colin spoelman

Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, my exposure to strip mining was a remote abandoned mine site we called “Red Dog.” The site consisted of a series of gravel tracks cutting across an expanse of rubble and bare rock that stretched nearly as far as you could see. For us, it was a place to drink unmolested in a dry county, a safe place for a bonfire, and there was plenty of space for off road four-wheel drive adventures. There was something hallowed about the industrial wasteland up on the mountain, stripped of its character, stripped of life, but yet familiar. For us, in high school, it seemed like a sympathetic place: quiet, removed, and symbolic of a certain futility that resonated with our adolescent lives.

I wanted to write a story about that futility, which I believe to be fundamental to the Appalachian experience, where poverty, political corruption, and coal company hegemony have long dominated the cultural, economic, and (especially) the physical landscape. Mining jobs have been on the decline for years, but coal production is up and the industry remains a preeminent source of community pride and shame.

I wanted to write a story about coal mining today that weaved in the experiences of the community members, miners, politicians, and safety inspectors who play their part in an ugly, but necessary industry. I started researching newspapers, reading books, and talking to old friends from my hometown, finding views so disparate, they hardly seem to address the same topic. The following events, which are fictionalized and appropriated for the story, stuck in my mind as the truth upon which to build the narrative architecture:

· A Harlan, Kentucky man died videotaping the dangers of his jobs deep within the mines.

· Following the Sago disaster, the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) stated that safety citations were up 18%. However, a study by the Appalachian Citizens Law Center stated that a third of those fines are unpaid. The agency is owed 4.1 million from Kentucky mines alone and has no power to enforce citations, even on serious violations.

· In Virginia, a bulldozer dislodged a boulder that slammed into a trailer several hundred feet below, killing a small boy.

· In West Virginia, an administrator at MSHA was fired for refusing to sign an environmental assessment of a coal slurry spill 25 times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster that exonerated the corporate parent. The assessment ultimately passed and the media never picked up the story.

· Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader and the largest beneficiary of coal company campaign contributions, is married to Elaine Chao, whom President Bush nominated to head the department of labor. The department of labor directly oversees MSHA.

According to Erik Reece, author of Lost Mountain, an area the size of Delaware will have been obliterated through mountaintop removal by 2010. While most environmentalists are concerned about snowmobiles in Yellowstone or drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve, here where people live, entire mountains are being cleared, burned, and leveled. The scale of destruction is unprecedented and has a profound impact on the environmental health of everyone living downstream from these mines.

However, it’s hard to get hysterical about the destruction; rising energy prices hit the poor hardest. From a safety perspective, strip mining is much less dangerous than underground mining. And though mining today represents only a fraction of the jobs in Appalachia, they are critical to an already depressed economy. It’s a complex problem, made more convoluted by political graft, weak regulatory oversight, and legal maneuvering.

There is already a developing subgenre of topical movies that look at a particular social problem from multiple angles. Films with social relevance are more popular and marketable than ever, because audiences want to learn about the complexity of these issues, and stories can make them more accessible. The filmmaker must approach the topic with the discipline of a documentary filmmaker, but with the eye for narrative of the best storyteller.

As a filmmaker, I’m interested in telling stories about my home. Coming Down the Mountain looked at the prescription drug epidemic in Appalachia with a similar, comprehensive approach. But that process reminded me that telling the “definitive” story is a difficult challenge. People in Appalachia are hyper-aware of the way they are represented in the media. There is a history of exploitation here, and very often it takes an indigenous voice to take a balanced look at the problems people face. It’s not an easy task.