408: Teenage Wasteland

WEBVTT

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[SPEAKER_00]: Teenage Wasteland, I'm Jason Horton, I'm Rebecca Leib, and this is Ghost Town.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Today we're talking about the documentary Teenage Waste Land on Netflix.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It is a lot of different things, it's nostalgia, it's journalism, it's mafia-related, it's a lot of things that you have intimate experience with before we get into it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yet when I sent to the article, I saw a link to it on like a local Facebook group I was in because I used to, that's a town that I live near and I worked at them all there and middle town New York.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's an arch kind of New York about, I'm to say like an hour, like I don't know North of New York City to give you some context.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So when I saw that, I was like, oh, I didn't know this story, but, I mean, I've gotten fired from a lot of jobs because it was kind of awesome.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And Galerie is, so if you're listening, if you know Middletown, or from Orange County in general, this one's for you.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, this jam is for you.

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[SPEAKER_02]: We started off, we see a bunch of kids there in a stream.

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[SPEAKER_02]: We got old camcorder.

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[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much footage of this, these kids and what they're doing.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And the question is like, is it enough?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Is it interesting enough to make into this documentary?

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it really hit me on a lot of levels in terms of nostalgia, in terms of being a certain age, a certain time in place,

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[SPEAKER_02]: in the 90s, but also like it went on for quite a long time, and I wonder if it's really more of a love letter to a time in place than it is about following this story.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Because the story, I mean, it is an interesting story, but it just isn't quite conclude when we want to include it goes in a while.

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[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, the opening credits go on for seven minutes.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's like the white

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[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, we have a painting and now the painting is dripping, ooh.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you get a lot of things, really documentaries now, where you get like, oh, people documented all this stuff 35 years ago.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And now it's kind of getting unearthed.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Where a lot of things now is either like archival footage or archival news footage and then new footage that people on like new equipment are doing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's kind of like the interesting and like rare part of it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's really amazing footage and the best part to me was seeing these students, so they're these students, and they're their high school students, and they're led by this guy named Frank.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He's a teacher, and he teaches this class, which sounds fucking awesome, called Electronic English.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a digital English electronic English.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's fucking incredible.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And the students get to rewatch the footage that they were in during this time, now that they're adults.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And it's very moving to see them as like young kids speaking out, doing, you know, investigative journalism.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So we start with, and again, I'm like, part of me is like, has this documentary even started yet?

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[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of title cards, there's a lot of footage, but here we are.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So middle town, New York.

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[SPEAKER_02]: People don't really know it, Jason knows it, it's 1991 and the students there like, this is like a norm court like suburban like New York space.

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[SPEAKER_02]: There's malls.

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[SPEAKER_02]: We have like, you know, these high schools.

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[SPEAKER_02]: We have like a lot of agricultural areas too, right?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Is that?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't feel special.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And we get into Fred Isix, who is the teacher.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He used to teach English, but he does a lot of AV stuff.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He's this academic hippie.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, one of those teachers.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's very, honestly, it was very inspiring to me to see this teacher be like, oh, he really changed lives from letting kids just have a camera and ask some questions.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He teaches electronic English, which it's

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[SPEAKER_02]: He was like, you know what?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Like go make music videos, go do shit.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Like take these camcores, take these editing bays, go just express yourself via this digital medium and like we'll talk about it, I guess.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so these kids and this footage is really cool where it's like kids making music videos and sketch comedy and like I love high school footage around this time is so innocent and fun and pure and very funny.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So we get a lot of that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: My friends and

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[SPEAKER_00]: the early nineties we were doing like we were like lip syncing to like Beastie boys.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah that's what they were doing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah it's a very like camp like you always knew one person that was like new camp quarters and like two VCRs and kind of taped things over so that was very of you know making dumb sketch comedy that was very a good time

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[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely, yeah, it's a giant camcorder.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's like on your shoulder like freezing up your fucking like ligaments It was so fucking heavy But he's like look I had this class.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I guess we need like a assignment in this class something that likes to structure this thing

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[SPEAKER_02]: And this also this high school looks a lot like my high school too, which brought me back to like this brutalist kind of cement block style mid century design and, you know, these different periods are going to the period like going like, okay.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So Fred is like, here's what I want your assignment to be in essence is to if you want to go out and document what's happening at this landfill at this dump.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Because something is happening there and people are being affected by this like reddish toxic sludge that's been bubbling up both in the dump and the neighbors around the dump.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So at first it was like, are these kids gonna be into this and turns out they really were, they were very into it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They start going, first of all, they all go to the dump on like a Saturday and like walk around with like syringes and shit.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, you're not being a very responsible teacher, but that was also the 90s too.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I think, you know, you'd like, we drank at a hoeset.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I should like a cigarette with a teacher one.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, is the very like, okay, I like a share.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That's the important part of the share.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He's actually teaching me to share.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So they go on there walking around this stuff.

