Streetwise (1984)

USA, 91 minutes, documentary
Director/photography: Martin Bell
Writer: Cheryl McCall

Seattle may have earned a reputation as something of a bastion of the laidback West Coast style, but this documentary of the mid-'80s has a different story to tell, chronicling the daily grind of runaways surviving on the city streets. The average age of the figures populating this grim yet placid and hauntingly beautiful meditation: probably about 14. Most of them left the certain horrors of their domestic origins for the uncertain horrors they confront here. These kids, who come across as preternaturally old even as they inhabit the emaciated garb of youth, wearing the faces of children, casually discuss robbing and dumpster diving and hitchhiking and faggots and johns and tricks ("dates") with one another and with the camera. They fend for themselves and occasionally find champions who attempt to fend for them too. But it's a loser's game and they know it as surely as those of us peering in at them from beyond the screens. Perhaps the most heartbreaking image that recurs all through is that of a young girl we have come to know slightly, whose words still echo in our minds, leaning into the window of a car stopped at the curb and then opening the door and climbing in. But the interactions with their parents make a close second. One mother is a waitress who barely survives herself and obviously has no ability to control or even much influence her daughter's behavior, though she cares and tries in her way. At one point, with her daughter attempting to carry on an easygoing, bantering conversation of small talk with her from another room in their home, there is a long silence followed by the mother finally responding, "Be quiet now, honey, I'm trying to drink." And there is a father and his son, Dewayne, whose story may be the saddest one of all that we actually witness, talking via telephone handsets on opposite sides of the glass window of a prison visiting chamber; the imprisoned father reminds Dewayne he has only three more years to go before his release, admonishing him to be good. To find out the fates of these children nearly 30 years on is only to confirm the death of all irony within the confines of this sad, circumscribed place: suicide, AIDS, nine children and counting, gone straight, stabbed in a street incident. One of them became a victim of Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, in 1987. Her name is Roberta Joseph Hayes, and even though she plays a relatively small part here she has the best shot for immortality because of her association with a famous serial killer. She is the one who will always be talked about first.