ANDREA KIM Marc Singer is the director of "Dark Days," a documentary about life under the streets of New York City. The film won three awards at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
By Brent Hopkins
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Even Hollywood couldn’t write a story as perfect as Marc Singer’s. A fresh-faced kid, fascinated by the people of New York’s mean streets, goes to live underground and, in the process, witnesses the salvation of an entire homeless community.
“It was too good to be true,” he said matter-of-factly, a smile springing to his eyes. “In the entire history of homelessness, it never, ever, ever happened before where an entire community was offered housing.”
Singer, director of the critically acclaimed documentary “Dark Days,” winner of three Sundance Awards, boasts a life story that reads like something out of a blockbuster fairy tale. Though only 27 years old, Singer has already seen more than most people will ever dream of.
Part ethnographer, part filmmaker, but most significantly a humanitarian, the former fashion model played an active role in getting a sizable population of New York City’s homeless off the street and back into mainstream life.
While in town to help promote “Dark Days,” a stark, fascinating view into the generally unseen and unknown life that thrives below the streets of New York, Singer took time to sit down with the Daily Bruin and explain his remarkable tale. Speaking with an understated passion, he admitted that the stories he caught on film were more positive than he could have ever imagined.
Palm Pictures Julio, one of the inhabitants of New York City's underground tunnels, cleans up in Marc Singer's documentary "Dark Days," playing now in Santa Monica. After landing in America in 1993 as a model, though with limited success, the London-bred Singer became interested in the homeless population he saw within his own neighborhood. In talking to the men and women on the streets, he heard stories of mini-cities constructed out of cast-off wood and scrap metal secreted away in railway tunnels and became intrigued. After locating one such community near Penn Station, he soon found himself bonding with the underground citizens.
“They became my friends, my really good friends, and I wanted to get them out of the tunnel,” he recalled. “We were sitting around the fire one night with Ralph, one of the guys. We were laughing about something, and he says ‘Man, somebody should be making a film about this.’ I was like, ‘Well, why don’t we do it?’”
What started as an off-hand comment soon became a massive self-improvement project.
“What we figured was that we’d make the film, sell the film and then the money would get them out of the tunnel,” Singer said. “At the same time, they’d be the entire film crew, so they’d be helping themselves out, too, instead of someone just giving it to them. That way, we could do some good stuff and help people along the way.”
Strangely enough, no one involved had any prior film experience, but went ahead anyway.
“I never wanted to be a director, I never had any film aspirations. I still don’t, really,” he said. “I’d never even seen a movie camera before, so we were very lucky. I can’t tell you where most of the things in the movie came from.”
With Singer loosely directing, his newfound friends put their talents to work to bring their story to the rest of the world. With the same ingenuity that they used to build houses with working appliances and televisions, they now found themselves working lights, hauling cables and operating complicated sound equipment.
“Everyone out there is very creative; you have to be to survive,” Singer said. “You might not have ever built a house in your life, but if you need a place to sleep, you’re going to make something to give you shelter. If there’s a way to get electricity, and you’re freezing, you’ll find yourself a heater and become an electrician.”
This is exactly what Singer and company did to make “Dark Days,” building complicated dolly equipment out of shopping cart wheels and discarded wood to house lights, cameras and technicians.
Palm Pictures Director Marc Singer captures Greg, another subterranean dweller, trimming his goatee with the aid of bootlegged electricity.
Since they had no access to proper tools, once again improvisation was the order of the day, as the crew employed heated metal rods in place of drill bits. It was not a quick process; the filming of the 84-minute movie took nearly two years. In that time, Singer and his makeshift crew captured the ins and outs of the women and men who made the 75-block-long tunnel their home. While there, stereotypes that portrayed the homeless as either insane or unmotivated layabouts were shattered for Singer. Rather, they turned out to be a caring, friendly group.
“I loved it,” he said. “I felt more accepted there in the tunnel, for who I am as a person, than in any other place in my life. There’s no judgment, because you can’t go any lower. When you’re out on the street, no one’s going to sugarcoat stuff, they’re just going to tell you exactly what they’re thinking at face value. It doesn’t matter what you look like, it doesn’t matter what you say, what you do, it’s all on you as a person.”
As Singer worked to capture this slice of life with his camera, production hit a serious snag. All the residents were ordered out by Amtrak, forced to abandon their squatters’ dwellings and find a new place to live. Just as he’d worked to help them before, he doubled his efforts to help them again.
After considerable work with advocacy groups and homeless experts, the underground populace was able to secure some much-coveted Section Eight vouchers, which allowed them to relocate to subsidized housing aboveground. Though the old way of life disappeared within months, the undergrounders flourished once given a second chance, Singer said.
“They’re doing brilliantly,” he said, smiling broadly. “Once you’ve been out for awhile, you get your pride back, your confidence and everything. You start believing in yourself again, that you’re worth something. People started dreaming again.”
This type of optimism was hard to come by underground, where bleak realities blotted out even the chance to hope for something better.
“It’s very nice to say ‘live for today,’ but when you’re fucking broke and eating out of the garbage, that takes a bit of a different meaning. You can’t see any further than that day, and you don’t see yourself in the future.”
According to Singer, none of the residents are back on the streets. Some cleaned up and got jobs in New York, while others moved as far away as Oregon and Alaska.
To this day, he counts them among his closest friends and still remains in contact with them.
Singer claims that these new lives that his friends have forged are his true reward, rather than all the accolades the film has garnered.
“The goal was to get everyone out, so everything else was just icing on the cake,” he said. “We used to dream about this years ago. We’d be sitting around freezing, and say ‘Can you imagine if this happened?’”
Even the most wild imaginations couldn’t have conceived this.
FILM: “Dark Days” is currently showing at the Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd. through Thursday. Call (310) 478-6379 for more information.