Brine-o-mite

Quirky doc chronicles the Salton Sea saga

By Cheryl Eddy

>cheryl@sfbg.com

Deep in the heart of southeastern California, the largely rural Sonoran Desert cradles a secret: the Salton Sea. How does a body of water twice the size of Lake Tahoe stay on the downlow? Some blame the odor — imagine millions of rotting fish carcasses blended with the sorrowful stench of broken dreams. Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea, a doc by San Francisco–based Chris Metzler and Berlin-based Jeff Springer, probes this unique landscape with surprising affection, paying particular attention to the often eccentric residents who've put down roots in the isolated communities that surround the sea — a place where, as narrator John Waters wryly puts it, "utopia and the apocalypse meet to dance a dirty tango."

The Salton Sea's history (it was created by an engineering mishap 100 years ago) and heyday (in the 1950s and '60s, it was a popular vacation spot) are traced in Plagues and Pleasures with colorful graphics, vintage photos, and — most poignantly — promotional films from the region's salad days: "Here is all that your family, your children, and your children's children will want!" Cut to the 21st century, and the once thriving recreation area is dotted with flooded towns and abandoned trailers. Though its water is relatively clean, it's sustained only through rainwater and agricultural runoff and retains an unappealingly brown appearance. It's also so salty that on hot summer days its oxygen level becomes dangerously low. Hence, all those dead, smelly fish.

Though some efforts have been made in recent years to save the Salton Sea — one of California's few remaining wetlands and recognized as an important bird habitat — its best chance for revival was pretty much squashed with the sudden demise of pop star–turned–US representative Sonny Bono, a champion of the cause. A strategy to divert water from the sea to SoCal cities means total evaporation is a possibility. As one resident puts it, "the Salton Sea project is basically infinity."

Filmmakers Metzler and Springer began working together at University of Southern California film school; Plagues and Pleasures is their first feature film. An early version played at 2004's San Francisco DocFest — and for the past few years the duo has screened the film at more than 100 festivals. This week the now completed doc hits the Pacific Film Archive, the Smith Rafael Film Center, and Metzler's own neighborhood theater, the Red Vic. During a visit to Guardian offices, he discussed the Salton Sea's peculiar allure.

SFBG: Besides the new narration by John Waters, how has the film changed since its first local screening in 2004?

Chris Metzler: We've kind of taken an unorthodox road in regards to making the film and screening it at festivals. When we sent out a work-in-progress cut, we got accepted at Slamdance. So, we took it on the road, got some good reviews and won some awards, and listened to feedback from the audience. The last third of the movie was heavy on environmental and social issues, because that's really the future of the Salton Sea. And we realized we didn't need to explain it as much as we did, so those things have been trimmed down.

SFBG: How did you get John Waters involved?

Chris Metzler: You know how there's these moments in life that are just serendipitous? We'd always wanted him to be the narrator for the film. A programmer at one of the festivals was friends with John Waters, and she wanted to show our movie to him. So we said, "Yeah! And do you mind asking him ..." A few days later we got a call saying he wanted to do it.

SFBG: If you look at the Salton Sea Authority Web site, it makes no mention of the people who live there. When you started the film, did you know you would end up making them your focus?

Chris Metzler: The thing that attracted both Jeff and I to the project was that we both appreciate people who live on the fringes of society and who kind of reinterpret what normal life is supposed to be. The people at the Salton Sea have done that in an enormous way. The few documentaries that had been made on the Salton Sea before were scientific or industrial films. Our film is all about the communities on the shores — we felt like the only way you could understand the issues of the Salton Sea is to understand the people and why they've decided to make it their home.

SFBG: Was Salvation Mountain [a giant sculpture created by artist Leonard Knight] one of the stranger things you encountered while making the film?

Chris Metzler: I think Hunky Daddy [a beer-drinking former Hungarian freedom fighter] qualifies as the most unique person we met! In regards to Salvation Mountain, that was one of our first discoveries of knowing that this was a place where a guy can kind of stumble into town, start taking junk from the dump and reuse old paint, and create this huge piece of folk art: a large, multicolored mountain in the middle of the desert that reflects his devotion to God. You know that this isn't an ordinary place.

SFBG: One of the more striking things in the movie is that despite everything, many of the real estate agents believe there will be a second boom.

Chris Metzler: In the 1950s and '60s, the Salton Sea was a thriving place. It was more popular than Yosemite National Park until the early 1970s. For a place that attracted so many people, you wonder how it could fail so colossally, at least in a recreation sense. I think [the real estate agents] feel that if someone just gave them some money, they could fulfill the promise that the Salton Sea once had.

SFBG: Have the people in the film seen it, and what do they think of it?

Chris Metzler: Most of the people in the film have seen it, and they all like it. It's nice to feel that you've captured what they feel is the essence of their community. Jeff and I are two outsiders who've spent a lot of time down there, and you never know if you're going to get it right. We didn't have a specific objective when we went down to the Salton Sea, other than to tell these people's stories in a truthful and honest way. *

PLAGUES AND PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA

Wed/22, 7:30 p.m.

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

$4–$8

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Fri/24–Thurs/2, 7:15 and 9:15 (also Sat.–Sun., 2, 4; Wed., 2)

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Tues/28–Wed/1, 7 p.m.

Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center

1118 Fourth, San Rafael

$5.50–$9.25

(415) 454-1222

www.cafilm.org

www.saltonseadoc.com