California Dreamin’

Even a cursory glance at the schedule of films and filmmakers descending on Kansas City this week for the 2004 KC Filmmakers Jubilee reveals that the gap between Hollywood fare and what’s being made by independent and modestly financed filmmakers is growing ever wider — thank heavens. Boasting a remarkable range encompassing everything from short student films to a Keith Gordon retrospective and exploring themes that include war, food and sex, the Jubilee folks seem to be aiming higher than ever.

Among the full-length features is former Kansas Citian Chris Metzler’s Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea, and it’s a winner. Codirected with Jeff Springer, this odd but accessible documentary is reminiscent of Errol Morris’ early work. In documentaries such as Gates of Heaven (a peek inside the pet-cemetery industry), Morris spun quirky subjects into art by finding even quirkier characters to serve as his geek chorus.

Metzler and Springer are no less talented in chronicling the birth, life and decay of California’s troubled Salton Sea. Not too far from plush Palm Springs, the man-made Salton Sea was also once prime real estate, hyped in the 1950s as the “California Riviera.” Developers divvied up perfect lake lots along the winding streets, adding to their cachet with picturesque marinas and a yacht club. The fishing was nonpareil: 33-pound corvina waited, ready for a bath of hot beer batter. But the development was like a pretty girl with her fingers crossed behind her back — nothing but a tease.

Promotional films at the time sang the Salton Sea’s praises (the filmmakers employ creative samples) — and they’re a stark contrast to what’s there now. The area has been mercilessly battered by ecological catastrophes (when fish weren’t dying by the millions from the heat and the saline, pelicans were eating their poisoned bodies) and wanton mismanagement. It’s as if that pretty girl has been saddled with a psycho husband. Spots along the sea — such as Bombay Beach, where double-wides that house Hungarian exiles abut those of welfare refugees from Los Angeles — look like images of bombed-out, post-Bush Baghdad.

What makes the film so rich is the way residents have entrusted Metzler and Springer with their stories. “They’re wary of the traditional media,” says Metzler, who went to Ft. Osage High School and attended the University of Southern California. “But we treated our talks like conversations, not journalism. And everyone wanted to talk. A lot of what you see comes from the very first interviews.”

Metzler could easily have ridiculed those subjects — among them, surreal but real-life characters Flash, the Landman and the designated mayor, Hunky Daddy, who reveals a hunk of himself as he moons the camera. But the director says he’s pleased they don’t come off as buffoons. “That was one of our worries early on,” he says. “The easiest thing to mine would have been the comedy. They are what people could consider bizarre or eccentric. We allowed them to be themselves yet show their positive traits.”