`Toxic comedy' on PVC challenges viewers to act

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`Toxic comedy' on PVC challenges viewers to act

By Barnhart

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Published May 4, 2002

If " Blue Vinyl " does nothing else, it has already defied conventional wisdom

about what you can and can't do on television.

You can, in fact, talk about a deadly serious subject without being deadly

dull. You can aggressively promote a political agenda and be entertaining.

And you can do a program on home improvement that viewers might actually

find useful.

Of course, the two young filmmakers who spent five years on " Blue Vinyl "

hope their work accomplishes much more than that. Even as their

self-described " toxic comedy " about the PVC, or vinyl, industry premieres at

9 p.m. Sunday on HBO, Judith Helfand and Dan Gold are on the go. They're

criss-crossing the nation, showing their film to local environmental groups,

trying to turn what might be the best TV program of the year into a

grassroots movement.

This extraordinary film opens with a seemingly innocuous event. One day in

1996, Helfand's parents decide to have new siding put on their modest Long

Island, N.Y., home. They choose vinyl, the " versatile plastic " used in

everything from medical supplies and bathroom pipes to shrink wrap.

Searching for the truth

Helfand clearly disapproves. A sweeter Jewish version of , she

marches out to learn the truth about PVC, a scrap of blue vinyl siding

(hence the film's title) clutched in her arm. Right beside her is Gold,

whose incisive and whimsical eye would capture the top cinematography prize

for " Blue Vinyl " at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

When Helfand was 25, she was treated successfully for a rare cervical

cancer. Like thousands of other " DES daughters, " her mother had been given

the drug diethylstilbestrol, or DES, to prevent miscarriage. Helfand's first

solo documentary, " A Healthy Baby Girl, " was an emotionally raw account of

her cancer and an angry history of DES, a drug promoted to doctors for years

even though its manufacturer knew it was ineffective.

While promoting " A Healthy Baby Girl, " Helfand visited Lake , La.,

home to a huge PVC facility. Activists there told her that the factory had

contaminated the community's soil and ground water. Workers inside the

factory, they said, were at even greater risk, because of high levels of

vinyl chloride (the " VC " in PVC) handled there.

In an interview earlier this year, Helfand said she remembered the vinyl

siding on her parents' house, " and suddenly I became nauseous. " Had her

family just bought a product manufactured at this very facility? A product

advertised as safe -- the way DES once was?

She felt kinship with Lake ; more than that, she felt another film

coming on. But it would be a different film than her previous one. With the

help of Gold, whom she eventually made co-director, " Blue Vinyl " would be

not as intense; there would be humor in it. It would be aimed at everyday

Americans. And it would be practical, with a Web site for people to find

alternatives to PVC (myhouseisyourhouse.org).

Not surprisingly, The Vinyl Institute, the main trade group representing PVC

makers, is not pleased with " Blue Vinyl. " An industry publication quotes a

spokesman as saying, " It's an attack on vinyl that's unsubstantiated by the

facts. "

HBO's top executive for documentary films, Sheila Nevins, disputes that.

" There aren't any false moves in it, " she said. " No one likes to be

criticized, but the truth is the truth. "

According to Gold, HBO's legal department required a briefing book

documenting every claim in the film. It's 1,200 pages long.

" They said, `Give us two sources for everything, and if Greenpeace is one of

them, give us three,' " Gold said.

Doubtless the people at The Vinyl Institute were also unhappy about their

portrayal in the film. LThe institute is the comic foil of " Blue Vinyl, " a

paranoid, image-obsessed public relations front for an industry that, it

seems, must have something terrible to hide.

Surrogate parents

In Lake , we see plucky citizen-activists forming a " bucket brigade "

to monitor the town's air quality. The filmmakers tag along with

Baggett, a lifelong Lake resident, attorney, inventor and one-man

wrecking crew against the vinyl industry. He introduces them to the widow of

Dan Ross, who worked at a PVC plant for 23 years and whose agonizing death

led to a landmark lawsuit.

On the other hand, there is the family at the Habitat for Humanity

house-raising, funded by The Vinyl Institute. A mother sheds tears of

gratitude for her new home, made mostly with PVC products. Helfand looks on

sympathetically.

And then there are Helfand's parents. They are perplexed by her

determination to tear off their new siding. Besides supplying comic relief

throughout the film, the parents are surrogates for the home audience.

Convince them of the evils of PVC and you can convince anyone. That isn't

easy given the reason why they, like most people, chose vinyl: It's cheap,

durable and looks nice.

Helfand runs herself ragged looking for environmentally correct alternatives

to the blue devil. Her mother rejects them all. Even if they do settle on a

compromise, it will be expensive, and Helfand will be stuck with a U-Haul

full of used siding -- which gives off deadly dioxins when burned. What

then?

Eventually, Helfand concocts a vinyl-recycling scheme. It's the kind only a

filmmaker would dream up, but that's sort of the point. " Blue Vinyl " calls

attention to a problem. Solving it is the viewer's job.

Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune