Editor's Note: This story was edited after publication.
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The trailer for a still-unseen documentary about McKeesport asks whether the city can "rise from the ashes."
Now the producer and director are embroiled in a nasty dispute, and it's not clear when the project itself will rise from the ashes.
Director Mike Wilson told the Almanac this week that producer Jim Hubbard seized control of the film, and pressured him to slant the movie to suit his own conservative ideology.
But Hubbard says the footage that Wilson shot last year was "terrible," and that's why he and Art Rupe, who's financing the film project, fired the director.
Rupe, a McKeesport High School graduate who now lives in Santa Monica, Calif., is a millionaire philanthropist and the founder of Specialty Records.
"Clearly if I felt we had a good film there, I wouldn't have fired him," Hubbard says. "At the end of the day, it's my film, not Mike's."
. . .
Wilson is the second director fired from the project. The first, Sarah Whalen, has since become a supervising producer on the History Channel television series "Ax Men."
"Art seemed to indicate to me that this was Jim's decision, and Jim indicated that it was Art's decision," Wilson says. He bristles at Hubbard's accusation that the footage shot in McKeesport was sub-par.
"It had nothing to do with the (quality) of stuff we were creating," Wilson says. "The cut that I turned in was the film that I felt needed to be made."
Wilson, a Missouri native who now lives in Minnesota, first came to prominence for the 2004 film Michael Moore Hates America.
Shot in the same cheeky, irreverent style that characterized Moore's controversial movies like Bowling for Columbine, it pointed out inaccuracies in Moore's films and asked whether he betrayed the principles of documentary filmmaking. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, including Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and Robert Koehler of Variety.
Michael Moore Hates America was one of the featured selections in the first "American Film Renaissance" film festival, which was organized by Hubbard and his wife as a conservative alternative to what they viewed as left-wing bias in Hollywood feature films.
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Although much of Rupe's philanthropy has been non-partisan, he has also supported organizations like the Young Americas Foundation, which calls itself "the principal outreach organization of the Conservative Movement," and the Media Research Center, which is an opponent of what it calls "strident liberal bias" in the media.
Wilson says "his gut" tells him that Hubbard and Rupe want to make a film that blames Democrats and trade unions for McKeesport's decline.
"Look, I'm a libertarian and a capitalist, but I tried to be fair," Wilson says. Throughout the film, he says, he juxtaposed stories about government programs with comments from people such as Jerry Bowyer, a conservative author and commentator from Elizabeth Township, who says local and federal officials have turned McKeesport into "a welfare state."
"Then I talked to (Mayor) Jim Brewster, who told me (the government) has to tear down (abandoned) houses, for instance, because who's going to want to invest money and move into a neighborhood with abandoned houses?" Wilson says.
"I was in love with the story, and I was in love with what I thought we were going to create," he says. "The worst part about this is to have it stripped away --- for really nefarious purposes ... I just hope people know that this isn't us, and it isn't right."
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Allegations that political bias motivated Hubbard and Rupe to remove Wilson from the project are untrue, Hubbard says.*
"Clearly we had some creative differences with Mike," he says. "What we want to do with the film is pursue the truth ... We don't have an axe to grind here."
The film is solely motivated by Rupe's desire to find out why the Mon Valley's economy collapsed in the 1980s, Hubbard says.
"Art just wants to help the town he grew up in," he says. Rupe has donated tens of thousands of dollars to charities in the McKeesport area, including the Consortium for Public Education.
. . .
Yet privately, several people who met with Rupe and Hubbard last year to discuss the film have told the Almanac that they were concerned by remarks made by both men.
One person says he warned other prominent local residents to be careful when dealing with the film crew. This source says he was worried that the film was going to do a "hatchet job" on the city.
(In the interest of full disclosure: I met with Rupe and Hubbard last year, and declined to participate in the project because of similar concerns, which I wrote about on two occasions, here and here.)
