SF Chronicle: Brothers Chronicle Recession On Film
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Brothers Chronicle Recession On Film
September 25, 2009
Sam Whiting, Chronicle Staff Writer
When Austin and Brian Chu set out to drive through all 50 states and make a recessionary road film, they totaled their mother’s red Suburban before they’d even crossed the California line.
Lucky break, that. It downscaled them into a middlebrow Toyota Minivan, which is a more sympathetic approach if you’re going around asking ordinary and oddball Americans about their finances. The brothers yanked out the backseat so they could sleep side-by-side and then they were unstoppable, covering 30,000 miles in a route that looks like shark’s teeth.
About 300 or 400 hours of video have been boiled down to “The Recess Ends,” a 68-minute documentary which they will premiere Wednesday at the Victoria Theatre in the Mission District. In keeping with the hard-times theme, admission is free, though in keeping with the theme of their adventure they’ll rely on the kindness of strangers.
The film “isn’t about people losing their job, losing their home, even though those are the physical aspects of recession,” says Austin, who is the older brother and does most of the talking. “It’s about love and compassion for one another. That ultimately is the solution for all the stuff that is going on.”
Job loss
Like many creative impulses in this economy, this one started with a layoff. Austin, 26, lost his job at an Internet startup in December. He was in a Newport Beach coffeehouse, fueled up, when he turned to a friend and blurted out “I want to drive through 50 states. I don’t know why.” He thought about it and then he did know why.
“People were losing jobs, retailers were filing for bankruptcy. I was like, ‘Man, something is happening and I need to go out and film it.’ “
Because he knew nothing about filmmaking, his brother Brian, 23, tried to talk him out of it, but that backfired. Instead, Brian, who majored in television and radio at San Francisco State University, quit his job to join his brother and they hit the road in late January.
“We tried to come up with a thesis before we left,” says Austin. “But that was very difficult because I had no idea what I wanted to cover.”
By the time they left Las Vegas, he knew. Just beyond the glittering lights they saw something they’d never seen, not even in overbuilt Orange County.
“As soon as you go beyond the Strip, you see brand new neighborhoods, less than 2 years old, that are abandoned,” says Austin. “You look down a street of 10 homes and eight of them have bank foreclosure signs. We were on Route 66 for a long time. We were also on 80, 40, 15.”
They drove along, filming whole developments of foreclosed homes.
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