The truth may not always set you free, but maybe it can make you a rich and famous. That’s the cynical takeaway from “An Omar Broadway Film,” a raw, sometimes unwatchable documentary exposing the brutality inside one of the nation’s toughest prisons. The film, which premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, is now being shown on HBO.and available on DVD.
Omar Broadway and Buddy Randolph, cellmates in New Jersey’s Northern State Prison spent six months in 2004 shooting footage with a contraband camcorder. Despite living in a segregated unit housing gang leaders, which includes serious twenty-three hour-a day lock down, the pair managed to document an amazing sampling of violent interactions among inmates and between inmates and correction officers. Broadway hopes the film will show “the world exactly what goes on within the confines of these buildings.”
The film, credited to both Broadway and filmmaker Douglas Triola, is rife with the Corrections’ trifecta: violence, degradation, deprivation. Conditions here are inhumane. And the fact that so many prisoners (and maybe even some viewers) have become inured to such treatment is heartbreaking. Here’s where the law and order brigade usually hurl bleeding heart tomatoes in my direction. But hear me out: to bombard offenders, who are incarcerated, in part, due to their own inhumanity with such grievous, inhumane treatment is not only unconscionable, it simply isn’t working.
Our prison population, larger than any other nation’s, and bursting at the bars, is subjected to varying degrees of harsh punishment and rehabilitation, with the former often the victor. With a recidivism rate nearing 50%, correcting our correctional approach is not merely a moral imperative, it is also the fiscally and socially responsible course.
Northern State is so over-crowded solitary confinement has become a penal luxury. Now two men share a tiny cell the size of a small bathroom. Yet within these walls–and among some of the inmates–lurks a remarkable–if tenuous– sense of hope. Broadway, Randolph and their families ( especially Broadway’s colorful mom, Lynne) are living on a faith–a tragically false faith–that once the film is released so will the incarcerated filmmakers. Of course it doesn’t work that way. Broadway–who’s doing a ten year stretch on nine counts of weapons possession and aggravated assault –is now finishing his sentence in a Maryland facility.
But amidst the almost impenetrable noise, the sparse and tight quarters and lousy grub, live youthful hearts pulsating with dreams of ditching the Big House for the big bucks they expect the film to earn them. Clearly an intelligent man with a hip-hop swagger to match his movie star name, Omar Broadway shows fleeting glimpses of the little boy whose dreams of stardom are now nourished in a cage.
What landed Broadway behind bars is one of those stories that has become so common place in some neighborhoods, it is described by a prosecutor as a “rite of passage” for many young African-American men in poor urban communities. While his mom laughingly says “Omar was born mean,” she blames the attention–and lawsuit settlement money–his older brother received after a car accident–on Broadway’s slide into the easy lure of the street corner drug trade.
That corner between 15th and Williams Streets in East Orange, New Jersey– a rough and tumble town near the edge of Newark–is where Triola, who signed on as a collaborator later and only met Omar Broadway for the first time last year–starts the film and frequently returns.
Some of the intrigue here comes from the covert maneuverings that smuggled the camera in and the tapes out. Lynne Broadway insists guards were involved, as some–enraged over the cruel treatment–wanted to get the footage to the public. While a Prison Watch advocate doubts this claim, Lynne says she had a network of guards all using the collective alias of “Walter,” who would bring her the tapes in exchange for an undisclosed amount of money. Just how much money was involved, or where it came from, remains murky.
For her part, Lynne Broadway is both riddled with anxiety over the camera and the consequences it may bring should the guys get caught, and proud of her son’s mission. “The minute they got that camera they went from inmates to filmmakers,” she offers with more than a hint of delusional grandiosity. Without Triola’s sizable contribution, all we’d have is some very raw, shaky ( think “Blair Witch Project”) camera shots. The narrative is filled in with the standard documentary interviews from family members, prison officials, advocates and other filmmakers. One, Tom Fontana, the creator of the HBO prison drama “Oz,” says of the incarcerated novice documentarians: “I totally believe they become actors in their own movie, that they convince themselves of the personas they are going to adopt.”
Ironically, it is those times when Broadway and Randolph are filming each other, when they let themselves just be themselves, devoid of bravado that I started to feel real empathy for their wasted lives. I even cultivated a false faith that not only would they be released to live rich and productive lives, but that the film would actually improve prison conditions across the country. I became infused with youthful idealism. A film really could change the world.
Then I read a crushing article about jails surpassing hospitals as the top mental health providers in the country. And after witnessing–albeit from a safe, celluloid distance– the brutality behind bars, realized the cruel irony of incarcerating mentally ill people in facilities barbaric enough to drive a sane person crazy.
It’ll take more than one movie. But it’s a start.
Please follow Amy Beth Arkawy on Twitter. You can also read her other News Junkie Post articles.
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Yet another thug complaining about the CO’s that have to put up with his disrespect on a daily basis. It is his own damn fault for going to prison. I don’t see him whining about how he treated his victims of his crimes. People like him should not be parents because the cycle just keeps going and going and going.
I worked for 31 years as a correctional officer ! During my tenure I was
spat upon , had urine and feces thrown at me. These “inmates”
are just pigs! They have more rights than private citizens.
They abuse the appeal process. they have three square meals a day.
contact visiting. family “visits”. canteen(store). and all the free medical
treatment they wish for i.e. dental,physical therapy,orthopedic care,
m.r.i. scans,outside medical consultants, e.n.t. specialists, urologists,
free medical care, just fill out a co-payment slip and say you are
indigent and the $5.00 fee will be waved! get a prison job (assignment)
and you only have do half of your sentence.(half time).
i/m’s disrespect and assault CO’s on a daily basis! The whole system is just circus.
Are we supposed to feel sorry for the murders, drug dealers, rapists and car jackers? I’m not sure what the point of this movie is other than for omar to “get money, get paid” as they say so he can be a baller when he get’s out.
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