Aspiring writer-producer Rob Federighi was visiting Chicago three years ago when he bought a newspaper from a StreetWise vendor and walked away wondering what the man’s story was. Federighi, a commercial real estate broker who grew up in the western suburbs, was living in Los Angeles at the time, hustling his sitcom scripts and game show concepts. As he mused about the vendor (was he from Chicago? did he have a family?), inspiration struck. Soon afterward he pitched the idea of a documentary to the StreetWise organization, a nonprofit that provides entrepreneurial gigs for people who might otherwise be jobless and homeless. What Federighi had in mind was a film “where we just tell the stories of who these people are.” It wouldn’t be so much about the organization, he told them. “But people will learn about StreetWise through the stories of the vendors.” They loved it right away, he says. All he had to do was finance and film it.
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It’s powerful stuff. Not because of artful filming: what you get is mostly talking-head video, sometimes saddled with background music that ought to be ditched. And not because of hard-hitting reporting on the organization, which has had some troubled times: the piece is an unabashed promo. There’s no serious analysis of the root causes of poverty either; Federighi says he didn’t want to make another “grim” film about homelessness. He thinks StreetWise offers one solution to the problem, and that’s what he wanted to show. The power is where he knew it would be—in the vendors and their stories.
The film opens with a shot of its lone woman vendor, Linda Fisher, in her wheelchair, before dawn, waiting for the 80 bus. StreetWise vendors pick up their inventory at the organization’s West Lake Street office, paying 35 cents each for the papers, which they sell for $1. Linda’s corner is Randolph and Michigan, and she’s there every day for the morning rush hour, 6 to 9 AM. She also helps out in the StreetWise office, goes to school at night, and cares for her five-year-old daughter, Joy. Afflicted with scleroderma and rheumatoid arthritis, she’s a single mom who had a foot amputated at 14 and aspires now to a good job and a good education for the child she says she is lucky to raise. “Selling StreetWise helps you realize the world doesn’t revolve around you,” she says. “No one owes you anything.” The movie’s best moments capture Linda and (the perfectly named) Joy at a park; the child’s voice, in this context, is indelible.
Fri 12/14, 7 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, 312-550-1212, $35 includes cocktail reception (cash bar), entertainment by the Walther Lutheran High School gospel choir, and dancing till 11 PM.