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[SPEAKER_02]: There's great footage of them like walking around this dump.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, hmm, you know, and they get like, they're literally like, look, it's a a brick with like, like, metallic bubbles coming up from the block.

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[SPEAKER_02]: That's crazy, right?

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[SPEAKER_02]: And this is just like, yeah, fucking shit.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Shoot it, you know, and so like taking all this footage and you know, bringing it back You look all in middle town of Dump, don't you dumb.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I don't It's the dump.

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[SPEAKER_02]: No, the dumps name is the wall killed dump, which is a great dump.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean wall kill.

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[SPEAKER_02]: There's the wall kill river Well the dump is being drained into the wall kill river.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's yeah.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's not good Spoiler alert.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's not good.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't turn out well for a lot of people there

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[SPEAKER_00]: has the word killing it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So it's, you know, you should know, you should know they should have known better than to buy a house there.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So they start investing in this landfill and the kids are asking people questions.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They're looking at this like a bloody and this water is disgusting.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a red, it's like water down blood.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And they keep saying, and I, you can't obviously smell it, but they keep commenting on the smell being just like absolutely disgusting.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And they start going

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[SPEAKER_00]: where like people like yeah look at my basement and it's covered in red sludge like a dump us like you know and Los Angeles is not as many basements right but in you know this part and probably for you for this basement we're very like absolutely it's very predominant

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[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, we get flooded all the time.

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[SPEAKER_02]: You can't do, you can't have that in a basement.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the flooding is our dangerous and like still waters already kind of dangerous In enclosed places, but imagine it's like radioactive toxic waste like medical waste.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They don't go a lot about Comedical waste and like animal waste human body parts like just all of that just like oozing into neighbors

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[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have a lot of like malls and then also like bet it like a I think there's a hot a hospital And there's just a lot of like industry and fact that's one like factories was a thing like oh You need to job like you worked it like some factory.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, good short about a time.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah And these people are working class people that live around there You know a lot of them even worked at the dump and are now retired and live next to it and I'm like Dude, are you still alive like what's going on with you?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Are you okay?

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[SPEAKER_02]: They're not okay?

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[SPEAKER_02]: They're it's

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[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot going on, but they reference this thing and I don't know if you recognize this is the love canal.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Love canal.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That was a pretty, but that's up state, right?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's not very close, but it's a similar thing where it was like, who's it?

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[SPEAKER_02]: There was like a thoughtful, is it?

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[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, it's not that as hard.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Buffalo.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, not quite, but you're in the, you're in the right area, yeah.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So they talked about how Love Canal was like oozing waste from this dump into the city.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And it retabic.

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[SPEAKER_02]: People got cancer.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Children were born with birth defects.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It was a monstrous situation that a lot of elected officials turned away from because they wanted to profit here.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I want what was happening up there.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So, they keep comparing the students and Fred keeps comparing this to the love canal.

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[SPEAKER_02]: A high school student interviews Don Terrell, who says that birth defects are actually happening here, and that the younger generation needs to like fight against these people.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They interviewed these guys named Dutch and Willie.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They're retired landfill workers who were missing teeth.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They were smoking pipes.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They were saying that they were thousands and thousands of pounds of toxic waste.

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[SPEAKER_02]: and that big companies would come and dump their waste and they didn't have permits and they would just like go crazy.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Very funny one high school is smoking a cigarette low and one of these, which is also very 90s too, or it's like the camera turns and there's like a high school, like smoking something a little bit covertly.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But like we still are there and we're seeing it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Parents don't care.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Parents didn't care what was happening.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They just want to make sure that kids came home alive every night.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So they were out and about doing, like conducting interviews, going to a lot of like community meetings too and filming community meetings then we get to a winter recess.

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[SPEAKER_02]: At this point too, I'm just like, this is really interesting, but like, where is this go?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, this is very cool, but it's also, it's very soft storytelling.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm used to like the big, high voltage.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like body camp footage, not like me and during high school like VCR camp footage.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm like, interesting, where is this going?

