A Political 'Street Fight' in Newark

Few cities in America are as rife with both corruption and civic pride as Newark, N.J. Documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry spent the 2002 election season absorbing plenty of both as he attempted to make a film about the candidates for mayor: the long-time incumbent, Sharpe James, and the 32-year-old upstart, Cory Booker.

Both are black, but James grew up poor while Booker was raised in the suburbs. James is an everyman making a six-figure salary; Booker is a golden boy living in the projects he's trying to revitalize. James' administration is notorious for corruption; Booker is as squeaky clean as they come. When James starts playing dirty -- spreading damaging lies about Booker, harassing Booker's supporters, even going after Curry -- the campaign turns brutal, turning the documentary into a thriller about how ugly the political machine can be.

We spoke with Curry shortly after "Street Fight" (which showed on PBS and is now available on DVD) was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar.

Ada Calhoun: Congratulations on the Oscar nomination.

Marshall Curry: Thanks! The luncheon for nominees was fun. They put everybody together, so it's not just like the A-list movie stars at one table and the rest of us at the other table. Steven Spielberg was at the table next to me. Tim Burton was sitting to my left, and the guy that did the makeup for Narnia was sitting to my right.

AC: How do you rate your chances? You're up against March of the Penguins.

MC: Yeah, not great. Somebody said, "You think Sharpe James is tough, wait till you take on the penguins!"

AC: Has James seen the movie?

MC: I have to believe he has. The day after the PBS broadcast there was a mailing that went out around the city that basically equated me with Adolf Hitler. But they haven't contacted me directly. I know he's written a lot of crazy letters to PBS and anybody that gives the film publicity. He tries to breathe his fire on them. I think most of what he's doing is just kind of a Newark whisper campaign that attacks the film as propaganda.

AC: Judging from the film, he's great at those. He seems to take a page from our White House when it comes to disinformation.

MC: I think that's one of the reasons that people have been interested in the film. Most people don't care about Newark particularly. And they certainly don't care about some election that happened there a couple of years ago. But when we played in Amsterdam at a big documentary festival there, on our first night there were 600 people in the audience. And we've been selling it to European television and Latin American television, and I think the reason that those people are interested in it is that there is something about it that feels unfortunately familiar. Whether you're calling Cory Booker a white Jew or saying that John Kerry is a war criminal … it's amazing how these things work.

AC: How do candidates get away with such bad behavior?

MC: One thing that frustrated me so much in both the Newark election and the last presidential election is the mainstream media tries to cover elections in a way that they consider to be fair but that in fact is a distortion of reality. They try to say, "Well, George Bush said this, John Kerry said this" or "Cory Booker said this, Sharpe James said this." And they don't analyze whether one side is telling the truth. They just allow themselves to be mouthpieces for the two campaigns. And I think that they do that because that is what the audience assumes is fair. In fact, I think the media needs to be like a referee. A good referee doesn't call the same number of fouls on both sides; a good referee calls fouls when there are fouls.

AC: One expects malicious deception from Washington, but not necessarily from black Democrats in the Northeast.