“Freeload” DVD (director: Daniel Skaggs)

Harsh look at modern day hobos

A relatively brief (65 minutes) but startlingly honest documentary here dealing with something most of us consider little more than a romantic anachronism — railway hobos. It’s difficult to imagine, in modern times, people who hop trains and travel as a lifestyle. “Homeless” could also be used to describe these folks, but this designation sometimes misses the mark. Often, today’s train riders do so out of choice. They’re renegades who buck the modern system of menial labor and expectations, and often seek adventure and a “live free or die” attitude and lifestyle. 

Skaggs’ documentary focuses on several young vagabonds, most of whom, at least on the surface, ride trains by choice. Their “fuck everyone” attitudes come straight from a subcultural or punk rock playbook. Some are good people who just don’t fit in. Others seem to be troubled characters, with alcohol or drug problems that are only encouraged by what can be a lonely and frightening future. I was left fascinated by the characters and way of life, though “Freeload” certainly doesn’t romanticize the lifestyle. There are moments of refreshing freedom and joy nestled among other moments of depressing nihilism that I can’t help but feel are a harbinger of doom for some of these people. If anything, it’s a realistic portrait of an outsider viewpoint that some don’t even realize still exists. Well-done, but not something I’d ever want to see again.

MVD Visual

"The Gods Of Times Square" DVD

This simultaneously enlightening and puzzling documentary by Richard Sandler observes an alarming part of America, centered in the heart of New York's Times Square. Filmed in the late 90's, this startling double-DVD set gets up close and personal to a staggering amount of religious fanatics and street preachers who took hold of these bustling streets before Disney and corporate America wiped it all away. Here are the homeless, the delusional, the cranks, creeps, drunks, transvestites, zealots, revolutionaries, fundamentalists, and the just plain mental. Sandler interviews and observes these people, all of whom seem to subscribe to a different system of spiritual beliefs. There's some truly nightmarish visions here, of intolerant bigots and lost souls, all interspersed with flickers of enlightened wisdom. Sandler provides a fairly unbiased (and often humorous) counterpoint to some of the more, uhm, challenging of the street preachers, and the film(s) here show him befriending certain Times Square regulars, like the endearing James or the misguided Jimmy. A fine work, but not something for the squeamish. (Brink DVD via MVD Visual)