Overall, the industry behaved as a cartel at time. Refusing to make small cars. Meanwhile honda and toyota proved them wrong and we lost some market share. So many mistakes were made. I have to say, we did learn making this film, of course, the basics such as that, after the bailout,u. A. W. Did agree to take a 50 wage cut for all the new hires. The incoming wage went from 28 to 14. At this point, i think it gotten leaner. I dont know if that will be enough. They say the industry is roaring back but well never regain the market share that we lost. I dont believe. Its funny because people say, well, they say that the Auto Industry posting huge profits. That doesnt translate into a mass amount of jobs anymore. In terms of employment, they will not be able to employed anymore. Host where did you get your training for this . Guest making documentaries . Host yes. Guest just doing it. I went to Georgetown School of foreign service. I got the film i joined film society and we started making movies. I changed my mind instead of trying to join the state department, i moved to los angeles and work apprentice for years. Documentary filmmakers, always nonfiction. People make documentaries, usually come at it with a variety of backgrounds. Very few of us took the film route. You need investigative sense and patience and you need to be a good listener, persuasive and have an ear for material. Host how many hours did you shoot . Guest too many, 5er hundred hour on this hundred hours on this one. Rachael and i met in new york. We were working for another producer. We were asked to produce a two hour tv special on the church of scientology. Nobody wanted to make the film because i think people were afraid of the church of scientology. We did it and it was a fascinating experience. We met on that film and in 2001 we started films in new york city our own production company. Host more from detropia. Who named it . Guest i did. Host when did you get that . Guest couple weeks before sunday. We didnt have a title. We opened up film up sunday in january. It needed a title. We couldnt figure out what to call it. There was a shot in the film where an auto part store has been converted by abartist to read an artist to read instead of auto parts, it reads detropia. We s. T. A. R. T. Ed play started playing with the concept. Host this next one is about scrap metal. Where did you run into that . Guest that was lucky for us in the sense that these guys are doing something illegal and they dont come up and tell you i want to be filmed. We were driving one wintery night and i saw a spark in this field. Very strong orange flame and we stopped the car and i said, i think these guys are taking down this building. We approached and somehow we were able to film the scene. Host , okay, well watch it. [video clip]. Just make sure we werent stealing nothing and were just careful. If they had any complaintings they would have to run us off. Cant get a job. Were still getting 11cents a pound. If we take copper, you get 2. 50 a pound. It goes somewhere and gets melted. Goes everywhere. China. Why it goes to china . So they can make stuff and sell it back for more. Host how does that work . How do they make money . Guest these guys know more about the price of metal on the International Market than most people. They keep track of what the price of copper, steel, aluminum and all the metals every single day. It goes up and down. If the price is good enough, they get up and they go and try to find those metals from abandoned factories and homes and things like that. They take it to scrap yard, which closes at 10 00 p. M. And they weigh it, they get their money and theyre right. Especially copper. It crucial and its expensive. Basically these guys are is the cleanup crew. Host do you you have idea how much they make . Guest apparently they each made 200 bucks. Host they take the metal out of buildings . Guest actually they adjust taking down what we found out later was a cadillac repair shop which was too devastating to put in the film. I couldnt put that information in there. Yes, they go into homes. Most of these guys go into abandoned buildings. You go into most of the structures in detroit, the structure is there. Host who are the coys . Guest the coys are newcomers. He met in hes and they hawaii. They heard of detroit and they heard it was urban and exciting. Detroit is becoming an attractive place for people like them. Host we see them in a building. How did you find them . Guest i found them, i forget how i found them. They do graffiti art, installation and they sort of take the structure of detroit like many artist and making them boo air own personalized into their own personalized project. [video clip]. We have a project we want to do. We started evaluating. We looked at baltimore and looking into new york city and detroit came up. I knew thats one thing detroit had abundance, old warehouses. About a couple weeks ago, we were able to keep our studio because everything is so affordable. Detroit is constantly amazing me. Feel like this is redefining what the value of things are, 25,000 for an amazing loft. I dont know, that makes it accessible for people like me. I would never be able to afford a home as an artist. Here i am