‘Middletown’ Review: Looking Back on a Group of Student Filmmakers Who Questioned Authority
The upstate New York high schoolers at the heart of “Middletown” hint at what the Breakfast Club crew might have been had they shared a purpose beyond sulky rebellion.
In 1991, teacher Fred Isseks created a way for his students to channel both their curiosity and their rightly contrarian impulses in an elective called Electronic English. For the next several years, the students who opted for that class made videos, shot horror shorts and, most significantly, embarked on a project about the local landfill that would become a sharp and heralded piece of investigative journalism. Altogether, classes from 1991 to ’97 made four films. The final was the hour-long “Garbage, Gangsters and Greed.” Political malfeasance, press acquiescence, the Ford Motor Co. and the Genovese crime family among others play their roles in the student exposé of toxic waste dumped into the area landfills.
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Filmmakers Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss know their way into the good graces of the young. Through such documentaries as the Emmy-winning “Boys State” and “Girls State,” they’ve also carved a niche for themselves in honoring their youthful subjects’ idealism and energy. With “Middletown,” they add a twist to that gift. In bringing together Isseks and four of the most dogged of Middletown High School’s reporters, now adults, the directors tell a story of teenage tenacity but also one of adults grappling with the grit and hopes of their younger selves.
That could have been overly sentimental. It’s not. (Although there are tearful moments). With access to Issek’s voluminous, well-kept archive of VHS tapes and files, McBaine, Moss and editor Christopher Passig (“Telemarketers”) craft a story that has the beats of a “60 Minutes” segment with hints of the emotional insights of a John Hughes movie.
Referred to by students as “Hippie Fred” and “Crazy Fred,” Isseks — with his shoulder-length hair, bright eyes and brighter smile — was that guy in 1991: the fun teacher. Although he had an interest in journalism and local history, the English instructor didn’t initially offer a video media class. Isseks (who graduated from Middletown in 1966) had previously given students Instamatic cameras and asked them to document their town. (He wrote a grant to buy them.) When the school got a bunch of video recorders, the class switched to video-making. “Use your talent to makes stuff not consume stuff” was a mantra.
A friend of Isseks who had a farm in the nearby town of Wallkill in Orange County, visits the class with stories of an environmental disaster underway at the nearby dump that Middletown uses. There are accounts of brown, swirling muck near the landfill, of barrels leaching amber ooze into the grasses and ground. The kids were hooked. He had explained it “in the way rebellious teenagers can understand,” Rachel Raimist (class of ’91) says.
“Middletown” begins with scratchy VHS footage of a MHTV disclaimer of the “opinions expressed in this documentary” variety. The video’s call letter opening, spot-on mimicry of broadcast news and poor video quality are hilarious and touching.
Because the original studio is no longer, McBaine and Moss re-created Isseks’ Middletown High studio in Los Angeles, which may be an additional reason for the time-travel awe expressed by former students Raimist, Jeff Dutemple, David Birmingham and Mike Regan. On a small TV monitor, they watch footage of themselves as they trespass amid the overgrowth of the Wallkill landfill, where brown muck pools and corroding barrels are stored; interrogate public officials for answers; and interview citizens concerned by the rank smell of their tap water.
There wasn’t much overlap among the seniors at the start of the class. Raimist’s family had relocated from New York City, and she tended to return to the city with her goth and emo friends for music acts. (Middletown is 70 miles north of New York City.) Mike Regan dropped in on Electronic English because his friends were enrolled. “Technically, I wasn’t even in Fred’s class,” he recalls three decades later. Dutemple describes himself as a bit of a poser those many years ago. And Birmingham, the son of a police officer and a mom who did social work, admit to being something of an anarchist.
They weren’t coming from the same place, but they were headed toward a shared destination: to find out if the nearby Wallkill and Al Turi landfill facilities were a danger to the health of citizens and to learn who was dumping in them illegally. Their quest took them to intriguing characters, including employees of the dump, New York State’s sole wildlife pathologist, two county executives and a newspaper editor. The footage shows the students navigating Freedom of Information Act requests, reading documents, engaging public figures and posing better and better questions.
A breakthrough comes when an anonymous tipster offers information on a dumping company’s violations. When we meet Mr. B, he could be out of central casting. But his information is blockbuster. It leads to organized crime’s role in the toxic waste dumping. The students garnered political support, as well as the interest of “60 Minutes,” ABC News, the New York Times and the Village Voice.
This was a far cry from how the first media outlet treated their findings. Early on, the class takes a tape of their investigation to the local newspaper, the Times Herald-Record. When they didn’t get a response, they invited the editor to meet with them. It is not a particularly auspicious moment for the veteran journalist, who is uncomfortable and condescending.
“He looks so mad,” Jeff says watching himself go toe-to-toe with the veteran newspaperman. “I’m nervous for that kid.” He needn’t be. In “Middletown,” the kids seem more than all right. So, too, the grownups they’ve become. It’s the adults charged with public safety who are concerning.
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