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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, turns out that it doesn't escalate, but again, it's like a soft escalation.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They realize that like nobody's listening to them when they talk about how polluted this town is from this like dump.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So they start to talk to this guy's name is Ward Stone and he is a wildlife pathologist and he basically says yeah like the animals around here are like radio active also and they're like six toes on like raccoons and you know the skull like he's like looking through this like animal carcasses and they're like this is.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And this guy is everyone kind of looks like an SNL character.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone is an adult.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone is a kid looks cool.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone's adult looks like they are an SNL character with like weird, like everyone just is like, like off, like on candy value.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And he starts like rallying with these kids.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And he is the one animal pathologist in New York.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So he's like he brings some credibility to this.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And they're like great.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Now we've got him, right?

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[SPEAKER_02]: So they also explain that landfill is built on an aquifer, which is a moving water source.

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[SPEAKER_02]: That's why things are moving so quickly into other spaces.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why things are like so widespread and polluting things.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And the high school kids are like telling adults and they're telling adults they've got this fucking inspector and he's talking to them and they're going back in the landfill.

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[SPEAKER_02]: and then all of a sudden like people are like oh actually this is like getting legitimate so actually we can't let them in the landfill anymore and then they start to arrest people and the kids are like holy shit now people are listening right and now you know people the press are getting press on it now so things traction is actually happening

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[SPEAKER_02]: But they kind of try to shut it down.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone starts to be like, Yeah, this is, we do acknowledge this is happening.

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[SPEAKER_02]: The different commissioners.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But we, you know, it's not harmful at all.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's not harmful at all.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And in fact, here's our big idea.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Now that we've listened to what you've been researching for so long, and these students also, once they graduate, they kind of let it go, but then the younger students take over.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So this is a long, this is a seven year long project, all in all.

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[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, okay, we acknowledge that maybe the dump has caused some harm.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Let's put a giant cap on it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to take a big piece of rubber and just like put it over the dump.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Is that work for all of you?

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[SPEAKER_02]: And everyone's like, no, that doesn't work for us.

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[SPEAKER_02]: That's insane.

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[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, it seeps through the land.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't go through the, it's like, it's not like it's not just fumes.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So the kids go and they sneak into the dump again.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And they go to like, there's these rolls of plastic sheets.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And one kid's like, here's my key, I'm just cutting through this cap that they're putting on this waste area.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so they realize, obviously, that it's kind of bullshit.

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[SPEAKER_02]: There's this man that calls the teacher Fred.

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[SPEAKER_02]: His name is Mr. B.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He's a mystery man.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And he says,

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[SPEAKER_02]: You're on to something.

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[SPEAKER_02]: You're on to it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: You got the kid you got the yeah, no, he is he's like this is a tip of the iceberg.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so then.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He's friends like, okay, and he tells us kids, he's like, there's a guy, Mr. B call man, because like what?

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[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, he's going to tell me something.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So there's this like cat and mouse game with Mr. B.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And then we find out that Mr. Mr. B is, he calls for it again.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And he says that there's 10 toxic landfills that are all connected to the mafia, and that he wants to speak to the kids.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So there's this classroom again that that you know Fred is teaching the kids and it's this kind of 80 classroom And this guy named Mr. B.

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[SPEAKER_02]: His actual name.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He tells the kids is Armando, Bilant Chioni He does look like he's in the soprano's he comes in this like kids class and he starts telling them bring a gun

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[SPEAKER_02]: the mob controls everything and the kids are like what and then teachers like I don't know listen to this guy and this guy like talks at the kids he says that there's organ pieces in there there's syringes in there he says that he used to work for the orange county sheriff's department and that's how he knows all this and he was a whistleblower they eventually like fired him and they planned some kind of break-in that stole all of his records so he's like you got to make this movie you got to make a documentary about this this is how you should go about it

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[SPEAKER_02]: then the classroom and the teacher find out that this guy's also like a part-time actor.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And so he knows what to be in this movie.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And he wants to make money.

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[SPEAKER_02]: He keeps references referencing making millions from this documentary.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So there's another like exploitative factor or like, you know, this guy has his own concerns and his own angle for these kids making this movie.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And then he and so they're like, okay,

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[SPEAKER_02]: He introduces these kids to this guy named Dieter Wong's Bangor, who also looks insane, and is drinking in front of the kids.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And he also worked for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And he's literally four beers in, and he's like, I want my lawyer here.

