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March 21, 2010 2:01 PM

Streets of Plenty is a documentary set in Vancouver's DTES of Corey Ogilvie's 31 day homelessness experiment whose thesis wasn't resolved until the 26th (and last) day.

In it, the protagonist starts living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside with nothing but a pair of underwear and a backpack. He attempts to answer his own question of how an individual can journey from a life of waiting for fiance's return from a weekend in Whistler to crack. Along the way, he sees how the various institutions of the DTES enable and/or assist those who have chosen that life and the effects of this life on an individual's health and sanity.

posted by sleslie (24 comments total)

Oh, I see....and might I add...what?
posted by zerobyproxy at 2:14 PM on March 21, 2010

He was a normal guy until he started smoking crack, now he is a hustler that sucks dick for $5 to buy another rock.
posted by gman at 2:22 PM on March 21, 2010

Crack is so powerful it'll make 31 days pass in just 26.
posted by DU at 2:27 PM on March 21, 2010

ACCESS DENIED
My employer doesn't want me to see what you're referring to.
posted by Kale Slayer at 2:27 PM on March 21, 2010

I watched 10 terrible minutes of a guy earnestly trying to make a film that mattered. What I saw was hardly a documentary. It was a film about some dude. Not the subjects. It was sarcastic, demeaning and this dude is clearly a peer to the jackass that filmed the ACORN video. What a douche. I would give it 100 thumbs down.
posted by zerobyproxy at 2:36 PM on March 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

Second link is the same as the third link?
posted by longsleeves at 2:46 PM on March 21, 2010

yeah, it's that good.
posted by gman at 2:47 PM on March 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

That's all well and good sitting in your ivory tower twiddling your hundred thumbs, but there are hard working people of much lower thumb status just trying to make ends meet.
posted by Dmenet at 2:48 PM on March 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

After hearing stories for the last three years of Vancouver doing more and more to push the homeless out of the city in order to put on a good show, this is really not the "documentary" I was hoping for. (Currently on video 2 of 7, and really hoping it takes a dramatic turn in presentation style and seriousness.)
posted by Doug Stewart at 3:47 PM on March 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

He should've hit the pipe on Day 1 while he was still in the nice shelter.

And what's up w/ no outtakes during the credits!?!?
posted by Lukenlogs at 3:49 PM on March 21, 2010

And what's up w/ no outtakes during the credits!?!?

Who needs outtakes when you can just read through the YouTube comments for entertainment? Like this one:

Unfortunately though, he totally overlooked one of the main issues: that we get all the trash people from across Canada because of our nice weather. EVERY city has it's share of addicts, and can deal with them. Our problem is that we have most of Canada's share, and cannot support it on our own. Strip these people of their mobility rights and ship them back to Ontario/Alta! (emphasis mine)

Ha Ha! Good one, YouTube commenter! I'm just going to step away from the keyboard now before I destroy something in a blind rage
posted by threetoed at 3:59 PM on March 21, 2010

So wait, this guy voluntarily becomes an addict to make a point? That doesn't make sense? I don't see why you would even do that to yourself. How did the makers of this ever think it was going to help?
posted by djduckie at 4:43 PM on March 21, 2010

> So wait, this guy voluntarily becomes an addict to make a point? That doesn't make sense? I don't see why you would even do that to yourself. How did the makers of this ever think it was going to help?

When the world of documentaries continues to slide further into the realm of "film maker as star," I'm not entirely surprised when they also have to employ more dramatic actions to gain attention. Definitely not a positive.
posted by Doug Stewart at 5:00 PM on March 21, 2010

Not gonna bother watching, just here to give you a better link for DTES than the urban dictionary entry for crack. Sweet post, dude.
posted by doublesix at 5:11 PM on March 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

For a good documentary on homelessness that doesn't smell so much like a vanity project I'd recommend Dark Days, which is about homeless people living in a train tunnel under Manhattan. Previously, though unfortunately the Google video link's gone. Here's a bit on YouTube.
posted by Consonants Without Vowels at 5:21 PM on March 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

i just watched most of it, and the guy either has a lot more guts or a ton fewer brains than i've got. yeah, he starts out as a pretentious privileged little shit who's going to expose homelessness as some sort of day camp for the lazy. but it does NOT up that way. i thought it was interesting & somewhat enlightening.
posted by msconduct at 5:56 PM on March 21, 2010

djuckie - "one time user for the sake of giving my documentary more punch" does not equal "addict". Maybe someday.
posted by mbatch at 6:32 PM on March 21, 2010

That was intense.
posted by Flex1970 at 8:11 PM on March 21, 2010

i guess i misunderstood the concept. i thought it was like "supersize me" or maybe even more aptly "super high me" but with crack.
posted by djduckie at 9:00 PM on March 21, 2010

I'm really ashamed I screwed up this post. It was a supersize me kind of thing at start and he wanted his base preconceptions confirmed but ended up getting his ass handed to him. Fascinating.

Engagement is always the first step towards some sort of solution, and this is a documentary of two groups who live next with walking's distance that have never talked to each other. (the last shot from his apartment is of BC Place and the DTES is within 4 or 5 blocks) Anyone watching this won't cheer as shopping carts of the homeless are thrown away after seeing a member of their own tribe go through what happened here, and for that I liked what I saw here.

I apologize again. It doesn't mean the video isn't worth watching.
posted by sleslie at 9:37 PM on March 21, 2010

OK, I watched the whole thing and I don't recall when I last saw something so irritating. The first half of the movie he spends bitching about how easy the homeless have it, feeding from the welfare tit. Then he moves out of the nice hostel and into the more typical hostel, gets a dose of the shits and can't take any more.

Eager to shut that shit down as soon as he can, he smokes a couple of pipes of crack in an alley, has a single shot of dope in a needle exchange, then goes home and they shoot the archetypal 'my hell on drugs' scene in his luxury apartment.

His sole insight from the experience? Long term homelessness is related to poor mental health and addiction. Well duh!

djuckie - "one time user for the sake of giving my documentary more punch" does not equal "addict".

I think it equals attention whore.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:01 AM on March 22, 2010

honestly, I hope the guy develops a serious drug habit and ends up being homeless and stuck in the world he's "investigating". what a freaking prick.
posted by wlai at 3:27 AM on March 22, 2010

His insufferable arrogance and profound dickishness made it impossible to get past the first few minutes of Part 2. I wanted to punch him in the face. Many times. Maybe that will make him look homeless enough.
posted by RedEmma at 12:17 PM on March 22, 2010

Unfortunately though, he totally overlooked one of the main issues: that we get all the trash people from across Canada because of our nice weather. EVERY city has it's share of addicts, and can deal with them. Our problem is that we have most of Canada's share, and cannot support it on our own. Strip these people of their mobility rights and ship them back to Ontario/Alta!

Nothing I've heard since moving West makes me more angry than this. Sure, it's a Youtube comment, but people have actually said this to me before. One even implied that cities in Ontario were buying the homeless bus tickets to go across the country.

As far as I can tell, Ralph Klein started this idea when he complained about the homeless "bums and creeps" from the east (unskilled migrant workers) that helped him build Calgary when he was mayor. If Calgary has the same problem, it's got nothing to do with "nice weather". There's more drugs and addiction here for a number of reasons, not least of which being the fact that we produce more drugs in-province and are the port where most of the drugs from many of the world's drug-producing regions first arrive.
posted by Kirk Grim at 2:39 PM on March 22, 2010