My Only Weakness

Everybody has a story. It's that simple.

Tonight's story began at UR for the screening of  "To Render a Life: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and the Documentary Vision."

It was being shown as a tie-in to the "The Social Lens: Photographs by Dorothea Lange and Her Contemporaries" exhibit which I'd already seen.

When I walked in and took a seat, I was immediately invited to move closer to two other attendees, so I did.

Hell, if strangers want me to sit closer to them, I'm happy to.

The woman's face looked familiar, so I used a few well-placed inquiries to find out why.

Turns out she's lived here nine years, is on the board of Firehouse Theater so I had no doubt seen her at performances.

One story down and the movie hadn't even started.

The film's purpose was two-fold: to consider the classic 1941 book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee and Walker Evans and to document a present day family living in rural poverty.

So in 1988, filmmaker Ross Spears spent three years documenting a family living in abject poverty just twenty miles south of Charlottesville.

Using excerpts read from Agee's book, he set the scene.

We see a Harvard class hearing a lecture about the wonders of the book (and since this was 1988, none of the students texted or looked at their phones) from a teacher whose class is at capacity every year.

We see the Washington Post's book critic, Jonathan Yardley, talk about why he doesn't like the book.

Howell Raines, the former executive editor of the New York Times, talks about its significance.

But the heart of the film comes from the three years the filmmaker spent with an extremely poor family documenting their lives from 1988 to 1991 and interspersed with readings from Agee's book about the poor rural families he and Walker Evans documented back in the 1930s.

Evans' intent as a photographer was always to stay invisible and Spears does the same.

With a voice reading from the book about the distinct smell of poor, white Southern houses, the camera glides over shots of roaches and flies on food and furniture.

It's disturbing and it's factual.

As one social documentary photographer says during the movie, "Taking pictures of suffering is a way to scream."

The film could have been construed as one long scream.

The family followed in the film lives off of one part-time income with no running water or indoor plumbing (and this is 1988).

Except for the father who did a lot of manual labor, they're all overweight, some approaching morbid obesity.

Both the husband and wife have missing teeth and she's only 48 and he's 55.

Their faces look so much older, clearly a result of a hard life.

But like the social documentarians of the '30s, this is what people look like when they live these lives.

And I'm betting that to the students in the room, 1980s poverty was as obscure to them as 1930s poverty.

After the film, the director spoke and took questions.

Ross Spears admitted that he'd grown close to the family he'd filmed and gave us updates about them today.

One woman said, "Thank you so much for this film. I wish everyone I know could see it."

I've no doubt that that was the same feeling expressed by people who saw the 1930s photographs of people scraping through the Depression.

When asked how difficult it had been to get the family to agree to the long-term shooting schedule, Spears was clear.

"Everyone has a story to tell," he said, "And they want to share it. Social documentarians are fortunate enough to be there when it happens."

Satisfied that I had what it takes to make note of what's happening, I left the labyrinthine UR campus for Church Hill.

Despite the later hour, The Roosevelt was hopping when I arrived but a kind soul let me take the one empty bar stool next to him.

Bartender T. offered up some Gabrielle Rause Vin de Gris, but I let the rainy weather dictate a red, opting for White Hall cabernet franc.

The guy on the stool next to me turned out to be a childhood friend of the kitchen brotherhood, so one of them introduced us and I now had company.

When his pork shank with buttermilk spaetzle in a mustard sauce arrived, he was generous enough to share a bite.

Since when do I take pig from a virtual stranger? Since, I don't know, always?

Next he offered up a bite of his flap steak with cheddar bacon mashed potatoes and housemade A-1 sauce, which I was just as happy to avail myself of.

Naturally when my beef shanks and gnocchi arrived, I offered him some, too.

In return, I asked him for his story, gleaning that he lives in Roanoke, was here on business and always has a good time when he's in Richmond.

While I was eating my cheeseburger (cheddar, bacon onion jam), a first for me at the Roosevelt, a guy a few seats down the bar caught my attention and began a conversation with me.

He, too, was drinking the White Hall, but unlike my Roanoke neighbor, he didn't offer me any of his food (tonight's special, the grilled tuna) because he'd already finished it.

A few well-placed questions and I knew he lived a couple of blocks away, hadn't been in the Roosevelt in months and came from upstate New York.

We chatted enthusiastically about how rental properties tie you to an area, the benefits of learning a trade (say, electrician) and how much there is to do culturally in Richmond.

In a comical moment, one of the sous chefs walked by saying, "Key lime pie, it's my only weakness."

I doubted that, questioned him and discovered that it's his only food weakness.

I overheard a guy saying he was going to the nearby market where they carry, "Head wraps, cigarettes, Dom Perignon and cell phones."'

Sounded like a hell of a market selection to me, but when asked, said I didn't need anything.

When he returned, he had a tale of seeing three, well, never mind, but he had a story.

Because everyone does and we all want to share ours.

You could say telling my story this way is my only weakness.

Okay, it's the only weakness I'm going to admit to tonight.