About me:
From the Director;
I’ve been on a journey. We all take them. Sometimes we know where we’re going and what to expect. Most times life simply has another plan for us. It’s up to us to adapt and live.
If you would have told me two years ago that I would be shooting a self financed documentary film in New York City about the lives, careers and dreams of Subway Buskers, I would have looked at you like a crazy person. Well, I’m in New York City shooting a self-financed documentary film about Subway Buskers!
The journey that leads me to this place began in October of 2005 while I was living in Los Angeles working on my stagnant unfulfilling career. My mother Shirley also in Los Angeles was diagnosed with bladder cancer. The prognosis at the time was somewhat upbeat and we figured she would get better. My mother went through many months of treatment, handling it like a champion. Enduring the discomfort and trying to make the changes in her life that would help her heal. Unfortunately my mother was a lifelong smoker and this took a huge toll on her. Along with the bladder cancer, she was eventually diagnosed with COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. A nice way of saying emphysema without scaring people. The years of cigarette smoking had done their damage. My mother died of cancer on September 19, 2006.
My mom wasn’t from Los Angeles so I decided to bury her on the east coast, in her home state of New Jersey. She is interned in Bloomfield, New Jersey with her mother Carrie, my grandmother.
I left Los Angeles in October 2006 for my New Jersey appointment and haven’t gone back. New York is home and I felt the need to spend time here. It’s also where my fondest and dearest memories of my life with my mother remain.
With no real life “plan,” I spent a lot of time walking the New York streets, thinking and riding the subway while I tried to make sense of all I’d been through. Emotionally I was confused, in pain and lonely. I didn’t find comfort in most things. Everything was just a blur. Life was tasteless.
While riding the subways in New York you come across musical performers called “Buskers.” They play or sing their hearts out for the hundreds of thousands of daily commuters for the love of it and loose change. For so many, they offer a few musical moments of joy and escape. On many a day, in my “fog” I got a lift from the music a Subway Busker shared with me while I was in my hustle and bustle mode. It makes the dash for the 2 train much more tolerable.
Every time I heard someone playing, singing or dancing, I thought, “I need to do a film about these people.” But then the fear thoughts crept in, “what kind of film?” “How will you finance it?” “Who will want to see these people in a film?” All of the scary “whys” and “how’s” danced in my head. But they were pushed aside and drowned out every time I walked onto a subway platform and some performer was filling the air with music. Each time helping me heal just a little bit more. Each musical experience and performer was more amazing than the next.
I kept thinking to myself, “who are these people?” “Where do they live?” “Why are they playing music for people in the subway?” “How did they get down here?” after months of enjoying their gifts, there was no doubt, I knew I had to do a film. I had to go on this journey and trust it.
Some of the subway performers had banners behind them with their names printed on them. So I did some research on the internet (thank you Al Gore) and found out what it was all about.
Once a year in New York City, Music Under New York (MUNY) a program run by the
Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) holds auditions for acceptance into it’s lineup. If selected to the MUNY roster, performers are given the opportunity to play at reserved locations in and around New York City’s mass transit system. On audition day, 70 performance artists of all types who have been pre-selected from hundreds of applicants, get five minutes to sing, dance, juggle or do whatever it is they do best. The auditions are open to the general public to view and take place in the historic Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Station. The judges consist of a large panel of professionals from the music industry, cultural institutions, MTA station operations and current MUNY artists. They evaluate and judge each five minute performance based on the criteria of overall quality, variety and appropriateness for the mass transit environment.
I followed and chronicled 6 MUNY program hopefuls who were chosen to audition. Shaheed Shabazz, Dominic Cammarota, Jodi Shaw, Doug Kwartler and Dagmar 2 (Meghan McGeary and Jim Bauer). My trek with them began weeks before the auditions and continued for months after. Some made it into the program. Some did not.
Making Subway Busker has been an amazing process. It’s helped me reconnect and discover what I “think” my next phase is supposed to be. You see, I’ve come to realize as a person and a filmmaker that life is truly about the journey.
I hope you enjoy my film.
Richard Cummings Jr.
© Film 50 LLC 2007
