Underground Films
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 31, 2000 9:00 p.m.
 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.