with a studio and apartment. In a major city functioning for like 700 or less a month. We can experiment here because if we fail, we havent really fallen anywhere. Host whats your sense of how many people will do what theyre doing . Guest i think its been about 50,000 people come in the last five years. I believe. I hope i didnt get that number wrong. I have to double check it. Its hard to tell how many have come over the last five years, i think. I know theres been a 59 increase a young population coming in the last five years to detroit. Will they stay . I dont know. A lot of them work in restaurants, coffee shop or dont have to work because the rent is so cheap. When they have children, will they send their children to public schools. Its very unknown thing but its very interesting trend because i think that what were seeing is Young College educated, mostly caucasian kids who would have moved to chicago or new york or philadelphia or los angeles, cant afford it because theyre not finding employment. A place like detroit, its a place that needs them. They can sort of make a mark. They can live for super cheap. They can have a loft. They can mingle with other people. There is a community growing. Very specific neighborhoods and midtown detroit. Its become a trendy thing. I dont know if its a trend that will be long term. Host you said you grew up in Farmington Hills. Whats that like and how far is it from downtown detroit . Guest 25 or 30 minute drive. I grew up 5 miles from the city limit of detroit. I group. On 12mile. Its a world away. Its got suburban, lofts and box tours and coffee shops. Its decent public schools. Interesting when i grow up mostly caucasian people there, all the caucasian people there are mixed now. Which is a good thing. Partly because the black middle class made an exit out of detroit and made it into the suburbs. Most people that could leave have left. Host why should detroit be saved . Why there should be a lot of money pumped in there . Guest i dont think this country is willing to let detroit go. It might be for reasons of nostalgia. It is detroit. It holds a special place. Its just this country will not allow detroit to become completely abandoned and to fail. I dont think its going to happen. I think its a point of personal pride. It the same reason that we have an american Auto Industry that no one wanted to allow to go bankrupt. Host you lived there what year . Guest this dilemma was made, 2010 film was made 2010. Host both of you lived there . Guest we took turns. We got apartments in downtown detroit. Host were they cheap . Guest yes. Host how do you and rachael divide your responsibility . Guest it depends. We castle films together. We choose most of the subjects together. We come up with the look and feel and the tone of the film together and then we go on locations separately. We dont go there together. Its better to have one person in the field and other have objective view of the material. Ill watch the material that she filmed and well show pieces on the editor. She weighs in and shes a major collaborator of ours. Host do you both have families . Guest rachael had a baby in the first week of production begin. She was on location a little bit less because of that. I dont have children. I have a husband and she has a child. Host character named tommy stevens. Who is he . Guest mr. Tommy stevens is the heart and soul of detropia. Hes a retired school teacher. He is a black middle class man who could leave detroit but doesnt. He owns the last blackowned blues bar in detroit. On the east side of detroit its called the raven lounge. He opens every friday and saturday nights. Some people come and sometimes they dont. It was a really busy business. Hes watched as industry has failed. He watched his customers go away. Hes an interesting guy to look at because the proximity of the plant. Just because hes an amazing street philosopher. [video clip]. Capitalism is a great system. I love it. But, it exploits the weak. Always does. Unfortunately. You know, one of the sociologist i used to read back in the 1960s, said that the upper class needed the middle class to buckle the poor. That if you take the middle class away, the upper class will have problems from your lower class. You got to think about it now. Only 2 of americans exceed 300,000 a year. If you wipe out the middle class there, are you going to have 98 of poor folks in this country . Host what do you think of his philosophy there . Guest well, he ends up saying that if theres no buffer between rich and poor, the only thing left is revolution. Hes not calling for revolution or riots. The man is observing that at some point, this is going to break. At some point when youve got the amount of jobless people and it goes on the rise and people would have lost their dignity and ability to provide, you know, economic revolution is a possibility. He said this a year before the occupy wall street. It was interesting. Of course occupy wall street didnt go anywhere. The idea that there would be this conversation happening and royaling in this country, he observes that. I think he is somebody who articulate what is a lot of people feeling which is that somehow, working hard and doing the right thing, keeping your