Mar 8 2008
Director of The Return of the Cuyahoga, about the fall and subsequent rebound of the Cuyahoga River, Lawrence Hott has spent several decades bringing ecological and environmental issues to film. With his latest piece, he hopes to bring a hopeful look at an historical tragedy.I spoke with Lawrence, currently back in his native Massachusetts, about The Return of the Cuyahoga.
Why did you pick the Cuyahoga River?
Actually, the Cuyahoga River picked me.
Back in 2000-2001 I was approached by Len Materman and he has a group called America's River Communities. He was working with an associate in Cleveland named Ted Esborn, a lawyer at the firm McDonald Hopkins, and they asked me to be a consultant. They had an idea for series on rivers that had been inspired by the American Heritage River Program, a Clinton initiative to highlight the importance of rivers. It involved fourteen rivers, and and the Cuyahoga was one of them. So they came to me as consultant on how to put together a series for public television on rivers. My first suggestion? I advised them to hire me. [Laughs.] Then they asked me to come to Ohio for a Brecksville seminar about the river, specifically the point, to talk about what should be in a film about it.
I met the people from WVIZ, specifically Mark Smukler, and they asked me if I was willing to work on a film about the history of Ohio. They had money in hand for a bicentennial film, but not for the Cuyahoga River film. So we started shooting the Ohio history film and did preliminary shooting on the Cuyahoga River film at same time. We finished the history film in 2003, but it took another four years for the money to come through for the Cuyahoga River project. WVIZ joined forces with the America's River Communities people. They were able to find funding.
What was the angle you felt would be new and different?
The angle on the Cuyahoga River was that here is a river that was in many ways a pollution nightmare, and it made Cleveland the butt of all kinds of jokes in the 70s, but the reality is that the business community and environmental community all got together to improve the health of the river and have been working together as a group since.
Although the river is not drinkable, particularly in The Flats, the improvements are astounding. I wanted to do a film that was hopeful about environmental concerns, not depressing, a screed, or an attack. The Cuyahoga River is a beacon; people come from all over the world, particularly from Eastern Europe, to look at how a river was brought back to life.
The first half of the movie is about how the river got to what it was and the second half is about how to bring a river back to life.
In the filming, what segments became most memorable for you?
Our favorite story in the film is about the group we call "the Parma boys" of the West Creek Preservation Community; West Creek is a tributary of the Cuyahoga. Here is a part of the country that most people would not say "there's where the environmentalists live." It is a working class suburb, somewhat ethnic, and yet it is home to one of the most successful environmental groups in country. They are featured because they are so successful at what they do. They are not tree huggers; they really get things done.
Another great interview from the movie involves Bob Fretz. He just retired as a watershed ranger for Akron, and he tells a great story about his father working for a tire company. His father would come home so covered with soot he would leave shadows, and he talked of all the chemicals that would wind-up in water and what he saw while patrolling the watershed.
But the two really incredible characters in this film are Wayne Bratton and Frank Samsel. Both are very well known in Cleveland. Bratton is a riverboat captain and Frank had Samsel Supply Maritime and is retired. Both are so funny, so articulate, that when they tell story of what happened on the river and how they worked to clean it up you feel like you were listening to two great Mark Twain type storytellers. But they're not telling stories about other people, these are about themselves. They are both so charismatic and really wonderful, just made for documentary films.
