Back in the early ‘90s, Fred Isseks began teaching an elective course called “Electronic English” at Middletown High School in Orange County, NY, a largely rural area about 90 minutes from Manhattan. Students in the class learned how to be broadcast journalists by producing their own stories on subjects of local interest — ideally something anodyne and uncontroversial.
But Isseks, an iconoclastic educator known for doing things his own way, had heard rumors about mysterious brown sludge spotted at the local landfill and urged his pupils to do some digging.
Armed with cameras,
microphones, and the naive confidence of youth, a ragtag group of students
exposed a massive environmental scandal in their own backyard. Over the course
of nearly a decade, Isseks’ students produced a series of probing investigative documentaries) including one with the irresistible title Garbage,
Gangsters, and Greed).
Their muckracking
crusade attracted national media attention and
put the teenage reporters at odds with self-dealing politicians, dismissive
journalists, and even the mafia. The wild-but-true story is the subject of a
new documentary called Teenage
Wasteland, in which Isseks and his former students look back on the
toxic investigation that changed their lives.
Directed by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, the film uses
both contemporary interviews and archival video filmed by high school students
thirty years ago that immediately transports viewers back to the era of flannel
and Starter
jackets.
But Teenage Wasteland, which opened Wednesday at the Film Forum in New York City, is more than just an exercise in
‘90s nostalgia. It’s also a funny, moving, coming-of-age tale about corruption,
the critical role of local journalism, and the enduring impact of a single,
unconventional teacher. (It will also screen Dec
5 in Middletown, NY and Dec
12 in Garrison, NY, with additional bookings expected soon.)
It all began five years ago when Moss and McBaine
stumbled across an
article about Isseks and his students in The Guardian.
“It was one of these hiding-in-plain-sight stories that
seem to contain multitudes. It had a lot to say about journalism and democracy
and having great teachers who change your life,” said Moss, speaking with
McBaine via Zoom from their home in the Bay Area.
The documentarians have a knack for films about
idealistic, politically-engaged young people: their recent efforts
include Boys
State, which followed a group of
teenage boys building a mock government during a week-long summer program in
Texas, and the follow-up Girls
State, which chronicled girls in Missouri during the summer that
Roe v. Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court.
They found the student journalists at Middletown High
School just as compelling.
“As storytellers, we’re always looking for a back door
into a big issue and an unexpected way to bring people to a conversation,” Moss
said. “Telling a story about garbage always seemed to us to be a sneakily
radical act, because no one wants to think about their garbage. But if
teenagers are talking about it, maybe they’ll listen.”
The filmmakers’ first step was getting in touch with
Isseks. They had brunch with the now-retired teacher, and were impressed by his
“wisdom, bravery, compassion, and intellect,” Moss recalled. “When we had that
conversation with Fred, he talked about civic courage. We loved his spirit and wanted to introduce the world to Fred. This is a time in our politics and
culture, where we’re looking to be inspired, looking for heroes.”
Isseks had kept — and was willing to share — almost
everything connected to the original student documentaries, including a trove
of VHS tapes in his basement. He’d even kept a detailed diary during the
period. “Sometimes people guard their horde very closely, but Fred is an open
book,” Moss said.
Isseks also helped the directors zero in on the former
students who become the main characters in Teenage Wasteland. There
is Jeff Dutemple, a
handsome, misunderstood jock with a troubled home life; Rachel Raimist, a Latina goth who
moved to Middletown from the city and enjoyed “making old white men squirm” by
asking tough questions as a reporter; Michael Regan, an ROTC kid who wasn’t
even technically enrolled in Electronic English but played a key part in the filmmaking
anyway; and David Birmingham, the son of a police officer. (Many Electronic
English alumni went on to work in TV and film production, including Raimist and
Dutemple).
“Fred was a surrogate father figure for these young
people at a vulnerable moment as they came of age,” Moss said. “It was so clear
who still carried this experience with them, 30-plus years later, that it was
still alive in them. We knew the audience would connect with those kids.”
Moss and McBaine spent about six months wading through
all the material Isseks shared with them, which included about 400 hours of
footage related to the original investigation plus 100 hours or so of MHSTV, Middletown
High School’s news broadcast. “It was like Hot Tub Time Machine,”
Moss said of the experience. But it was essential in order to figure out how to
streamline a narrative as gnarled and complicated as Chinatown.
The footage captures a very specific window in time,
“when cameras were shifting the culture” well before the advent of smartphones,
McBaine said. In 1991, home video of police officers beating Rodney King
triggered a national outcry. A few months later, The Real World premiered
on MTV.
Moss and McBaine worried that the grainy VHS footage might be off-putting to contemporary viewers, but their 19-year-old daughter was instantly hooked on the story. “All the young people we’ve showed this movie to really connect to it,” McBaine said. “They see themselves, and that’s important.”
Reporting to you live from the ‘90s.
The video filmed by Isseks' students isn’t always
polished or visually pleasing, but it’s often jaw-droppingly dramatic. In one
tense showdown, the MHS journalists butt heads with the editor of a local
newspaper, who is shockingly dismissive of what they’ve uncovered. There are
also interviews with an array of colorful witnesses and experts who feel
straight out of Central Casting — most notably “Mr. B,” a foul-mouthed
whistleblower with information about illegal dumping at the landfill.
“They really did the shoe leather reporting and
investigation,” Moss said. “I had a real fear in making the movie that we would
just make a lesser work. We are updating their work 30 years later, and that’s
an exciting opportunity. But I also thought, ‘If we can’t do better, we
shouldn’t do it.’”
Ultimately, Teenage Wasteland does more than
just rehash the details that Isseks’ students uncovered three decades ago. It
also becomes a vivid lesson in the importance of what Isseks calls “civic
courage.”
“When we talk about democracy, we focus on the big marble
buildings in Washington, but we know that so many issues are fought locally,”
Moss said. “The odds may seem insurmountable at the national level, but you can
make a difference in your own backyard. That’s where things happen that
really do matter in your life—the books that are going to be
banned or the toxic waste that’s dumped in the water supply.”
Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The
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