Living and Filming On The Street

"Is it okay if I smell?" the Harvard senior asked his job interviewer over the phone, adding, "I haven't showered in two weeks."

The student filmmaker received special dispensation after explaining that his odor resulted from his research for a project.

Attempting to understand and gain the trust of Cambridge's homeless population for a documentary thesis film, Bradley K. Marshall '86-'87 lived down and out in the streets around Harvard Square.

For three weeks last June, he ate free meals from charity organizations, lived in abandoned buildings, and loitered on street corners. Marshall, who graduated in January, told the homeless people he met that he was "out," meaning out of luck and out on the street.

"I was often very confused--no sleep, no food, just walking around outside all the time. It's easy to lose touch with reality," Marshall says. Because of hunger and fatigue, he would often become disoriented and miss the free meals at St. Francis.

A vagrant named Peter invited Marshall to live with him and several other homeless people in an abandoned residential house, located a few blocks from Harvard Square. Most of Marshall's time each day was spent "walking and spacing out," as well as looking for his next meal.

The 23-year-old Berkeley, Calif. native says at the end of the first week he thought, "I know what this is like. I don't need to do it anymore."

"But sticking with it for three weeks--past the point where it was challenging and exciting, past the point where I wanted to stop--it felt much more like it was against my will," he says. "That powerless feeling of being homeless stayed with me."

During his time on the street, Marshall met and learned about Peter, Starchild and Bill, the three main protagonists in the student's recently completed 25-minute documentary film about the area's homeless, entitled "On The Street." Starchild is a leather-jacketed punk in his early twenties, who ran away from home when he was 14 years old. Peter is a schizophrenic. And Bill is an alcoholic who lives on the street with his wife.

On meeting Marshall, Peter told him that he had "wasted 63 million people" in another universe in order to save this one. At that point, Marshall says, he knew he wanted Peter in his film.

"On The Street" shows its subjects sleeping in abandoned houses, philosophizing over free meals, napping in the park and walking around the streets of Cambridge. Each of the characters are caught on film at moments that reveal their personalities and attitudes toward living on the street.

The film introduces Starchild strolling along Mass Ave singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" in a loud, defiant voice. In another vivid scene, Starchild is shown meticulously shaving his head with a straight razor, explaining that since he has no wife he has to do the job himself.

Peter, who has been on the street for several years, talks rapidly, but articulately about flying Egyptians and cities underground. When Marshall asks him on film why he does not want to have an apartment or job, Peter replies, "None of those questions are relevant to me."

"Peter's obviously crazy, he can't ever hold a job. But he functions very well in his own world and, to a lesser extent, in ours," Marshall says, adding, "I like him better than the average Harvard student."

Bill and his wife have been homeless for two years, and spend much of their time with their collected belongings on the benches in Cambridge Common. Bill says he hopes to leave the streets soon, and tells Marshall that when a man is his age, it would be nice to have a home to show for it.

Breaking Down Stereotypes

The film tries to capture the experience of being homeless, says Marshall. "I'm not out for the immediate solutions. I'm trying to get people to think about what homelessness means to the people who live it. What I'm aiming at is for people to look at the homeless in a different way, to break down stereotypes."

According to Robb Moss, a visiting lecturer in the VES department, Marshall accomplished his objective. "Most people on the street we see out of the corner of our eyes; we see them without noticing them or really comprehending the situation. In this film the marginal people are in the center and straight society is placed on the side lines," Moss says.

"On The Street" reveals the close relationship that the filmmaker had with his subjects, says Moss. "It has an intimate quality; it's personal without editorializing."

Marshall says that he intentionally stayed away from the statistics and "didactic narration" of typical documentaries. He deliberately shot the film in color, because "black and white imposes a statement on the film that says it is depressing."

"On the Street" is very different from the the T.V. news because "it has some depth and real knowledge," says Alfred Guzzetti, Marshall's thesis advisor and the chairman of the VES department. "Unlike other films about the homeless, this one's made from the inside. It shows us what we don't expect to see."

Marshall plans to distribute his film, which cost $4000 to complete, to public television stations and educational and social service organizations.

Marshall's acute interest in homelessness stems in part from his parents' emphasis on social responsibility. In Berkeley, Marshall says, the homeless were a major concern. While at Harvard, he volunteered in two homeless shelters and conducted research for the City of Somerville Human Services Department on strategies for the prevention of homelessness.

While saddened by their plight, Marshall was also intrigued by the seemingly carefree aspects of a homeless person's lifestyle. "I always had a fantasy about being a bum. I thought it would be a kind of freedom," he says. But Marshall discovered that concerns about his next meal and finding a shelter were "a pain in the ass."

"It made me think a lot about choice. Some people say that the homeless want to live on the street, to be free. But that kind of freedom and choice don't exist. That's just a rationalization," he says.

"Given the choice of living on the street or being turned down again and again for a job and an apartment, [homeless people] will say it's their decision to live on the street, when in fact it's their only choice."