Wilson also worries that Hubbard and Rupe might betray McKeesporters who have cooperated with the film crew so far.
I thought I should point out that Lucas Piatt of Millcraft Industries, which is renovating the store for commercial and residential use, has been nothing but supportive of our efforts to preserve what we could of the store.
First things first: In case you missed the item in Pat Cloonan's Daily News column, Terry Lee --- or someone who says he's Terry Lee --- has come partially out of retirement.
Four CDs of Terry Lee's legendary radio shows for WMCK and WIXZ (1360) are for sale right now on eBay. The cost is $15.99 each, plus shipping.
The name doesn't mean much to anyone who didn't grow up in the Mon Valley in the 1960s and '70s, or who isn't interested in Pittsburgh radio. But for those of us who dig the oldies, saying "Terry Lee is selling his CDs on eBay" is like saying "J.D. Salinger is out in the alley, signing autographed pictures."
Porky Chedwick was the radio pied-piper of Pittsburgh teens in the 1950s, and arguably Clark Race of KDKA and Jim Quinn, then on KQV, served that role in the 1960s. Terry Lee, working on McKeesport's 1360, was the more hip, less corporate alternative.
And he must have been made of caffeine and 9-volt batteries. While simultaneously hosting his nightly radio show, Lee also was hosting a teen dance show on WIIC-TV (11), operating a night club off of Lovedale Road in Elizabeth Township called "T.L.'s Nite Train," and working as a concert promoter.
I also have some of the bootleg recordings that have floated around over the years. He was a helluva radio talent who didn't have to be working in McKeesport.
As music faded from AM radio in the late 1970s, Terry worked for a while at several Mon Valley stations, including the old WESA in Charleroi, but then he abruptly vanished.
Why? Who knows. A lot of rumors were spread by people who may have been jealous of his success, or maybe who had been legitimately grieved. I've heard all of the rumors; most of them fall into the category of "a friend of a friend told me."
For what it's worth, I've been interviewing a lot of people who worked at WMCK and WIXZ with Terry. Universally, they tell me that they occasionally had disagreements, but genuinely liked him.
I suspect the rumors are mostly baloney (I'm not going to repeat them here), and that he simply got tired of the aggravation and blew the scene. The fact is, no one knows for sure, because Terry's been mostly incognito for the last 20 years.
Using my elite reporter skills, I did get a home address for him a few months ago, but I haven't written to him. I did order the CDs, though, and I did send him an email. If he wants to talk, man, do I have questions.
. . .
In Other Business: A group of protesters yesterday staged a demonstration against the company that developed the Waterfront shopping center in Munhall and Homestead.
They claim that the Waterfront destroyed the business district on Eighth Avenue in Homestead, and that Pittsburgh officials should cancel the developer's deal to build a similar entertainment and commercial complex on the North Side.
To which I say: Oh, bullflop.
First, I'll agree that the Waterfront hasn't generated any development on the "other side of the tracks" in the Steel Valley. As John Dindak, Betty Esper and others pointed out when the Waterfront was being planned, the complex largely turns its back on the boroughs.
The developers didn't want people from the Steel Valley shopping there. They wanted people from Pittsburgh --- notably Squirrel Hill, Oakland and Shadyside --- shopping there. That's why the entrances from Homestead and Munhall are congested and small, while the entrances from the Homestead Greys Bridge are wide and commodious. That's why they didn't --- at first --- want Port Authority buses running through the Waterfront.
You can call it racism or classism, and you'd have a good argument. Certainly people on the "other side of the tracks" in Homestead, Munhall and West Homestead are poorer and include more minorities than those in Squirrel Hill, Oakland and Shadyside.
But the idea that the Waterfront was responsible for Eighth Avenue's decline is a joke. Like most downtown business districts, Eighth Avenue has been in serious decline for 30 years. When the Waterfront opened, only a handful of businesses were still hanging on --- Levine Brothers Hardware, Harry's Clothes, and a few others. Their owners were elderly, and they've retired or died.