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[SPEAKER_02]: This is very serious business.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you're getting into like the top secret like Orange County, like bureaucratic mess.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And he says that the mob controls all of this,

15:27.298 --> 15:40.745
[SPEAKER_00]: a lot of, I mean, I remember, I had a friend who lived in Washingtonville, which is very close to Middletown, and there were people from like the Colombo family, like the District Street, so there was a lot of mafia in the area.

15:40.925 --> 15:47.749
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's right, and they both turn out to be right, that this dumping ground was part of a larger mafia sanitation,

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[SPEAKER_02]: Sanitate, no, exactly, a part of a larger, like sanitation money grab for, like basically allowing the mob to dump a different, different waste dumping grounds.

16:00.433 --> 16:08.576
[SPEAKER_02]: And in turn, not saying anything because then politicians were buying up land around this place, so they didn't want this to be known so that their property wouldn't lose value.

16:08.956 --> 16:10.217
[SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, like people are dying of cancer.

16:11.097 --> 16:13.678
[SPEAKER_02]: so it is true and it does happen that way.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Now the students in their documentary get they go out and they share it and people learn about this, but they're not the ones who really and they get, you know, they get 60 minutes, New York Times, they get a lot of coverage around this and they're called like, they're like, they get a lot of coverage about this.

16:34.185 --> 16:37.986
[SPEAKER_02]: But they, and it's called wait, it's called garbage gangsters agreed by the way, which is a good

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's not what changes things.

16:44.562 --> 16:46.022
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's where the dissonance is.

16:46.142 --> 16:53.144
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it helped, but the mob people who were eventually arrested for this whole scheme that happened much later.

16:54.164 --> 17:05.808
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it was something that got the ball rolling, but it didn't have that narrative arc that I thought that it would have after me sitting through this two and a half hour documentary wondering what the cause and effect of this was.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Now, again, deep nostalgia for what they were trying to do and what they showed us and all of that incredible footage.

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[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that that, and we talked about this on a different episode, this director that I talked to, this Netflix documentary director, like she won't even do a project unless they have the footage.

17:25.211 --> 17:28.993
[SPEAKER_02]: And so now I feel like we're seeing a lot of footage forward documentaries.

17:29.013 --> 17:29.333
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But I would say that this, I'm not sure it had the juice to take us all the way there.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But it was really interesting.

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[SPEAKER_02]: and took us part of the way there and gave me a deep appreciation for teachers and that that time in my life and dumps and dumps dumps as well.

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[SPEAKER_02]: But again, it was kind of fraught in a way and played upon my own sense of self around that time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, see it in a way that's kind of like, oh, this is what it might be, what would make it more robust or make it like what would it need and to Yeah, I mean, they wanted to use all that footage.

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[SPEAKER_02]: I think to make it better.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you have to tell this whole story of the drug cartile.

18:15.647 --> 18:23.851
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a title card at the end saying that like they were eventually busted and actually People a wallkill did get financial settlements from from the state of New York which is great.

18:24.271 --> 18:28.834
[SPEAKER_02]: So like there was some really positive resolution, but we got this like big gap between when they were investigating

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[SPEAKER_02]: the dump and then when they busted the mafia and different leadership that were involved in it.

18:35.346 --> 18:38.567
[SPEAKER_02]: So I feel like it's maybe one piece of like a broader thing.

18:39.127 --> 18:41.628
[SPEAKER_00]: But also these are probably happening all over the country.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure.

18:42.248 --> 18:42.948
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: People just didn't have teachers to say, hey, here's a bunch of cameras.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't we go check this out?

18:46.950 --> 18:47.970
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.

18:49.010 --> 18:50.091
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's very special.

18:50.151 --> 18:51.271
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very special thing.

18:51.531 --> 18:55.092
[SPEAKER_02]: But narratively, again, I watched these like high octane things.

18:55.212 --> 18:59.294
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was such a beautiful like 90s version of what these documentaries are.

18:59.794 --> 19:01.454
[SPEAKER_02]: But there were some pieces to the story missing.

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[SPEAKER_02]: So again, if you want to be like taken right back,

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[SPEAKER_02]: to walking in a dump of medical waste in your high school, with your best high school friends.

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[SPEAKER_02]: This is the documentary for you.