Red Line Film Collides With MTA Controversy

Filmmaker Chris Hume spent almost $10,000 of his own money making a documentary about Los Angeles’ Metro Rail subway system. He traveled hundreds of feet underground, explored the Red Line’s deepest tunnels and enjoyed unique access to much of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $4.5-billion construction project.

But now that “Beneath Los Angeles” is complete, Hume finds himself in a hole with the MTA. What began nearly two years ago as a friendly partnership between Hume and the MTA to document the seldom-seen world of the miners down below began to fray when Hume expanded the movie’s scope to include the controversy up above.

“Chris chose to magnify, distort and even glorify some of the troubles the Metro Rail experienced during construction, while ignoring or downplaying the tremendous positive social and economic impacts of this project,” MTA spokesman Marc Littman said of the film, which includes footage of the Hollywood Boulevard sinkhole and interviews with some of the subway’s most passionate opponents. “It’s totally unbalanced.”

Hume, whose 56-minute movie screens for the public Tuesday at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, doesn’t apologize for his one-man film or back away from the dispute.

“I didn’t want it to be a puff piece for the MTA, but I also didn’t want it to be a slam piece,” says Hume, 34, who edits motion picture trailers for Miramax and hopes to one day direct feature films. “There’s no way I’m ever going to please everybody.”

“Beneath Los Angeles” arrives as the MTA works toward the May 2000 completion of the last stretch of subway into North Hollywood after years of construction problems, cost overruns, management shake-ups and negative media accounts.

In the documentary, touching portrayals of subway miners and rare footage of underground construction are followed by scenes of buildings damaged by tunneling and unsettling stories of people hurt by the subway. A man calling himself Hollywood’s only blind talent agent stands in front of his red-tagged Walk of Fame office building, describing how he was evicted with only five minutes notice because ground sinkage exacerbated damage caused by the 1994 earthquake.

Littman, who with other agency officials asked that his name be removed from the documentary’s credits, said the MTA was not given a chance on film to rebut some of the charges. The MTA contends that Hume was allowed in the tunnels with the understanding the documentary would depict the lives and work of the miners, and in turn the agency would have access to Hume’s footage. Hume said his agreement with the MTA covered only liability issues, not content, and since no money changed hands he had editorial freedom.

Pursued Controversy to Liven Up Documentary

The turning point in the documentary’s focus came when he met Isabel Lopez, a North Hollywood nightclub owner whose building was damaged by tunnel construction, Hume said. “I realized there was something really poignant that could drive the [documentary] beyond engineering. The fuel was ignited.”

In the film, Lopez stands near a large sinkhole in the floor inside her nightclub. While several agency officials speak in general on screen about project safety and damage payouts, no one from the MTA is given a chance to address Lopez’s situation on camera.

“It’s a breach of trust,” Littman said. “He wasn’t honest with us.”

Hume said he pursued the controversy, in part, to liven up the documentary, which he hopes to sell to a public television station or home video distributor and show at film festivals.

The film’s featured attraction is John Walsh, a colorful, quotable, longtime critic of the subway. In the film, Walsh yells and screams during an MTA board meeting, his face nearly as red as his jacket, as he calls officials racist, accusing them of denying Metro Rail service to lower-income neighborhoods. He stands on Hollywood Boulevard, proudly totaling how much money his activism has cost the MTA, saying the agency treated Hollywood “the same way Sherman treated Atlanta.”

Hume said after an early screening, MTA officials lobbied for a more positive tone and removal of some scenes, including one of a worker smoking in a tunnel as a train rumbles by. Littman acknowledges suggestions were made, but says the MTA in no way tried to censor the movie.

“The miners are the backbone of the piece,” insists Hume, who was able to keep his post-production costs down by using Miramax’s editing system. “Most of them are very friendly. A couple of times when the tunnel-boring machine was going through the rock they weren’t pleased to have someone down there with a camera because it’s such a constricted environment. I filmed them cussing at me.”

With his MTA-issued hard hat, vest and boots, and the new digital video camera he bought for this project, Hume saw work areas no subway token can buy. Entering the tunnel on the Universal City side, he once traveled nearly two miles into the Santa Monica Mountains--at one point to a depth of about 900 feet--toward the future Hollywood/Highland station to watch the tunnel-boring machines (“They’re as big as a football field!”) at work.

“It was incredible, like being on a spaceship,” Hume said of being inside the enormous machines. “You’re hundreds of feet underground walking on catwalks near machines with banks of gauges and dials. It’s very hot and wet, probably more than 100 degrees down there. And the air has to be pumped in artificially from the opening two miles back.”

Controversy aside, “Underneath Los Angeles” celebrates the engineering and construction of the subway, with triumphant scenes of the 1997 “hole-through”--the underground meeting of the tunnelers burrowing north from Hollywood and south from the San Fernando Valley.

‘It Was Our Special Little Domain’

Except for a brief comment by an MTA official, the subway project’s three fatalities are not mentioned. “The deaths on the construction of the subway are far below-average for a project this size,” Hume said. “Out of respect for the families, why sensationalize that?”

Hume said this month’s grand opening of the Hollywood section of the Red Line was thrilling for him, but the crowds will take some time for him to get used to.

“When I go down in a station now, I feel like I still need my hard hat and boots,” Hume said. “For the longest time it was our special little domain. I would be sneaking around down there at 3 o’clock in the morning. It would be me and the workmen. We would have the whole system to ourselves. Now it’s everybody’s.”

* “Beneath Los Angeles” screens Tuesday at 8 p.m. at Raleigh Studios Screening Room, 5300 Melrose Ave.; $5; (323) 634-0199. Portraits of the miners, taken by photographer Ken Karagozian, will be on display in the theater lobby at the screening.