No one who watches ”Fast Food Women,” the first of a two-part
”P.O.V.” presentation airing at 10:30 p.m. Monday on PBS-Ch. 11, will be compelled to bop down to their neighborhood fast-food joint for a quick snack. This is a short-30 minutes-and stinging indictment of an industry that takes, the filmmaker argues, unfair advantage of people struggling to make ends meet.
Filmmaker Anne Johnson took her cameras to southeastern Kentucky to tell this story, interviewing fast-food executives and supervisors but focusing solidly on the women who work as waitresses, cooks and minions of the fast-food biz.
”The work is hard,” says one of the women, simply.
And the remuneration is pathetic. Few of the women interviewed make much more than minimum wage, and hope of anything better is virtually non-existent. There is no medical insurance, no retirement benefits, no job security.
In a business in which all tasks are getting increasingly menial, the women are essentially reduced to human automatons, toiling in a dehumanizing environment.
All the while, as one puts it, ”the chains` executives think creatively about ways to make our jobs uncreative.”
This is a sad look at the subculture of the working poor, made even more sorrowful by the fact that they are all but helpless to do anything about it. That is not the case with the people featured in the second portion of the ”P.O.V.” program.
”Takeover” is a fascinating, artful documentary that focuses on efforts of homeless Americans to get places to live. Shot by 12 video crews in eight cities, the film focuses on May 1, 1990, when organized groups of homeless people seized and occupied vacant government-owned buildings.
The events of that day are given sturdy context, as we witness events, and learn of issues, leading up to the takeovers; meet some of the organizers; and even scout a remarkably lavish home that sits unused and empty under control of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
This was a story I remember reading hardly a word about in the press. That, and what positive things the takeovers were able to accomplish, makes this not only an interesting but also an important film. Filmmakers Peter Kinoy and Pamela Yates give the story a vivid, forceful feel.
– Believing that Holly Hunter is one of the most interesting actresses around doesn`t make me believe anything she does as Georgie Swift Symonds in
”Crazy in Love” (7 p.m. Monday, Turner Network Television).
Living on an idyllic island in Washington state`s Puget Sound, Georgie is a public television filmmaker whose life appears quite good. Her businessman husband, Nick (Bill Pullman), seems a loving sort, the scenery is breathtaking and she`s surrounded by her mother, grandmother and sister and her family.
But she`s not happy because she sees adultery around every corner.
The reason for this-fully explored in Luanne Rice`s 1988 novel of the same name-is that adultery has become almost a family trait, having touched most profoundly Georgie`s mother, Honora (Gena Rowlands), whose husband abandoned the family.
This like-father-like-husband feeling makes a self-absorbed mess of Georgie, who sees evil intentions in any other woman and fears the worst every time Nick hops a plane to commute to work in Seattle.
When Nick travels to London on business, Georgie gets as frazzled as if he`d said he`d be spending the weekend with porn star Marilyn Chambers.
How does she cope? She leaves the island for a photo shoot in conjunction with one of her documentaries. And it takes her all of about 30 seconds (and one dinner) to dally with the photographer.
This is a mess of a movie, made worse by the way in which the grandmother (Herta Ware) is portrayed: babbling and out of control. Nothing in the movie rings true, and, though Rowlands brings a quiet grace to her role, the rest of the cast seem to have misplaced-or were never given-their emotional compasses.