head down and putting in the hours, that used to translate into at least a desent lifestyle. That was some sort of guarantee. We manueled it would be a imagined it would be a guarantee. Hes deserving what a lot of people now which is anxiety and panic that they wont reap the benefits of capitalism. Host what do you think . You group up with a father who is an entrepreneur who is a capitalist. Guest thats right and hes a republican. Host this man had a business. Guest hes a great businessman. He buys houses in detroit and renovates and them and rent them to people. He believes the free market and he loves capitalism and he believes in the free market and identifies that something is broken. We need to find a way out of this. Im not an economist, im a filmmaker, the idea that, i think that we believe we didnt need those jobs anymore. We didnt need those dirty jobs. We could do better. Something better was on the way. Why not let those jobs go. I think it was shortsighted because we didnt realize we havent replaced it. Weve been swirling around trying to figure out what it is. So many millions of low skilled people were able to have a decent lifestyle an education, you have a job. Mr. Stevens and his own matter of fact way seems to be making those observation. Host is crystal starr her real name . Guest yes. Shes a star and shes a detroiter and born and raised. Shes a poet, shes a writer, shes a blogger. Whos trying to stay in detroit because she loves it. Trying to make ends meet and trying to figure out whats there for her as a young curious and intelligent person. Host when you were following her around, how was it set up and why where she was in the old mansion and the theaters . Guest she said you suburban kids had tree houses. We had abandoned buildings and thats where we have our fun. She goes in the buildings all the time. She was doing it already. Thats one of the reasons we capture her. Thats what she do in your free time go to the old hotel and apartments. She would get her book and figure out what used to be there, what was detroit she didnt experience. That hay day and that important big grant city. She never experienced. Her parents barely experienced it. But yet people talk about it all the time. She represents that holding on a an e. Era and not experiencing it. Host how much education does she have . Guest shes got some college experience. Host shes a blogger . Guest yes. Shes a video blogger. She has cultural salons on the weekend. Host lets watch crystal starr. [video clip]. History is one of my things even since grade school. Thats a passion. What was there, who was there. Wow, its amazing where you see they ripped out the walls. Theres copper pipe right there. Can you imagine like having breakfast right here. Look at your view. Look at your view in the morning. Yes, im going to go out and conquer the world. I can see it from right here. Motown right up the street. I feel like i was may be here a little while back or im older than i really am but i have like this young body and spirit and mind but i have the memory of this place when it was banging. Thats how i feel. Guest lot of people feel that way. Lot of detroiters feel that way. Some people have a memory of the place when it was banging because they were there. People like crystal have a memory of the place she heard about it, read about it, dreamed about it and she was told about it. There was that hope that it could somehow come back, return to greatness, i think it wont. I think it should come something different. Transform itself smaller and functional. But returning to that era, no city can do that. Host im going tend it not some of your video but before i do that, i want to ask you about it. Because within the last couple years, 60 minutes did a big feature on rodriguez. Rodriguez lived in places like youre seeing here. No one knew about him and he had been a singer. What do you think the rest of the world saying about your detropia . Your documentary. Also seeing rodriguez and other looking for sugarman. Whats the image portraying to the rest of the world . Whats the message . Guest i think the message in that film is a totally different animal. I actually ran into rodriguez while filming detropia. He was an amazing talent that was lost to the world forever, working in detroit in construction. Then he was plucked out and he was found that filmmaker and return to greatness, celebrity. Rodriguez has experienced the harsh realities a lot of detroiters have. This is a country in transition and in a bit of identity crisis. We trying to figure out what the next 50 years will look like. Other countries have been through it. This country is final talking about those realityings for maybe the first time i think were projecting to the world an honest reassessment where where we come from. Host detropia can be found in movie theaters. Itunes and dvd in january. Guest i get to sleep for a year. We just finished a film it looks at islam phobia. Host when is that going to run . Guest not sure yet. Host this is a little bit inner city blues. Not connected with your film. But it captures another personality from that state. Thank you Harley Geiger for joining us. Guest thank you for having me. [video clip]. For dvd copy of this