Why haven't new businesses taken their places? Eighth Avenue is full of older buildings that would require expensive renovations, and most of them don't have parking. Small business owners are not going to take risks on dilapidated old storefronts in Homestead when they can rent brand-new spaces in shopping centers in Forest Hills or North Versailles.
I don't like it, but it's reality, and it's not the developers' fault.
A lot of people bemoaned the demolition of Chiodo's Tavern, but the Walgreen's that replaced it is the first new construction on the avenue in years. It's also attractive and respectful to the surrounding buildings.
As for the protesters --- I've met many of them over the years. They are sincere and passionate about the Steel Valley. But some of them are professional protesters who protest everything; a few of them are still fighting battles from the early 1980s, when the mills went down.
God bless 'em. We need 'em to occasionally remind everyone that everything's not sweetness and light, and to hold the feet of the Waterfront's developers --- and others --- to the fire.
But the Steel Valley would be better off if they spent less time chanting slogans, and more time trying to clean up Eighth Avenue and tear down abandoned commercial buildings.
Ah, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
(Editor's Note: I wanted to get a comedy-variety show to fill this spot for the summer ... something hosted, maybe, by Wayne and Schuster or Pat Paulsen, and featuring the Ding-a-Ling SIsters. But as it turns out, 1.) I don't have any money to hire talent, 2.) I'm not actually on TV, and 3.) the people I wanted for the show are dead. So instead, we're stuck with another rerun, this one from May 7, 2003.)
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Isn't it funny how the bodies of government that have the most impact on our daily lives --- our town councils and school boards --- get the least scrutiny from voters? Funny, as in, "depressing"?
In any event, a story from this evening's Daily News illustrates again why the Mon Valley will never get its own chapter of Mensa. It seems that the borough council in Glassport "discovered the U.S. flag on display there was missing something --- a couple of stars":
Councilman James Foster recalled the moment exactly. A month or so ago, he and other councilors were looking around chambers thinking of ways to improve its look.
"We were talking about how old some of the things were and I pulled the flag out," Foster recalled. "I immediately said 'Hey, this is a few stars short.'"
Two to be exact. The even row pattern of the flag tipped Foster off.
(Editor's Note: Due to circumstances beyond my control, it's summer rerun time! Here's an Almanac that originally appeared on March 31, 2004. I'd call it "the best of," but that's like trying to decide which method of tooth-drilling you like "best.")
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At a critical point in a serious meeting last night, I looked down and realized I was wearing two different color shoes. One brown, one black.
It's a long walk from the parking lot to the office, so on rainy, sloppy days, I wear my swamp boots to work, and then change into a pair of dress shoes. The problem is that this invariably means that either the boots or the shoes go home at the end of the day; not both. (Unless I wore shoes on my hands when I went home ... hmmm ....)
But yesterday, there was no need to wear my swamp boots to the office, so I wore a pair of dress shoes. At some point during the afternoon, I kicked off the shoes under my desk. And then, as I prepared to go home last night, I slipped my feet back into them.
One brown. One black. I looked like an escapee from the looney bin (the Dementia ward, if you will, or if you won't, for that matter).
It's just the thing when you're having a serious meeting with a couple of PhDs. Luckily they weren't psychiatrists.
In other business, Kennywood is giving the Old Mill a new look, according to the Post-Gazette:
The new ride will be called Garfield's Nightmare, featuring that chubby feline of comic strip fame. In the ride, Garfield, who is known for his healthy appetite, has a bit too much to eat and goes into a deep sleep, and falls into a nightmare where all the characters that he normally tortures, such as his owner, Jon, and Odie the dog, gain a bit of revenge. Riders will be given special glasses that will make the scenes appear in 3-D and the entire ride will undergo other changes, including a new queuing line, a refreshment stand and a place where riders can get their picture taken with the famous fat cat.
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